Caroline Fernolend, MET Foundation: “We work to preserve our architectural heritage and to support a framework for living”

Caroline Fernolend, the president of the Mihai Eminescu Trust (MET) Foundation, is a true visionary in the realm of cultural preservation. With a profound passion for safeguarding Romania’s rich heritage, she has embarked on a tireless journey to protect and revitalize historical landmarks, traditional craftsmanship, and the cultural tapestry of the nation. Moreover, the organization is part of Haferland Week, the event which is about to start between Aug 3-6, 2023.

Could you provide a brief summary of the activities and projects carried out by MET during your tenure?

I’ve been working for the Trust, in various positions, for almost 23 years. Along the way, our team supervised around 1,300 different projects involving at least 115 villages and several cities in Transylvania.

As you know, our foundation is the descendant of MET UK, an organization founded in London in the late 1980s to support Romanian dissidents and fight against the Communist regime’s plans for forced industrialization, which effectively meant razing Romanian villages and relocating their inhabitants to newly-built urban ghettos.

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Ever since, preserving Romania’s cultural and material heritage has been our mission. In the first decade after the fall of the Communist regime, our focus turned gradually to the preservation of villages in the south-eastern part of Transylvania, where we have been working ever since to help revitalize those communities.

Over the past 23 years we planted more then 3 million trees, trained a couple hundred locals in traditional crafts, renovated private homes, manors, and Medieval churches, sometimes teaching the owners themselves how to do restoration work, assisted in archaeological digs, taught business and English to locals, did collaboration projects with schools, town halls and the forestry service, and so on.

One of our many outstanding projects is the restoration of the Malancrav Apafi Manor house, a five-year enterprise that was eventually awarded the Europa Nostra prize. It is a typical project for us, since it involved the local workforce. The craftsmen who did the restoration were also the ones who inaugurated the restored building.

This year’s theme for Haferland Week is sustainability. How do you personally relate to the concept of sustainability? But in your work?

The whole work of MET is centered on ensuring a sustainable future for the communities where we are present. I have a personal interest in this endeavor. My family has been living here, in the village of Viscri, since 1842, so this is personal history for me. I came back here after college and I have never left again.

There’s a phrase that says there is no future without the past. It’s very important to me to be able to help the people from here build a life using the local resources: teaching them traditional crafts, or helping them start small businesses to secure a steady income.

This is why we are also involved in creating jobs and developing entrepreneurial capability at a local level, for example by providing business skills or handicraft training.

What we do here could be called community revival. We work to preserve our architectural heritage and, at the same time, to support a framework for living: a community that lives from small businesses, environmentally friendly agricultural practices, local crafts. The third layer we operate on is the cultural heritage – reviving all the traditions of the place.

We aim to preserve an authentic sense of the place by helping the people from here lead a normal life in a rural community. People still work in the field, raise animals, and follow their customs.

This is an integrated approach to community development that engages the local communities, including local resources, know-how, and traditional crafts, tools, and techniques.

As you collaborate with various localities in Romania, how would you define the traditional Transylvanian villages for someone who is unfamiliar with its history?

These villages are truly unique. They are quintessentially German and also very different from actual villages in Germany. They are multicultural, with at least two, sometimes three languages spoken in the space of just a few square miles. They still preserve a sense of a quiet, happy life, as it was hundreds of years ago. I’ve met tourists who asked whether they were allowed to touch the furniture in their room, thinking it must have come from a museum. They still have mostly pristine surroundings, spared from aggressive development. The food is great, natural, and healthy. There’s culture, unique traditions, artisan products. It’s really beautiful.

What role do you play in persuading local authorities to invest in this type of heritage? How do you leverage your influence to advocate for the preservation and restoration of these churches?

Churches are actually an easy sell. They’re well-known monuments, beloved above all by the locals. The problem is the restoration costs, which can be very, very steep, far above what a local town hall can afford.

It’s easier, then, to involve the locals in smaller projects, like the restoration of private homes, or converting outbuildings into guest facilities.

We are, of course, maintaining a close cooperation with municipalities. Since we’ve been there for so long and we’ve done so many things together, we’ve come to know very well all the people in charge, so there’s a constant dialogue going on.

You have been instrumental in promoting the conservation and valorization of heritage sites. How do you believe heritage conservation can empower communities?

There’s more than just the places and buildings. The number of people who have learned some traditional crafts, renovated their homes, or started a small business runs into the hundreds, so I believe we’ve certainly made an impact at the community level.

Yes, we’ve helped with the restoration of many facades, houses and outbuildings (barns etc.). But I believe that preserving the architectural heritage must go hand in hand with its use by people. An empty house, however beautifully renovated, is not a living thing. And what we want above all is to help these villages flourish, not turn them into an open-air museum. Lived-in houses survive for much longer than abandoned ones.

Read also: Haferland Week 2023: A captivating journey through time and Transylvanian traditions

How do you motivate the locals to conserve their heritage and see its potential for development?

You know that short story by Ioan Slavici, Popa Tanda? It’s about a Transylvanian priest who fails, again and again, to get his parishioners in a poor village to get to work to improve their lives. And when all the preaching fails, the priest starts by repairing his own house, roof, fence… And that makes the entire village want to emulate him. It’s important to find a common goal and work locally following a well-defined action plan.

That is what we did. We started small – lots of small projects, mostly facade repairs. But that gradually changed minds and the locals became more responsible. And then we started repairing the barns, the footbridges, we put up direction signs and so on, and started teaching courses in traditional handicrafts.

Now we have a whole „cottage industry” – some people make and sell slippers, socks, jams, honey, others have converted their homes or barns into guest houses, or provide sightseeing tours around the place.

How do you perceive the balance between modernization and preserving the authenticity of heritage?

More and more young people are visiting the area. Some of them are moving here, in places like Viscri, drawn by the perspective of being away from the pollution and stress of city life. I believe that these young people are, like me, interested to preserve these villages as they are. Many young architects, as well, come here to learn about traditional building materials and techniques.

I welcome this trend. While I certainly do not want to see here the sort of development that took over the sea coast, I believe that there is room for growth. For instance, we are very proud of the ecological wastewater treatment plant in Viscri, the first of its kind in Romania, which operates gravitationally and uses vegetation to decompose waste.

You explained in other interviews that finding the right balance between preserving heritage and maintaining sustainable tourism can be complex. How do you navigate the delicate equilibrium between attracting tourists and ensuring the long-term well-being of the local community in places like Viscri and Mălâncrav?

In our projects, we focus on sustainable tourism. By that, we mean the area’s cultural and material heritage, hiking routes, staying at traditional guesthouses, enjoying home-made food and produce, and the unique experience of traditional rural life.

Thankfully, we have not reached capacity, at least for the time being, so the question of over-tourism is less relevant for the time being. But when that time comes, the local administration and the people will probably have to work together to set some limits to development, room capacity, or a mix of both.

Sustainable practices will be needed all across. The whole selling point of these places is their authenticity, unspoiled environment and traditions. The objective, then, is to allow for sustainable tourism as a part of a self-sufficient community. And yes, that probably means that over the medium term accommodation prices will go up.

Read also: Michael Schmidt, M&V Schmidt Foundation: “I see Haferland Week as one more way to make possible a sustainable future for the places where I grew up, for the children and grandchildren of my generation.”

Are there other challenges apart from over-tourism?

Sorry to sound like a TV talking head, but we need a national strategy for rural tourism, especially centered on high-potential areas. Also, the infrastructure (roads, utilities etc.) could use an upgrade.

And then there’s the problem of convincing people. Some still do not understand concepts like sustainability or environmentally-aware development. We had to work pretty hard to convince several dozen villagers in Viscri to join a co-op that produces milk. Unfortunately, the memory of Communist-era cooperatives, which robbed their parents or grandparents of most of their assets, is still raw. But we’re working to overcome that. Some parts of the past are better left behind.