Introduction
Lying at the ‘crossroads of empires’ and peripherically related to several political and cultural centers, a typical feature of ethnic groups living in the shifting Central-Eastern part of the European continent, Transylvanian Saxons produced various identification discourses in the course of history. This article looks at Transylvanian Saxon self-identification from 1918 onwards, focusing on the related symbolic geographies and on the East-West divide this identification has been recurrently connected with, albeit in different ways. Its main sources are literary products, showing how mutations in Transylvanian Saxon identification discourses are mirrored therein.
Transylvanian Saxons in Historical and Cultural Context
In the 12th century, at the behest of the Magyar King Géza II, settlers from different German-speaking regions, such as the Mosel region, Flanders and Luxembourg were invited to Transylvania in order to colonize the presumably deserted territory newly conque...

