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capital of the county of Suceava, Romania
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Suceava (Romanian: [suˈtʃe̯ava] ⓘ) is a city in northeastern Romania. The seat of Suceava County, it is situated in the historical regions of Bukovina and Western Moldavia. It is the largest urban settlement and county seat of Suceava County, with a population of 84,308 inhabitants according to the 2021 Romanian census.
During the Late Middle Ages, namely between 1388 and 1564 (or from the late 14th century to the late 16th century), this middle-sized town was the capital of the Principality of Moldavia. Later on, it became an important, strategically located commercial town of the Habsburg monarchy, Austrian Empire, and Austria-Hungary (formerly belonging to Cisleithania or the Austrian part of the dual monarchy) on the border with the Romanian Old Kingdom.
Nowadays, the town is known for its reconstructed medieval seat fortress (further rebuilt through the EU-funded Regio programme) and its UNESCO-recognized World Heritage Site Saint John the New Monastery (part of the Churches of Moldavia), both local and national tourist attractions. In addition, the Administrative Palace, a historic and civic building dating to imperial Austrian times and designed by Austrian architect Peter Paul Brang, is located in the historic town centre along with the Roman Catholic Saint John of Nepomuk church (one building facing the other). Suceava is also an academic centre of Romania, represented by the Ștefan cel Mare University of Suceava (USV).
Suceava is the 22nd largest Romanian city. The city's population increased exponentially during the second half of the 20th century, from just over 10,000 people in the late 1940s to over 100,000 in the early 1990s.
During the Late Middle Ages, the town of Suceava was the capital of the Principality of Moldavia, being strategically located at the crossroads of several trade routes linking Central Europe with Eastern Europe, and, more specifically for that period of time, the former Principality of Moldavia with the Kingdom of Poland and the Kingdom of Hungary respectively. The town of Suceava had also operated under the Magdeburg law back in the Middle Ages (German: Das Magdeburger Recht).
From 1775 to 1918, Suceava was under the administration of the Habsburg Empire, initially part of its Kingdom of Galicia and Lodomeria, then gradually becoming the third most populous urban settlement of the Duchy of Bukovina, a constituent land of the Austrian Empire and subsequently a crown land within the Austrian part of Austria-Hungary. During this time, Suceava was an important, strategically located commercial border town with the then Romanian Old Kingdom to the south-east (Romanian: Vechiul Regat, German: Altreich).
Throughout the Austrian-ruled period of Bukovina, Suceava was also regarded as a 'miniature Austria' by native intellectual Rudolf Gassauer given its significant ethnic diversity (which, up until the early 20th century, included an overwhelming majority of ethnic Germans, more specifically Bukovina Germans, as well). An even older ethnic German presence in the town (as well as in the entire region of Bukovina) can be traced back to the end of the 14th century, more specifically during the Late Middle Ages (represented by a relatively small group of Transylvanian Saxons).
In the wake of World War I, after 1918, along with the rest of Bukovina, Suceava became part of the then newly enlarged Kingdom of Romania. After the end of World War II, the town slowly underwent a process of communist systematization which increased its population approximately tenfold throughout the decades prior to the 1989 Romanian Revolution. It became a municipality in 1968. Suceava is also crossed by the namesake river, a tributary of Siret, to the northwest, in the neighbourhood of Ițcani (German: Itzkany).
An important market town at the crossroads of several Central and Eastern European commercial routes since the Middle Ages (toward the Kingdom of Hungary to the west and the Kingdom of Poland to the north), Suceava is still an important commercial town nowadays.The city is also a railway junction on CFR Line 500, from which a line branches off westward towards Transylvania.
Moldavian chronicler Grigore Ureche presumed the name of the town came from the Hungarian Szűcsvár, which is combined of the words szűcs (i.e. furrier, skinner) and vár (i.e. castle). This was taken over by Dimitrie Cantemir, who, in his work Descriptio Moldaviae, gave the very same explanation of the origin of the town's name; however, there is neither historical nor vernacular evidence for this. According to another theory, the town bears the name of the river with the same name and that, in turn, is supposed to be of Ukrainian origin.
In Old German, the town was known as Sedschopff, in both contemporary German (i.e. Standard German/Hochdeutsch) and Old German sources it can be found under such variations as Sotschen, Sutschawa, or Suczawa (most commonly), in Hungarian as Szucsáva ([ˈsut͡ʃaːvɒ]) or Szőcsvásár (most likely according to his work Letopisețul Țării Moldovei până la Aron Vodă written in Romanian), in Polish as Suczawa, in Ukrainian as Сучава (Sučava), while in Yiddish as שאָץ ([ʃɔts]).
Historical affiliations
The present-day territory of the town of Suceava and the adjacent surroundings were already inhabited since the Paleolithic period. Stemming from the late Antiquity, there are also traces of Dacian oppidum of the 2nd century. In stark contrast to several other historical regions of Romania (most notably Transylvania and Oltenia), Suceava (along with the entire region of Bukovina for that matter) was not conquered by the legions of the Roman Empire and consequently was one of the lands of the Free Dacian tribes during ancient times. Nonetheless, according to ancient Roman scholar Ptolemy, at that time in the region also dwelled two likely Celtic-speaking tribes, more specifically the Anartes and the Taurisci, as well as the Germanic Bastarnae, who have also been attested there. The presence of Celtic-speaking tribes in Bukovina is further attested during the late La Tène culture period through archaeological studies.
After the fall of Rome and during the Migration Period, the predominantly Carpiani population was successively invaded by East Germanic peoples (such as the Goths or the Gepids), Huns, Slavs, Magyars (i.e. Hungarians), Pechenegs, and ultimately Cumans.
When the town was established and very shortly afterwards, its trade was also facilitated with other Central European towns and markets by a local community of German potters and merchants (quite probably Transylvanian Saxons from Bistrița/Bistritz area) who migrated here during the Ostsiedlung. At the same time, the town had operated under the Magdeburg law (a type of medieval German town law applied mostly in Eastern Europe, but also in several parts of Central Europe), as was the case of Câmpulung Moldovenesc (German: Kimpolung), Siret (German: Sereth), Baia (German: Baja, Stadt Molde, or Moldenmarkt), or Târgu Neamț (German: Niamtz), all which were also situated on the territory of the Principality of Moldavia (more specifically on its northern area or the highlands).
As it was the case of other medieval towns in which the Magdeburg law held sway, this particular German town law came hand in hand with the medieval municipal law (discernible with the foundation of Freiburg im Breisgau in the early 12th century) and the Sachsenspiegel (an important law book during the time of the Holy Roman Empire). The town of Suceava is referred to as Sotschen (an Old High German name) in one of the works of Abraham Ortelius on European geography for the 15th and 16th centuries.
During the late Middle Ages, the town of Suceava was the capital of the Principality of Moldavia and the main residence of the Moldavian princes for nearly two centuries (namely between 1388 and 1564). The town was the capital of the lands of Stephen the Great, one of the pivotal royal figures in Romanian history, who died in Suceava in 1504. During the rule of Alexandru Lăpușneanu, the seat was moved to Iași in 1565 and Suceava failed to become the capital again. Michael the Brave captured the town in 1600 during the Moldavian Magnate Wars as he became the ruler of Wallachia, Moldavia, and Transylvania, but he was defeated during the same year. In 1653, Suceava was sieged.
Together with the rest of Bukovina, Suceava was under the rule of the Habsburg monarchy (and, subsequently, the Austrian Empire as well as Austria-Hungary) from 1775 to 1918 (with the border of the Habsburg domains passing just south-east of the town).
During the late 19th century and early 20th century, the town was the third largest in the Duchy of Bukovina, after Cernăuți (German: Czernowitz or Tschernowitz) and Rădăuți (German: Radautz). Throughout this period of time, in the process of the Josephine colonization (German: Josephinische Kolonisation), the Habsburgs and, later on, the Austrians, attracted many German-speaking settlers from abroad to settle down in Bukovina and, implicitly, in contemporary Suceava, then just a small market town. Over the passing of time, these newly arrived German settlers and their descendants became collectively known as Bukovina Germans. This community has since dwindled to a very small number.
Nonetheless, despite their current numbers, the Germans from Suceava are still culturally, socially, and politically active. Given its diverse ethnic background during the late Modern Age, Austrian architect Rudolf Gassauer stated that the town of Suceava could have well been perceived back then as a 'miniature Austria'. Additionally, at that time, on an administrative level, the town of Suceava was part of a namesake bezirk (i.e. district) with a total population of 66,826 inhabitants.
In 1918, the town of Suceava (as well as the entire region of Bukovina) became part of the enlarged and unified Kingdom of Romania (and what is known in Romanian historiography as Greater Romania), after an overwhelming vote of the German, Romanian, and Polish representatives of the General Congress of Bukovina. All 7 political representatives of the Bukovina Germans led by Alois Lebouton voted for the union of Bukovina with the Kingdom of Romania.
Throughout the interwar period, Suceava underwent further infrastructural development within the then enlarged Kingdom of Romania (Romanian: Regatul României). Moreover, from an administrative point of view, it had also briefly belonged to Ținutul Suceava (between 1938 and 1940), one of the 10 lands established during King Carol II's reign.
In addition, the town had previously had sizeable German, Jewish, and Polish ethnic communities which gradually dramatically dwindled throughout both the late 20th century and early 21st century. However, various ethnic groups are still present in smaller numbers nowadays and are socially, culturally, and politically active and mostly well integrated through their representative institutions (e.g. Dom Polski for the Polish community, the local headquarters of the Union of the Ukrainians of Romania for the Ukrainian community, the Association of Italians of Romania established in the city in 1993 for the Italian community, or the local branch of the Democratic Forum of Germans for the German community). With regard to the Jewish population, according to Encyclopaedia Judaica: "The local Jews were persecuted by the Nazi German and Romanian authorities between 1940 and 1941. When deported to Transnistria in 1941, they numbered 3,253. Only 27 remained in the town." The total nunber of Jews deported to Transnistria from Suceava County in October 1941 was 5,942. A Romanian official document from 1946 suggests that most Jews in Suceava County survived the Holocaust. The broader context is that 70% or more than 70% of the southern Bukovinian Jews deported to Transnistria survived the ordeal. On March 14, 1944, Romania's military dictator Ion Antonescu allowed the repatriation of all the Jews deported to Transnistria.
Subsequently, from the 1950s onwards (concomitantly with the rise of communism in Romania), Suceava was heavily industrialized and a significant series of historical buildings from its historical centre (including the entire Franz Josef Straße) were demolished for Plattenbau-like blocks of flats to be constructed at the orders of the former communist officials.
After the 1989 Romanian revolution, the town had increasingly lost both a significant amount of its population and its former industry which was forged mainly during communism. Therefore, its local economy entered a period of decline for many years. During the early 21st century, Suceava's population raised above 100,000 inhabitants according to official Romanian census data and estimates, but then went into decline again as per the latest census from 2021. At the same time, both economic development and revitalisation took place as well since 1999 onwards. Eventually, Suceava attracted investors to such an extent that it became the city with the highest density of modern commercial spaces per capita in Romania. Additionally, Suceava represents an urban development pole in the North-East development region.
Text from the Wikipedia article “Suceava”, available under CC BY-SA 4.0.