Dr. Claus Stephani
Translation by Google, Needs Editing
From: Das Mädchen aus dem Wald
Märchen, Sagen, und Ortsgeschichten aus dem Radautzer Ländchen
Ion Creanga Verlag, Bukarest 1985
Posted in English on February 9, 2021
In 1826 the Galician Provincial Government, to which the Buchenland was then subordinate, submitted an application to the Viennese court chancellery, “One should deploy hard-working and busy people in the deserted areas of the districts of Stanislau, Kolomea, and Czernowitz.”
At that time there were probably numerous Romanian farms and hamlets and also a few villages in the Kimpolung district, but many Heiduck lived in the dense forests of the Cheremousch, whose “robbery” had an adverse effect on the country’s economic development.
Three years later, in 1829, the economic office in Solka worked out a plan with precise sketches and sent it to Vienna on September 29th. Three settlements were planned, namely in the valley of the Solonetzbach south of Solka, then in the Warwata area between Pertesti and Illisesti and finally on the lake meadow (Poiana Baltä).
Another three years passed and in the spring of 1832 the Solka Economic Office repeated its proposals to the Chernivtsi Graduate Inspectorate and demanded that German settlers be sent here for “security and cultivation”.
When Slovaks then immigrated to the valley of the Solonetz and Plesch, other settlement options arose for the German colonists: on the dense forest-covered mountain slope of the Humorbach, about three kilometers from its confluence with the Vltava river, and also in the Buchenhain area on the same stream , about twenty kilometers north of its mouth and in the also heavily wooded source area of the Schwarzbach, about six kilometers south of the village of Negrileasa, inhabited by Romanian farmers, at the place called Fürth (Vad), where the German town of Schwarzthal later emerged.
The first seventy-three German Bohemian families came to Bori in the Buchenland in 1835. They came from the Prachiner district, and in the passport of Josef Günthner from Seeiwsen, which was issued on April 6, 1835, you can read which way the Ansidlers moved: from Budweis to Iglau, Brünn, Olmütz, Teschen, Wadowitz, Bochnia, Jarnow, Przemysl, Sambor, Kolomea, and Chernivtsi.
On May 8th, Josef Günthner and his wife and three children, the youngest of whom was only three years old, registered for departure in Budweis and only on June 10th did the family arrive in Chernivtsi after an arduous journey. They had to report to each of the cities mentioned and each time the next stop was precisely prescribed.
From Chernivtsi they were sent on to Radautz and from there to Solka, where they arrived on June 16. Only then were they assigned to “settlement on state grounds”.