Human habitat and the forest in Transylvania during the First World War. Case study: Sighişoara
Human habitat and the forest in Transylvania during the First World War. Case study: Sighişoara

Summary/Abstract: The sustainable use of resources in times of crisis and war is a very topical issue. The manner in which the wood supply was dealt with during the course of history makes this humanistic discipline meet the field of forestry. From the very beginning my paper distinguishes between the demand for construction wood and firewood. While demand for the former was very low to non-existent even in 1918, demand and prices for the latter grew as the war went on, being sold at the end of the conflict ten times more expensive than at the beginning of the Great War. On the one hand, it can be argued that during the Great War the forests nearby Sighişoara were spared of human intervention. On the other hand, however, the lack of cleaning and thinning operations had a negative impact on the healthy evolution of the tree population. As for the forest’s preservation, one can note the negative effects of the nineteenth-century Hungarian legislation that imposed a stereotyped forest management. In the interwar years, it came under heavy criticism from Saxon forestry experts, such as Julius Fröhlich. Finally, I demonstrate that forestry in Sighişoara and the economic plan established at the end of the nineteenth century were not affected by the town's involvement in the First World War.

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