Transylvanian German

The Transylvanian Germans, better known as the Transylvanian Saxons, are one of the oldest German communities east of the Carpathians. From the mid-twelfth century King Géza II invited Rhineland colonists to guard the passes and mine; they settled the Altland and, after the Teutonic Knights were invited in 1211 and expelled in 1225, the Burzenland.

Andrew II's Golden Charter of 1224, the Diploma Andreanum, granted autonomy on their Königsboden, or Királyföld, where no Hungarian lord might own land, their towns ringed by fortified churches. In 1438 they joined the Hungarian nobility and the Székelys in the Union of the Three Nations.

Under the humanist Johannes Honterus almost the whole people adopted Lutheranism in the mid-sixteenth century, and the Lutheran church became their national church. After Mohács in 1526 Transylvania became an autonomous principality under Ottoman suzerainty, and the Saxon towns kept their privileges until the Treaty of Karlowitz confirmed the Habsburg reconquest in 1699.