F OREWORD
i confess that i have been waiting for this book for a long time. The Banat, as a civilisational space, seduced me in my youth, with its culture fanning out across the triplex confinium. This triple border became very real for me from the tower of Cenad Cathedral as I looked down on the convergence of Romanian, Hungarian and Serbian lands. In this volume, my old friend Victor Neumann – whose much-read and oft-cited book The Temptation of Homo Europaeus emerged out of a doctoral thesis that I recall with a feeling of intellectual joy – has gathered together 15 authors from Timișoara, Caransebeș, Novi Sad and Vrsac, Szeged and Belgrade. Thus, it is a multicultural and multinational volume that succeeds in reviving, in fascinating detail and with an inevitably broad context, a European image from the eighteenth to the twentieth centuries, which is fundamental to the modernity of the continent. Research into regional history is illustrated in this volume, from the so-called Landesgeschichte of 1800 onwards, reshaped during the 1980s into a complex search for ‘sub-’ and ‘transnational regions’, ‘Euro-regions’ and ‘frontiers’ that have become objects of study for geopoliticians and historians.1 It describes a Banat where, living alongside Romanians, were the Venetian Gerardo de Sagredo’s Balkan and Benedictine monks from the Morisena monastery, Slavic and Oriental traders, Hungarian magnates, Ottoman commanders and Austrian architects working on von Erlach’s projects. This Banat territory was, at various times, a proto-Romanian ‘dukedom’, Angevin land, Ottoman pashalik, Habsburg province administered by the Hungarian Diet, and finally, divided between Romania, Hungary and yesterday’s Yugoslavia. Today it is a place that remains, geographically and spiritually, a cultural bridge, a connecting space.
vii
F OREWORD
i confess that i have been waiting for this book for a long time. The Banat, as a civilisational space, seduced me in my youth, with its culture fanning out across the triplex confinium. This triple border became very real for me from the tower of Cenad Cathedral as I looked down on the convergence of Romanian, Hungarian and Serbian lands. In this volume, my old friend Victor Neumann – whose much-read and oft-cited book The Temptation of Homo Europaeus emerged out of a doctoral thesis that I recall with a feeling of intellectual joy – has gathered together 15 authors from Timișoara, Caransebeș, Novi Sad and Vrsac, Szeged and Belgrade. Thus, it is a multicultural and multinational volume that succeeds in reviving, in fascinating detail and with an inevitably broad context, a European image from the eighteenth to the twentieth centuries, which is fundamental to the modernity of the continent. Research into regional history is illustrated in this volume, from the so-called Landesgeschichte of 1800 onwards, reshaped during the 1980s into a complex search for ‘sub-’ and ‘transnational regions’, ‘Euro-regions’ and ‘frontiers’ that have become objects of study for geopoliticians and historians.1 It describes a Banat where, living alongside Romanians, were the Venetian Gerardo de Sagredo’s Balkan and Benedictine monks from the Morisena monastery, Slavic and Oriental traders, Hungarian magnates, Ottoman commanders and Austrian architects working on von Erlach’s projects. This Banat territory was, at various times, a proto-Romanian ‘dukedom’, Angevin land, Ottoman pashalik, Habsburg province administered by the Hungarian Diet, and finally, divided between Romania, Hungary and yesterday’s Yugoslavia. Today it is a place that remains, geographically and spiritually, a cultural bridge, a connecting space.
vii
In fact, Banat unites the European South-East, to which it belongs, with Mitteleuropa as imagined by Friedrich Naumann 100 years ago, and with an East-Central Europe from which it takes mental nourishment. It is a world descended from the Austrian autocracy of Franz Kafka, Stefan Zweig, Max Brod, Robert Musil, Czeslaw Miłosz and Milan Kundera, belonging, in my opinion, to a creative and active periphery of the West, but according to Jenö Szücs, to a ‘third Europe’.2 The range of subjects covered in this volume on the Banat is diverse and carefully considered: the Enlightenment from the time of Brukenthal and Teleki; the age of Maria Theresa and Joseph II in which imperial Viennese policy led to the century’s vastest European migration, thus creating a specific rural habitat of Swabian, Italian, Spanish, Czech and Slovak colonists in the region; the Freemasonry that was concentrated in an area between the Mureș and Tisza rivers; the bourgeoisie from Prague, Bratislava and Zagreb, not to mention those from the Germanic countries; the Freemasonry that included Francesco Griselini, author of one of the best-known histories of the Banat; the Romanian and Serbian Orthodoxy that represented a very real shelter for Transylvanian co-religionists; the Judaism so open to the kind of multilingualism that creates an elevated culture; the diverse education and the very active mass-media, mostly present in the centres with a South Slavic population; the urbanism, as well as baroque military, civil and ecclesiastical art, illustrated by the monumental citadel of Arad – which, hard as it is to understand, we are ignoring today – and the Catholic cathedrals of Timișoara and Lenauheim, the Serbian church of Timișoara and the Romanian church of Lugoj, the numerous statues of St Nepomuk, the frescoes in Brâncovenesc style from Săraca monastery or the neo-Gothic and Secession buildings – all of them acknowledging a syncretic cultural climate hard to find in other parts of Europe. I have predominantly referred to culture, but I do not overlook that the political civilisation of modern Banat is accurately analysed here, with interesting emphases upon the ‘passivity of the Banat’ during the memorandist age and the little-known ‘Banatian republic’ from 1918 to 1919, an analysis constantly shaped by the thinking of Vasile Maniu and Alexandru Mocsonyi, Vincenţiu Babeş and Constantin Diaconovici-Loga, Vasile Goldiş and Eftimie Murgu, pillars of the conceptual and geographical, historical and anthropological construct that bears the name of the Banat. We owe this volume to a number of scholars whom I respectfully salute. I have learnt a lot from what they have written.
Răzvan Theodorescu Vice-President of the Romanian Academy of Sciences
viii
ix
In fact, Banat unites the European South-East, to which it belongs, with Mitteleuropa as imagined by Friedrich Naumann 100 years ago, and with an East-Central Europe from which it takes mental nourishment. It is a world descended from the Austrian autocracy of Franz Kafka, Stefan Zweig, Max Brod, Robert Musil, Czeslaw Miłosz and Milan Kundera, belonging, in my opinion, to a creative and active periphery of the West, but according to Jenö Szücs, to a ‘third Europe’.2 The range of subjects covered in this volume on the Banat is diverse and carefully considered: the Enlightenment from the time of Brukenthal and Teleki; the age of Maria Theresa and Joseph II in which imperial Viennese policy led to the century’s vastest European migration, thus creating a specific rural habitat of Swabian, Italian, Spanish, Czech and Slovak colonists in the region; the Freemasonry that was concentrated in an area between the Mureș and Tisza rivers; the bourgeoisie from Prague, Bratislava and Zagreb, not to mention those from the Germanic countries; the Freemasonry that included Francesco Griselini, author of one of the best-known histories of the Banat; the Romanian and Serbian Orthodoxy that represented a very real shelter for Transylvanian co-religionists; the Judaism so open to the kind of multilingualism that creates an elevated culture; the diverse education and the very active mass-media, mostly present in the centres with a South Slavic population; the urbanism, as well as baroque military, civil and ecclesiastical art, illustrated by the monumental citadel of Arad – which, hard as it is to understand, we are ignoring today – and the Catholic cathedrals of Timișoara and Lenauheim, the Serbian church of Timișoara and the Romanian church of Lugoj, the numerous statues of St Nepomuk, the frescoes in Brâncovenesc style from Săraca monastery or the neo-Gothic and Secession buildings – all of them acknowledging a syncretic cultural climate hard to find in other parts of Europe. I have predominantly referred to culture, but I do not overlook that the political civilisation of modern Banat is accurately analysed here, with interesting emphases upon the ‘passivity of the Banat’ during the memorandist age and the little-known ‘Banatian republic’ from 1918 to 1919, an analysis constantly shaped by the thinking of Vasile Maniu and Alexandru Mocsonyi, Vincenţiu Babeş and Constantin Diaconovici-Loga, Vasile Goldiş and Eftimie Murgu, pillars of the conceptual and geographical, historical and anthropological construct that bears the name of the Banat. We owe this volume to a number of scholars whom I respectfully salute. I have learnt a lot from what they have written.
Răzvan Theodorescu Vice-President of the Romanian Academy of Sciences
viii
ix
PRE FACE
the banat of timișoara: a european melting pot aims to promote an innovative perspective on the historiography of the region, with emphasis on an area whose identity, both past and present, derives from its geographical position, from the multi- and intercultural nature of the area, and from its civilisational diversity. The book relies on extensive research in the archives and libraries of Romania, Serbia, Hungary, Austria and Germany. This history of the Banat proposes a vision free of linguistic, religious, ethnic or national constraints. It presents the sociopolitical, religious and cultural life of the region, along with events, dates and relevant facts from the eighteenth, nineteenth and twentieth centuries. This book provides the explanations necessary for an understanding of the regional and local administrations, and for describing community identity and ideologies, personalities and representative institutions. It is the result of a collective effort, in which the dates and facts described emphasize the common denominator of the people and ethnic groups who populated the Banat. Often, its pages lead the reader to discovery of a world where conscience plays an essential part. The interpretations are interdisciplinary, history being understood not only as a sequence of events and facts, but also as a recollection and evaluation of religion and education, arts and architecture, media and intellectual-political ideas, all of which have left an indelible mark on the region. Due to the nature of the documentary information, the comparative studies and personal reflections, the history presented here is mostly focused on the problems and challenges of the region. The reader who seeks to understand the ethno-linguistic and religious diversity of the various groups that
xi
PRE FACE
the banat of timișoara: a european melting pot aims to promote an innovative perspective on the historiography of the region, with emphasis on an area whose identity, both past and present, derives from its geographical position, from the multi- and intercultural nature of the area, and from its civilisational diversity. The book relies on extensive research in the archives and libraries of Romania, Serbia, Hungary, Austria and Germany. This history of the Banat proposes a vision free of linguistic, religious, ethnic or national constraints. It presents the sociopolitical, religious and cultural life of the region, along with events, dates and relevant facts from the eighteenth, nineteenth and twentieth centuries. This book provides the explanations necessary for an understanding of the regional and local administrations, and for describing community identity and ideologies, personalities and representative institutions. It is the result of a collective effort, in which the dates and facts described emphasize the common denominator of the people and ethnic groups who populated the Banat. Often, its pages lead the reader to discovery of a world where conscience plays an essential part. The interpretations are interdisciplinary, history being understood not only as a sequence of events and facts, but also as a recollection and evaluation of religion and education, arts and architecture, media and intellectual-political ideas, all of which have left an indelible mark on the region. Due to the nature of the documentary information, the comparative studies and personal reflections, the history presented here is mostly focused on the problems and challenges of the region. The reader who seeks to understand the ethno-linguistic and religious diversity of the various groups that
xi
populated the Banat through history will notice that this aspect has been partially highlighted, as we have focused on the experiments relating to the amalgamation of population within the region. There is less emphasis on any kind of cultural or community segregation as the region has always been defined as a civic and intercultural phenomenon.1 The main objective of the editor and his team was to describe the inhabitants of the Banat and their mentality. It is an almost utopian area – comparable to Alsace-Lorraine (according to the Serbian writer Miloš Crnjanski) – where the cornerstone is the cultural code, the result of multiple legacies. We have proposed not only a presentation of the history but also a unitary coverage of the past of a region which after the Paris Peace Treaty of 1918 was divided between Romania, Serbia and Hungary. For this, we have included some of the most compelling descriptions from the Romanian, Serbian and Hungarian archives. As a result, we have been able to present in an objective manner the roles of the House of Habsburg, the Austrian Empire and the Austro-Hungarian Monarchy in the organisation, management and socio-economic development of the region. The Banat of Timișoara: A European Melting Pot is a comparative work which presents an in-depth look at one fragment of an imperial, multi- and intercultural world. Despite being varied in style and interpretation, the studies in the book enrich and summarize the research conducted up to now, presenting the first history of the region, a hundred years after its division. Without following the normal construction of a book and presenting dates and events in chronological order, the studies describe the region by taking into account the results of the first modernisation process and focus on its features by contextualising them. In The Banat of Timișoara: A European Melting Pot both the editor and his team present the positive and negative aspects of modernisation and the relationship between old and new. Its several hundred pages reveal the centuries preceding intolerant ethnonationalism, world wars and discriminatory legislation. (Although the main focus of the historical discourse and historiography is not on theories of political identity or on the totalitarian regimes of the twentieth century, it does not ignore the almost entire disappearance of the German and Jewish communities from the Banat and Central/ Eastern European regions.) Its chapters recall the local–universal relationship along with the civilisation context in which the Banat was able to facilitate the reunion between West and East. The book often draws attention to the multiple cultural codes of the region, which gave a unique identity to the area, within the overall framework of Central and South-Eastern Europe. The tragedies caused by the First World War and the division of the region put an end to the first stage of modernisation. The continuities and ruptures during the interwar period are highlighted in the book’s final chapters. The perspective
xii
submitted in this book is innovatory and the result of well-documented and carefully-thought-out research. I believe that the Europe we know today – not merely the states which benefited from the division of the Banat – has much to learn from this page of history.
Victor Neumann Timișoara, February–March 2018
xiii
populated the Banat through history will notice that this aspect has been partially highlighted, as we have focused on the experiments relating to the amalgamation of population within the region. There is less emphasis on any kind of cultural or community segregation as the region has always been defined as a civic and intercultural phenomenon.1 The main objective of the editor and his team was to describe the inhabitants of the Banat and their mentality. It is an almost utopian area – comparable to Alsace-Lorraine (according to the Serbian writer Miloš Crnjanski) – where the cornerstone is the cultural code, the result of multiple legacies. We have proposed not only a presentation of the history but also a unitary coverage of the past of a region which after the Paris Peace Treaty of 1918 was divided between Romania, Serbia and Hungary. For this, we have included some of the most compelling descriptions from the Romanian, Serbian and Hungarian archives. As a result, we have been able to present in an objective manner the roles of the House of Habsburg, the Austrian Empire and the Austro-Hungarian Monarchy in the organisation, management and socio-economic development of the region. The Banat of Timișoara: A European Melting Pot is a comparative work which presents an in-depth look at one fragment of an imperial, multi- and intercultural world. Despite being varied in style and interpretation, the studies in the book enrich and summarize the research conducted up to now, presenting the first history of the region, a hundred years after its division. Without following the normal construction of a book and presenting dates and events in chronological order, the studies describe the region by taking into account the results of the first modernisation process and focus on its features by contextualising them. In The Banat of Timișoara: A European Melting Pot both the editor and his team present the positive and negative aspects of modernisation and the relationship between old and new. Its several hundred pages reveal the centuries preceding intolerant ethnonationalism, world wars and discriminatory legislation. (Although the main focus of the historical discourse and historiography is not on theories of political identity or on the totalitarian regimes of the twentieth century, it does not ignore the almost entire disappearance of the German and Jewish communities from the Banat and Central/ Eastern European regions.) Its chapters recall the local–universal relationship along with the civilisation context in which the Banat was able to facilitate the reunion between West and East. The book often draws attention to the multiple cultural codes of the region, which gave a unique identity to the area, within the overall framework of Central and South-Eastern Europe. The tragedies caused by the First World War and the division of the region put an end to the first stage of modernisation. The continuities and ruptures during the interwar period are highlighted in the book’s final chapters. The perspective
xii
submitted in this book is innovatory and the result of well-documented and carefully-thought-out research. I believe that the Europe we know today – not merely the states which benefited from the division of the Banat – has much to learn from this page of history.
Victor Neumann Timișoara, February–March 2018
xiii
part 1 (introduction)
xiv
xv
part 1 (introduction)
xiv
xv
However, written under the pressure of nationalist ideologies and the consequences of war, documents like this failed to refer to the plurality of sociocultural and religious legacies of the region: the legacies of cohabitation between the Orthodox and Catholic Churches; the interactions between the Germans, Austrians, Romanians and Serbians; the association of the Yiddish-speaking German Jews with the Ladino-speaking Spanish Jews; and the assimilation of the emancipated Jews to other cultures such as German or Hungarian. All this symbolised a history which the inhabitants of Timişoara recognised as their own and which they wanted to continue. Interaction is the natural consequence of a mixed history in a border city, a fact which is reflected in its names in many languages – Timişoara (Romanian), Temeswar and Temeschburg (German), Temesvár (Hungarian) and Temisvaru (Serbian); by a multilingual press in German, Hungarian and Romanian; by non-discriminatory social behaviour; by individual and civic initiatives; by the cooperative attitude of administrative authorities. Not only did partition of the region, agreed by the Treaty of Trianon as part of the Paris Peace Conference, create tensions among the three neighbouring countries – Romania, Serbia and Hungary – but it also ignited anxiety among the inhabitants regarding centralist policies and ethnonationalist ideologies. States formed on ethnographic criteria after the First World War experienced the real problem of recognising and integrating regions with a heritage of diverse origins. The new authorities faced challenges such as multi- and intercultural expression, the existence of many religions, and the recognition of plural histories. These did not correspond to identity formulated on the basis on a fictive ethnicity, as contemporary elites had imagined. Romanian interwar political parties and governments – even the most tolerant – were not comfortable with admitting that society in Timişoara was the result of the intermingling of many languages and cultures, that it did not belong exclusively to a single religious denomination, and that it did not bear the signs of a so-called ethnonational specificity. Its plural cultures and histories did not correspond to the monolingual and monocultural orientations of the newly created nation state. Imperialist and nationalist censuses served as a means for political hierarchies and centralised administrations to redraw the map of Europe in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. The administration in Budapest compiled statistics on Timişoara’s inhabitants in 1910, focusing on mother tongue (see Table 19.1) and religion (see Table 19.2).
370
I N T E RWA R TIM IȘ OARA
Table 19.1 Timişoara’s inhabitants in 1910 by mother tongue D E C L A R E D M O T H E R T O N GU E
N U M B E R O F S P E A K E RS
German
32,963
Hungarian
28,645
Romanian
7,593
Serbian
3,490
Slovakian
341
Croatian
149
Ruthenian
4
Other
818
Tota l
74 ,003
Table 19.2 Timişoara’s population in 1910 by religion DECLARED RELIGION OR D E N O M I NAT I O N
N U M B E R O F F O L L O W E RS
Roman Catholic
49,981
Orthodox
11,257
Jewish
6,729
Reformed Calvinist
3,554
Evangelical Lutheran
1,609
Greek Catholic
754
Unitarian
80
Other
39
Tota l
74 ,003
Source: Rotariu, Semeniuc, and Mezei, Recensământul din 1910: Transilvania, pp. 548–50.
What conclusions may be drawn from the figures in Tables 19.1 and 2, as classified by the enumerator of the census? Firstly, that German speakers were the most numerous, representing 32,963 inhabitants or 44.5 per cent of the total population. An explanation may be useful here. Starting with the rule of Joseph II, the Habsburg authorities approved the use of German, without imposing it, as a means of communication with the population. The reason behind this was that Timişoara had been inhabited by colonists of German origin (Swabians) during the eighteenth century and most of them did not speak any language but German. Secondly, the Italian, Spanish and French settlers were assimilated by the Germans, so they also used German as the
CHAP TER 19
371
However, written under the pressure of nationalist ideologies and the consequences of war, documents like this failed to refer to the plurality of sociocultural and religious legacies of the region: the legacies of cohabitation between the Orthodox and Catholic Churches; the interactions between the Germans, Austrians, Romanians and Serbians; the association of the Yiddish-speaking German Jews with the Ladino-speaking Spanish Jews; and the assimilation of the emancipated Jews to other cultures such as German or Hungarian. All this symbolised a history which the inhabitants of Timişoara recognised as their own and which they wanted to continue. Interaction is the natural consequence of a mixed history in a border city, a fact which is reflected in its names in many languages – Timişoara (Romanian), Temeswar and Temeschburg (German), Temesvár (Hungarian) and Temisvaru (Serbian); by a multilingual press in German, Hungarian and Romanian; by non-discriminatory social behaviour; by individual and civic initiatives; by the cooperative attitude of administrative authorities. Not only did partition of the region, agreed by the Treaty of Trianon as part of the Paris Peace Conference, create tensions among the three neighbouring countries – Romania, Serbia and Hungary – but it also ignited anxiety among the inhabitants regarding centralist policies and ethnonationalist ideologies. States formed on ethnographic criteria after the First World War experienced the real problem of recognising and integrating regions with a heritage of diverse origins. The new authorities faced challenges such as multi- and intercultural expression, the existence of many religions, and the recognition of plural histories. These did not correspond to identity formulated on the basis on a fictive ethnicity, as contemporary elites had imagined. Romanian interwar political parties and governments – even the most tolerant – were not comfortable with admitting that society in Timişoara was the result of the intermingling of many languages and cultures, that it did not belong exclusively to a single religious denomination, and that it did not bear the signs of a so-called ethnonational specificity. Its plural cultures and histories did not correspond to the monolingual and monocultural orientations of the newly created nation state. Imperialist and nationalist censuses served as a means for political hierarchies and centralised administrations to redraw the map of Europe in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. The administration in Budapest compiled statistics on Timişoara’s inhabitants in 1910, focusing on mother tongue (see Table 19.1) and religion (see Table 19.2).
370
I N T E RWA R TIM IȘ OARA
Table 19.1 Timişoara’s inhabitants in 1910 by mother tongue D E C L A R E D M O T H E R T O N GU E
N U M B E R O F S P E A K E RS
German
32,963
Hungarian
28,645
Romanian
7,593
Serbian
3,490
Slovakian
341
Croatian
149
Ruthenian
4
Other
818
Tota l
74 ,003
Table 19.2 Timişoara’s population in 1910 by religion DECLARED RELIGION OR D E N O M I NAT I O N
N U M B E R O F F O L L O W E RS
Roman Catholic
49,981
Orthodox
11,257
Jewish
6,729
Reformed Calvinist
3,554
Evangelical Lutheran
1,609
Greek Catholic
754
Unitarian
80
Other
39
Tota l
74 ,003
Source: Rotariu, Semeniuc, and Mezei, Recensământul din 1910: Transilvania, pp. 548–50.
What conclusions may be drawn from the figures in Tables 19.1 and 2, as classified by the enumerator of the census? Firstly, that German speakers were the most numerous, representing 32,963 inhabitants or 44.5 per cent of the total population. An explanation may be useful here. Starting with the rule of Joseph II, the Habsburg authorities approved the use of German, without imposing it, as a means of communication with the population. The reason behind this was that Timişoara had been inhabited by colonists of German origin (Swabians) during the eighteenth century and most of them did not speak any language but German. Secondly, the Italian, Spanish and French settlers were assimilated by the Germans, so they also used German as the
CHAP TER 19
371
language of communication. Thirdly, during the process of emancipation and modernisation, German had been the language of instruction of the elites and of printed matter throughout the Austro-Hungarian Empire. Benedict Anderson’s remark that the German language ‘increasingly acquired a double status: “universal-imperial” and “particular national”2 – is perfectly valid in this case. At the end of the nineteenth century and the beginning of the twentieth, the German language represented a reference point not only for the civic and cultural code of the entire population but also for its ideology and ethnonational movements. It was a time when people and groups were increasingly identified on the basis of language and cultural differences. As for the Hungarian speakers in Timişoara, their number – 28,645 – reflects an increase in the second half of the nineteenth century to account for 38.7 per cent of the total population. This was due to the political changes that occurred in the aftermath of the 1848 Revolution when the Hungarian language replaced Latin and/or German in the public administration, the Hungarian aristocracy preferring to use it since it was understood by the large mass of peasants. Classification based on language and religion, as shown in Tables 19.1 and 19.2, was only seldom in line with the social and intellectual aspirations of the majority of the population of Timişoara. In the decade 1900– 10, the city continued to exist on its own coordinates, and cooperation among its citizens in the interests of the common good was a generally accepted way of life. The Budapest administration learnt with surprise that Timişoara was challenging the dominant ideological orientation of the time, namely linguistic nationalism. In this regard, the Hungarian regime observed that the German language continued to hold an appreciable share not only of interpersonal communication but also with regard to education, culture and the press. For instance, the most important local newspaper was the German-language Temeswarer Zeitung.3 Despite the politics of Hungarian assimilation, 44.5 per cent of the total population continued to speak German as their mother tongue.4 The Romanian speakers accounted for 10.2 per cent and the Serbian speakers, 4.7 per cent. There was a real distribution as far as social composition was concerned. As for the religious denominations, even though Roman Catholics represented the majority, with 67.5 per cent of the total population,5 freedom of conscience was not restricted. The population was free to practise the Orthodox, Jewish, Reformed Calvinist, Evangelic Lutheran and Greek Catholic faiths, churches and synagogues for each of these being spread across the cities’ neighbourhoods. All this cultural and religious variety was conducive to the organisation of the population in professional, technical and scientific associations. The bourgeoisie embarked on numerous liberal initiatives, with the support of the local administration, while a social democratic orientation formed part of the political culture of the majority of the population.
372
I N T E RWA R TIM IȘ OARA
A NEW STATE AND THE REDEFINITION OF IDENTITY The statistics of Timişoara’s interwar population, carried out by the Romanian administration, show sociocultural transformations but also the continuity of the relationship between the majority and the minorities.6 The category of identity has changed as compared with the earlier period, ‘nationality’ or ethnoculture becoming the main reference point for the census. Table 19.3 presents the situation inventoried in 1930. Table 19.3 Timişoara’s population in 1930 by nationality D E C L A R E D NAT I O NA L I T Y
N U M B E R O F P E RS O N S
German
27,807
Hungarian
27,652
Romanian
24,217
Jewish
7,171
Serbian, Croatian or Slovene
2,156
Russian
700
Czech or Slovak
597
Gypsy/Traveller/Roma
337
Bulgarian
257
Polish
101
Turkish
67
Ruthenian or Ukrainian
53
Albanian
10
Armenian
10
Hutsana
7
Greek
8
Tatar
2
Other
179
Non-declared
249
Tota l
91,580
Small Orthodox community with origins in Galicia. From time to time part of this population moved from Galicia to Bucovina, Maramures, Transylvania and the Banat. a
Source: Manuilă, Recensământul, vol. ii. Neam, limbă maternă, religie (Kinship, Mother Tongue, Religion), Central Institute of Statistics (Bucharest, 1938), pp. 468–69.
CHAP TER 19
373
language of communication. Thirdly, during the process of emancipation and modernisation, German had been the language of instruction of the elites and of printed matter throughout the Austro-Hungarian Empire. Benedict Anderson’s remark that the German language ‘increasingly acquired a double status: “universal-imperial” and “particular national”2 – is perfectly valid in this case. At the end of the nineteenth century and the beginning of the twentieth, the German language represented a reference point not only for the civic and cultural code of the entire population but also for its ideology and ethnonational movements. It was a time when people and groups were increasingly identified on the basis of language and cultural differences. As for the Hungarian speakers in Timişoara, their number – 28,645 – reflects an increase in the second half of the nineteenth century to account for 38.7 per cent of the total population. This was due to the political changes that occurred in the aftermath of the 1848 Revolution when the Hungarian language replaced Latin and/or German in the public administration, the Hungarian aristocracy preferring to use it since it was understood by the large mass of peasants. Classification based on language and religion, as shown in Tables 19.1 and 19.2, was only seldom in line with the social and intellectual aspirations of the majority of the population of Timişoara. In the decade 1900– 10, the city continued to exist on its own coordinates, and cooperation among its citizens in the interests of the common good was a generally accepted way of life. The Budapest administration learnt with surprise that Timişoara was challenging the dominant ideological orientation of the time, namely linguistic nationalism. In this regard, the Hungarian regime observed that the German language continued to hold an appreciable share not only of interpersonal communication but also with regard to education, culture and the press. For instance, the most important local newspaper was the German-language Temeswarer Zeitung.3 Despite the politics of Hungarian assimilation, 44.5 per cent of the total population continued to speak German as their mother tongue.4 The Romanian speakers accounted for 10.2 per cent and the Serbian speakers, 4.7 per cent. There was a real distribution as far as social composition was concerned. As for the religious denominations, even though Roman Catholics represented the majority, with 67.5 per cent of the total population,5 freedom of conscience was not restricted. The population was free to practise the Orthodox, Jewish, Reformed Calvinist, Evangelic Lutheran and Greek Catholic faiths, churches and synagogues for each of these being spread across the cities’ neighbourhoods. All this cultural and religious variety was conducive to the organisation of the population in professional, technical and scientific associations. The bourgeoisie embarked on numerous liberal initiatives, with the support of the local administration, while a social democratic orientation formed part of the political culture of the majority of the population.
372
I N T E RWA R TIM IȘ OARA
A NEW STATE AND THE REDEFINITION OF IDENTITY The statistics of Timişoara’s interwar population, carried out by the Romanian administration, show sociocultural transformations but also the continuity of the relationship between the majority and the minorities.6 The category of identity has changed as compared with the earlier period, ‘nationality’ or ethnoculture becoming the main reference point for the census. Table 19.3 presents the situation inventoried in 1930. Table 19.3 Timişoara’s population in 1930 by nationality D E C L A R E D NAT I O NA L I T Y
N U M B E R O F P E RS O N S
German
27,807
Hungarian
27,652
Romanian
24,217
Jewish
7,171
Serbian, Croatian or Slovene
2,156
Russian
700
Czech or Slovak
597
Gypsy/Traveller/Roma
337
Bulgarian
257
Polish
101
Turkish
67
Ruthenian or Ukrainian
53
Albanian
10
Armenian
10
Hutsana
7
Greek
8
Tatar
2
Other
179
Non-declared
249
Tota l
91,580
Small Orthodox community with origins in Galicia. From time to time part of this population moved from Galicia to Bucovina, Maramures, Transylvania and the Banat. a
Source: Manuilă, Recensământul, vol. ii. Neam, limbă maternă, religie (Kinship, Mother Tongue, Religion), Central Institute of Statistics (Bucharest, 1938), pp. 468–69.
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373
While the policy of Magyarisation was aimed at the linguistic and civic assimiliation of the inhabitants of the Hungarian part of the Dual Monarchy, Romanianisation, which began in 1918, introduced new criteria of differentiation based on ethnocultural origin and on the number of persons living in the respective community. For the enumerator of the census, the notion of ‘nationality’ was equivalent to kinship (neam in Romanian meaning tribe or race).7 Thus the enumerator considered that it offered accurate and unambiguous data.8 The former criteria of language and religion were not abandoned but acquired new meanings. The statistics regarding Timişoara’s inhabitants in 1930 suggest that the Romanian state was very concerned with the idea of nation and belonging to a nationality. This was a general trend in the states newly formed after the First World War and was reflected in the sociopolitical language that was used. Defining identity on the basis of ‘ethnonational’ affiliation generated uncertainty as until then the cities and regions where the majority and minorities coexisted involved an integration of the diverse cultures, religions and histories and had allowed for nuances when it came to defining personal or group identity. At that time, about 30 per cent of the Romanian population belonged to a different cultural group, or ‘nationality’, from the Romanian one. In the historical and sociological literature, and also in the Romanian press during the interwar period, the term ‘foreigner’ defined both a person coming from another country and someone belonging to a minority group within the borders of the same state. Such an approach was used by certain intellectuals in Timişoara at that time, an example being Revista Institutului Social Banat– Crişana: Buletin Istoric (Journal of the Banat–Crişana Social Institute: Historical Bulletin) (1933–46), published under the auspices of the Banat–Crişana Social Institute. The journal and the institute were led by Cornel Grofşorean, one of Timişoara’s mayors in the 1930s, and the model was taken from the Romanian Social Institute of Bucharest and the Institute for Social Research of Romania. The institute in Timișoara had been subordinated to the centralist system and deeply influenced by ethnonationalist ideology, an orientation often visible in the articles of the journal’s contributors: Cornel Grofşorean, Aurel Ciupe, Gh. Cotoşman, Anton Golopenţa, Romulus Ladea and Ioachim Miloia.9 Consequently, the journal failed to reflect the local context and thus to serve the interests of all citizens. Such an orientation was already visible in the years immediately following the First World War. During the process to set up the first institution of higher education in Timişoara, Mayor Stan Vidrighin spoke about the identity of the city: A higher school such as the Polytechnic . . . will prove the strength and superiority of the Romanian genius, will contribute – to a remarkable extent – to the consolidation of the Romanian element in Timişoara
374
I N T E RWA R TIM IȘ OARA
and the Banat, and will bring with it the nationalisation of all the institutions which are today still foreign. The overwhelming majority of the Romanian element within the Banat will gain through this establishment those intellectual forces to which the majority of Hungarians and Swabians, who are today better armed, will be forced to surrender. And our particular inferiority in Timişoara, which is the regrettable result of our minority status in this city, will certainly be transformed here, too, into superiority.10 Onisifor Ghibu, director of the Ministry of Religion and Public Instruction in the Council of Directors (Consiliul Dirigent)11 followed the same line. According to him, the establishment of the institution of higher education had as its main objective ‘the fortification and nationalisation of this border city’.12 By examining the notion of ‘nationality’ used as the main criterion in the census of 1930, it can be asserted that Timişoara represented a challenge for the enumerator for the following reasons: 1. the city was inhabited by many groups, each speaking two or more languages; 2. nationality did not always coincide with the mother tongue used; 3. the identity of some of the inhabitants of the city – for example, the Jews – was in certain cases determined by religion rather than the mother tongue (the census introduces in this case the notion of ‘Jewish nationality’); 4. Timişoara’s character as a melting pot made the identification of its citizens with one particular nationality often impossible, mixed marriages being numerous, indicating relationships between Roman Catholics and Protestants, Orthodox and Greek Catholics, Christians and Jews; 5. ‘nationality’ or ethnonation were very relative notions in a region where cultures and customs intertwined. Timişoara’s population in the 1930 census by mother tongue and by religion is shown in Tables 19.4 and 19.5 respectively.
CHAP TER 19
375
While the policy of Magyarisation was aimed at the linguistic and civic assimiliation of the inhabitants of the Hungarian part of the Dual Monarchy, Romanianisation, which began in 1918, introduced new criteria of differentiation based on ethnocultural origin and on the number of persons living in the respective community. For the enumerator of the census, the notion of ‘nationality’ was equivalent to kinship (neam in Romanian meaning tribe or race).7 Thus the enumerator considered that it offered accurate and unambiguous data.8 The former criteria of language and religion were not abandoned but acquired new meanings. The statistics regarding Timişoara’s inhabitants in 1930 suggest that the Romanian state was very concerned with the idea of nation and belonging to a nationality. This was a general trend in the states newly formed after the First World War and was reflected in the sociopolitical language that was used. Defining identity on the basis of ‘ethnonational’ affiliation generated uncertainty as until then the cities and regions where the majority and minorities coexisted involved an integration of the diverse cultures, religions and histories and had allowed for nuances when it came to defining personal or group identity. At that time, about 30 per cent of the Romanian population belonged to a different cultural group, or ‘nationality’, from the Romanian one. In the historical and sociological literature, and also in the Romanian press during the interwar period, the term ‘foreigner’ defined both a person coming from another country and someone belonging to a minority group within the borders of the same state. Such an approach was used by certain intellectuals in Timişoara at that time, an example being Revista Institutului Social Banat– Crişana: Buletin Istoric (Journal of the Banat–Crişana Social Institute: Historical Bulletin) (1933–46), published under the auspices of the Banat–Crişana Social Institute. The journal and the institute were led by Cornel Grofşorean, one of Timişoara’s mayors in the 1930s, and the model was taken from the Romanian Social Institute of Bucharest and the Institute for Social Research of Romania. The institute in Timișoara had been subordinated to the centralist system and deeply influenced by ethnonationalist ideology, an orientation often visible in the articles of the journal’s contributors: Cornel Grofşorean, Aurel Ciupe, Gh. Cotoşman, Anton Golopenţa, Romulus Ladea and Ioachim Miloia.9 Consequently, the journal failed to reflect the local context and thus to serve the interests of all citizens. Such an orientation was already visible in the years immediately following the First World War. During the process to set up the first institution of higher education in Timişoara, Mayor Stan Vidrighin spoke about the identity of the city: A higher school such as the Polytechnic . . . will prove the strength and superiority of the Romanian genius, will contribute – to a remarkable extent – to the consolidation of the Romanian element in Timişoara
374
I N T E RWA R TIM IȘ OARA
and the Banat, and will bring with it the nationalisation of all the institutions which are today still foreign. The overwhelming majority of the Romanian element within the Banat will gain through this establishment those intellectual forces to which the majority of Hungarians and Swabians, who are today better armed, will be forced to surrender. And our particular inferiority in Timişoara, which is the regrettable result of our minority status in this city, will certainly be transformed here, too, into superiority.10 Onisifor Ghibu, director of the Ministry of Religion and Public Instruction in the Council of Directors (Consiliul Dirigent)11 followed the same line. According to him, the establishment of the institution of higher education had as its main objective ‘the fortification and nationalisation of this border city’.12 By examining the notion of ‘nationality’ used as the main criterion in the census of 1930, it can be asserted that Timişoara represented a challenge for the enumerator for the following reasons: 1. the city was inhabited by many groups, each speaking two or more languages; 2. nationality did not always coincide with the mother tongue used; 3. the identity of some of the inhabitants of the city – for example, the Jews – was in certain cases determined by religion rather than the mother tongue (the census introduces in this case the notion of ‘Jewish nationality’); 4. Timişoara’s character as a melting pot made the identification of its citizens with one particular nationality often impossible, mixed marriages being numerous, indicating relationships between Roman Catholics and Protestants, Orthodox and Greek Catholics, Christians and Jews; 5. ‘nationality’ or ethnonation were very relative notions in a region where cultures and customs intertwined. Timişoara’s population in the 1930 census by mother tongue and by religion is shown in Tables 19.4 and 19.5 respectively.
CHAP TER 19
375
This edition Š Scala Arts & Heritage Publishers Ltd, 2019 Text Š Victor Neumann, 2019 First published in 2019 by Scala Arts & Heritage Publishers Ltd 10 Lion Yard Tremadoc Road London SW4 7NQ, UK www.scalapublishers.com ISBN 978-1-78551-124-0 Editor and co-translator Rowena Anketell Designed by Linda Lundin Printed in Turkey 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the written permission of the author and publisher. Every effort has been made to acknowledge correct copyright of images where applicable. Any errors or omissions are unintentional and should be notified to the Publisher, who will arrange for corrections to appear in any reprints.