Câmpuri culturale germanofone în România Mare după 1918

English title: German cultural fields in Greater Romania after 1918

Issue: 1/2023

Pages: 229-246

Language: Romanian

Author: Andrei CORBEA-HOIȘIE

Abstract:

On 29 December 1918, a month after a Romanian “national assembly” had proclaimed in Alba Iulia the unconditional annexation of Transylvania to the Kingdom of Romania, King Ferdinand signed the Decree consecrating the Act of Union; the Transylvanian Saxon politicians and dignitaries were facing a fait accompli. Most of them immediately understood that persisting in their old loyalties was meaningless and counterproductive in view of the reality of the Romanian army’s presence in the province, so that already on 8 January 1919 a “national assembly” of the Saxons, convened by their German National Council, adopted a clear Declaration of adhesion to the Union; 20 years later, Karl Kurt Klein considered that, with this moment, the Transylvanian Saxons would be responsible, among other things, for ‘providing solid support for the merger of all the German communities scattered throughout the provinces of Greater Romania’.

Although the strict model of the Transylvanian Saxons in their internal organisation by “ethnic councils” (“Volksräte”) was taken up by the German groups in all the other Romanian provinces, the references of the Saxon “world” in Transylvania, the result of a centuries-old historical and cultural tradition, compared to the local circumstances in Banat, Bukovina and especially in Bessarabia and Dobrogea were difficult to impose.

Keywords: cultural fields, Transylvanian Saxons, Karl Kurt Klein, Banat, Bucovina

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