“... victims of the war?” – two models of the resilience of educational institutions in temporary war theatres during World War I : The impact of the Romanian invasion of Hungary in 1916 on schools

Abstract

It has always been an important task to settle and integrate refugees, at least tempo- rarily. One of the key element of this process is to provide the education to refugee students. However, there is a relative dearth of literature dealing with the educational spaces created for refugees in the previous century and the personal experiences. The Hungarian National Archives holds reports about the number and situation of ref- ugee students. With the use of these, on the one hamd, I intend to briefly present the conditions of Transylvanian refugee students who escaped from Transylvania to the safer parts of Hungary after the Romanian attack in 1916. I want to find out to what extent Hungarian state education and civil society contributed to the remediation of the refugees. On the other hand, I also focus on the question of returning to home. I highlight that although life recovered in most areas of Transylvania after the defeat of the Romanian troops, various factors hampered the resumption of the education.