TheMarketForIdeas

Alexandru Potcoavă makes a keen observation in the August 2025 issue of the literary magazine Orizont, based in Timișoara: “You know you’re in a Central European city when, in one of its squares, you stumble upon a Column of the Plague, erected in Viennese Baroque style”. If in Austria, the Czech Republic, Slovakia, or Hungary these columns are a common sight (now cultural, religious, and artistic monuments, but with a less-than-pleasant origin), in Romania, we find columns of the plague only in Timișoara and Cluj-Napoca – proof that, if not geographically, at least ideologically, these two cities were (and continue to be) closer to a certain Central European ideal.

The plagues and the monuments built in their wake symbolize the positioning of our lands at the crossroads between East and West. The “Turkish disease”, as it was called, made its way into Timișoara with an Imperial battalion of the Third Army, arriving from the eastern parts of Wallachia, or the so-called Turkish Wallachia. Between January 1738, when the first cases appeared, and June 1739, a thousand of the six thousand residents of the Timișoara fortress perished. In Cluj, 10% of the population was lost, and further east, towns in the Sibiu and Brașov regions also fell victims to the plague.

The Habsburg Counter-Reformation aimed to strengthen Catholicism, and one of its manifestations was the erection of plague columns in cities affected by the epidemic across the Czech Republic, Slovakia, Hungary, Serbia, Croatia, Austria, in Banat, and in Transylvania. These columns were symbols of gratitude for the cessation of the epidemics, as well as expressions of Catholic devotion.

Building these monuments after the plague’s end was not just a symbol of liberation from suffering, but also a beacon of hope for the return of normal life and economic activity. Symbolically, it represented an act of hope for the revitalization of the local economy, a sign that it would once again follow its usual course after the plague had significantly reduced the labour force. Since the plague didn’t choose its victims based on profession, many crafts and trades were affected, and some skills were permanently lost.

Timișoara is home to not one, but two of these Baroque columns – one in Piața Libertății, the other in Piața Unirii –, both adorned with intricate artistic details and saints as protectors. They are testimonies of the cultural and religious superiority of the Habsburgs, who not only liberated Timișoara militarily earlier in 1716, through Prince Eugene of Savoy, but also brought civilization, order, and a new way of life. Thus, the monuments carried with them the hope of prosperity. On May 3rd, and later on May 15th, 1739, processions took place, with the population gathering around the statue of St. Nepomuk as a sign of gratitude to the divine for the eradication of the plague.

From a socio-economic perspective, these processions, followed by the erection of the plague columns, reaffirmed the authority of the Habsburg Empire over Timișoara, a city at the dawn of its transition from Ottoman rule to Viennese control. The columns of the plague stand as proof of a social cohesion that would later lead to the city’s economic flourishing, with the emergence of factories and modern industries. And, more than that, they symbolize Timișoara and Cluj-Napoca’s “Mitteleuropeanism”, cities influenced by the ideas, cultures, and economies of Central Europe – a space more symbolic than geographical, based on cultural communion and ethnic cosmopolitanism, as opposed to nationalist or imperialist interpretations.

Erected in the aftermath of devastating epidemics, the plague columns in Timișoara and Cluj-Napoca are still symbols of a Mitteleuropean identity, symbolizing the intersection of cultures and a shared cultural heritage that transcends geographical borders and nationalist ideologies. This spirit can be still felt today, with Timișoara and Cluj-Napoca asserting their place in the a wider (Central-)European narrative alongside Vienna, Prague, or Bratislava.