Siebenbürgen in Otto Folberths Kriegstagebuch
Transylvania through the War Journal of Otto Folberth

Summary/Abstract: The memoirs of World War I participants have been studied and used in the last years to write about and interpret the conflagration, on the occasion of the centenary commemoration of the armed conflict’s outbreak. In this paper the author investigates the unpublished memoirs of the Transylvanian Saxon writer and editor Otto Folberth (1896–1991) in order to find out how he referred to his homeland, Transylvania, which was then part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire. Folberth, a young high school graduate,attended a military school and was then sent to the Galician front, to fight against the Russian army. His notes, often written next to his cannon, refer to art, philosophy,literature, history, politics and war. His journal lines clearly show his patriotism, his concern for Transylvania which had become a theater of war, for his hometown Mediaș, for his family he had left behind.Folberth celebrated the end of the Great War in the autumn of 1918, in Mediaș,but was disappointed by the decision taken by the leadership of the Transylvanian Saxons on January 8th, 1919, whereby they adhered to the separation of Transylvania from Hungary and to its unification with Romania.

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