House of Soterius von Sachsenheim
| Soterius von Sachsenheim | |
|---|---|
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| Country |
 Austrian Empire Austria-Hungary
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| Founded | 1791 |
| Ethnicity | Transylvanian Saxons |
The House of Soterius von Sachsenheim is a Transylvanian Saxon noble family originating from the village Stein (present-day Dacia), in the former Saxon administrative division. Among its members were politicians and bureaucrats in the Transylvanian state administration and also army officers, scholars, pastors and artists.
The ancestors of the family emigrated in the High Middle Ages from the western area of present-day Germany to south-east Transylvania, part of a group of German colonists (Transylvanian Saxons) invited by the Hungarian kings to settle near the eastern border of their kingdom. The initial name of the family was Schöchter(t). In the Moselle Franconian dialect (the base of the German dialect spoken by the Transylvanian Saxons), Schöchtert means a wooden milking pail and a Schöchter is a cooper who manufactures milking pails.
The earliest known ancestor, Valentinus Schöchtert (born c. 1554), lived in the village of Stein (also known by the Hungarian name of Garat, today the village Dacia in Jibert commune near Brașov, Romania) and was a country farmer (land bauer). His son Peter Schöchtert (born c. 1584) also lived in Stein. In the family tree, the words written near his name appear to be Christinus Scholarius (Christian scholar). He married Martha Goldwein.
As in those times it was very fashionable to use Latin surnames, the family name was Latinized from Schöchter(t) to Soterius (which is also similar to the Greek word soter, saviour). Peter Schöchtert's son was Petrus Soterius, born in Stein, in 1618. He became a Lutheran pastor in Bodendorf (today Buneşti), the first of three generations of pastors in the family. Petrus married twice, first to Anna Thomae (1632–66) and second to Barbara Kissling (1633–91), from an old Saxon family of royal judges. In 1661, when he participated in a mission to the Ottoman camp involved in the throne disputes, the Ottoman leader Ali Pasha offered him the title of Prince of Transylvania, in an attempt to win over the sympathies of the Saxons (in the multiethnic context of Transylvania). Petrus though declined as he was content being a pastor.
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