Open Access

Roxana Nubert

• The century-long historical and political power exercised by the Ottoman Empire in Southern Europe has left deep scars in the Romanian culture and even in the Romanian language. Consequently, there is still an area in which the oriental world is very much alive and this is Dobrudja. The costal town Balchik, situated in Dobrudja, is intensely illustrated as a gateway to the Orient in the Romanian literature and paintings of the 1920s and 1930s. Nevertheless, the way the Romanian-German authors (Oskar Walter Cisek, Adolf Meschendörfer) deal with this charming oriental world represents an exception. Cisek’s interest for Balchik is instinctively stirred by the oriental-Balkan atmosphere of his hometown Bucharest: In the novel “Die Tatarin”/“The Tatar” (1929), the author identifies the foundation for “the discovery” of the oriental-Balkan influenced Romanian Black Sea coast in the local German-language literature.The honeymoon places the protagonists of Adolf Meschendörfer’s novel “Der Büffelbrunnen”/“The Bufallo-Fountain” (1935) in Mangea Punar, today Costineşti, a small town on the Romanian Black Sea coast, which in the interwar period was populated by the Germans from Banat. In this way, the oriental world of Dobrudja is integrated into the text. Compared to Oskar Walter Cisek’s Balchik, Mangea Punar is only one episode from all the events portrayed in the book, because the story of the novel is mostly set in Kronstadt (Brasov). Meschendörfer’s dealing with this exotic region represents a unique endeavor for the Transylvanian Saxon literature of the 20th Century.