[1] 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.

[3] He then enlisted at the University of Dorpat and stayed in Marienburg (the present-day Alūksne in Latvia), in the house of the pastor Johann Ernst Glück.

There he met and tutored Marta Helena Skowrońska, an orphan girl aged twelve from Lithuania fostered by the pastor (who would become the Empress Catherine I of Russia).

As preparation for this proposed major work, he put into writing many of his preliminary studies in Latin and German, some of these are kept in the Brukenthal National Museum.

[5] Johann Michael (the Elder) was born in Schellenberg on 25 November 1742 and started his studies at the Hermannstadt (Sibiu) gymnasium.

Following the Edict of Restitution in 1790, a decision was made in 1791 to send a delegation to the Holy Roman Emperor Leopold II, on behalf of the Transylvanian Saxons as they wanted to put forward their own proposal for regulation.

Mayor Rosenfeld of Hermannstadt and Johann Michael headed the delegation and in January 1792 they travelled to Vienna to meet Emperor Leopold II.

He died on 31 March 1794 in Klausenburg (today Cluj-Napoca), where the family had moved after it had become clear that the seat of the provincial government was to be permanently located there.

He attended the local Protestant school and later he studied philosophy and law at Klausenburg (present-day Cluj-Napoca) lyceum until 1794, the year when his father died.

[10] In 1808, he married Theresia Sophie Elisabeth von Albrichtsfeld, who gave birth to four children (two survived infancy).

[10] Clara Adelheid was born on 5 November 1822, the second child of Johann Michael the Younger and his second wife Johanna Justine.

She displayed artistic talent and the painter Theodor Glatz praised her in a letter to Anton Kurz from 16 May 1847, published in the magazine Siebenbürgischer Volksfreund ("Trasylvanian People's Friend").

Despite resistance from the family, who had doubts about giving consent to marriage due to Theodor's insecure position and also because of his religious and status differences, the couple were married on 12 August 1847.

To cover the funeral costs, Theodor's brother sold the paintings that were left, including hundreds of studies, to a Viennese junk dealer.

A self-portrait and a portrait of her husband Theodor both painted in 1853 were brought to England by her sons, the family have since given them to the Transylvanian Museum in Gundelsheim.

Afterwards, Albert took up residence in Mediasch, the birthplace of his wife Jeanette Schaffendt, and started to engage in public life.

As a member of the upper management of the "Transylvanian - Saxon Agricultural Society", he presided over the Regional Association in Mediasch for two years.

Since the re-organisation of the Greater Local Council he has been a city representative and a member of the Committee of the Mediasch District Assembly.

Arthur Soterius von Sachsenheim was born on 31 July 1852, in Békéscsaba, where at that time his father Albert Conrad was serving in the army.

After graduating the Gymnasium in Mediasch, he studied medicine at the University of Vienna with student residencies in Graz, Berlin and Würzburg, receiving the doctor diploma for general medical practice.

There they met Salomon August Andrée, who was preparing his 1897 Arctic Balloon Expedition, they were also seeking news of Fridtjof Nansen, who had attempted to go as far north as possible (and succeeded), but his whereabouts were not known until sometime later in 1896.

Arthur collected ethnographic objects, mammal skeletons and molluscs (including a mollusk later named Neptunea sachsenheimi).

[15][16] He donated to the Transylvanian Association for Natural Sciences a collection of over 100 ethnographic objects gathered from various parts of the world.

[19] After this heartbreak, Edith moved to south Germany, then Poland and then Austria, she painted where she could, producing mainly watercolours of the places she lived in and visited.