Documentary

Like a Bird on the Fence

The people appearing in the documentary are not Transylvanian Saxons but Deutschböhmen, that is Germans from Bohemia who settled around the Semenic-Mountain (Banat) in the first part of the 19th century. Since the production of the documentary, however, things have changed, not necessarily for the worst. (it could even be the subject for a documentary itself): in some of the villages (formerly) inhabited by the Deutschböhmen, people from Timisoara built their holiday houses, Weidenthal (which is featured in the docu - the Romanian name is Brebu Nou) and Wolfsberg (Garâna) are not completely deserted, the mayor of Garâna (might be known to some Romanians for the Jazz Festival there) is actually of German origin.