Present-day Romania Research Articles

From the Ghetto to Auschwitz and Back – Transgenerational Trauma

A city in present-day Romania with a multicultural, multiethnic and multiconfessional history, Oradea (Nagyvarad, Grosswardein, Varadino, Magnum Varadinum) has had from its very foundation an entirely distinct geopolitical reality, its century-long existence being marked by a wide variety and continuous differentiation, which penetrate deeply into every aspect of everyday community life. The Jewish community, actively present since the 18th century, carved out a place for itself and represented a hub of Jewish emancipation in the episcopal city, which was often a battleground for the hegemonic local forces, the reformed Transylvanian ones, Austria-Hungary and the Ottoman Empire. After a long and relatively peaceful period of Romanian rule (1918–1940), following the Second World War the population of Oradea was shaken by racial laws issued first by the Romanian authority and afterwards by the Horthyst occupying forces (1940–1944) in Northern Transylvania, which concentrated Jews for deportation in the second biggest ghetto in Eastern Europe after Budapest. The demography of Oradea showed the loss of one third of its residents. Out of nearly 30,000 inhabitants, barely 2000 survivors returned, and the transgenerational trauma sent its echoes through time to the fourth generation, that of today’s teenagers. Their grandparents and great-grandparents, returned from deportation, had to go through another trauma and persecution, with the communists’ coming to power in 1948 and soon afterwards, that of the ‚red antisemitism’. The ways this trauma passed down across generations and deepened during communist totalitarianism, its masks during the postcommunit period, as well as the means of limiting and combating it are the ramifications of the topic which was examined not only theoretically, but by concrete examples of original case studies based on face-to-face interviews and microhistorical accounts received from the descendants of concentration camp suvivors. To these we shall add several examples from post Shoah memoirs of Oradea survivors and their descendants.

L’attaccamento spirituale al Santo Padre nella Chiesa Greco-Cattolica di Romania

"Spiritual Attachment to the Holy Father Pope in Greek-Catholic Church in Romania. The present study captures the attitude of Romanian Greek Catholic believers towards the person of the Pope. This attitude is reflected in the relations that have existed over time between the Roman Pontiffs and the Greek Catholic Church on the territory of present-day Romania. On the one hand, there are various pontifical actions in favor of the Romanians united with the Church of Rome, and on the other hand the Greek Catholic Romanians will be able to give their lives for the biblical truth of the Petrine primate. Keywords: Devotion, Pope in Rome, Petrine primate, Greek Catholic Church in Romania "

Aging Levee

The article is both a survey of the literature since the publication in 1997 of Gottfried Schramm’s book, and a critical review of the conclusions drawn by the most recent research. The survey focuses onthe main theses put forward by Schramm (his famous eight theses on Romanian ethnogenesis) and the way they fared in the literature. His 1985 and 1986 articles, which formed the basis of the book’s fourth part have been translated into both Hungarian and Romanian. However, there has been very little, if any engagement with Schramm’s arguments, which are primarily, if not exclusively linguistic, and no retort came either from archaeologists or from historians. Much ink has been spilled on the political implications of his ‘eight theses’ for the presence of Romanians in Transylvania, but few have noted that the key to the understanding of Schramm’s viewpoint is his envisioning of the Slavic migration. The article brings to the fore the results of the archaeological excavations in the countries of the central Balkan region and in Romania (both north and south of the Carpathian Mountains) in an attempt to verify Schramm’s theory of a migration of Vlach pastoralists from the Balkans to the territory of present-day Romania. The last part of the paper discusses the episode of the Romanian immigration that appears in the so-called Cantacuzene Annals, the earliest chronicle of Wallachia.

The Context of the First Romanian Translations Revisited

The division of the territory inhabited by Romanians into at least three large regions, each subject to different influences if not fundamentally different, represents a reality that would have led to several independent initiatives to translate the Scriptures and other texts of moral instruction into Romanian. However intense the cultural and material exchanges in the Middle Ages may have been, they did not always act in a coherent manner, making it impossible for a single group of scholars to have been responsible for such a complex dissemination of translations as the oldest preserved copies of the Psalter. I believe that each Romanian province tried, in its own way, to respond to this difficult task that arose in the Romanian landscape in the mid-fifteenth century as a result of the disputes around the restoration of Christian unity. At least four threads resulted from the merging, from which, in the sixteenth century, Romanian literature emerged. A first source passed through the western part of present-day Romania, meaning the Banat of Severin, Crișana and northwestern Transylvania, where the confrontations between Catholicism and Orthodoxy had taken place much earlier, contact with the West was more intense, and there was a stronger need to assert identity given that, especially following the Ottoman occupation of southern Danube, the Orthodox group in medieval Hungary was increasing due to Serbian colonisation. A second source existed in Maramureș, where coexistence with the Ruthenians and the reverberations of the culture emanating from the University of Prague increased the variety of models, as illustrated by Ioan-Florin Florescu in the exegesis he dedicated to the sources of the Tetraevanghelium printed at Sibiu between 1551-1553, and in Nagy Levente’s synthesis on the relationship between Romanians and the Protestant Reformation. The third source appeared in Moldavia, where, after a period of hesitation between the Catholic offer from Poland and that brought by Hussite refugees from Hungary and Bohemia, the vision of the anti-unionist Metropolitan Teoctist I was imposed. As a result of his close collaboration with the voivode Stephen the Great, his relations with the Orthodox circles of Athos and Kyiv, and his correct understanding of Moldavian realities (which were deeply affected by wars for the throne but also, to a large degree, religious wars), Teoctist was best able to bring together Slavic sources of very good quality, praiseworthy acculturation initiatives and the resources of the scriptoria of Moldavian monasteries. The fourth source developed in the interior of Transylvania, in Banat, more precisely in Lugoj-Caransebeș and Hunedoara, being the domain of the Romanian Reformed Episcopate founded in 1566. At its initiative, several editions were compiled from previous translations, and the literary repertory was enriched with its own contributions whose utility went beyond the limits between which other sources operated, including books for worship and not only those for reading. Its inheritance fell to the Orthodox Metropolitanate of Alba Iulia, which resumed the effort to translate and print in the mid-seventeenth century, bringing it into line with the most advanced standards reached at the time in publishing of holy books.

Gendered Epithets in Two Prominent Romanian Dictionaries

Abstract The present paper seeks to investigate the representation of a relevant number of gendered epithets in two prominent Romanian dictionaries, the most recent edition of DOOM (2021, Third Edition) and the current edition of DEX (2016, Revised Edition based on the first and second editions). Taking into account the prescriptive dimension which both these dictionaries share and the fact that they both retain their status as significant reference books in present-day Romania, the paper examines the way in which these current dictionaries choose to describe these words, arguing for the significance of the “metadata” (Nunberg, 2018; Pullum, 2018) component in the lexicographical representation of lexical items which can function as gendered insults.

Infrastructure, feral waters and power relations in rural Romania

The material relics of socialism continue to affect present-day rural Romania. This article explores the nexus of socialist/post-socialist agricultural infrastructure, groundwater, soil transformations, the privatization process and the constitution of power relations along the Lower Danube rural areas. Positioning ourselves in the anthropology of infrastructure, we document both ethnographically and with Geographic Information Systems tools the social and political consequences of broken agricultural infrastructure in a village located on the banks of the Lower Danube, Romania. We show how the local political elite is able to exploit the surfacing of groundwater in their favour, resulting in economic loss only for small landholders and villagers without power. The interface of the multiple temporalities inherent in infrastructure with the various materialities of groundwater – its propensity to leak, infiltrate and surface – precipitated the emergence of a new ecological order. The new hybrid ecology is made up of pre-socialist feral groundwater, the socialist ‘hydraulic society’ that reclaimed agricultural land, and the post-socialist political economy. We engage a more-than-human perspective in order to offer a more sophisticated – and realistic – picture of post-socialist rural power relations.

The Use of Pragmatic Documents in Medieval Wallachia and Moldavia: Fourteenth to Sixteenth Centuries by Mariana Goina

Reviewed by: The Use of Pragmatic Documents in Medieval Wallachia and Moldavia: Fourteenth to Sixteenth Centuries by Mariana Goina Mark Amsler Goina, Mariana, The Use of Pragmatic Documents in Medieval Wallachia and Moldavia: Fourteenth to Sixteenth Centuries (Utrecht Studies in Medieval Literacy, 47), Turnhout, Brepols, 2020; cloth; pp. xvii, 329; 26 b/w illustrations, 2 b/w tables; R.R.P. €90.00; ISBN 9782503587974. Michael Clanchy, riffing on Claude Levi-Strauss, kickstarted a branch of social history seeking out ‘literate mentalities’. In particular, pragmatic literacy studies refer to the uses of documents for everyday or administrative communication or for record-keeping purposes. Mariana Goina’s new book, based on her Central European University dissertation, brings new and interesting light to a late development in European literacy in the principalities of Wallachia and Moldavia (present-day Romania). Oddly, after the Romans exited from Dacia around 271 ce, it was more than a thousand years before another literate culture emerged in the area. How did that happen? Goina takes on that question in her rich archival study. Her book is organized in three parts: historical background, survey of the sources, and use and dissemination of written texts. The sources range from the late thirteenth to the sixteenth centuries. Goina’s multi-chapter survey of sources makes for dense reading, as she gives generous detailed attention to the types of documents, primarily land charters and letters. Her analysis of the uses and dissemination of writing in Moldavia and Wallachia shows how people continued to use oral modes of validation and communication alongside newer, sometimes foreign, written modes. From her sources, she also works out what people thought about the written texts they were using, their ‘literate mentalities’, whether a land charter needed to be authenticated by oral testimony or whether it could be evidence of ownership in itself, or whether the charter was an aide-memoire for what was considered the primary oral agreement. Goina’s study of Moldavian and Wallachian documents will make better known texts whose genres may be familiar but whose local details and what they reveal about social and political life of the time are less so. The history of literacy is social history, and Goina and her documents don’t disappoint. Land ownership was a constant and contentious experience across the social spectrum, from princes and high court officials to merchants and villagers. In late fifteenth-century Wallachia, for example, as higher-ups sought to acquire and consolidate land holdings, free villagers marshalled written authority to certify their ownership and prevent encroachment and their relegation to serfdom. It is sobering to see the extent to which the surviving documents are mostly to do with land inheritance, ownership, and conveyance. Writing goes hand in hand with control or disruption of power. Goina discusses many intriguing cases of literacy as social practice. She explains the legal fiction by which a family used a specific text to turn a daughter into a ‘son’ and therefore eligible to inherit land, or the practice of adopting another member of the community as a ‘brother’ for similar purposes. Textual acts [End Page 243] are constitutive within a social context. At the same time, Goina’s evidence points to women’s, especially widows’, active participation in literate culture, mostly on behalf of inheritance and land ownership. The surviving documents also reveal the costs of literacy. To make a land charter, an owner or claimant might pay the scribe a horse or forty złotis, but then pay out six times that amount for a feast to gather together ‘oath-helpers’ to vouch orally for the charter and the land rights. Goina pays good attention to the languages of charters and other documents in the archives. Charters and other texts survive in Latin, Slovanic, Polish, and German. German communities were especially prominent in the principalities. Wallachian and Moldavian literacy was thickened by the active presence of Hungarian, German, Polish, and other foreign scribes in the principalities. The princes’ international relations and the region’s geographic location as a major trade route suggest how local practices were partly shaped by other literate contacts, especially merchants. It is also clear from Goina’s research that literate practice...

The Medieval Spear-, Lance or Javelin Heads from the National Museum of Romanian History (Bucharest) and Their Assessment

The referred article mostly classifies and subsequently embeds 18 medieval spear-, lance or javelin heads from the National Museum of Romanian History in Bucharest (Romania) in typology and chronology following the possible analogies. The discussed heads of throwing or thrusting pole arms are deposited in the medieval part of the depository concerning the Department of Archaeology of the aforementioned museum. Up to 61.1% of these heads is deficient of any information about their archaeological contexts. The rest most likely originated in the territory of present-day Romania. Except from two incomplete heads with fragments of their blades the examined assemblage can be divided into 7 categories or groups. The first category belongs to the thrusting heads/spikes whose sockets are wider than their blades. Heads of the remaining 6 groups have got blades wider than their sockets. The examined assemblage could be dated to the Middle Ages (the 6th – 16th centuries), then the usage of some of them might have also anteceded or exceeded the Middle Ages (to Prehistory, the Roman Period, Great Migration Period, and Modern Period), or it is not possible to date them (1 pc).

Cercetările arheologice de la cetatea Șoimoş (jud. Arad) din anii 1966-196 (jurnal de săpătură) / The archaeological researches of Şoimoş castle (Arad County) from 1966-1967 (excavation diary).

Șoimoș castle is located on the northern bank of the Mureș River and it is one of the best preserved medieval castles from the territory of present-day Romania. The castle however has never been thoroughly investigated through archaeological methods; therefore the construction phases of the fortification, especially those dated at the beginning of its existence, are still not exactly established. The results of the test excavations carried out in 1966-1967 by a team of archaeologists; among them Marius Moga and Florin Medeleţ from the Museum of Banat, were unknown until now. The paper presents the excavation journal belonging to F. Medeleţ, kept in the archive of the Banat National Museum and the drawings of the plans and sections of the excavated trenches. A general excavation plan has also been sketched. The archaeological inventory from these excavations will be published on another occasion.

From Propagandistic Exploitation to Post-Communist Sensationalism: Beethoven Reception in Twentieth- and Twenty-First-Century Romania

This paper mainly investigates the way Beethoven’s image was turned, during the totalitarian political regimes of twentieth-century Romania, into a tool of propaganda. Two such ideological annexations are striking: one took place in the period when Romania, as Germany’s ally during World War II and led by Marshall Ion Antonescu, who was loyal to Adolf Hitler, to a certain extent copied the Nazi model (1940–1944); the other, much longer, began when Communists took power in 1947 and lasted until 1989, with some inevitable continuations. The beginnings of contemporary Romanian capitalism in the 1990s brought, in addition to an attempt to depoliticize Beethoven by means of professional, responsible musicological enquiries, no longer grounded in Fascist or Communist ideologies, another type of approach: sensationalist, related to the “identification” of some of Beethoven’s love interests who reportedly lived on the territory of present-day Romania.

Familia Șorban/Șerban, în secolele XIV–XVII. Schiță genealogică

"Șorban/Șerban Family in the 14th-17th centuries. Genealogical sketch This article aims to reconstruct the historical route of a lower nobility family, from the first appearance in history to the beginning of the modern era. It is the Sorban/Serban family, with two branches, in the north-western part of Transylvania (in the broader sense), respectively in the south-west part of it, having a common root, in the world of the Maramures knezes, continued by a common strain, among the petty nobility of Chioar. The objective is to contribute to a better knowledge of the lower nobility in the western provinces of present-day Romania, on the background that the nobility of these parts is not yet sufficiently represented in the Romanian historiography. The oldest members of the family can be identified in the first half of the 14th century, as knezes Stan Albu and Locovoy of Cosău. At the beginning of the next century, the knezial family individualized in several branches, including the Sorba of Călineşti. In the 16th century, a member of this family crossed into Chioar District, and his three sons received a diploma of ennoblement in 1609, for services to Prince Gabriel Báthory. During the 17th century, the Sorba(n) family appears in several conscriptions of the Chioar, divided into two branches. At the beginning of the 18th century, a Şorban emigrated to the Mureş Plain, near Arad. There will emerge a strong branch of the family, which changes its name to Şerban and sticks to the Greek Orthodox Church, while the other one keeps its name, but shifts to the Greek Catholic Church. Both branches contribute in the 19th and 20th centuries to the intellectual and political elite of Romanians. Descendants of both branches are now well-known people in the cultural field. Keywords: Romanian-nobility, genealogy, Șorban, Șerban, Locovoy "

Educating the Other

This article explores the role of foreign governesses in the early nineteenth century in the province of Wallachia, a principality in the southeastern part of present-day Romania and a peripheral territory at the intersection of the Habsburg, Russian, and Ottoman empires. It focuses on the professional integration of governesses into Romanian society, exploring their complementary routes of activity, both in private educational networks for the elite and in the emerging educational institutions for girls. Their cultural identities as transnational teachers sometimes collided with local perceptions and employers’ ambitions, and the study sheds light on the different categories of governesses and how they succeeded in keeping up with a certain model for governesses that prevailed in this period.

Roof tile workshop in Mezőhegyes (Békés county, Hungary)

This study reports on an Árpád Period site in Mezőhegyes, where remains of an interesting structure were unearthed. Based on the design of the brickwork feature and the significant amount of corrupted roof tiles found in and around it, the structure must have functioned as a roof tile kiln. The best analogies for these roof tiles are found primarily in France (e.g., in Pontigny, Vermenton and Auxerre) and in Egres (Igriș, present-day Romania). Based on the findings, the analogies, and the history of Egres, it seems that the roof tile kiln of Mezőhegyes operated in the 12th century and can be connected to the activities of the Cistercian Order.

Historical legacies in savings: Evidence from Romania

This study explores channels of savings persistence using a spatial regression discontinuity across an imperial border in present-day Romania. With data obtained from a lab in the field experiment and household survey, the findings suggest that imperial history influences savings behaviors today. I find no evidence that economic preferences for risk and time differ across the border, nor that these preferences are culturally transmitted. Rather, imperial history is strongly correlated with current financial access and asset choice, which affect savings accumulation. To confirm the robustness of these findings, I conduct falsification tests that arbitrarily move the border and also rule out several alternative mechanisms, including trust in financial institutions, financial literacy, and migration. I establish the external validity of the field experiment using nationally-representative data, which also suggests that savings legacies have important welfare consequences for the ability to mitigate household shocks. These findings highlight the role of history in under-saving, as well as the reinforcing nature of culture and institutions in shaping contemporary economic outcomes.

Rumuńska redakcja języka cerkiewnosłowiańskiego – zarys problematyki

The Romanian Redaction of the Church Slavonic Language – an Outline of the Problem
 The article is devoted to the Romanian redaction of the Church Slavonic language. More recent redactions of the Old Church Slavonic language emerged in all areas inhabited by Slavs of the Orthodox faith. Apart from the national redactions of the Church Slavonic language, which developed in Slavic countries, a form of this language with its own peculiar peculiarities also emerged in the territory of present-day Romania. Between the 13th and the 16th century, the official language of Moldavia and Wallachia (the lands which subsequently became part of Romania) was a Slavic language in a form based on a Bulgarian version of the Church Slavonic language. It gradually developed distinct features, so that we may already speak about a Romanian redaction of the Church Slavonic language in the 15th and 16th centuries.

An archaeometric study of early Copper Age pottery from a cave in Romania

AbstractEarly Copper Age pottery sherds discovered in a cave within the crystalline dolomites of the Southern Carpathians (Romania) were investigated by polarized light optical microscopy (OM), X-ray powder diffraction (XRPD) and electron microprobe analysis (EMPA) to obtain information on the pottery production in the Copper Age in the territory of present-day Romania. Microscopically, the clayey matrix of the ceramic body is highly birefringent or consists of low-birefringent and isotropic parts mixed together, containing fragments of quartz, muscovite, alkali feldspar, plagioclase, biotite, chlorite, heavy minerals and metamorphic and magmatic rocks, as well as an opaque material. The EMPA data revealed an Fe-rich illite-like matrix and helped to identify the mineral nature of the inclusions. Local pottery production in bonfires or surface clamps is envisaged. Miocene illitic clays may have been used as raw materials, mixed with a small amount of sandy temper. The thermal changes revealed by OM, the modification of the XRPD peaks and the EMPA data suggest firing temperatures of between 800 and 850°C.

THE BULGARIAN FOLKLORE SONG - MODERNITY, TRANSFORMATION AND VIEW TO THE FUTURE

The last decades are time of dynamic changes in folk music, which is a part of contemporary Bulgarian musical culture. Singer's performing art related to Bulgarian musical folklore is the part of Bulgarian culture that makes it recognizable and valued in the world. Thus, the Bulgarian folk song presented by its contemporary performers is perceived simultaneously as one of the oldest and most local manifestations of art in the cultural world, and as well as an artefact and a value, one of the most modern and global manifestations of the shared cultural heritage of humanity. The Bulgarian folklore, with its specificity and characteristics, develops on the land of the Bulgarian ethnos and it was formed on a space in Southeastern Europe, which far exceeds the state borders of present-day Bulgaria. Bearers of this culture are as numerous diasporas in southern Russia, in Ukraine and Moldavia, as well as Bulgarian settlers in the Banat region of present-day Romania, population in Bosilegrad, Dimitrovgrad and the surrounding villages in present-day Serbia. Why is it so important to preserve and rediscover our folk song, to develop it as art, concert policy, media content, educational practices, market mechanisms? Bulgarian folk song contains every single human experience, every emotion, the history of past and present generations, wisdom, folly, heroism, cunning, love, hate, faith, hope, kindness ... It is a mystical memory, a philosophy of life, a way to understand the spiritual and the eternal. The folklore song is both old and modern; simultaneously our, local and common, global; because it reflects our cultural identity and makes us unique and recognizable in the world; because it is one of the strongest manifestations of the human, the aesthetic, the moral. Imagine that you are listening to a favorite folk song: the power of words pierces the brain, the melody caresses and warms the heart, the magic of the song carries you like a time machine backwards, in the memory of the Golden Ages of harmonious worlds and forward, in the dreamed better worlds... Without the folk song, our Bulgarian world will not be the same because our Bulgarian folk song is bread, life, history, past, present and future.

Archaeological site of Bolnica in Paracin and its importance for the prehistory of the Central Morava Region: A contribution in chronology and horizontal and vertical stratigraphy

The paper presents the horizontal and vertical stratigraphy of the site of Bolnica in Paracin, based on both earlier and the latest archaeological excavations and the material which had been collected for decades by the Hometown Museum in Paracin, as a result of the construction works connected with the constant urbanisation of the area. The presented archaeological material is attributed to a period from the Early Neolithic to the so-called Dacian La T?ne, meaning the 2nd century AD. One of the subjects discussed in this paper is the possibility that the sites of Bolnica and Motel Slatina, in fact, represent one large site, which was artificially divided by the E 75 highway and the Serbian Glass Factory. The comparative analysis, which encompassed the sites positioned on the right bank of the Velika Morava River, showed that this is one of the sites with the most independent chronological sequences in the Central Morava Region. Likewise, the importance of this site as a strategic point and an important intersection on the route from the Danube River to the Central Balkans, and further towards the south and east is underlined. Finally, we analysed the appearance of Dacian material culture during the 1st and the 2nd century AD and compared the occurrence of certain forms and decorations with relevant sites in present-day Romania. The paper cautiously suggests that the Dacian material culture represents traces of the deportation of 100,000 Transdanubians to the territory of Moesia by the legate Silvanus Aelianus, possibly between 61 AD and 64 AD, during the reign of Emperor Nero, which has been partially confirmed by new archaeological excavations at the site of Glozdak-Lidl during 2018.

Początki i rozwój szkolnictwa polskiego w Rumunii do 1939 roku

Poles settled in present-day Romania in the fourteenth century. A subsequent influx of Polish settlers followed the fall of the Kościuszko Uprising. The aim of this study is to present the history of education in the Polish minority in Romania. The work focuses on showing various forms of educational and upbringing institutions from the early 19th century to 1939. In the analyzed period, the Poles organized mainly kindergartens and comprehensive primary and secondary schools in Bukowina (now northern Romania). They also made attempts at introducing the Polish language to teachers’ training institutions i.e. teachers’ training colleges for men and women. They established their own socio-educational societies and built Polish Houses in which they pursued a wide range of educational and cultural activities. In the Kingdom of Romania, Polish children could also attend (under certain conditions) Polish language classes in Romanian state schools. Owing to the Polish Schools in Romania, followed by the Polish School Association in Romania, Polish private education assumed various forms.

Staging Encounters with Estranged Pasts: Radu Jude’s The Dead Nation (2017) and the Cinematic Face of Public Memory of the Holocaust in Present-Day Romania

This article provides a close analysis of Radu Jude’s The Dead Nation (2017), a documentary essay that brings together authentic archival sources documenting the persecution and murder of Jews in World War II. The sources include a little-known diary of Emil Dorian, a Jewish medical doctor and writer from Bucharest, a collection of photographs depicting scenes from Romanian daily life in the 1930s and 1940s, and recordings of political speeches and propaganda songs of a Fascist nature. Through a careful framing of this film in relation to Romanian public memory of World War II, and in connection to the popular new wave cinema, I will contend that Jude’s work acts, perhaps unwittingly, to intervene in public memory and invites the Romanian public to face up to and acknowledge the nation’s perpetrator past. This filmic intervention further offers an important platform for public debate on Romania’s Holocaust memory and is of significance for European public memory, as it proposes the film happening as a distinct and innovative practice of public engagement with history.