In this article we will briefly visit the main square of Miercurea Sibiului and stop next to the Lutheran Church of Apoldu de Sus. The two old communities are situated westward from Sibiu, on the main road towards Sebeș (Mühlbach).

Miercurea Sibiului (Reußmarkt in German, Szerdahely in Hungarian) used to be a Transylvanian Saxon Seat of its own (the Reussmarkter Stuhl), with a distinctive coat of arms and all the importance of a main seat. It was declared town only in 2004, although it feels like a village. Apoldu de Sus is a village in the administration of this town, although there is some distance between the two.

The area where the town is now has been inhabited by Dacians. And it is no surprise, since we are in the wider area around the old Dacian capital. This can still be felt today, for instance, in the way people dress: the traditional Romanian clothes use the colors black, white and red, with the only exception being this region, which distinctively uses exclusively black and white. As a bonus, the Romanians use geometrical figures and straight lines, while the Hungarians use floral symbols, curved lines, and are additionally fond of the color green; a keen eye will immediately notice the difference. The Germans dress in a completely different way and are easy to differentiate from anyone else.

Miercurea Sibiului (which, by the way, would translate to “Sibiu’s Wednesday”, probably referring to a market held on Wednesdays) was founded by Germans in the year 1290 (as Ruhcmark), on the banks of the Secaș River (that gives the name to the surrounding Secașelor Country or Țara Secașelor), and has nowadays around 3600 inhabitants (with the Germans being now only 1% of the entire community).

An important sight is the Greek Catholic Church of the Annunciation, built in 1773. Next to it there is the Muzeul Țării Secașelor, a local museum (Secaș comes from the Hungarian word Székás, meaning “salty”, which is a geological reality of the area.

Perhaps the most important building in the community is the fortified Evangelical-Lutheran Church of Miercurea Sibiului. It was built in the 13th century (initially as a Romanesque basilica, then rebuilt in the Gothic style) and has suffered various damages from the invasions of the Turks and, surprisingly, the Serbs.

Apoldu de Sus (Großpold in German, Nagyapold in Hungarian) was first attested in 1272, build built by the Germans. However, there are older traces of the Celts, Dacians and the Romans in the surrounding area.

Here is a view of the school, which is in a rather advanced state of decay…

The Evangelical-Lutheran Church was, obviously, closed. One interesting detail about Apoldu de Sus is that it had an important community of Landlers – protestants forced by the Habsburgs to leave Carinthia (Kärnten, in Austria) and come here due to their conversion to Lutheranism. The Landlers (more than 800 deported people) lived in an area called Landlersiedlung, made up of Neppendorf (Turnișor, today a district of Sibiu), Großau (Cristian, a village near Sibiu) and Apoldu de Sus.