Diffuse Loyalitäten am Ende des Krieges: die Banater Schwaben

Abstract

The paper begins by discussing the loyalty-faith-betrayal triad in relation to the Crown, the em pire, and one’s one nation, and then it proceeds to analyze the situation of the Banat region in the aftermath of World War I and the attitude of the local German population towards the tumultu ous events that took place after November 1918. Among the elements thus highlighted we find the confusion experienced by the region’s multiethnic population (Romanians, Germans, Serbs, and Hungarians), the intervention of the Entente forces, as well as the attempts made by the authorities in Budapest to maintain control over Banat—among other things, by trying to set up an administrative unit of Banat sometimes referred to as a “republic,” which was never actually proclaimed, was never granted international legal status and never acquired its own institutions or distinct legislation, and was therefore ephemeral and practically non-existent. The authors then examine the options available to the German population in what concerned their chances of still living as Germans in a land they had profoundly shaped in economic and cultural terms for the past 200 years, at a time what the Romanians had clearly opted for a union with Romania, the vacillations of a population that included a modest intellectual class between the old loyalty to wards the Hungarian state, the loyalty towards one’s own community (amid the renewed hope of a German revival), and also the loyalty expected by the Romanian state (of which they knew little, and the little they knew tended to be mostly negative), without forgetting the decision—otherwise influenced by the Saxon leaders (Rudolf Brandsch)—to accept the union with Romania and to support this decision at the Paris Peace Conference.