AUFGABENBEREICHE DER EVANGELISCHEN PFARRFRAU EINER SIEBENBÜRGISCH-SÄCHSISCHEN GEMEINDE IM 20. JAHRHUNDERT
Fields of Duty of a Protestant Pastor’s Wife in a Transylvanian Saxon Parish in the 20th Century

Summary/Abstract: The present article can be considered a contribution to the oral history and contains the description of the fields of duty that a protestant pastor’s wife had in a Transylvanian Saxon parish until the beginning of the 21st century. As an introduction there is a brief overview over the evolution of the parsonage as a religious institution beneath the church beginning with the Lutheran Reformation in the 16th century in Germany. The author is a protestant pastor’s wife herself and recounts some of her experiences living in a village parish where the pastor and his wife were seen as the father and mother of the parish. Among the wife’s duties was the organizing of the women’s association in the village, baking gingerbread for all children at Christmas and Easter, teaching religion at school but also privately (the only possibility in communist Romania), being a good host to all arriving guests, whether invited or not, and many other activities. After the fall of communism through the revolution in December 1989, almost 90% of the German speaking population of Romania, the so-called Transylvanian Saxons, left for Germany. This historical event meant the end of the parsonage as an institution within the parishes and the Evangelical church.

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