Over 8,000 tourists, locals and hundreds of Saxons who returned home during this period participated in the 13th edition of the Haferland Week Festival, the organisers announced in a press release sent to AGERPRES.
The most anticipated moments of this year's edition were the Escape of the Lole from Agnita, the hiking tour and cultural picnic held at the Saschiz Refuge Fortress, as well as the traditional Saxon ball and jazz concerts.
'We successfully conclude yet another edition of Haferland Week, probably the most successful so far in terms of public participation, with a large turnout at all the events held here. Haferland Week is already an undeniable success. The constant influx of tourists has led to the development of local tourism infrastructure, with ongoing investments in guesthouses, cafés and tea rooms, handmade product shops, and traditional food stores. With Haferland Week, we have laid the foundation for a success story, to which we, as organisers, contribute alongside the local community and the authorities,' said Michael Schmidt, President of the M&V Schmidt Foundation, co-organiser of the event.
The theme of this year's edition of the festival was 'Neighbourhood Traditions.'
'If we talk about neighbourhoods as the main theme of this edition of Haferland Week, we must speak of extended neighbourhoods, which connect us not only with those next door but also with those who are no longer here, such as the Saxons who left Romania. It is up to us, the generations of a borderless Europe, to build, and where necessary, rebuild, the bridges between these communities, including through initiatives like Haferland Week, this operation of rediscovering the past that also looks forward to the future,' said Emil Hurezeanu, former Minister of Foreign Affairs and co-initiator of the event.
As a token of appreciation for his long-standing cooperation with the M&V Schmidt Foundation in preserving Saxon cultural identity, Michael Schmidt was awarded a badge bearing the Federal Coat of Arms of Germany by Bernd Fabritius, the German Government's Government Commissioner for Matters Related to Ethnic German Resettlers and National Minorities.
Also attending this year's edition of Haferland Week were Mircea Abrudean, President of the Senate, Ulla Krauss-Nussbaumer, Austria's Ambassador to Bucharest, Lior Ben Dor, Israel's Ambassador to Bucharest, as well as Adriana Stanescu, Romania's Ambassador to Germany, Dan Mihalache, Romania's Ambassador to Cyprus, and Gabriel Bologan, Romania's Ambassador to the Holy See.
Also present were MEP Siegfried Muresan and Luca Niculescu, Secretary of State in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs.
The 2025 edition of Haferland Week hosted, as every year, the annual meeting of the Romanian-German Bilateral Cooperation Forum, whose mission is to maintain dialogue on economic and cultural matters between the two countries.
This year's forum meeting focused on the state of German-language education in Romania.
The festival was organised by the M&V Schmidt Foundation, in partnership with the Tabaluga Foundation - Peter Maffay Stiftung, and took place from 31 July to 3 August across ten localities: Archita, Saschiz, Homorod, Rupea, Cris, Roades, Mesendorf, Cloasterf, Bunesti, and Viscri.
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