Vișeu de Sus (German: Oberwischau, Hungarian: Felsővisó, Yiddish: Ojberwischo) is a town in northern Romania in Maramureș County. The municipality, which was elevated to town status in 1956, is located at the confluence of the river Vișeu, which gives it its name, and the Vaser. In addition to the town in the narrower sense, it also includes the village of Vișeu de Mijloc. In 2002, Vișeu de Sus had 15,944 inhabitants, Vișeu de Mijloc 3,223. In terms of area, Vișeu de Sus is the second largest town in Romania.[3]
The town is particularly well-known for the Carpathian Forest Railway (Wassertalbahn), which runs from Vișeu de Sus on a rail network about 40 km long to the Ukrainian border.
Oberwischau was first mentioned in 1362.[4] In 1778, forest workers settled there, mainly from the Upper Austrian Salzkammergut around Gmunden and Bad Ischl, who were dissatisfied with the conditions they had previously encountered in Deutsch-Mokra, but also lumberjacks from Salzburg and Tyrol.[5] From 1796 to 1798[4][6] and/or 1812[5] settlers from Upper Zips followed, especially from Hopgarten.[5] The Zipser Saxons (see Zipser in Romania) lived for a long time in their own district, the so-called Zipserei. Due to labor conflicts, the two groups avoided each other for a long time, which led to a persistent coexistence of two German dialects, namely a Middle Bavarian dialect based on the common language and a Silesian-Hopgarten dialect, called Zäpsersch, which only began to mix in the 20th century.[5] By 1970, the Silesian dialect had finally died out. Oberwischaudeutsch, which is mainly based on Central Bavarian and Upper Austrian dialects with small residual Zäpser elements, is still spoken in the town today.[6]