History & Culture
Our municipality offers more than just beautiful landscapes and a lively community – it also has central facilities that structure everyday life and enable people to live together. Whether school, town hall or cemetery – each of these places fulfills an important task in the lives of our citizens. On this page, we would like to give you an overview of these facilities and show you how they help shape our community life.
Pastor Josef Georg Konnerth, whose father was a master builder, brought the prerequisites for the construction of a new school to Großau in 1893. In his very first year in office, a presbyterial resolution was passed to build a new school. It was thanks to Pastor Konnerth’s persistence that the necessary land could be purchased in 1899 despite a lack of money. On July 30, 1905, the construction work was awarded and a full year later, on September 23, 1906, the building was inaugurated. Since then, the words “Our people’s strong castle” have stood above the entrance. Generations of us from Großau have gone through this school, true to the motto “whoever has the school has the future”. Further information on this topic can also be found in our Großauer Blatt No. 5-2006 under the heading “The German school in Großau around 1900”.
School
Town hall
The town hall of Großau is located on the main street, about 150 meters before the cemetery, and was built in 1909 under Pastor Konnerth, according to Pastor Weingärtner. If you drive from Europastrasse through Kirchgasse and Brückengasse, you will arrive directly at the square in front of the town hall.
It serves as the seat of the municipal council, while the municipal secretary’s official apartment is located on the top floor. The building also houses the municipal archive, where important documents on the history and development of Großau are kept.
Pastor Weingärtner says the following in his local history book about the parish of Großau: “If you climb the castle hill in the north of the parish, the viewer is presented with a beautiful picture….our gaze is always caught first by the high church tower and now also by the mighty fortified church. In the distance, about 10 km away, the belt of the Carpathians greets you…The rows of houses emerge and you can recognize almost all the streets, the cemetery, the railroad station…”
The cemetery is located on the main road (Bahngasse), which leads to the southern Romanian mountain communities of Orlat and Gura Riului at the foot of the Carpathian Mountains. The tall pine trees immediately make it clear that this place is something special – especially when you look at the community from the church tower.
Cemetery
According to Pastor Weingärtner, Goethe once said: “If you want to get a picture of a place, two things are important: climb the tower and go to the cemetery.” The care of the graves and paths shows how the deceased are honored and remembered in the lives of their families.
Although it was certainly more florid in the past, the cemetery, which covers around 1 hectare, still looks very well-kept. As the upkeep can no longer be carried out by the bereaved alone, the HOG and the parish of Großau jointly look after the chapel (176 m²), the paths and the entire grounds so that visitors can find a dignified place and burials can continue to take place.