Romanians take Brașov

On 29 August 1916, the third day of the war between Romania and Austria-Hungary, Romanian troops took Brașov, in German Kronstadt, in Hungarian Brassó. It was the largest city the Romanians captured during their offensive in Transylvania. The advance units of the 4th Division of General Alexandru Averescu’s Second Army came down into the city from the passes above the Prahova valley almost without a fight, because the Austro-Hungarian troops and authorities had left it the night before. According to the American historian Michael Barrett, at about 5 p.m. Romanian units marched through the streets to the main square of the city. In Romania, where the Julian calendar was still in use, it was 16 August, and local Romanian tradition recorded the event under that date.

A city of three nations

Brașov, lying at the foot of the Carpathians in the basin of the Burzenland, in the south-eastern corner of Transylvania, had about 41,000 inhabitants according to the census of 1910 and was the second-largest city of the land after Kolozsvár. About 43 per cent of its inhabitants were Hungarians, 29 per cent Romanians and 26 per cent Germans. The city was founded in the Middle Ages by the Transylvanian Saxons and for centuries was one of their main centres. The Gothic Black Church towered over the old town, and in the 16th century the reformer and humanist Johannes Honterus worked here.

For Romanians Brașov was one of the most important cities of Transylvania. In the Romanian quarter of Schei some of the first books in the Romanian language were printed in the 16th century, and from 1838 the Gazeta de Transilvania, one of the most important newspapers of the Transylvanian Romanians, was published here. The border with Romania was only a dozen or so kilometres away, and the railway to Bucharest ran over the Predeal pass. The city was therefore one of the first objectives of the Romanian war plan.

The road to the city

The area around Brașov was defended by the Austro-Hungarian 71st Division, in practice a scratch collection of Landsturm battalions, march battalions and gendarmerie. Its core was the Székely 82nd Infantry Regiment. Its 1st Battalion, supported according to Barrett by an armoured train, held up the attack of the Romanian 4th Division in the Tömös (Timiș) pass for the whole of 28 August and only in the evening fell back to the mouth of the pass. The regiment’s two other battalions defended themselves near the castle at Bran (PL) against the Romanian 3rd Division, and an alarm battalion from the Brașov garrison blocked the road at Râșnov. The threat of being outflanked from the west and orders from divisional headquarters meant that on 29 August all these units withdrew westwards, towards Zărnești and Codlea. The road to the city lay open.

During the night of 28 to 29 August the Hungarian officials left Brașov. The evacuation was prepared at the last moment, because the government in Budapest had earlier not wanted to alarm the population. There were dramatic scenes at the station. Terrified Hungarians and Germans stormed the departing trains, and according to Barrett the last of them was wrecked by Romanian artillery.

The Romanians enter

In the afternoon of 29 August, as the Romanian columns approached the city, a delegation of local Romanians came out to meet them. According to Romanian sources it was led by the physician Gheorghe Baiulescu, who on the road outside the city greeted Colonel Darvari, the commander of the approaching column. He assured him, also on behalf of the Saxons and Hungarians, of the loyalty of the whole population and asked the army to take the city under its protection. The Romanians did not have to fight in the city itself. In the evening their units marched to the main square, greeted as liberators by the local Romanians. Baiulescu became mayor and, according to Romanian sources, was the first Romanian to hold the office in the history of Brașov.

We have not been able to find reliable accounts of that day from the Saxon and Hungarian population. From the Austrian official history it is known that on 29 August the Saxons and Hungarians of the border communes were ordered to leave their homes and withdraw with their belongings beyond the Mureș, and many of them had already fled earlier.

A short rule

In the following days the Romanians occupied the whole plain around Brașov, but they advanced cautiously and lost contact with the retreating enemy. Soon the situation was reversed. After the defeat in the Dobruja at the beginning of September Averescu moved to another sector of the front, and some divisions were taken from the Second Army. In October, after the victory at Hermannstadt, Erich von Falkenhayn’s German Ninth Army advanced on Brașov and retook the city on 7–9 October. Romanian rule had lasted about 40 days. Baiulescu and many of the Romanians who had welcomed the Romanian army fled with it. Baiulescu returned to Brașov only after the union of Transylvania with Romania at the end of 1918.