Wissenschaft Archive - Halbjahresschrift für Geschichte und Zeitgeschehen in Zentral- und Südosteuropa

Das rumänische Konsulat in Wien als Drehkreuz für das Schicksal rumänischer Jüdinnen und Juden 1943

IKGS-Admin_2 — Thu, 15 May 2025 09:46:06 +0000

Daniela Schmid, Jüdisches Museum Wien

Dr. Daniela Schmid, Studium der Kunstgeschichte, Slawistik und Judaistik an den Universitäten Wien und Krakau; Promotion zum Thema „Jüdische Amulette aus Osteuropa“; seit Februar 2023 als Archivarin am Jüdischen Museum Wien, davor für ein internationales Auktionshaus als Restitution Researcher, eine private Judaica-Sammlung in Wien sowie eine auf Zentral- und Osteuropa spezialisierte Anwaltskanzlei tätig. Momentaner Forschungsschwerpunkt: Verschränkung von Renaissance-Ikonografie und Judaica.

Without memory, there is no culture.
Without memory, there would be no civilization, no society, no future.
Elie Wiesel, 2008

Einführung

Im Hinblick auf die Übernahme des Vorsitzes der Internationalen Allianz für Holocaust-Gedenken (International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance, IHRA) durch Rumänien 2016¹ war es der rumänischen Botschaft in Österreich ein Anliegen, sich mit dem von Mythen umrankten Narrativ zur Rettung von Jüdinnen und Juden rumänischer Staatsbürgerschaft durch das zu der Zeit entsprechende Generalkonsulat in Wien (Consulatul general României la Viena) im Frühjahr 1943 auseinanderzusetzen.² Diese Arbeit möchte dem Kaleidoskop an bereits gesichtetem Material und Widersprüchlichkeiten zur Handhabung der in den zeitgenössischen Akten so bezeichneten „Judenfrage“ durch das offizielle Rumänien als Hintergrund für solch humanitäre Hilfsaktionen weitere Gesichtspunkte zum Gesamtverständnis der Situation³ hinzufügen. Sie basieren auf der Erschließung von Primärquellen aus dem Aktenbestand des Diplomatischen Archivs (Arhiva Diplomatică) des Außenministeriums in Bukarest.

Die vorliegende Abhandlung unterliegt folgender Struktur: Ausgehend von einer grob skizzierten, vergleichenden Einführung über die jüdische Bevölkerung sowohl in Österreich als auch in Rumänien werden die Schicksale von zwei Zeitzeugen, die mit dem rumänischen Generalkonsulat in Wien im Frühling 1943 in Kontakt standen, den historischen Belegen der Archivfunde gegenübergestellt. Der Hauptteil der Arbeit fokussiert auf den chronologischen Ablauf der Ereignisse, reflektiert durch die Korrespondenz zwischen dem rumänischen Generalkonsulat in Wien mit der ihr übergeordneten rumänischen Botschaft in Berlin sowie den offiziellen Stellen in Bukarest vor und während der Kriegsjahre. Den Abschluss bildet eine Analyse der Dokumente und Ereignisse vor den politischen Hintergründen, um die Bedeutung und den Kontext diverser Vorgänge einzuordnen und zu reflektieren.

Der Holocaust in Österreich

In Österreich wurden Jüdinnen und Juden bereits im Austrofaschistischen Ständestaat (1934–1938) strukturell diskriminiert und mit antisemitischen Aktionen konfrontiert. Eine konkrete existenzielle Verfolgung setzte mit der Eingliederung ins „Dritte Reich“ 1938 und der damit einhergehenden Übernahme der sogenannten Nürnberger Gesetze ein. Ab diesem Zeitpunkt unterlag das Gebiet Österreichs der Gesetzgebung des Deutschen Reichs. Jüdische Organisationen mussten ihre Tätigkeit einstellen, mit Ausnahme derer, die gezwungen wurden, die Ausreise und später die Deportationen der jüdischen Gemeinde selbst zu organisieren.⁴ Mit dem Jahr 1941 wurde eine Ausreise für die jüdische Bevölkerung de facto unmöglich. Vermögenswerte von Juden wurden durch sogenannte Vermögensanmeldungen erfasst und konfisziert. Im Oktober 1941 begannen die Massendeportationen, eine Bedrohung für alle in den von Deutschland eingegliederten beziehungsweise okkupierten Ländern lebenden Jüdinnen und Juden.

Der Holocaust in Rumänien

In Rumänien waren die Gesetzgebung sowie die Umsetzung von diskriminierenden Gesetzen etwas heterogener. Rumänien durchlief im Unterschied zu Österreich mehrere politische Phasen, geprägt von Machtwechseln und in ihrer Intensität variierenden antisemitischen Verfolgungen: 1938 bis 1940 war das Land der Diktatur König Carols II. unterworfen, von 1940 bis 1944 als Verbündeter der „Achsenmächte“ Deutschlands von Ion Antonescu. Auch geografisch sind divergierende Vorgehensweisen durch territoriale Verschiebungen zu berücksichtigen: So erduldete 1941 etwa die jüdische Bevölkerung Bessarabiens, der Moldau sowie der Bukowina⁵ Gräueltaten und wurde in die Lager Transnistriens deportiert.⁶ Die jüdische Bevölkerung in den übrigen Teilen Rumäniens hingegen war tendenziell weniger rigiden und fatalen Verfolgungsmaßnahmen ausgesetzt.⁷

Das rumänische Generalkonsulat in Wien

Die Frage nach der etwaigen Rettung rumänischen Jüdinnen und Juden in Wien im Jahr 1943 betrifft vor allem das mögliche Agieren innerhalb der diplomatischen Beziehungen. Verfolgte hofften auf Ausreise-Visa, um der unmittelbaren Bedrohung in Österreich zu entkommen. Das rumänische Generalkonsulat in Wien war seit 1938 der rumänischen Botschaft in Berlin unterstellt. Primär durch Stelian Obiziucs Forschungen⁸ wurde klar, dass es sich bei der Hilfsaktion des rumänischen Generalkonsulats in Wien um keinen Einzelfall handelte, sondern dass andere Länder ebenso agierten.⁹ Allen voran ist Constantin Karadja,¹⁰ der damalige Generalkonsul für Rumänien in Deutschland, zu nennen. Sein Verdienst ist die Rettung zahlreicher rumänischer Jüdinnen und Juden im Ausland; auch das Generalkonsulat in Wien stand in engem Kontakt mit ihm. Für seinen Einsatz wurde er posthum 2005 als „Gerechter unter den Nationen“ von der Gedenkstätte Yad Vashem in Jerusalem ausgezeichnet.¹¹

Persönliche Erinnerungen an die Ereignisse in Wien 1943

Bevor die konkrete Aktenlage einer Analyse unterzogen wird, sollen zwei Zeitzeugen mit ihren persönlichen Erinnerungen an die Ereignisse in Wien sowie die Erfahrungen mit dem dortigen rumänischen Generalkonsulat im Frühjahr 1943 ein Stimmungsbild der damaligen Situation wiedergeben:

Martin Katz wurde 1919 in Wyschnyzja (ukr. Вижниця, rum. Vișnița), damals in der Bukowina/Rumänien, heute Teil der Ukraine, geboren. In seiner publizierten Autobiografie¹² beschreibt er die Schwierigkeiten und langwierigen Anträge, um die Bestätigung seiner rumänischen Staatsbürgerschaft durch das rumänische Generalkonsulat in Wien zu erlangen. Angesichts der drohenden Deportation 1943 wandte sich Katz direkt an Generalkonsul Constantin Mareș im rumänischen Generalkonsulat, der sich in dessen Büroräumen zu einem Treffen bereiterklärte. Bereits im Warteraum traf Katz auf rund fünfzehn weitere rumänische Juden beziehungsweise Jüdinnen in derselben Notsituation, die beim Generalkonsulat auf Hilfe hofften. Katz erinnerte sich konkret an eine Familie Goldmann, enge Verwandte von Kommerzialrat Berthold Storfer. Storfer, selbst jüdischer Herkunft und zum Katholizismus konvertiert, fungierte als Leiter des Ausschusses für Überseetransporte, der die Emigration nach Palästina organisierte.¹³ Mareș war jedoch nicht in der Lage, Hilfe anzubieten, da die offiziellen Stellen in Bukarest dies strengstens untersagt hatten. Jedoch unterschrieben Katz und alle anderen an diesem Tag im Generalkonsulat anwesenden rumänischen Jüdinnen und Juden eine Petition an den damaligen Ministerpräsidenten Rumäniens Ion Antonescu mit der Bitte um dringende Hilfe. Katz erklärte seine Bereitschaft, für das rumänische Militär zu arbeiten, um seinen Patriotismus unter Beweis zu stellen. Diese Geste wurde von Mareș vorgeschlagen, jedoch waren Ergebnis und Dauer einer Antwort völlig unvorhersehbar. Katz besuchte den Generalkonsul noch ein weiteres Mal, diesmal aus Sorge um seine kranke Mutter und Schwester. Katz stand offenbar mit Mareș seit langer Zeit in Kontakt, angeblich hatte er Mareș auch immer wieder bei diversen Angelegenheiten unbekannter Natur geholfen. Mareș gab Katz eine inoffizielle Empfehlung: Er sollte sich mit dem Portier des Generalkonsulats arrangieren, um Zugang zu einer sicheren Unterkunft innerhalb der Botschaft zumindest für einige Nächte zu bekommen. Auch zum Zeitpunkt des zweiten Treffens befanden sich zahlreiche andere Jüdinnen und Juden im Wartezimmer des Generalkonsulats, doch konnte Katz seine Empfehlung nicht mit ihnen teilen. Als er jedoch letztendlich das betreffende Kellerabteil in der Botschaft betrat, war eindeutig ersichtlich, dass dieses bereits anderen als Unterschlupf gedient hatte.

Leider war es Katz unmöglich, seine Mutter zu retten. Sie wurde am 28. März 1943 nach Auschwitz deportiert. Am 9. April hatte Mareș endlich Neuigkeiten für Katz aus Bukarest, allerdings keine guten: Mareș selbst hatte seine Stelle am Generalkonsulat verloren, gleichzeitig hatte sich die Lage der Juden in Rumänien auf Betreiben der National-Legionären Regierung drastisch verschlechtert. Vom nächsten Tag an war auch der Keller des Generalkonsulats als Unterschlupf versperrt. Doch die Ereignisse überschlugen sich, und wiederum am folgenden Tag war Mareș zurück in seiner Position am Generalkonsulat: Antonescu hatte sich von den „Legionären“ distanziert. Nichtsdestotrotz blieb die rumänische Außenpolitik konstant, und Mareș war es weiterhin untersagt, zugunsten der jüdischen Bevölkerung zu intervenieren. Seine Frau versuchte, diese im Generalkonsulat zumindest mit Jausenpaketen zu unterstützen. Eine zusätzliche Bedrohung stellten dabei die Wiener Spitzel dar, die aus den gegenüberliegenden Fenstern auf das Generalkonsulat in der Prinz-Eugen-Straße spionierten. Am 13. April 1943 erhielt das Generalkonsulat endlich Nachricht von Antonescus Büro bezüglich der Petition: Es war die offizielle Anordnung, dass alle rumänischen Juden nach Rumänien zurückkehren sollten (laut offiziellen Dokumenten geschah dies am 6. April 1943). Diese Entscheidung betraf auch diejenigen, die bereits von der Gestapo für den Transport gefangengenommen worden waren. Mareș informierte das Gestapo-Hauptquartier und erreichte die Freilassung von Katz, der bereits dort inhaftiert war. Am 18. Juni erhielt Katz ein Durchreise-Visum für Ungarn. Die Einreise von Ungarn nach Rumänien gestaltete sich jedoch kompliziert, da die Bahnangestellten noch nicht über die neuen Reisebestimmungen für Juden informiert worden waren. Katz kam nach Temeswar (rum. Timișoara), wo er von einer neuen Bestimmung erfuhr, die ihn zur Zwangsarbeit in Boncota, eine Einrichtung für 3.000 jüdische Zwangsarbeiter, verpflichtete. Als König Michael I. von Rumänien am 23. August 1944 mit der UdSSR eine Koalition gegen das nationalsozialistische Deutschland einging, wurden Martin Katz und die anderen Zwangsarbeiter aus dem Lager entlassen. Katz kam endlich nach Bukarest, von wo er aber 1947 nach Wien zurückkehrte. Ab 1953 lebte er in München, 1995 kehrte er endgültig nach Wien zurück, wo er 2013 verstarb.¹⁴

Das Schicksal von Elizabeth Trahan gestaltete sich anders. In ihren publizierten Memoiren¹⁵ beschreibt sie ihre Jugenderlebnisse während des Krieges in Wien. Ihr Vater Albert Welt war Ingenieur und wurde in Czernowitz (ukr. Чернівці, rum. Cernăuți) geboren; seine Familie lebte seit 1936 mit rumänischer Staatsangehörigkeit in Wien. Nach Frau Trahans Notizen (sie führte während dieser Zeit ein Tagebuch) erhielt die Familie vom rumänischen Generalkonsulat in Wien rumänische Pässe mit sechsmonatiger Gültigkeit. Des Weiteren beschreibt Elizabeth Trahan auch, dass rumänischen Jüdinnen und Juden im Generalkonsulat sicherer Unterschlupf gewährt wurde, gerade für solche, deren Namen bereits auf den Transportlisten standen und die von der Gestapo gesucht wurden. Die Mitarbeiterinnen und Mitarbeiter des Generalkonsulats werden als sehr großzügig bei ihrer Hilfestellung beschrieben, von der Ausgabe von Matratzen zum Übernachten im Keller bis hin zum Angebot von frischen Omeletts. Frau Trahan, damals noch Elisabeth Welt und 18 Jahre alt, verbrachte selbst drei Nächte im Generalkonsulat, aber ihr ist es unmöglich zu beziffern, wie viele andere Bedrohte durch diese Maßnahmen gerettet werden konnten. Neben dem Gewähren des Unterschlupfs verteilte das rumänische Generalkonsulat laut Frau Trahans Aufzeichnungen auch Essensmarken ohne das aufgedruckte „J“ für „Jude“. Am 23. Dezember 1943 erhielt die Familie Pässe ohne Indikation der Religionszugehörigkeit.¹⁶ Am 1. Jänner 1940 zog sie wieder zu ihrem Vater, der seit 1936 in Wien lebte, um gemeinsam mit ihm zu emigrieren. Sie schafften es jedoch nicht, Europa während des Zweiten Weltkriegs zu verlassen. Erst im Juli 1947 konnte sie als Displaced Person mit der Hilfe des American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee in die Vereinigten Staaten emigrieren. Nachdem sie ihr Doktorat in Vergleichender Literaturwissenschaft 1957 an der Yale University erhalten hatte, unterrichtete sie bis zu ihrer Pensionierung 1993 an zahlreichen Universitäten. Danach war sie als freischaffende Wissenschaftlerin und Autorin tätig. Sie verstarb am 16. September 2009 und hinterließ ihren schriftlichen Nachlass dem Center for Jewish History in New York,¹⁷ darunter ihr Tagebuch aus ihrer Zeit in Wien. Einer ihrer Berichte trägt den Titel Im Schatten,¹⁸ ein Typoskript, das zusätzliche Informationen über diese Zeit enthält. Sie beschreibt das Generalkonsulat als den einzig sicheren Ort für rumänische Juden, angeblich waren über 100 Menschen anwesend in der Hoffnung auf Ausreisevisa. Aber nur acht Menschen konnten jeweils sicher die Nacht dort zubringen, die anderen mussten gehen.

Das Rumänische Generalkonsulat in Wien während des Nationalsozialismus – basierend auf der Aktenlage des Diplomatischen Archivs in Bukarest

1938

Nach dem „Anschluss“ Österreichs an das nationalsozialistische Deutschland wurde die rumänische Botschaft in Wien zum Generalkonsulat und der Legation der Rumänischen Botschaft in Berlin als Hauptstadt des Deutschen Reiches unterstellt. In diesem Jahr gingen zahlreiche Anfragen von Mihail Mitilineu, dem Legationskonsul des Rumänischen Generalkonsulats in Wien, sowie von Generalkonsul Constantin Mareș an Nicolae Petrescu-Comnen, den rumänischen Außenminister, als auch an Mihai Antonescu, Vizepräsident des rumänischen Ministerkonzils des Außenministeriums, mit der Anfrage nach der Ausgabe kurzfristiger Visa (mit drei bis vier Monaten Gültigkeit) an Jüdinnen und Juden aus Rumänien in Wien. In diesen Anfragen wurde auch auf die drohende Gefahr im Fall eines Verbleibs in Österreich hingewiesen.¹⁹ In diesen Schreiben finden sich auch die Daten, dass zu dieser Zeit 900 jüdische Familien aus Rumänien in Wien registriert waren, man ging von 3.000 bis 3.500 Einzelpersonen aus. Im Dezember 1938 ist von weiteren 200 jüdischen Familien aus Rumänien die Rede.²⁰ Die politische Lage erlaubte ihnen keine offizielle Rückkehr nach Rumänien mehr, doch das rumänische Generalkonsulat in Wien bat um eine Ausnahmebewilligung, die es bei Reichsstatthalter Arthur Seyß-Inquart beantragte. Dieses Ansinnen wurde jedoch abgelehnt. In den Dokumenten finden sich auch Hinweise auf tätliche Angriffe auf das Konsulatspersonal durch rumänische Juden, so attackierten sie aus Angst und Verzweiflung etwa den Chauffeur des Generalkonsulats. Ein weiteres Problem stellte die Tatsache dar, dass viele Hilfesuchende während der sowjetischen Annexion Bessarabiens und der Nordbukowina 1940 nach Österreich geflohen waren und dadurch keinerlei Identifikationspapiere vorweisen konnten, was prinzipiell die Ausstellung eines rumänischen Passes unmöglich machte. Doch auch hier gab es Ausnahmefälle.²¹ Zur Frage der Ausstellung rumänischer Pässe an Juden vor dem Hintergrund des Verlustes der Staatsbürgerschaft²² korrespondierte das Generalkonsulat in Wien im Juni und Oktober des Jahres 1940 mit dem Außenministerium in Bukarest.²³

1939

Am 25. und 27. Oktober 1939 informierte jeweils ein Telegramm aus Berlin das Außenministerium in Bukarest über die zahlreichen Fälle rumänischer Jüdinnen und Juden, die sich angesichts der Tatsache, dass ihre Namen auf Deportationslisten für Konzentrationslager auf polnischem Gebiet, das von Deutschland besetzt war, erschienen, an das Generalkonsulat in Wien um Hilfe gewandt hatten.²⁴

1940–1941

In einem Schreiben an den rumänischen Außenminister Mihai Antonescu in Bukarest vom 19. Dezember 1941 wies Constantin Mareș auf die widersprüchlichen Lösungen bei Anfragen von Jüdinnen und Juden aus Rumänien nach Reisepässen hin, hinter denen er kein erkennbares Arbeitsmuster sehen konnte.²⁵ Im Anhang wurden konkrete Schicksale genannt, Mareș fragte nach Handlungsanweisungen. Diese Beispiele folgen häufig dem Muster, dass der Reisepass zuerst abgelehnt, etwa ein Jahr später jedoch ausgestellt wurde.

1942

Im März 1942 wurden auch Jüdinnen und Juden rumänischer Staatsangehörigkeit in Deutschland und Österreich von der Gestapo zum Tragen des „Judensterns“ gezwungen.²⁶ Am 7. Juli 1942 notierte das rumänische Generalkonsulat in Wien auf offiziellem Briefpapier, dass a) rumänische Juden in Österreich nicht dazu gezwungen werden könnten, den „Judenstern“ zu tragen und b) drei Juden mit gültigem rumänischem Pass in ein Durchgangslager verbracht worden waren.²⁷ Diese Tatsachen finden sich auch in einem Brief des königlichen rumänischen Generalkonsuls an die Reichsstatthalterei Wien vom 8. Juni 1942.²⁸

Gegen das rumänisch-jüdische Paar Philipp²⁹ und Anna Mandelbaum war für das Nichttragen des „Judensterns“ eine Strafe eingehoben worden, obwohl sie eine offizielle Bestätigung über die Ausnahme davon vom rumänischen Generalkonsulat besaßen. In einem Schreiben des rumänischen Generalkonsulats in Wien an die Regierung in Bukarest vom 20. Juni 1942 wird das Vermögen rumänischer Juden in Wien inklusive Liegenschaften auf über zwei Millionen Reichsmark geschätzt.³⁰

Ein Beispiel weiterer Diskriminierung ist der Fall von Josef Weintraub aus Baden bei Wien. Er wurde gezwungen, sein Haus zu verkaufen, wovon in einem Schreiben des Generalkonsulats an das Außenministerium in Bukarest vom 21. April 1942 die Rede ist. Am 30. März 1943 wurde Josef Weintraub nach Theresienstadt deportiert.³¹ Des Weiteren ist eine Auflistung rumänischer Juden aus dem Jahr 1942 bekannt, da diese die Summe von 5.000 Reichsmark für das Rumänische Rote Kreuz spendeten, ein höchst kompliziertes Unterfangen im Hinblick auf die Ermittlung der Wechselrate durch die Devisenstelle. Diese Hilfsaktion wurde jedoch in Rumänien von Diktator Antonescu persönlich verwehrt. Ohne Frauen und Familien zu zählen, wissen wir aufgrund dieser Aufstellung, dass 13 dieser 24 Personen zwischen dem 30. März und 1. April 1943 in Konzentrationslager deportiert wurden:³²

1. Abraham Ebner, deportiert nach Theresienstadt am 1. April 1943,
2. Josef Weintraub, deportiert nach Theresienstadt am 30. März 1943,
3. Heinrich Weinberger, deportiert nach Riga am 26. Jänner 1942,
7. Filip (Philip) Mandelbaum, deportiert nach Auschwitz am 31. März 1943,
11. Moses Tennenhaus, deportiert nach Riga am 1. April 1943,
14. Markus Greif, deportiert nach Theresienstadt am 1. April 1943, verstorben am 19. Juni 1943,
16. Mathilde Patek, deportiert nach Theresienstadt am 30. März 1943, verstorben am 26. Juli 1943,
19. Mella Goldenthal, deportiert nach Theresienstadt am 1. April 1943,
22. Osias Flocker, deportiert nach Theresienstadt am 1. April 1943,
23. Claire Hellering, deportiert nach Auschwitz am 31. März 1943; Jenny Hellering ebenfalls nach Auschwitz deportiert am 31. März 1943.

Heinrich Weinberger war bereits 1942 nach Riga deportiert worden. Die übrigen Menschen auf dieser Liste wurden genau in jenen Tagen, als rumänische Jüdinnen und Juden im rumänischen Generalkonsulat in Wien im Frühling 1943 Asyl suchten, in den Tod geschickt. 1942 forderte das rumänische Generalkonsulat in Wien dringend Hilfe und Instruktionen bezüglich des Umgangs mit der schrecklichen Situation der rumänischen Juden in Wien bei ihren Vorgesetzten in Bukarest an, wobei die unmittelbare Bedrohung sowie die Diskriminierungsmaßnahmen explizit erwähnt wurden.³³ Für den Oktober jenes Jahres fand sich eine Notiz des Generalkonsulats in Wien, die sich wiederum auf ein Telegramm von Gheorghe Davidescu, Generalsekretär des Außenministeriums, bezog; darin befindet sich die Anweisung, dass allen antisemitischen Instruktionen der Deutschen strikt Folge zu leisten sei.³⁴

1943

Ende März 1943 wurde die Lage auch für die rumänisch-jüdische Bevölkerung in Wien nochmals prekärer, als nun täglich ihre Namen auf den Transportlisten in Konzentrationslager erschienen. Karadja wandte sich aus Berlin an Wien und Bukarest, um die Festnahmen rumänischer Juden zu bestätigen.³⁵ Ein weiteres Eil-Telegramm wurde von Constantin Mareș aus Wien an das Außenministerium in Bukarest geschickt, mit der dringenden Bitte um Instruktionen für die Hilfe zugunsten der Juden rumänischer Staatsangehörigkeit in Wien.³⁶ Die Antwort erfolgte mit klaren Instruktionen – den Bestimmungen der deutschen antisemitischen Gesetze war auch in diesem Falle Folge zu leisten.³⁷

Am Folgetag, dem 27. März 1943, verfasste Constantin Karadja, Konsul der rumänischen Botschaft in Berlin, abermals ein Schreiben an Bukarest, in dem er die Massendeportationen beschrieb und dringend aus Berlin und Wien um die Erlaubnis zur Hilfestellung durch die Ausgabe rumänischer Pässe zum konsularischen Schutz bat. Dieses Schreiben bezog sich auch auf die Anordnung vom 21. August 1942, als Rumänien dazu gezwungen wurde, die „Endlösung der Judenfrage“ nach dem Vorbild des „Dritten Reichs“ anzunehmen. Dies inkludierte die Schätzung und Konfiszierung des Vermögens rumänischer Juden in Deutschland und Österreich. Dieser Anweisung und ihrer Ausführung widersetzten sich jedoch die rumänischen Konsulate, da aus Bukarest diesbezüglich keine klaren Anweisungen kamen.³⁸ Nach einem weiteren Schreiben von Karadja vom 6. April 1943 erhielt er schließlich die offizielle Erlaubnis, die Transporte rumänischer Jüdinnen und Juden in Wien in allerletzter Minute zu stoppen, um zumindest kurzfristig deren Deportation zu verhindern.³⁹ Das Generalkonsulat in Wien setzte sich unverzüglich telefonisch mit Bukarest in Verbindung. Die Ergebnisse dieses Gespräches sind in den Akten leider nicht festgehalten worden. Nach Karadjas Schätzungen konnten nur zwanzig Prozent der 500 rumänischen Jüdinnen und Juden in Wien gerettet werden (vgl. die Zahl der rumänischen Jüdinnen und Juden in Wien weiter oben, vermutlich ging Karadja bei seinen Schätzungen vom Stand 1943 aus, der schon deutlich minimiert war);⁴⁰ nicht zuletzt aufgrund der ausbleibenden konkreten, offiziellen Anweisungen aus Bukarest.

Auch von amtlicher Seite, der Schutzstaffel (SS), gibt es einen historischen Bericht zur Situation im rumänischen Generalkonsulat in Wien. Er beschreibt einen Vorfall vom 25. März 1943, bei dem sich Constantin Mareș an die Gestapo wandte, weil etwa 30 rumänische Juden das Generalkonsulat nicht mehr verlassen wollten, da sie Festnahmen und Deportationen fürchteten; Instruktionen von der Botschaft in Berlin zum Umgang mit dieser Situation waren noch ausständig; es wurden keine Maßnahmen von Seiten der Gestapo gesetzt.⁴¹

1943 – Politische Fakten in Rumänien – Hintergründe

In diese Zeit von Karadjas eindringlichem Bittschreiben zur Hilfestellung vom April 1943 fällt auch eine Antwort von General Ion Gheorghe, dem rumänischen Militärattaché in Berlin, der zwei Möglichkeiten für diese Angelegenheiten vorsah:

Accept the German policy and stop efforts to help the Jews, which also has the advantage of not irritation the Germans OR
Oppose the German orders with the argument that Romania itself is responsible for its population, not matter of which „ethnical“ origin.⁴²

Am 15. April 1943 ordnete Radu Lecca, der Generalkommissar für die „Judenfrage“ (Comisar general pentru probleme evreiești) in Rumänien, die Rückkehr aller rumänischen Juden aus okkupierten Ländern und deren Deportation nach Transnistrien an. Jedoch vollzog in Rumänien am 20. April dieses Jahres Ion Antonescu eine politische Kehrtwende: die Möglichkeit, dass Deutschland den Krieg gewinne, sei unsicher geworden, weshalb er an die Folgen für sein Land, Rumänien und dessen zukünftige Generationen, zu denken habe. Sollten demokratische Länder den Krieg gewinnen, würden diese wohl Wiedergutmachungsmaßnahmen für die Vertreibung der Juden aus Rumänien fordern, etwas, das für die Zukunft des Landes nicht wünschenswert sei:

Eine der radikalsten Lösungen wäre für mich, alle Juden aufzugreifen und sie über die Grenze zu schicken. Aber wir sind ein kleines Land, kein großes Land wie Deutschland. Ich kämpfe dafür, den Krieg zu gewinnen, aber es könnte auch sein, dass die Demokratien ihn gewinnen. Und wir wissen, was Demokratie bedeutet, es bedeutet Judokratie. Weshalb sollte ich künftige Generationen unseres Volkes der Gefahr aussetzen, für meine Entscheidung, die Juden außer Landes zu treiben, bestrafen? Viele Juden wurden ihrer Handelsressourcen beschnitten und aus dem Wirtschaftsleben ausgeschlossen. Sie sagen mir, dass einige von ihnen nun „zu Fuß“ weitermachen. Wir sind nicht imstande, alle Juden auf einmal aus dem Wirtschaftsleben unseres Landes zu entfernen.⁴³

Diese Quelle lässt einige der wahren Beweggründe für diesen kurzfristigen Paradigmenwechsel Antonescus deutlich werden. Ein diesbezügliches Dokument vom 24. Mai 1943 findet sich auch in den Unterlagen des Auswärtigen Amtes in Berlin:

Aufzeichnung über den gegenwärtigen Stand der Judenfrage: An sich weit fortgeschrittene Judengesetzgebung, jedoch Auflockerung in letzter Zeit durch erleichterte Möglichkeit, für Juden die Rechtsstellung von Blutrumänen zu erlangen. Handhabung der Judengesetzgebung in letzter Zeit mild. Keine Zustimmung zur Deportation von Juden nach dem Osten. Hinsichtlich der im deutschen Machtbereich lebenden rumänischen Juden war 1941 Zustimmung zur Deportierung erteilt, jedoch wurde im April d. J. Zustimmung widerrufen und Wunsch ausgesprochen, rumänische Juden zum Zwecke der Überführung nach Transnistrien wie ungarische oder italienische Juden aus dem Reichsgebiet in ihr Heimatland zurückkehren zu lassen. Staatsführer Antonescu deutete bei Besuch im Führerhauptquartier Bereitwilligkeit zur Aussiedelung zahlreicher Juden nach Russland an, erklärte aber gleichzeitig, dass er noch Bedenken hätte, da sie dort doch nur umgebracht würden.⁴⁴

Was veranlasste Ion Antonescu neben primär politisch und ökonomisch motivierten Gründen, die Deportationen in Rumänien sowie die Rückreise rumänischer Juden in ihr Heimatland beziehungsweise die Emigration von dort nach Palästina zu bewilligen? Vermutlich ist dies nicht zuletzt auch den Interventionen von Wilhelm Filderman, Präsident der jüdischen Gemeinde Rumäniens zwischen 1919 und 1947, sowie deren Oberrabbiner Alexander Șafran zu verdanken.⁴⁵ Gemeinsam hatten sie eine Petition gegen die Deportation der Jüdinnen und Juden aus Siebenbürgen organisiert, die von zahlreichen Oppositionspolitikern unterzeichnet worden war. Auch die Unterstützung von Nicolae Bălan, dem orthodoxen Erzbischof von Transsylvanien sowie der Mutter des rumänischen Königs, Elena von Griechenland, war vorhanden.⁴⁶ Ein weiterer relevanter Punkt war Ion Antonescus Prozess der „Rumänisierung“, eine nationalistische Maßnahme, bei der es um die Rückbringung aller im Ausland lebenden Rumänen, inklusive der jüdischen Bevölkerung, in ihr Heimatland ging.⁴⁷ Darum war in den ersten Monaten des Jahres 1943 die rumänische Politik von „Realpolitik“ geprägt, also dem eigenständigen Umgang mit der „jüdischen Frage“ unabhängig von Deutschland. So entstand ein Gegeneffekt.⁴⁸

Nachsatz – 1944

Für den Jänner 1944 findet sich eine Korrespondenz zwischen Radu Flondor, dem Generalkonsul Rumäniens in Wien, und dem Außenminister Rumäniens bezüglich des Falles von Antoinette Iliescu,⁴⁹ die mit ihrer Tochter Elena in ein deutsches Konzentrationslager im besetzten Polen deportiert worden war. Der Vater der Familie, Alexandru Iliescu in Bukarest lebend, hatte in dieser Angelegenheit beim rumänischen Generalkonsulat in Wien interveniert. Verzweifelt kämpfte er um die Freilassung seiner Frau und Tochter aus dem Lager Izbica, in dem sie sich seit Juni 1942 befanden. Sowohl Mutter als auch Tochter waren Juden rumänischer Herkunft, sie hatten bereits vor dem Kriegsausbruch in Wien gelebt. Die Hilfe konnte nur durch die Einschaltung Berlins erfolgen, wie sich aus dem Hilferuf von Alexandru Iliescu an das rumänische Generalkonsulat in Wien entnehmen lässt. Das letzte Schriftstück in diesem Fall ist auf den 3. April 1944 datiert.

Im Februar 1944 wurden auch Telegramme des rumänischen Außenministeriums an die Legation an Vichy versendet. Darin ist von der Befreiung des Großteils der rumänischen Juden aus Konzentrationslagern die Rede; dies wurde auch umgesetzt. Die ersten zehn dieser Befreiten würden in einem Zug von Paris nach Wien und von dort weiter nach Rumänien reisen. Auch in dieser Angelegenheit bewies das rumänische Generalkonsulat in Wien seinen Willen zu helfen.⁵⁰

Resümee

Im Zusammenspiel von Erinnerungen der Zeitzeugen und offizieller Aktenlage zu den Geschehnissen im rumänischen Generalkonsulat in Wien lässt sich feststellen, dass trotz enormer Bemühungen durch die diplomatischen Mitarbeiter des rumänischen Generalkonsulats in Wien kaum je schriftliche offizielle Anweisungen bezüglich der Hilfestellung für jüdische Mitbürgerinnen und Mitbürger übermittelt wurden. Die Archivdokumente zeigen die Bemühungen einzelner Protagonisten der Konsulate auf, die Anweisungen aus Bukarest forderten. Das Ausbleiben von juristisch basierten Hilfsmaßnahmen durch ihnen zugrunde zu legenden Direktiven zeigt klar, dass die politische Führung Rumäniens kein Interesse am Schicksal seiner Jüdinnen und Juden hatte, aber einzelne Konsulatsmitarbeiter aus humanitären Gesichtspunkten heraus agierten.

, 31.12.2022. ︎
An dieser Stelle möchte ich mich ganz besonders bei Călin Ţânţăreanu, dem früheren Stellvertreter des rumänischen Botschafters in Wien, bedanken, der die Idee zu diesem Projekt hatte, sowie bei Irina Cornișteanu, der ehemaligen Direktorin des Rumänischen Kulturinstituts in Österreich. Auch Stelian Obiziuc, der Leiter des Diplomatischen Archivs in Bukarest, darf nicht unerwähnt bleiben: Bei meinen Forschungsreisen nach Bukarest hat er mich mit seinem Wissen und seiner Hilfe unterstützt. Ohne ihn wäre die Einsicht in viele Aktenbestände nicht so rasch und unkompliziert verlaufen. Schlussendlich möchte ich auch meinem Arbeitgeber während dieses Forschungsauftrages, Dr. Ariel Muzicant, für seine Unterstützung bei diesem Projekt danken. ︎
Florin C. Stan: Situația evreilor din România între anii 1940–1944 [Die Lage der Juden in Rumänien 1940–1944]. Cluj-Napoca 2012. ︎
Doron Rabinovici: Instanzen der Ohnmacht. Wien 1938–1945. Der Weg zum Judenrat. Frankfurt 2000. ︎
Mariana Hausleitner: Die Rumänisierung der Bukowina. Die Durchsetzung des nationalstaatlichen Anspruchs Großrumäniens 1918–1944. München 2001. ︎
Mariana Hausleitner, Brigitte Mihok, Juliane Wetzel (Hgg.): Rumänien und der Holocaust. Zu den Massenverbrechen in Transnistrien 1941–1944 Berlin 2001; Bert Hoppe, Hildrun Glass: Die Verfolgung und Ermordung der europäischen Juden durch das nationalsozialistische Deutschland 1933–1945. Band 7: Sowjetunion mit annektierten Gebieten I. Besetzte sowjetische Gebiete unter deutscher Militärverwaltung, Baltikum und Transnistrien. München 2011. ︎
Vgl. Hildrun Glass: Deutschland und die Verfolgung der Juden im rumänischen Machtbereich 1940–1944. München 2014. ︎
Ottmar Trașcă, Stelian Obiziuc: Diplomați români în slujba vieții: Constantin I. Karadja și salvarea evreilor din Europa în timpul celui de-al treilea Reich (1932–1944) / Romanian Diplomats in the Service of Humanity: Constantin I. Karadja and the Salvation of Romanian Jews in Europe during the Third Reich (1932–1944). Cluj-Napoca 2017. Vgl. auch Ottmar Trașcă, Stelian Obiziuc: Diplomatul Constantin I. Karadja și situația evreilor cetăţeni români din statele controlate / ocupate de Germania nazistă în cel de-al doilea război mondial [Der Diplomat Constantin I. Karadja und die Lage der Juden mit rumänischer Staatsangehörigkeit in den von NS-Deutschland kontrollierten/besetzten Staaten während des Zweiten Weltkriegs]. In: Anuarul Institutului de Istorie „George Barițiu“ din Cluj-Napoca XLIX (2010), S. 109–141. ︎
David Rosenfeld, Vivian Schnurbusch: Gibt es unter den Diplomaten nur zwanzig Judenretter? Einige Anmerkungen und Ergänzungen zum Katalog der Ausstellung „Ein Visum fürs Leben“ – Diplomaten, die Juden retteten, , 31.12.2022. ︎
Rumänischer Generalkonsul in Berlin (1932–1941), Direktor der Konsularabteilung des Rumänischen Außenministeriums (1941–1944). ︎
, 31.12.2022. ︎
Martin Katz: Meine neun Leben. In Wien von den Nazis gejagt, in München die Prominenz erobert. Wien 2011. ︎
Gabriele Anderl: „9096 Leben“ – Der unbekannte Judenretter Berthold Storfer. Berlin 2012. ︎
Audiointerview mit Martin Katz, , 31.12.2022. ︎
Elizabeth W. Trahan: Geisterbeschwörung. Eine jüdische Jugend im Wien der Kriegsjahre. Wien 2000. ︎
Ebenda, S. 152–156. ︎
, 31.12.2022. ︎
Elizabeth W. Trahan: Im Schatten, S. 28f., , 31.12.2022. ︎
Arhivele Ministerului Afacerilor Externe (im Folgenden: AMAE), fond Problema 33 [Bestand Problem 33], vol. 8, f. 39; ebenda, fond Problema 84/Pașapoarte românești, vize, bilete liberă petrecere, general [Bestand Problem 88/Rumänische Pässe, Visa, Durchreisegenehmigungen, Generalia], vol. 5, 1938–1940, nicht paginiert; ebenda, fond Problema 33, vol. 31, f. 201–204; ebenda, fond Problema 33, vol. 31, f. 200+verso; ebenda, fond Problema 84, vol. 5, 1938–1940, nicht paginiert. ︎
AMAE, fond Problema 84/Pașapoarte românești, vize, bilete liberă petrecere, general, vol. 5, 1938–1940, nicht paginiert. ︎
AMAE, fond Problema 33, vol. 31, f. 201–204. ︎
Trașcă, Obiziuc: Diplomați români în slujba vieții, S. 137f., S. 146f. ︎
Ebenda, S. 148–152, f. 178f. ︎
AMAE, fond 71, Vol. 1, f. 163f. ︎
No. 5971, AMAE, fond Problema 84/Pașapoarte românești, vize, bilete liberă trecere, general, vol. 6, 1941–1945, nicht paginiert ︎
AMAE, fond 33, vol. 22. ︎
AMAE, fond 33, vol. 14, f. 97. ︎
AMAE, fond 33, vol. 14, f. 90. ︎
Philipp Mandelbaum überlebte den Holocaust nicht. Geboren in Galați, wurde er am 31. März 1943 nach Auschwitz deportiert. , 25.7.2016. ︎
AMAE, fond 33, vol. 32, f. 61; f. 90–98. ︎
, 25.7.2016. ︎
AMAE, fond 33, vol. 32, 91f., , 25.7.2016. ︎
AMAE, fond Problema 33/Chestiuni privitoare la evrei din perioada 1900–1948, vol. 32, f. 122.
AMAE, fond Problema 33/Chestiuni privitoare la evrei din perioada 1900–1948, vol. 32, f. 69.
AMAE, fond Problema 33/Chestiuni privitoare la evrei din perioada 1900–1948, vol. 32, f. 73f.; fond 71/1920–1944. Austria. Telegrame, vol. 2, Viena, 1942–1944, f. 90f.
AMAE, fond Problema 33/Chestiuni privitoare la evrei din perioada 1900–1948, vol. 32, f. 81–83.
AMAE, fond Problema 33/Chestiuni privitoare la evrei din perioada 1900–1948, vol. 32, f. 98–100.
AMAE, fond Problema 33/Chestiuni privitoare la evrei din perioada 1900–1948, vol. 32, f. 101.
AMAE, fond Problema 33/Chestiuni privitoare la evrei din perioada 1900–1948, vol. 32, f. 102.
AMAE, fond Problema 33/Chestiuni privitoare la evrei din perioada 1900–1948, vol. 32, f. 96.
AMAE, fond Problema 33/Chestiuni privitoare la evrei din perioada 1900–1948, vol. 16, f. 77.
AMAE, fond Problema 33/Chestiuni privitoare la evrei din perioada 1900–1948, vol. 32, f. 131. ︎
AMAE, fond Problema 33/Chestiuni privitoare la evrei din perioada 1900–1948, vol. 32, f. 131. ︎
Telegramm Nr. 1634 und Nr. 83/43.842 vom 25. März 1943, abgedruckt in Trașcă, Obiziuc: Diplomați români în slujba vieții, S. 541–543. ︎
AMAE, fond Problema 33/Chestiuni privitoare la evrei din perioada 1900–1948, vol. 32, f. 7; fond 71/1920–1944. Austria. Telegrame, vol. 2, Viena, 1942–1944, f. 134. ︎
AMAE, fond Problema 33/Chestiuni privitoare la evrei din perioada 1900–1948, vol. 32, f. 131. ︎
Referat despre protecția diplomatică și consulară acordată evreilor români în Germania și răpirea averilor lor în valoare de cca. un miliard lei (valoare 1938) de către național-socialiști, Bucureşti, 10 Oct. 1944, Constantin Karadja, AMAE, fond 33, vol. 16, f. 449. ︎
Ebenda, AMAE, fond 33, vol. 16, f. 35. ︎
Referat „Acțiunea … a unui grup de evrei români în … și politica țării față de minoritarii evrei in străinătate, AMAE, fond 33, vol. 16, f. 437. ︎
Radu Ioanid: The Holocaust in Romania. The Destruction of Jews and Roma under the Antonescu regime, 1940–1944. Lanham 2022, S. 532f. ︎
AMAE, fond 33, vol. 16, f. 116. ︎
Im rumänischen Original: „Una ar fi cea mai radicală: să iau pe toți evreii și să-i trec peste graniță. Dar noi suntem o țară mica, nu o țară mare, ca Germania. Eu lupt să câștig războiul, dar se poate întâmpla să-l câștige democrațiile. Și noi știm ce înseamnă democrația: însemnă iudeocrație. Și atunci să expun eu ca generațiile viitoare ale neamului să fie pedepsite fiindcă printr-o asemenea măsură a mea au fost scoși evreii din țară? Mulți evrei au fost scoși din fondurile lor de comerț și înlăturați din viața economică. Dv. spuneți că unii din ei mai fac încă comerț pe picior. Nu putem însă să-i scoatem pe toți evreii dintr-o dată vin viața economică a țârii.“ Lya Benjamin: Evreii din România între anii 1940–1944. Problema evreiască în stenogramele Consiliului de Miniștri [Die Juden in Rumänien 1940–1944. Die Judenfrage in den Stenogrammen des Ministerrats]. București 1993, Doc. 166. Ich danke Lya Benjamin an dieser Stelle herzlich für unser diesbezügliches Gespräch in Bukarest 2016. Vgl. auch Randolph L. Braham: Romanian Nationalists and the Holocaust. The Political Exploitation of Unfounded Rescue Accounts. New York 1998, S. 29. ︎
Central Office United Restitution Organization (URO), Frankfurt/Main, Band III, Frankfurt/M., Oktober 1959, S. 523. ︎
Vgl. auch Constantin Iordachi, Ottmar Trașcă: Ideological Transfers and Bureaucratic Entanglements. Nazi ,Expertsʻ on the ,Jewish Questionʻ and the Romanian-German Relations, 1940–1944. In: fascism 4 (2015), S. 48–100, S. 93–96. ︎
Asher Cohen: Horthy Pétain, Antonescu and the Jews, 1942–1944: Toward a Comparative View. In: Aharon Weiss (Hg.): Yad Vashem Studies XVIII (1987), S. 189f. ︎
Radu Ioanid: The Holocaust in Romania. The destruction of Jews and Gypsies under the Antonescu regime, 1940–1944. Chicago 2000, S. 23. ︎
International Commission on the Holocaust in Romania, Final Report of the International Commission on the Holocaust in Romania, Presented to Romanian President Ion Iliescu, Bucharest 2004. ︎
AMAE, fond 71, vol. 1, f. 395–450. ︎
AMAE, fond Problema 33/Chestiuni privitoare la evrei din perioada 1900–1948, vol. 30, f. 143; ebenda, vol. 30, f. 145; ebenda, fond 71/1920–1944. Franța. Telegrame, vol. 5, Vichy, 1943–1944, f. 83. ︎

Der Beitrag Das rumänische Konsulat in Wien als Drehkreuz für das Schicksal rumänischer Jüdinnen und Juden 1943 erschien zuerst auf Halbjahresschrift für Geschichte und Zeitgeschehen in Zentral- und Südosteuropa.

Gedenkstätten der Verschleppung und Aussiedlung der Deutschen in Ungarn. 1952–2015

IKGS-Admin_2 — Thu, 15 May 2025 09:45:59 +0000

Beáta Márkus, Universität Pécs / Ágnes Tóth, Forschungszentrum für Sozialwissenschaften in Budapest

Dr. Beáta Márkus (geb. 1988) ist Historikerin und wissenschaftliche Mitarbeiterin des Stiftungslehrstuhls für deutsche Geschichte und Kultur im südötlichen Mitteleuropa an der Universität Pécs. Studium der Geschichte und Liberal Arts an der Universität Pécs. Doktoratsstudium an der Andrássy Gyula Deutschsprachige Universität Budapest mit der Arbeit „Deportation deutschstämmiger Zivilisten aus Ungarn in die Sowjetunion 1944/1945”. Forschungsschwerpunkten sind die Geschichte und Lage der deutschen Minderheit in Ungarn, Zwangsarbeit und Zwangsmigration sowie Erinnerungskultur in Ungarn.

Dr. Ágnes Tóth (geb. 1961) Historikerin und wissenschaftliche Mitarbeiterin des Forschungszentrums für Sozialwissenschaften in Budapest. 2010 Habilitation, 2018 Verleihung des Grades „Doctor of Sciences” (DSc) von der Ungarischen Akademie der Wissenschaften. Seit 2002 am Institut für Minderheitenforschung in Budapest als stellvertretende Direktorin, 2010–2013 als Direktorin. 2015–2020 Leitung des Lehrstuhls für deutsche Kultur und Geschichte Südosteuropas an der Universität Pécs. Gremienarbeit u. a. am Donauschwäbischen Zentralmuseum Ulm und in der Kommission für Geschichte und Kultur der Deutschen in Südosteuropa e. V. Zahlreiche Publikationen zur Lage nationaler Minderheiten in Ungarn seit 1920. Ihre aktuellen Forschungsschwerpunkte sind die Geschichte der Deutschen in Ungarn im Sozialismus und die Erinnerungskultur der Zwangsmigration.

Thematisierung der Ereignisse¹

Das Ende des Zweiten Weltkrieges und das darauffolgende halbe Jahrzehnt waren eine der verhängnisvollsten Phasen in der Geschichte der deutschen Minderheit in Ungarn. Zwischen Dezember 1944 und Ende Januar 1945 wurden etwa 30.000 Angehörige der Gemeinschaft zur Zwangsarbeit („Reparationsarbeit“) in die Sowjetunion deportiert. Auf Grundlage des Prinzips der Kollektivschuld wurden anschließend innerhalb von anderthalb Jahren (19. Januar 1946 bis Juni 1948) etwa 220.000 Menschen nach Deutschland ausgesiedelt.

Die betroffenen lokalen Gemeinschaften nahmen die Geschehnisse während der Verschleppung und Aussiedlung/Vertreibung natürlich wahr und diese wurden so – mit unterschiedlicher Intensität – zu einem Teil der Identität des Kreises der sich erinnernden Personen. Die politischen Machthaber untersagten jedoch vier Jahrzehnte lang öffentliche Gedenkveranstaltungen, und auch die Errichtung von Gedenkstätten war nicht möglich. So blieben die Ereignisse der Nachkriegszeit im Gedächtnis der Gemeinschaft bruchstückhaft und an lokale Ereignisse gebunden, während sie der Mehrheit der ungarischen Gesellschaft gänzlich unbekannt waren.

Mit der wissenschaftlichen Aufarbeitung der Geschichte von Zwangsarbeit und Aussiedlung, ihrer internationalen Hintergründe und der Zusammenhänge zwischen den Zwangsmigrationsprozessen in der Nachkriegszeit konnte so erst in den 1980er-Jahren begonnen werden. Die Fragestellungen dieser ersten Forschungen waren wesentlich von der sogenannten Potsdamer Legende geprägt, d.h. von der ausschließlichen Interpretation der Aussiedlung der Ungarndeutschen als außenpolitische Notwendigkeit und auf Anordnung der Großmächte hin.² In methodischer Hinsicht sind diese Arbeiten durch einen positivistischen, deskriptiven und ereignisorientierten Ansatz gekennzeichnet.

In den 1990er-Jahren erweiterte sich der thematische und methodische Horizont dieser Forschungen. Bezüglich der Zwangsmigration rückte nun die komplexe Untersuchung dieses Prozesses in den Vordergrund, d.h. die Analyse der jeweiligen Verantwortung der Großmächte, der ungarischen politischen Führung und der ungarischen Gesellschaft, die Bestimmung der daraus resultierenden regionalen Unterschiede, die Auseinandersetzung mit der Integration der Vertriebenen in Deutschland sowie die Aufarbeitung der Schicksale der Vertriebenen, die sich in Deutschland nicht zurechtfanden und nach Ungarn zurückkehrten. In den folgenden Jahren verlagerte sich die Aufmerksamkeit erfreulicherweise auf die sozialgeschichtlichen Aspekte der Vertreibung.³ Die Geschichte der Deportationen zum „malenkij robot“⁴ erhielt größere Aufmerksamkeit und es wurden überdies auch zahlreiche Interviews mit Überlebenden durchgeführt. In den meisten Fällen erfolgte die Befragung jedoch ohne ein angemessenes methodisches Fundament und es wurde nicht unter dem Gesichtspunkt der Erinnerungskultur analysiert. In den vergangenen Jahren rückten Forschungen, die sich mit den regionalen Unterschieden der Deportation der Deutschen und mit deren Hintergründen befassten, in den Mittelpunkt.⁵

⁶Einen weiteren Wendepunkt in der Beurteilung der Repressalien der Staatsmacht gegen die Deutschen in Ungarn nach dem Zweiten Weltkrieg stellt der politische Systemwechsel in Ungarn dar. Die neue politische Elite strebte danach, sich von den Verbrechen, die vom staatssozialistischen System begangen und anschließend vertuscht worden waren, zu distanzieren. Sie bemühte sich, die Betroffenen zu gewinnen und ihnen eine finanzielle Entschädigung zu gewähren. Im Jahr 1990 reagierte das Parlament mit zwei Beschlüssen – Nr. 35/1990 und Nr. 36/1990 – auf das Unrecht, das den Deutschen angetan worden war. In diesen stellte das Parlament die Tatsache des Rechtsbruches fest und erklärte, dass die Verschleppung der Ungarndeutschen ab 1944 und ihre anschließende Aussiedlung eine grobe Verletzung der Menschenrechte und ein unrechtmäßiges Vorgehen gewesen sei. Die Betroffenen waren unschuldig gewesen und hatten allein aufgrund ihrer nationalen Zugehörigkeit Leid erfahren. Die daraufhin ergriffenen Maßnahmen waren entsprechend ein Ausdruck der kollektiven Verantwortlichmachung der Deutschen in Ungarn: Die Nationalversammlung sprach den Angehörigen der Verstorbenen ihr Beileid und den Überlebenden der Leidenszeit ihr Mitgefühl aus.

⁷Parallel zur juristischen Rehabilitierung wurden zahlreiche Ausstellungen und Konferenzen organisiert, insbesondere im Zusammenhang mit den Jahrestagen der Vertreibung (1996–1998, 2006–2008), und es wurden Gedenkveranstaltungen unter Beteiligung von Staatsvertretern und Abgeordneten der Parlamentsparteien abgehalten, die auf ein reges Presseecho stießen. Die Landesselbstverwaltung der Ungarndeutschen gedachte am 23. und 24. März 1996 mit einer zentralen Veranstaltung in Budakeszi des 50. Jahrestages der Vertreibung.⁸ Am 7. Juni 1996 wurde dann der Grundstein für eine zentrale Gedenkstätte der Vertreibung auf dem alten Friedhof in Budaörs gelegt.⁹ Am 16. Mai 1997 fand im Hof des Lenau-Hauses in Pécs die Einweihung des Denkmals der Vertreibung statt, bei der Staatspräsident Árpád Göncz anwesend war und eine Ansprache hielt. Heinrich Reitinger, Direktor des Ungarndeutschen Sozial- und Kulturwerkes, sprach im Namen der Vertriebenen und bewertete den Prozess der Neubeurteilung der Ungarndeutschen in den 1990er-Jahren bzw. die damaligen politischen Maßnahmen wie folgt: „Für uns hat eine neue Geschichtsschreibung begonnen”. Diese Ereignisse signalisierten, dass die Regierung öffentlichen, ritualisierten Gedenkfeiern an die Vertreibung der Ungarndeutschen nicht nur zustimmen, sondern sie auch unterstützen würde. Und die nun folgende Errichtung von landesweiten Gedenkstätten hob das Gedenken von der lokalen auf die gemeinschaftlich-nationale Ebene.

Am 60. Jahrestag der Vertreibung setzte sich dieser Erinnerungsprozess mit wachsender politischer und öffentlicher Unterstützung fort. Im Jahr 2006 eröffneten die deutsche Botschafterin in Budapest, Ursula Seiler-Albring und der Vorsitzende der Landesselbstverwaltung der Ungarndeutschen, Ottó Heinek im Haus des Terrors in der ungarischen Hauptstadt eine Sonderausstellung mit dem Titel „Deutsches Schicksal in Europa – Schwäbisches Schicksal in Ungarn“. Im Juni 2006 wurde das zentrale Vertriebenendenkmal in Budaörs feierlich eingeweiht. In seiner Rede aus diesem Anlass dankte Präsident László Sólyom den deutschen Heimatvertriebenen und ihren Familien. Eine ähnliche Geste machte auch Parlamentspräsidentin Katalin Szili am 16. November 2007 auf einer Konferenz im Parlament, die unter dem Titel „Sie kamen mit einem Bündel“ stattfand.

Als Höhepunkt dieses Prozesses können der Parlamentsbeschluss Nr. 88/2012 und der Änderungsbeschluss Nr. 103/2013 angesehen werden, mit denen der 19. Januar zum Tag der des Gedenkens an die Verschleppung und Vertreibung der Deutschen in Ungarn erklärt wurde.¹⁰ Dieser Schritt ist bisher einmalig in den mittel- und osteuropäischen Staaten, in denen es zur Verschleppung und Vertreibung der dortigen deutschen Minderheiten gekommen war.

Obwohl sich der Name des Gedenktages zunächst nur auf die Verschleppungen zur Zwangsarbeit bezog und der Begriff „Vertreibung“ (elűzés) erst durch die Änderung des Entschlusses hinzugefügt wurde, blieb die Thematisierung der Verschleppungen lange Zeit im Hintergrund. Auch wenn die wissenschaftliche Erforschung der Deportationen zum Zwecke der Wiedergutmachung – wie erwähnt – bereits Ende der 1980er–Jahre eingesetzt hatte, Gedenkveranstaltungen stattgefunden hatten und Gedenkstätten errichtet worden waren, so entwickelte sich hieraus dennoch keine landesweite, an allen betroffenen Orten abgehaltene Reihe von Gedenkveranstaltungen.

Eine Veränderung trat erst 2015 auf zivilgesellschaftliche Initiative hin ein, als die Regierung am 20. Januar 2015 zum Gedenkjahr an die in die Sowjetunion verschleppten politischen Gefangenen und Zwangsarbeiter(-innen) verkündete.¹¹

Im Rahmen des Gedenkjahres stellte der Staat mittels Ausschreibungen erhebliche finanzielle Mittel zur Erforschung der Deportationen ungarischer Staatsbürger in die Sowjetunion sowie für Gedenkausstellungen und Erinnerungsveranstaltungen zur Verfügung. Im Zuge dieses Gedenkens wurde der Begriff der „Deportation zum Malenkij Robot”, der sich bis dahin nur auf die Verschleppung der Deutschen bezogen hatte, auf alle aus Ungarn deportierten Menschen ausgeweitet. Dies bedeutete einen neuen Ansatz in der Interpretation der Ereignisse.

Trotz dieses Prozesses, der sich seit dem politischen Systemwechsel vollzieht, kann jedoch nicht davon gesprochen werden, dass sich die Ereignisse der Deportation und Vertreibung der Ungarndeutschen in das gesamtgesellschaftliche Bewusstsein eingeprägt haben. Auch die damit zusammenhängenden Gedenkveranstaltungen, Publikationen, Filme und literarischen Werke richten sich in erster Linie an die Angehörigen der deutschen Volksgruppe bzw. erreichen vor allem diesen Kreis. Nur hier stoßen sie auf größeres Interesse.

Forschungshintergrund und analytische Gesichtspunkte

Eine umfangreiche zusammenfassende wissenschaftliche Arbeit über die Erinnerungskultur der deutschen Minderheit in Ungarn liegt bislang nicht vor. Zwar wurden historische Forschungen zu einzelnen identitätsstiftenden Ereignissen (An- und Aussiedlung) durchgeführt,¹² diese sind allerdings nur auf Teilaspekte ausgerichtet.

Auch die Zahl der Arbeiten, die sich mit der Erinnerung an die Deportation und Vertreibung der Ungarndeutschen und mit den entsprechenden Gedenkstätten beschäftigen, ist gering. Die erste derartige Studie, die sich – als Teil von Forschungen über die politische Denkmalerrichtung nach dem Systemwechsels – mit diesem Thema befasst, stammt aus der Feder von Géza Boros.¹³ Ein Buch über die Denkmäler, die die Verschleppung in die Sowjetunion thematisieren, verfasste Zalán Bognár.¹⁴ Das Ziel des Bandes bildete allerdings nicht die umfassende Erschließung des Themas, er führte vielmehr anhand einzelner Beispiele die auf diesem Gebiet zu beobachtenden Tendenzen vor Augen. 2017 publizierte das Institut für Nationales Kulturerbe einen Band, als dessen Zielsetzung die Erstellung einer Liste von Denkmälern genannt wird, die im Rahmen der Gedenkjahre von 2015 bis 2017 errichtet wurden.¹⁵ Der Band enthält aber nicht nur derartige Denkmäler, sondern auch Objekte, die vor der Verkündung des Gedenkjahres eingeweiht wurden. Auch diese Arbeit ist also nicht als umfassend zu betrachten. In Anbetracht all dessen lässt sich feststellen, dass die Erinnerungskultur im Zusammenhang mit der Verfolgung der Ungarndeutschen am Ende des Zweiten Weltkriegs noch weitestgehend unerforscht ist. Eine systematische Dokumentation und Analyse von Denkmälern und Gedenkstätten zu diesen Themen wurde bisher nicht durchgeführt. Diese Lücke soll durch die im Rahmen des Instituts für Minderheitenforschung des HUN-REN Gesellschaftswissenschaftlichen Forschungszentrums begonnenen Erhebungen geschlossen werden. Ihr Ziel es ist, eine Bestandsaufnahme der Gedenkstätten zur Erinnerung an Deportation und Vertreibung der Ungarndeutschen zu erstellen, die verschiedenen Typen von Gedenkstätten (Mahnmale, Gedenktafeln, Gedenkparks) zu bewerten und zu vergleichen, die Umstände ihrer Errichtung (Initiatoren, Geldgeber usw.) zu ermitteln sowie die Inhalte der Gedenkfeiern zu dokumentieren und zu analysieren.¹⁶

In der zweiten Hälfte dieses Artikels werden erste Ergebnisse dieses Forschungsvorhabens zusammengefasst. Anhand der Angaben zu den mehr als 200 bisher dokumentierten Denkmälern versuchen wir, ihr Entstehungsdatum, ihre lokale Verortung, die Symbolik der Objekte und ihre Inschriften zu erläutern. Die Analyse geht nicht auf die inhaltlichen Aspekte und politischen Kontexte der Objekte ein, auf diese kann nur verwiesen werden. Die Denkmäler, die im Rahmen des Projekts „Gedenkjahr an die in die Sowjetunion verschleppten politischen Häftlinge und Zwangsarbeiter“ errichtet wurden, sind nicht in die Analyse einbezogen worden, da die Deportation der Ungarndeutschen hier – wie bereits dargelegt – in einem anderen analytischen Kontext erfolgte. Zudem ist die Ausschreibungsdokumentation für die mit öffentlichen Geldern errichteten Gedenkstätten nur teilweise zugänglich.

Obwohl beide Ereignisse jahrzehntelang verschwiegen wurden, ist es bemerkenswert, dass die regelmäßigen Gedenkfeiern zur Erinnerung an die Vertreibung vor den Gedenkveranstaltungen an die Deportationen begannen. Die Tatsache, dass diese Ereignisse nicht gleichzeitig enttabuisiert wurden, hat mehrere Gründe. Die Aussiedlungen betrafen eine erheblich größere Zahl von Menschen als die Verschleppungen zur Zwangsarbeit, und die Auswirkungen der Vertreibungen sind – aufgrund der zerrissenen Familienbande, des Verlusts von Heimat, Kultur, Identität o.ä. – auch noch Jahrzehnte nach den Ereignissen in der Erinnerung der Betroffenen lebendig. Schon aus diesem Grund war es nicht möglich, die Erinnerung daran vollständig zu unterdrücken. Die Rolle der Sowjetunion bei den Verschleppungen trug gleichzeitig dazu bei, dass diese in besonderem Maße tabuisiert wurden. Als Ordnungsprinzip der Studie wurde jedoch die Chronologie der Ereignisse und nicht ihr Hervortreten in der Erinnerungskultur gewählt, sodass zunächst die Gedenkstätten der Deportationen und dann die Orte der Vertreibungen untersucht wurden.

Im Allgemeinen verstehen wir Gedenkstätten zur Erinnerung an die Verschleppung und Vertreibung als Kommunikationsmittel. Sie sind Ausdruck des Systems der Erinnerungskultur der deutschen Minderheit in Ungarn und beeinflussen das individuelle Geschichtsbewusstsein der Angehörigen der Gemeinschaft.¹⁷ Unter Rückgriff auf die Definition von Stephan Scholz verstehen wir unter „Gedenkstätte“ jedes materielle Zeichen der Erinnerung im öffentlichen Raum, das zum Gedenken an die Deportation der Mitglieder der betreffenden Gruppe in die Sowjetunion am Ende des Zweiten Weltkriegs, an ihre Aussiedlung nach Deutschland sowie an ihre zurückgelassene Heimat geschaffen wurde. Dazu gehören auch bereits existierende Objekte, die von der Gemeinschaft zu diesem Zweck genutzt werden, unabhängig von ihrer früheren Funktion.¹⁸ Gedenkstätten (Denkmäler, Erinnerungstafeln, Gedenkparks usw.) sind klassische Mittel der Erinnerung, ihre Aufgabe ist es, dem Prozess des Vergessens entgegenzuwirken.¹⁹ Das Schaffen von „Markierungen“ zur Vergegenwärtigung der Vergangenheit ist deshalb notwendig, weil sie – auch nach dem Tod der betroffenen Generation – die Erinnerung an Ereignisse, die für die Gemeinschaft von Bedeutung sind, wachhalten. Das Bedürfnis nach langfristigem Erinnern bzw. nach Dauerhaftigkeit, Zeitlosigkeit und Unveränderlichkeit drückt sich auch in der Wahl des Materials für die Denkmäler aus, die in den meisten Fällen aus Metall oder Stein bestehen.²⁰ Die Errichtung von Gedenkstätten bringt die Wertvorstellungen der Gruppe zum Ausdruck und zeigt, an welche Ereignisse sie sich aktiv erinnern will und welche sie – mittels der Auswahl – in Vergessenheit geraten lassen möchte. Die Auswahl wird zudem stets von den Normen der Gruppe, ihrem Identitätskonzept und den Machtverhältnissen der Gegenwart beeinflusst. Die räumliche Gebundenheit der Gedenkstätte und des Denkmals zeigt auch, dass die anzusprechende Gruppe in der Regel ebenfalls ortsgebunden ist – sie will ein vergangenes Ereignis für die dort lebenden Menschen dauerhaft präsent und unausweichlich machen und damit das Geschichtsbewusstsein prägen.²¹ Dies ist vor allem dann möglich, wenn die jeweilige Gedenkstätte mit wiederkehrenden sozialen Handlungen verbunden ist, also mit regelmäßig stattfindenden Gedenkfeiern, die das Geschichtsbild der Gruppe immer wieder aktualisieren.

Da die Denkmäler für die gedenkende Gemeinschaft einen Teil des öffentlichen Raumes für lange Zeit in Anspruch nehmen, verraten Anzahl, Größe und Standort der Denkmäler zugleich die Stellung der Gruppe in der sozialen Hierarchie.²² Das ist insbesondere dann der Fall, wenn die Erinnerungsgemeinschaft einen Teil der Gesamtgesellschaft bildet, der über eine von der Mehrheit abweichende Geschichte verfügt. Auf diese Weise bietet die Denkmalerrichtung auch die Möglichkeit, sich im Gefüge konkurrierender Vergangenheitsvorstellungen zu verorten. Außerdem muss die Minderheit die Zustimmung der Mehrheitsgesellschaft und der politischen Macht einholen, um ein „Zeichen des Gedenkens“ im öffentlichen Raum zu setzen. Dies erfordert mitunter, dass die Minderheit ihr Bild von der eigenen Vergangenheit den gesellschaftlichen Erwartungen anpasst.

Die Tatsache, dass es Ende des 20. Jahrhunderts für eine ethnische Minderheit möglich wurde, ein Denkmal im öffentlichen Raum zu errichten, ist Teil eines Demokratisierungsprozesses, der seit der Neuzeit im Gange ist. In früheren Zeiten war der öffentliche Raum größtenteils auf die Erinnerung an „große Menschen“ und Ereignisse beschränkt.²³ Den Höhepunkt dieses Prozesses bildete das Faktum, dass auch Minderheitengruppen in die Lage versetzt wurden, ihr eigenes Geschichtsbild im öffentlichen Raum zu präsentieren, auch wenn sich dieses von der Interpretation der Mehrheitsgesellschaft hinsichtlich eines bestimmten Ereignisses unterschied oder ihr manchmal sogar widersprach.

Gedenkstätten der Verschleppung zur Zwangsarbeit in die Sowjetunion

Die ersten Denkmäler, die an die Deportation von Menschen deutscher Abstammung erinnern sollen, wurden bereits zu einem erstaunlich frühen Zeitpunkt errichtet. Das erste bekannte Objekt wurde 1952 in Gyula aufgestellt. An einer Innenwand der Josephskirche im Stadtteil „Deutschstadt“ wurde eine Tafel mit der Aufschrift „Zum Gedenken an unsere Lieben, die in den Kohlebergwerken des Donbass starben“²⁴ angebracht, zusammen mit den Namen der Todesopfer.²⁵ Eine weitere Gedenkstätte wurde 1957 in Óbánya in der Baranya eingerichtet. Heimkehrer aus der Sowjetunion renovierten dort das 1863 auf dem Friedhof errichtete Steinkreuz und versahen es mit der Inschrift: „Renowiert zurErinnerunk von Heimkehr aus Ruszland“. In die Reihe der frühen Denkmäler gehört auch ein 1965 auf dem Friedhof von Taksony errichtetes, nicht gekennzeichnetes Kreuz, an dem erst 1989 die folgende Inschrift auf Ungarisch angebracht wurde: „Zum Gedenken an geliebte Menschen, die in der Ferne, an einem unbekannten Ort starben, errichtet von den Bewohnern von Taksony 1965“.²⁶

Die Errichtung dieser frühen Denkmäler ist insofern überraschend, als zu dieser Zeit selbst die bloße Erwähnung der Deportationen ein Tabu darstellte. In Erinnerungstexten und Interviews aus der Zeit nach dem Systemwechsel erwähnten die Betroffenen häufig, dass sie nach ihrer Rückkehr ein Schweigegelübde ablegen mussten und dass die Behörden ihnen mit verschiedenen Sanktionen drohten, falls sie über das, was ihnen widerfahren war, sprechen würden.²⁷ Vor diesem Hintergrund erscheint es geradezu leichtsinnig, Denkmäler zu errichten, auch wenn alle drei Fälle von einer gewissen Vorsicht geprägt waren. Auf den Objekten ist kein Text zu finden, und wenn doch, dann weist er nicht eindeutig auf die Verschleppung durch die Sowjets hin. Das gemeinsame Merkmal der Denkmäler aus dieser Zeit ist ihr kirchlicher Bezug, der sich in der Wahl des Aufstellungsortes widerspiegelt. Die Denkmalserrichtung in sakralen Räumen drückt das Verlangen aus, die Toten zu bestatten, d.h., dass dieser Raum auch als symbolische Grabstätte der Opfer dient. Diese Elemente finden sich auch bei den meisten der späteren Denkmäler wieder.

Nach dem Systemwechsel stieg die Zahl der Gedenkstätten, die an die Verschleppung der deutschstämmigen Zivilisten erinnern, sprunghaft an. Infolge der politischen Wende endete nämlich der Zwang, zu schweigen. Die Errichtung von Gedenkstätten in größerer Zahl machte es möglich, die örtlichen Erfahrungen zu verewigen bzw. die Ereignisse in die kollektive Identität der deutschen Nationalität einfließen zu lassen. Dieser Prozess wurde dadurch verstärkt, dass die örtlichen Gemeinschaften die betroffenen Personen als Zeugen zu Wort kommen ließen. Diese Erzählungen verliehen einerseits den Ereignissen für die jüngeren Generationen Authentizität, andererseits machten sie den persönlichen und einzigartigen Charakter des Leidens deutlich. Im Jahrzehnt nach dem Systemwechsel wurden die Gedenkstätten zumeist von Angehörigen der örtlichen deutschen Minderheit, von den damals gebildeten Minderheitenselbstverwaltungen sowie von Privatpersonen oder von den Kommunalverwaltungen eingerichtet. Auch wenn die ungarndeutsche Gemeinschaft eindeutig das Ziel verfolgte, die Erinnerung an die Deportation zur Zwangsarbeit in die Sowjetunion stärker als bisher in das kollektive Gedächtnis einfließen zu lassen, kann dieser Prozess nicht losgelöst vom geistigen Umfeld der damaligen Jahre und dem Wunsch nach politischer Rehabilitierung betrachtet werden. In den Denkmälern, die in dieser Zeit – im Zusammenhang mit den erinnerungspolitischen Bestrebungen der Regierungen – errichtet wurden, kam der Darstellung der „Verbrechen des Kommunismus“ eine besondere Bedeutung zu.

Sowohl für die im sakralen Raum als auch auf den Hauptplätzen errichteten Gedenkstätten triff zu, dass diese keine „authentischen Orte“ sind bzw. nicht in unmittelbarer Verbindung zu dem stehen, was 1944/1945 geschah. Die deutsche Fachliteratur unterscheidet diesen Sachverhalt mittels der Begriffe „Denkmal an die Zeit“ und „Denkmal aus der Zeit“.²⁸ In einigen Fällen wurden jedoch Gedenkstätten auch an authentischen Orten errichtet: So wurde 1996 an der – mittlerweile abgerissenen – Lakits-Kaserne in Pécs (dt. Fünfkirchen), in die die Deutschen aus der Baranya vor ihrer Deportation gebracht wurden, eine Gedenktafel angebracht. Auch an der Wand der Schule von Bátaszék erinnert eine Tafel daran, dass die aus dieser Gegend deportierten Deutschen einige Tage lang dort gefangen gehalten worden waren. Und das Mahnmal, das 2014 neben dem Bahnhof in Szerencs eingeweiht wurde und auch als zentrale Gedenkstätte für die Deportationen dient, erinnert an das Schicksal aller in den Eisenbahnwaggons „verfrachteten“ Zivilisten der Region und nennt die Namen der betroffenen Dörfer. Über die Symbolik der Denkmäler lassen sich relativ wenige allgemeine Feststellungen treffen. Im Vergleich zu den Denkmälern der Vertreibung fällt vor allem das Fehlen aufwendiger ikonografischer Merkmale, Symbole und figuraler Elemente auf. Auch wenn der Eisenbahnwaggon, die Silhouette einer Lore, die auf die schwere Arbeit im Bergwerk verweist, oder die Grubenlampe auf einigen Gedenktafeln und Denkmälern zur Deportation zu finden sind, kann nicht von einem allgemein verwendeten Symbolsystem gesprochen werden. Das am häufigsten verwendete Symbol ist das Kreuz, das zum einen die Anpassung an den als Schauplatz dienenden sakralen Raum zum Ausdruck bringt und zum anderen die Funktion des Grabsteins für die Todesopfer übernimmt. Dies kann nicht nur an den frühen Denkmälern beobachtet werden, sondern auch an denen, die in den letzten drei Jahrzehnten errichtet wurden. Die Denkmäler für die Deportierten wurden nur in den seltensten Fällen an zentralen und gut sichtbaren Plätzen eines Ortes errichtet. Eine Ausnahme bilden lediglich die sogenannten Heldendenkmäler des Ersten Weltkrieges, die erst während der 1990er-Jahre so erweitert wurden, dass sie auch an die Deportierten erinnern.²⁹

Zu den „gemeinsamen Denkmälern“ gehören auch solche, die verschiedene Ereignisse und Opfergruppen miteinander verbinden. Ein Beispiel dafür ist die Skulptur von Tibor Szervátiusz in Nagymaros aus dem Jahr 1994, die neben den zu Reparationsleistungen deportierten Deutschen auch der Opfer von 1956 gedenkt.³⁰ Das Bindeglied bildet hier wohl die Darstellung der Opfer der sowjetischen Unterdrückung bzw. der kommunistischen Diktatur als eine Gruppe. Einen ähnlichen Gedanken spiegelt sicherlich auch das Denkmal von Tibor Gusztáv in Villány wider. Dieses wurde 2012 zum Gedenken an die verschleppten und ausgesiedelten Deutschen sowie an die in die Hortobágyer Puszta umgesiedelten „Kulaken“ errichten.³¹

Deportation und Vertreibung erhielten oft gemeinsame Gedenkstätten. Diese Denkmäler verbinden die von der Roten Armee durchgeführten Deportationen also nicht mit dem Kommunismus, sondern mit der Herkunft der Opfergruppe. Derartige gemeinsame Werke wurden beispielsweise in Ecseny,³² Magyarhertelend und Kiskassa³³ aufgestellt. Dieser Ansatz wurde im letzten Jahrzehnt zurückgedrängt, das vereinheitlichte Gedenken im Gulag-Gedenkjahr ließ diese Form des Erinnerns nicht überleben.³⁴

Ein beträchtlicher Teil der Denkmäler sind in ungarischer und deutscher Sprache beschriftet, wobei in den letzten Jahren eine Dominanz der ungarischen Sprache festzustellen ist. Wie bereits erwähnt, geht aus den Inschriften in vielen Fällen nicht eindeutig hervor, welchem Ereignis konkret gedacht werden soll. Es wird so gewissermaßen ein „gemeinsames Wissen“ der jeweiligen Gemeinschaft vorausgesetzt. Dieser Sachverhalt charakterisiert Gedenkstätten generell, denn ihre Aufgabe ist nicht die Aufklärung und Information, sondern die Vermittlung und Aktualisierung eines bereits bestehenden Geschichtsbildes.³⁵ Dies gilt insbesondere für die frühen Deportationsdenkmäler, bei denen aus Furcht vor Repressalien der politischen Machthaber die Gedenkorte selbst verborgen blieben.

Gedenkstätten der Aussiedlung nach Deutschland

Obwohl die politische Rehabilitierung im Zuge des Systemwechsel erfolgte, wurde eine größere Anzahl von Gedenktafeln und Denkmälern zum Thema der Vertreibung erst ab der zweiten Hälfte der 1990er–Jahre, in Zusammenhang mit den Gedenkfeiern zum 50. Jahrestag der Ereignisse, aufgestellt. In diesem Fall bestand kein dringender Bedarf an einer symbolischen Beerdigung der Toten. Die Errichtung der Denkmäler wurde – worauf zumindest ihre geografische Lage hinweist – nicht durch den Anteil der in der Siedlung lebenden Deutschen beeinflusst.

Die Denkmalerrichtung wurde in der Regel durch die örtliche deutsche Minderheitenselbstverwaltung und/oder durch die kommunale Verwaltung, durch die lokalen Kirchengemeinden und die ausgesiedelten Deutschen bzw. durch ihre Organisationen initiiert. Sie waren die Geldgeber, fallweise traten als Unterstützer aber auch Privatpersonen oder (deutsche) Partnergemeinden hervor. Seit Ende der 1990er-Jahre war zudem bei größeren, figuralen Denkmälern – wie in Elek und Bácsalmás – auch der Staat als Auftraggeber und/oder Financier in den Prozess eingebunden.

Hinsichtlich des Aufstellungsortes der Denkmäler ist festzustellen, dass versucht wurde, authentische Orte auszuwählen. In Bezug auf die Aussiedlungen konnten in der jeweiligen Gemeinde auch mehrere derartige Standorte definiert werden. Ein häufiger Ort war beispielsweise das Gemeindehaus (Csávoly, Csátalja), wo die Deportationskommandos gearbeitet und wo die Liste der auszusiedelnden Personen ausgehängt worden war. Die Denkmäler wurden auch an den Mauern der Kirchen, in denen die letzte heilige Messe gefeiert worden war, an den Sammelstellen und an den Bahnhöfen (Bóly) oder in deren Nähe aufgestellt. Auch in diesen Fällen untermauerte die sakrale Umgebung die Notwendigkeit des Schutzes und die Bedeutung des Gedenkens.

Im Gegensatz zu den Deportationsgedenkstätten sind die Vertriebenendenkmäler oft auffällig und demonstrativ, was sich auch in ihrer räumlichen Verortung ausdrückt. Mehrere wurden beispielsweise an zentralen Orten der Gemeinden, auf Hauptplätzen oder verkehrsreichen Knotenpunkten errichtet. In anderen Fällen markiert das Denkmal symbolisch den eigenen Raum, eine Besetzung des eigenen Raums. Dies geschah, wenn das Denkmal in Einrichtungen, Gebäuden und Plätzen der deutschen Minderheit aufgestellt wurde – so im Hof des Lenau-Hauses in Pécs, an der Wand des deutschen Gemeindehauses in Pomáz oder auf dem Platz vor dem Ungarndeutschen Heimatmuseum in Pusztavám.

In den letzten zwei Jahrzehnten ist eine neue Tendenz zur beobachten: Größere Räume werden als Gedenkorte eingerichtet. Im Auftrag der Gemeindeselbstverwaltung und der deutschen Minderheitenselbstverwaltung wurde so in Nagynyárád ein Gedenkpark mit einem Denkmal geschaffen. Die Holzskulptur von István Beréti besteht aus mehreren Elementen: einer geschnitzten Säule, vor der Eltern mit einem Bündel und mit ihren Kindern auf die Aussiedlung warten, sowie einem offenen Tor, das einerseits das Verlassen der Heimat in einen fremden Raum, andererseits die Heimkehr bzw. die Erwartung der Heimkehr symbolisiert. (Bild 5: Nagynyárád).

Die Symbolik der Aussiedlungsdenkmäler und -gedenkstätten ist ausgefeilter als jene der Schöpfungen in Verbindung mit der Verschleppung. Wir finden unter Ersteren sowohl figurale als auch abstrakte Darstellungen, deren Schöpfer aber häufig auch Motive und Attribute in die Kompositionen einfließen ließen, die unmittelbar mit dem Deutschtum/Deutschsein verbunden sind.

Im Folgenden werden nur einige typische Darstellungsweisen hervorgehoben. Mehrere der Werke symbolisieren das Trauma der Gemeinschaft durch eine einzige leidende Gestalt.³⁶ Das 1997 in Bácsalmás von György Fusz errichtete Monument mit dem (ungarischsprachigen) Titel „Aus ihrem Heimatland vertriebene Völker“³⁷ erinnert gleichermaßen an die deportierten Schwaben, die deportierten Juden sowie an die Leiden der Bunjewazen und Serben, aber auch an den Leidensweg der aus der Großen Schüttinsel, dem Szeklerland und aus dem Komitat Szabolcs umgesiedelten Ungarn. Ihr Schicksal wird durch eine in sich versunkene, verzweifelte und hoffnungslose Figur dargestellt, die „wie ein müder, später Nachkomme von Rodins Denker“³⁸ erscheint. Die Gedenkstätte spiegelt die Traumata der verschiedenen Gruppen wider und lässt sie gleichzeitig miteinander verschmelzen, offensichtlich mit dem Ziel, die verschiedenen Gruppen durch die Schaffung eines gemeinsamen Gedenkortes zu versöhnen. Diese Verfahrensweise ist auch in anderen Gemeinden mit gemischter Bevölkerung zu beobachten. So wurde in Csávoly gleichzeitig eine Gedenktafel für die vertriebenen Deutschen und eine Gedenktafel für die aus der Slowakei umgesiedelten Ungarn eingeweiht. Diese Erinnerungspolitik fördert jedoch nicht die Fähigkeit der Gruppe, ein eigenes Geschichtsbild und eine eigene Identität zu entwickeln, sondern beeinträchtigt sie unserer Meinung nach sogar.

Die Werke stellen häufig Gestalten mit Bündeln und Wanderstöcken dar, was – neben der Symbolisierung der Ausgrenzung und Heimatlosigkeit – eine direkte Anspielung auf die Äußerung von Imre Kovács³⁹ „Sie kamen mit einem Bündel, sie gehen auch mit einem Bündel“⁴⁰ darstellt. Diese Gegenstände wurden zu einem Symbol der Vertreibung der Ungarndeutschen. Zugleich ist auf diesen figuralen Denkmälern häufig das Verlangen der Auftraggeber festzustellen, dass die Darstellung allgemeinverständlich und „schön“ sein soll. Die jungen Männerfiguren wirken daher nicht unbedingt verzweifelt, sondern haben im Gegenteil eine stolze Haltung, die oft an den kleinen Jungen aus dem Volksmärchen erinnert, der sein Glück versucht.⁴¹ Ein Beispiel für eine Überidealisierung ist beispielsweise die Schöpfung von Ferenc Trischler, die 1997 im Hof des Lenau-Hauses in Pécs aufgestellt wurde.⁴² „Wenn man nicht wüsste, dass es sich um ein Denkmal zum 50. Jahrestag der Vertreibung der Deutschen aus Ungarn handelt, könnte man meinen, die Figur sei gerade erst angekommen.“⁴³

Auch Tore und Türen als Symbole der Ausgrenzung und der Zersplitterung der Gemeinschaft durch die Vertreibung sind häufig Bestandteil der Kompositionen. Hinter den halb geöffneten bzw. geschlossenen Toren befindet sich meist eine einzelne verlassene Person oder Familie, die nur zögerlich zum Aufbruch bereit ist. Dieses Motiv sehen wir auf den Werken in Soroksár⁴⁴ und Budakeszi⁴⁵ sowie teilweise auch auf dem zentralen Denkmal auf dem alten Friedhof in Budaörs. Das Werk von Péter Menasági „Geschlossene Tore“ besteht aus zwei Hauptteilen, nämlich aus einem Tor, das an die Form der alten schwäbischen Portale erinnert und aus einem an einen Altar erinnernden Steintisch, auf dem ein Schlüssel liegt. Der Türrahmen und der Tisch sind aus Kalkstein, die Tür ist aus Bronze.⁴⁶

Andere Symbole der figuralen Werke sind Bäume, die in der Mitte zerbrochen sind, deren Wurzeln sich jedoch an Felsen klammern oder die verdorrt sind. Das Werk von Géza Stremeny, das 1996 in Nagykovácsi aufgestellt wurde, zeigt eine Linde mit abgebrochener, morscher Krone, aus deren Stamm ein neuer Trieb sprießt. Die Linde ist ein Symbol des Deutschseins und befindet sich auch im Wappen der Gemeinde. „Die geknickte Linde stützt sich auf die Brüstung einer Brücke und überspannt einen Bach, womit sie die Verbindung zwischen der Vergangenheit (den im Sturm der Geschichte erlittenen Verlust) und dem daraus wiedergeborenen Leben (Gegenwart) betont.“⁴⁷

Auf den Vertriebunendenkmälern wird häufig – neben der Aussiedlung – auch die Ansiedlung dargestellt, womit die Kontinuität der Präsenz der Gemeinschaft in Ungarn und die Schicksalsgemeinschaft mit der ungarischen Nation betont wird. Dies kommt in István Rigós 1998 Werk in Mór zum Ausdruck. Dieses hebt schon in seiner Inschrift „1698–1948“ die jahrhundertelange Anwesenheit der Deutschen in Ungarn hervor. Das Denkmal verkörpert die Herauslösung aus dem Ganzen.⁴⁸

Die Inschriften der Vertriebenendenkmäler sind in der Regel, die der Gedenktafeln in fast allen Fällen zweisprachig. Die schriftlichen Informationen sind ein wesentlicher Bestandteil der Gedenkstätten, sie sind (auch) für die Kommunikation mit der Mehrheitsgesellschaft wichtig. Denkmäler ohne Inschriften können nämlich ihre Aufgabe, den außenstehenden Betrachter an konkrete Ereignisse zu erinnern, nicht oder nur in begrenztem Maße erfüllen, d.h. aufgrund ihrer „Neutralität“ kann keine Gruppe sie ganz als ihre eigenen Gedenkstätten betrachten. Einsprachige Inschriften – wie in Hőgyész in deutscher Sprache und in Márkó auf Ungarisch – sind selten zu finden.

Die Inschriften bringen auch Unterschiede in der Erinnerungspolitik zum Ausdruck. In vielen Fällen werden die Ereignisse aus ihrem Zusammenhang gelöst und in einen allgemeineren Kontext gestellt. Das 1998 in Magyarpolány errichtete Denkmal, das aus einem einzigen großen Steinblock besteht, trägt die Inschrift „Zum Gedenken, zum Erinnern“. Hier geben weder das Werk selbst noch die Inschrift einen Hinweis auf das Ereignis, an das erinnert werden soll. Der in Dunaszekcső aufgestellte schwarze Marmorblock (2008) zeigt im oberen Teil eingravierte Darstellungen von vertriebenen Frauen und Kindern, im Hintergrund sind Waggons zu sehen. Die Inschrift lautet: „Zum Gedenken an die Vertreibung 1945–1948. A kitelepítés megemlékezésére.”⁴⁹ Die auf dem Denkmal eingravierten Bilder stellen die personifizierte, traumatisierte Gemeinschaft dar, während die Inschrift das Ereignis hervorhebt. Und während im Deutschen der Begriff „Vertreibung“ verwendet wird, spricht man im Ungarischen von „Aussiedlung“. Die Begriffsverwendung vermittelt somit den Angehörigen der betroffenen Gruppe und der Mehrheitsgesellschaft bzw. außenstehenden Beobachtern eine jeweils unterschiedliche Botschaft hinsichtlich der Bewertung des Geschehens. Im Gegensatz zu den oben genannten Werken sind die Inschriften auf vielen Denkmälern konkreter und emotionaler. Dies kommt dadurch zum Ausdruck, dass sie vor allem die beteiligten Personen und weniger das Ereignis benennen. Die Hinwendung zu den Opfern wird durch den Gedenkstein von Gyulafirtátót (2008), der „zum Gedenken an die ausgesiedelten deutschen Familien“ aufgestellt wurde, signalisiert. Diese Absicht wird in Pomáz noch deutlicher zum Ausdruck gebracht. Hier wird zum einen die Zahl der Vertriebenen benannt, um das Ausmaß des Traumas zu verdeutlichen, und zum anderen wurde die folgende, emotionale Inschrift auf der Gedenktafel angebracht: „1946–1996. Zur Erinnerung an die 1032 Pomazer Bürger deutscher Muttersprache, die vor 50 Jahren – am 12. März 1946 – ohne Hab und Gut aus ihrer Heimat vertrieben wurden“. Das genaue Datum und die Anzahl der betroffenen Personen sowie die Aufzeichnung der Art und Weise, wie die Vertreibung stattfand, weisen auf ein ausgeprägtes Geschichtsbewusstsein hin, der Begriff „Die Bürger von Pomáz“ auf die Gemeinschaft mit den Opfern. Eine etwas versöhnlichere Variante dieser Art von Inschrift findet sich in Bakonyjákó: „Zur Erinnerung an die 243 deutschen Familien, die im Jahre 1948 aus Jaka nach Deutschland und Österreich vertrieben wurden“.

Zusammenfassung

Die historische Aufarbeitung der traumatischen Ereignisse im Zusammenhang mit der Geschichte der Ungarndeutschen nach dem Zweiten Weltkrieg, ihre Thematisierung im öffentlichen Diskurs und die Schaffung von Erinnerungsorten und -ritualen vollzog sich über einen längeren Zeitraum.

Obwohl das Gedenken an die Personen, die zur Zwangsarbeit in die Sowjetunion („malenkij robot“) verschleppt wurden, und an die in den sowjetischen Arbeitslagern Verstorbenen in den örtlichen deutschen Gemeinden vereinzelt bereits in den 1950er- und 1960er-Jahren zu beobachten ist, wurde eine größere Anzahl von Gedenkstätten erst im Zuge des politischen Systemwechsels 1989/90 und nach der politischen Rehabilitierung eingerichtet. Von diesem Zeitpunkt an können wir die Errichtung von Denkmälern sowohl zur Erinnerung an die Verschleppungen (Deportationen) als auch an die Aussiedlung (Vertreibung) sowie entsprechende Gedenkveranstaltungen als kontinuierlich betrachten. Die Einführung eines zentralen Gedenktages im Jahr 2012 brachte eine gewisse Bewegung in dieser Angelegenheit. Die Tatsache, dass nur noch wenige Angehörige der von den Ereignissen betroffenen Generation leben, trägt dazu bei, das Gedenken an ein gemeinsames Datum zu binden und die Erinnerung an die Ereignisse vom kommunikativen in das kulturelle Gedächtnis zu überführen.⁵⁰ Obwohl dieser Wandel noch nicht vollständig abgeschlossen ist, sind die Gedenkfeiern immer noch mit örtlichen Ereignissen und Zeitpunkten verbunden, aber auch zentrale Veranstaltungen spielen eine immer größere Rolle.

Auch wenn für die Verschleppung der Deutschen zur Zwangsarbeit noch kein konkreter Gedenktag festgelegt wurde, so ist auch hier seit anderthalb Jahrzehnten die gleiche Tendenz zu beobachten. Die repräsentativen nationalen Gedenkfeiern finden nicht zwischen Mitte Dezember und Ende Januar statt, also in der „authentischen“ Zeitphase, sondern in der Regel am 25. Februar, dem Tag des Gedenkens an die in die Sowjetunion deportierten ungarischen politischen Gefangenen und Zwangsarbeiter. Dies kann jedoch nicht mit der Deportation aufgrund der deutschen Herkunft in Verbindung gebracht werden.

Die vor dem Systemwechsel angebrachten Tafeln und aufgestellten Kreuze, die an die Verschleppung zur Zwangsarbeit erinnern, halten in erster Linie das Ereignis fest. Mit den Kreuzen beerdigte die Gemeinschaft symbolisch ihre Toten, sie errichtete für diejenigen, die in fremder Erde in unmarkierten Gräber liegen ein Grabdenkmal. Die Erinnerung an die Verschleppten geschah vielerorts auch nach der politischen Rehabilitation in den 1990er-Jahren gemeinsam mit anderen Opfergruppen in der jeweiligen Gemeinde. Dies manifestierte sich in der Erweiterung der bestehenden Gedenkstätten des Ersten Weltkrieges um ein Verzeichnis der militärischen und zivilen Opfer des Zweiten Weltkrieges. Auch wenn hierdurch nicht zwischen den verschiedenen Opfergruppen unterschieden wird, wird den Betroffenen ein Gesicht gegeben und das Leid personifiziert.

Obwohl in den letzten anderthalb Jahrzehnten eine zunehmende politisch-staatliche Beteiligung in Bezug auf beide Ereignisse festzustellen ist, zentrale Gedenkstätten eingerichtet wurden (Budaörs 2006 und Szerencs 2014) und ein Gedenktag bestimmt wurde, so blieben die Orte des Gedenkens im Wesentlichen auf die örtliche Ebene beschränkt. Wie sich das Ableben der betroffenen Generation und die zentralstaatlichen Verallgemeinerungsbestrebungen auf die Erinnerungspolitik der lokalen deutschen Gemeinschaften auswirken und inwieweit sie in der Lage sein werden, die inhaltlichen Elemente der bisherigen Erinnerung zu bewahren, lässt sich heute noch nicht abschätzen.

In den letzten Jahren ist eine neue Entwicklung zu beobachten: Mehrere Gemeinden errichteten zu verschiedenen Zeitenmehrere Gedenkstätten für ein und dasselbe Ereignis. Es handelt sich um eine Art räumliche Ausdehnung, bei der in einer bestimmten Gemeinde mehrere Orte für das Gedenken ausgewiesen werden.⁵¹ In diesem Zusammenhang kann auch festgestellt werden, dass die neu geschaffenen Gedenkstätten eine andere, zumindest ergänzende und erweiterte Interpretation der Ereignisse bieten. Dies deutet auch auf eine veränderte Wahrnehmung der Ereignisse durch die Gemeinschaft, die politische Macht und die Mehrheit der Gesellschaft hin.

In dieser Studie wird der Begriff „Gedenkstätte“ für alle Objekte verwendet, die im Zusammenhang mit der Verschleppung und Aussiedlung der Deutschen in Ungarn errichtet wurden. Diese Denkmäler können sehr unterschiedlich sein: figurale und nicht-figurale Denkmäler, Gedenktafeln sowie Gedenkparks. Auf die historiographische Aufarbeitung der Ereignisse und ihre Darstellung in der Erinnerungspolitik gehen wir hier nicht näher ein. Wir beschränken uns in diesem Zusammenhang auf die Hervorhebung der wichtigsten Merkmale und verzichten daher auch darauf, alle Arbeiten zu den einzelnen Aspekten des Themas aufzulisten. Es werden nur Angaben zu jenen Arbeiten gemacht, die hier zitiert werden. ︎
Siehe dazu Marchut Réka: Töréspontok. A Budapest környéki németség második világháborút követő felelősségre vonása és annak előzményei (1920–1948) [Bruchpunkte. Die Verantwortlichmachung der Ungarndeutschen in der Umgebung von Budapest nach dem Zweiten Weltkrieg und deren Vorgeschichte (1920–1948)]. Budapest–Budaörs: MTA Tásadalomkutató Központ 2014, S. 185–199., Tóth Ágnes: Telepítések Magyarországon 1945–1948 között. A németek kitelepítése, a belső népmozgások és a szlovák–magyar lakosságcsere összefüggései [Migrationen in Ungarn 1945–1948: Vertreibung der Ungarndeutschen, Binnenwanderungen und slowakisch-ungarischer Bevölkerungsaustausch]. Kecskemét: Bács-Kiskun Megyei Levéltár 1993, S. 33–38. und Ungváry Krisztián: A potsdami határozatok legendái a történetírásban [Die Legenden der Potsdamer Beschlüsse in der Geschichtsschreibung]. In: Rainer M. János (Hg.): Magyarok 1945-ben [Ungarn im Jahr 1945]. Budapest: 1956-os Intézet 2015, S. 248–302. ︎
Tóth: Telepítések; Zinner Tibor: A magyarországi németek kitelepítése [Die Aussiedlung der Ungarndeutschen]. Budapest: Magyar Hivatalos Közlönykiadó 2004.; Tóth Ágnes: Hazatértek. A németországi kitelepítésből visszatért magyarországi németek megpróbáltatásainak emlékezete [Rückkehrer. Gedächnis der Heimsuchung der aus Deutschland zurückgekehrten ausgesiedelten Ungarndeutschen]. Budapest: Gondolat 2008; Gonda Gábor: Kitaszítva. Kényszermigráció, nemzetiségpolitika és földreform németek által lakott Dél- és Nyugat-Dunántúli településeken 1944–1948 [Ausgestoßen. Zwangsmigration, Nationalitätenpolitik und Landrefom in von Deutschen bewohnten süd- und west-transdanubischen Siedlungen 1944–1948]. Pécs: Kronosz 2014, ferner Marchut: Töréspontok. ︎
„Malenkij robot“ ist der in Ungarn verbreitete Begriff für die Verschleppung zur Zwangsarbeit in die Sowjetunion. Angeblich wurden die Betroffenen oft angelogen, dass sie nur zu einer „kleinen Arbeit“ (also „Malenkij Robot“ in der Umgebung verpflichtet sind, stattdessen wurden sie für mehrere Jahre in sowjetischen Lager transportiert. ︎
Márkus Beáta: „Malenkij robot” Baranya vármegyében. Döntési folyamatok: hogyan választották ki a civil lakosok közül azokat, akiket aSzovjetunióban végzendő jóvátételi munkára mozgósítottak 1944/1945-ben? [„Malenkij Robot” im Komitat Baranya. Entscheidungsprozesse: Wie wurden die Zivilisten ausgewählt, die zur Wiedergutmachungsarbeit in die Sowjetunion transportiert wurden in 1944/1945?]. In: Múltunk [Unsere Vergangenheit] 2014/3. S. 62–104.; Márkus Beáta: „Csak egy csepp német vér”. A német származású civilek Szovjetunióba deportálása Magyarországról 1944/1945 [„Nur ein Tropfen deutsches Blutes”. Deportation deutschstämmiger Zivilisten aus Ungarn in die Sowjetunion 1944/1945]. Pécs: Kronosz 2020. ︎
Parlamentsbeschlus Nr. 35/1990. (III. 28.) zur Behebung der kollektiven Beschwerden der deutschen Minderheit in Ungarn, , 26. 5. 2024 und Parlamentsbeschluss Nr. 36/1990. (III. 28.) zur Wiedergutmachung für ungarische Staatsbürger, die zu Reparationszwecken in die Sowjetunion deportiert wurden, und für ungarische Staatsbürger, die von den Gerichten der Sowjetunion verurteilt und in der Zwischenzeit rehabilitiert wurden, weil sie keine Straftat begingen, siehe , 26. 5. 2024. ︎
„Számunkra új történetírás kezdődött” [„Für uns begann eine neue Geschichtsschreibung”]. In: Neue Zeitung, 17. 5. 1997, S. 1. (ohne Autor) ︎
Bajtai László: Emlékünnep Budakeszin [Gedenkveranstaltung in Budakeszi]. In: Barátság [Freundschaft], 15. 4. 1996, S. 1. ︎
Grundstein für ein Landesmahnmal. In: Neue Zeitung, 15. 6. 1996. S. 1. (ohne Autor) ︎
Parlamentsbeschluss Nr. 88/2012. (XII. 12.) zum Tag des Gedenkens an die Verschleppung der Ungarndeutschen, siehe , 22. 5. 2024., ferner Parlamentsbeschluss Nr. 103/2013. (XII. 20.) zum Tag des Gedenkens an die Verscheppung und Vertreibung der Ungarndeutschen, siehe. , 22. 5. 2024. ︎
Regierungsbeschluss Nr. 1009/2015. über die Verkündung des Gedenkjahres der in die Sowjetunion verschleppten politischen Gefangenen und Zwangsarbeiter. Magyar Közlöny. Magyarország hivatalos lapja [Ungarisches Amtsblatt. Offizielles Blatt von Ungarn] 2015/4., 191–192. Das Gedenkjahr wurde später bis Februar 2017 verlängert, siehe darüber die Regierungsverordnung Nr. 1572/2015. über die Modifizierung des Regierungsbeschlusses Nr. 1009/2015 über die Verkündung des Gedenkjahres der in die Sowjetunion verschleppten politischen Gefangenen und Zwangsarbeiter. Magyar Közlöny. Magyarország hivatalos lapja, 2015/4. S. 19123–19124. ︎
Márta Fata: Gedenkkreuz und Ulmer Schachtel. In: Márta Fata, Katharina Drobac (Hgg.): Migration im Gedächtnis. Auswanderung und Ansiedlung im 18. Jahrhundert in der Identitätsbildung der Donauschwaben. Stuttgart 2013, S. 187–220.; Schell, Csilla: „Pro Memoria“. Denkmäler als Erinnerung an die Vertreibung in Ungarn seit der Wende. In: Jahrbuch für Europäische Ethnologie 8. Paderborn. Brill Verlag 2013, S. 213–230.; Erb Maria: Erinnerungsstätten der Ansiedlung in Ungarn. In: Landsmannschaft, der Deutschen aus Ungarn; Landesverband, Baden-Württemberg (Hg.): Kulturtagung am 15. Oktober 2022 in Gerlingen. Gerlingen: Landmannschaft der Deutschen aus Ungarn 2023, S. 85–123. ︎
Boros Géza: Kitelepítési emlékművek Magyarországon (1989–2004) [Aussiedlungsdenkmäler in Ungarn (1989– 2004)]. In: Regio, 2005/2. S. 93–110. ︎
Bognár Zalán: A „málenkij robot” utóélete régiónként – a történetírásban, a köztudatban, emlékművek Magyarországon kitekintéssel a határon túlra [Nachgeschichte der „Malenkij Robot” je nach Regionen – in der Geschichtsschreibung, in der Öffentlichkeit, Denkmäler in Ungarn und jenseits der Grenzen]. In: Bognár Zalán (Hg.): „Itt volt a végállomás“: halálos áldozatokkal járó német- és magyarellenes tevékenységek a Kárpát-medencében, 1944–1949 [„Hier war die Endstation.” Deutsch- und ungarnfeindliche Tätigkeiten mit fatalan Folgen im Karpatenbecken, 1944–1949]. Pécs: Magyarországi Németek Pécs-Baranyai Nemzetiségi Köre 2015, S. 169–196. ︎
Magyar Sándor István: Emlékezés politikai foglyokra és áldozatokra. Emléktáblák és emlékművek Magyarországon [Zum Andenken der politischen Gefangenen und Opfer. Gedenktafel und Denkmäler in Ungarn]. Budapest: Nemzeti Örökség Kiadó 2017. ︎
Im Rahmen des Forschungsprojekt sammelten wir die folgenden Daten: Name der Gemeinde, Art des Denkmals, Ort des Denkmals, Zeitpunktder Einweihung, Initiatoren (und Förderer), Name des Künstlers, Name des Denkmals, Beschreibung, Inschriften, weitere Anmerkungen. Die Ergebnisse des Aufsatzes beruhen, soweit keine anderen Angaben gemacht werden, auf den Dokumentationen, die wir bisher sammelten und die im HUN-REN-Institut für Sozialwissenschaften aufbewahrt werden. ︎
Stephan Scholz: Vertriebenendenkmäler. Topographie einer deutschen Erinnerungslandschaft. Paderborn: Brill Verlag 2015, S. 17. ︎
Ebenda, S. 18. ︎
Ebenda, S. 21. ︎
Ebenda, S. 23. ︎
Ebenda, S. 24. ︎
Ebenda, S. 22. ︎
Reinhart Koselleck: Kriegerdenkmale als Identitätsstiftungen der Überlebenden. In: Karlheinz Stierle, Odo Marquard (Hgg.): Identität.München. Wilhelm Fink Verlag 1996, S. 255–276, hier: S. 259; Reinhart Koselleck: Einleitung. In: Michael Jeismann, Reinhart Koselleck (Hgg.): Der politische Totenkult. Kriegerdenkmäler in der Moderne. München. Fink Verlag 1994, S. 9–20, hier: S. 15. ︎
Originalinschrift in ungarischen Sprache: A Don medencei szénbányákban elhunyt kedveseink emlékére. Übersetzung der Autoren. ︎
Zum Denkmal siehe: Erdmann Gyula: Schuldlos sühnen. In: Mittag Mónika (Hg.): Málenkij robot. Az orosz bányákba deportált gyulaiak emlékére[Malenkij Robot. Zum Andenken der in russischen Bergwerken deportierten Gyulaer]. Gyula. Német Kisebbségi Önkormányzat 2011, S. 21–28. Mit Foto siehe , 22. 5. 2024. ︎
Bognár: Itt volt a végállomás, S. 193. Originalinschrift in ungarischer Sprache: A távolban elhunyt, ismeretlen helyen nyugvó szerettei emlékére állította a taksonyi nép 1965 [Errichtet zum Gedenken an geliebte Menschen, die in der Ferne gestorben sind und an einem unbekannten Ort ruhen, durch die Einwohner von Taksony im Jahr 1965]. ︎
Siehe zum Beispiel Dobozi Eszter: „Csak a napnyugtát níztük …” Elhurcolt magyar nők a Donyecben [„Wir erwarteten nur den Sonntenuntergang.” Verschleppte Ungarinnen in Donezk]. Debrecen: Csokonai 1991, S. 146f; Szebeni Ilona: Merre van a magyar Hazám?… Kényszermunkán a Szovjetunióban, 1944–1949 [Wo ist meine ungarische Heimat? … In Zwangsarbeit in der Sowjetunion 1944–1949]. Budapest. Széphalom Könyvműhely 1991, S. 117, S. 300.; Szebeni Ilona: Haza fogunk menni. Kényszermunkán a Szovjetunióban 1944–1949 [Wir werden nach Hause gehen. In Zwangsarbeit in der Sowjetunion 1944–1949]. Debrecen: Piremon 1993, S. 294.; Márkus Beáta (Hg.): „Messze voltam én fogságban, nagy Oroszországban”. Magyarországi németek szovjet kényszermunkán, 1944/1945–1949. „Malenkij robot” interjúkötet [Ich war in der Ferne in Gefangenschaft, im großen Russland. Ungarndeutsche in sowjetischen Zwangsarbeit 1944/1945–1949. „Malenkij Robot” Interviewband]. Pécs: Magyarországi Németek Pécs-Baranyai Nemzetiségi Köre 2013, S. 74, 88, 150, 238. ︎
Scholz: Vertriebenendenkmäler, S. 27; ferner Detlef Hoffmann: Die Problematik der Mahn- und Gedenkstätten auf den Plätzen ehemaliger Konzentrationslager im Nachkriegsdeutschland. In: Heinrich Theodor Grütter, Ulrich Borsdorf (Hgg.): Orte der Erinnerung. Denkmal, Gedenkstätte, Museum. Frankfurt–New York: Campus Verlag 1999, S. 267–284, hier S. 276. ︎
n Mecseknádasd zum Beispiel wurden 1992 am Denkmal des Ersten Weltkriegs Tafeln für die Toten des Zweiten Weltkriegs, einschließlich der Verschleppten, angebracht. Das ursprüngliche Denkmal für den Ersten Weltkrieg wurde 1922 von István Hernesz und Manno Miltiades geschaffen. Siehe mit Fotos: , 22. 5. 2024. Ähnliche Varianten sind ferner in anderen Gemeinden zu finden, so in Berkenye, siehe , 22. 5. 2024 , in Újpetre, siehe , 22. 5. 2024, in Mágocs, siehe , 22. 5. 2024, und in Kakasd, siehe , 22. 5. 2024. ︎
Siehe dazu , 22. 5. 2024. ︎
Siehe dazu , 22. 5. 2024. ︎
Siehe dazu , 22. 5. 2024. ︎
Bognár: Itt volt a végállomás, S. 195. ︎
In der Ausschreibung wurden die Gestaltung der förderfähigen Denkmäler, die Farbe, die Größe und das zu verwendende Material sowie der Text der Tafeln festgelegt. Siehe dazu das Programm der GULAG-GUPVI Auschreibungen, , 22. 5. 2024. ︎
Scholz: Vertriebenendenkmäler, S. 30. ︎
In Dunabogdány und auch im Hof des Lenau-Hauses in Pécs gibt es ein Vertibenendenkmal mit einer einzigen Figur. In Biatorbágy stellt in einem Werk von Márk Lelkes aus dem Jahr 2014 eine Frau die vertriebenen Deutschen dar. Siehe , 24. 5. 2024. ︎
Siehe dazu https://www.kozterkep.hu/~/3060/A_szulofoldjukrol_eluzott_nepek_ emlekmuve_Bacsalmas_1997.html, 24. 5. 2024. ︎
Ember Mária: A halálos fáradtság szobra [Statue der tödlichen Ermüdung]. In: Barátság [Freundschaft] 1997/5. S. 1865. ︎
Imre Kovács (1913–1980) war ein ungarischer Schriftsteller und Politiker der Nationalen Bauernpartei. Seine Äußerungen zur Aussiedlung der deutschen Minderheit aus Ungarn nach Deutschland gelten bis heute als Sinnsprüche der damaligen deutschfeindlichen gesellschaftlichen Atmosphäre und der Verfolgung ab 1945. ︎
Szabad Szó [Freies Wort], 1945. április 10. S. 4. ︎
Boros: Telepítési emlékművek, S. 102. ︎
Siehe dazu , 24. 5. 2024. Siehe ferner , 24. 5. 2024. ︎
Mayer Éva: Bemutatjuk a pécsi Lenau Házat [Wir stellen das Lenau Haus in Pécs vor]. In: Barátság [Freundschaft] 1997/5. S. 1917. ︎
Siehe dazu , 24. 5. 2024. ︎
Siehe dazu http://www.zentrum.hu/hu/2014/08/budakeszi-emlekmuvet-avattak-a-svabok-oseinek/, 24. 5. 2024. ︎
Im Gutachten des Lektorats für Bildende und Angewandte Kunst heißt es: „Die prägnante Symbolik des Entwurfs ist sowohl komplex als auch zugänglich und erinnert sowohl an konkrete Ereignisse als auch an sakrale Formen. Der Ton des Denkmals, die künstlerische Artikulation von Abwesenheit und Stille, adeln es als einen Ort des erhabenen Gedenkens“. – Országos Német Önkormányzat Irattára, 308-33/2005. ︎
Boros: Telepítési emlékművek, S. 103. Das Motiv des Baumes enthalten auch die Denkmäler in Pornóapáti und Újbarok. Siehe Ebenda, S. 103–104. ︎
Siehe dazu , 24. 5. 2024. ︎
Siehe dazu , 24. 5. 2024. ︎
Assmann, Jan: A kulturális emlékezet: írás, emlékezés és politikai identitás a korai magaskultúrákban [Das kulturelle Gedächtnis: Schrift, Erinnerung und politische Identität in frühen Hochkulturen]. Budapest: Atlantisz 2013, S. 49–57. ︎
In Gyula befand sich beispielsweise die Gedenktafel für die Opfer der Deportation aus dem Jahr 1952 in der Josefskirche in der Deutschstadt, während die neue Gedenktafel aus dem Jahr 2015 an einem prominenten Ort auf dem Apor-Platz neben der Kirche angebracht wurde. Auch in Pomáz wurden mehrere Gedenktafeln zur Erinnerung an die Vertreibung angebracht: Die Gedenktafel von 1991 ist ein Geschenk der ehemals vertriebenen Einwohner von Pomáz, während die Gedenktafel 1996 auf Initiative der Einwohner von Pomáz angebracht wurde. In der Gemeinde Városlőd wurden ebenfalls mehrere Vertriebenendenkmäler an verschiedenen Orten und zu verschiedenen Zeitpunkten errichtet (1998 auf dem Kirchenplatz, 2008 auf dem Platz vor dem Friedhof). ︎

Der Beitrag Gedenkstätten der Verschleppung und Aussiedlung der Deutschen in Ungarn. 1952–2015 erschien zuerst auf Halbjahresschrift für Geschichte und Zeitgeschehen in Zentral- und Südosteuropa.

Armenische Diaspora in Bulgarien in Vergangenheit und Gegenwart

IKGS-Admin_2 — Thu, 15 May 2025 09:45:53 +0000

Björn Opfer-Klinger, Ernst Klett Verlag, Leipzig

Dr. Björn Opfer-Klinger (geb. 1972). Studium der Mittleren und Neueren Geschichte, Osteuropäischen und südosteuropäischen Geschichte sowie der Politikwissenschaften an den Universitäten Göttingen und Wien. Promotion an der Universität Leipzig zur bulgarischen Besatzungsherrschaft in Mazedonien während der beiden Weltkriege. Redakteur für Bildungsmedien beim Ernst Klett Verlag in Leipzig.

Das Territorium des heutigen bulgarischen Staates war und ist geprägt von vielfältiger ethnischer und religiöser Migration. Dazu trug die geographische Lage an der Donau und der Schwarzmeerküste ebenso bei, wie die unmittelbare Nähe zum Ägäischen Meer bzw. zum Bosporus und den Dardanellen. Dazu zählte auch die Ein- und Durchwanderung von Armeniern seit der Spätantike.

In der heutigen Republik Bulgarien stellt die armenische Bevölkerung zahlenmäßig eine nur kleine Minderheit. Folgt man der offiziellen Bevölkerungsstatistik, ist sie heute die fünftgrößte ethnische Gruppe im Land. Allerdings sind diese Zahlen, wie noch zu sehen sein wird, nicht unumstritten. Lange Zeit waren die bulgarischen Armenier kaum im Blick wissenschaftlicher Untersuchungen. Erst seit der Jahrtausendwende fanden kleinere Minoritäten wie die bulgarischen Armenier stärkere Berücksichtigung in wissenschaftlichen Betrachtungen.¹

Armenische Einwanderungsbewegungen und Kulturleben vor 1890

Die ersten armenischen Spuren lassen sich bis etwa ins späte 5. Jahrhundert zurückverfolgen.² Hintergrund dieser Migration dürfte in erster Linie die Stationierung armenischer Soldaten bzw. ihrer Familien in den Diensten des Oströmischen Reiches in Makedonien, Thrakien und entlang der Donau gewesen sein. Aber auch unfreiwillige Umsiedlungsaktionen gehörten dazu, wie die Flucht infolge religiöser Verfolgung, schlossen sich doch viele Armenier häretischen Bewegungen wie z. B. den Paulikianern oder Tondrakianern an. Im Hochmittelalter folgten vermehrt Angehörige der Armenisch-Apostolischen Kirche und Anhänger der chalzedonischen Christologie.³ Es ist auch davon auszugehen, dass die Glanzzeit des ersten Bulgarischen Reiches im 9. Jahrhundert sowie in der Zeit des West- und des Ostbulgarischen Reiches im ausgehenden 10. Jahrhundert Armenier als Handelstreibende oder Handwerker in die urbanen Zentren von Makedonien und Thrakien einwandern ließ. Über eine annähernde Zahl oder die Frage, für wie viele Personen Bulgarien nur eine Zwischenstation war bzw. sie sich in der slawischen Mehrheitsbevölkerung assimilierten, können allenfalls vage Schätzungen abgegeben werden. Als gesichert gilt, dass es im 9./10. Jahrhundert auch familiäre Bande zwischen dem bulgarischen Adel und armenischen Fürstentümern im östlichen Anatolien bzw. armenisch-byzantinischem Adel gab.⁴ So war die Ehefrau des Zaren Peter I. (927–969) verwandt mit Romanos I. Lekapenos, dem byzantinischen Kaiser armenischer Abstammung (920–944). Bekannt ist auch, dass die Mutter des bulgarischen Zaren Samuil (997–1014), Hripsime, eine Tochter des armenischen Königs Ashot II. (915–928) aus der Dynastie der Bagratuni war.⁵

Im 13./14. Jahrhundert existierten armenische Kolonien u.a. in Sofia, Strumica und Warna. Weitere größere Einwanderungsbewegungen sind für das ausgehende 15. und 16. Jahrhundert belegt, jener Zeit, in der das Osmanische Reich auf dem Höhepunkt seiner Macht und in seiner kulturellen Blüte stand. Dazu zählten armenische Migranten aus dem Schwarzmeergebiet, wie etwa aus der Handelsstadt Kaffa von der Halbinsel Krim, aber auch aus den zwischen Persien und dem Osmanischen Reich umkämpften Gebieten.⁶ Ziele dieser armenischen Zuwanderung waren größere, prosperierende Handelsstädte wie Plowdiw oder Warna. Nicht selten waren unter den Zuwanderern Spezialisten wie Goldschmiede, Schneider, Steinmetze und Weber, die die lokale Wirtschaft spürbar prägten. Der bulgarisch-katholische Bischof Petăr Bogdan Bakšev (1601–1674) berichtete als Zeitgenosse von einer bereits spürbaren Präsenz armenischer Gemeinden auf dem Gebiet des heutigen Bulgarien. Für Plowdiw verzeichnete er bereits für Anfang des 17. Jahrhundert etwa 100, für Sofia und Russe um 1640 jeweils rund 200 armenische Haushalte sowie kleinere armenische Kolonien in weiteren Städten wie Šumen, Dobrič, Pazardžik, Burgas, Tărnowo, Silistra, Razgrad und Sliwen.⁷ Für die nachfolgenden zwei Jahrhunderte liegen hingegen nur sehr spärliche Quellen zu armenischen Gemeinden vor. Die meisten Zeugnisse existieren zur Plowdiwer Gemeinde, die zu Beginn des 19. Jahrhunderts aus schätzungsweise 150 bis 200 armenischen Familien bestand.⁸

Zu dieser Zeit zählte die Stadt neben Edirne und Saloniki zu den aufstrebenden wirtschaftlichen und kulturellen Zentren der westlichen osmanischen Reichshälfte. Mit einem zunehmend wohlhabenden Bürgertum in Gestalt von Händlern und Handwerkern wurde Plowdiw während der osmanischen Tanzimat-Reformzeit zu einem der Ausgangspunkte der so genannten bulgarischen „Wiedergeburt“. In diesem Umfeld prosperierte die Plowdiwer Gemeinde spürbar. Sie eröffnete zunächst in sehr provisorischer Form eine kleine Sonntagsschule, aus der 1834 die erste armenische Grundschule für Jungen mit kleinem Kindergarten unmittelbar an der Kirche Sur Surp in der Plowdiwer Altstadt hervorging.⁹ Später entstand auch eine kleine Mädchenschule. Bis heute hat diese Schulgründung einen hohen ideellen Stellenwert für die Identität der bulgarischen Armenier. Unter Federführung des armenischen Rechtsanwalts Vahinak Hajrabedjan wurden 1926 die Jungen- und Mädchenschule zusammengelegt und als Mittelschule registriert. 1942 stiftete das Ehepaar Viktoria und Krikor Tjutjundzhjan den Bau eines neuen, größeren Schulgebäudes. Nach der zeitweiligen Schließung der Einrichtung 1976 wurde die 1990 wiedergegründete Schule nach diesem Ehepaar benannt.¹⁰ Nicht nur, aber auch wegen dieser ersten armenischen Schule, ist Plowdiw das kulturelle Zentrum des Armeniertums in Bulgarien geblieben.

Die Herausbildung einer bulgarischen Nationalbewegung wirkte sich auch auf die armenischen Gemeinden aus. Historiker wie Louise Nalbandian gehen davon aus, dass die frühe armenische Nationalbewegung spürbar von der bulgarischen „Wiedergeburt“ beeinflusst wurde.¹¹ Inwieweit allerdings einzelne Armenier die bulgarischen Nationalisten in ihrem Kampf gegen die osmanische Herrschaft direkt oder indirekt unterstützten, ist umstritten. Fest steht, dass die Gründung des bulgarischen Fürstentums dank der relativ liberalen Verfassung von Tărnowo, die den Einwohnern unabhängig von ihrer Religion und ethnischen Zugehörigkeit die bulgarische Staatsbürgerschaft ermöglichte, die Attraktivität Bulgariens u.a. für armenische Einwanderer steigerte. Lebten 1878 im bulgarischen Fürstentum und dem autonomen Ostrumelien zusammen etwa 5.300 Armenier, so stieg diese Zahl bis 1900 auf über 14.500 an, was ungefähr 0,4% der Gesamtbevölkerung betrug. Dies machte sich seitdem auch in der Gründung verschiedener, wenn auch meist kurzlebiger armenischsprachiger Presseerzeugnisse bemerkbar.¹² Kurzzeitig sank die Zahl armenischer Gemeindemitglieder allerdings wieder, wahrscheinlich nachdem die jungtürkische Revolution anfänglich Hoffnung auf Besserung der Verhältnisse für die armenische Bevölkerung geweckt und armenische Migranten zur Rückkehr nach Armenien ermutigt hatte.¹³ 1910 verzeichnete der bulgarische Zensus nur noch knapp 13.000 Armenier im Land.¹⁴

Die Bedeutung der eingewanderten armenischen Revolutionäre zur Zeit der Pogrome, Kriege und Genozide

Das Anwachsen der armenischen Diaspora war nicht zuletzt auf die antiarmenischen Pogrome im Osmanischen Reich 1895/96 zurückzuführen. In diesen Jahren flohen allein mehrere tausend Personen in das Fürstentum Bulgarien, wovon einige dauerhaft blieben. Unter diesen Geflüchteten befanden sich auch Anhänger der drei wichtigsten armenischen Oppositionsparteien des Osmanischen Reiches, der Sozialdemokratischen Partei (Huntschak), der Demokratischen Liberalen Partei (Ramgawar) und der Armenischen Revolutionären Föderation (Dashnak). In Bulgarien traten sie zwar nicht offen im politischen Leben des Landes in Erscheinung, infolge der verbreiteten antiosmanischen Haltung der gesellschaftlichen Eliten des Landes entstanden jedoch sehr bald enge Kontakte zwischen den armenischen Revolutionären einerseits und der bulgarischen Staatsverwaltung bzw. dem Militär andererseits. Wichtige Akteure dieser zunächst noch losen politischen armenischen Netzwerke in Warna und Plowdiw waren beispielsweise die Revolutionäre Garegin Nschdeh, Andranik Ozanjan, und Simon Vratjan.

Diese Netzwerke müssen auch in Zusammenhang mit einem weiteren Umstand gesehen werden: Seit Ende des 19. Jahrhunderts gab es in Südosteuropa und dem Orient eine wachsende Zahl militanter Organisationen, sei es mit anarchistischem, sozialistischem, agrarrevolutionärem oder nationalistischem Hintergrund oder einer Mischung aus mehreren dieser Ideologien. Über die Frühphase der Präsenz armenischer Revolutionäre in Bulgarien ist wenig geforscht worden und so kann beispielsweise nicht mit Sicherheit gesagt werden, inwieweit sich Mitglieder der einheimischen armenischen Minderheit diesen revolutionären Bewegungen wie der Dashnak anschlossen oder diese indirekt unterstützten. Von Bedeutung war die Bildung enger Kontakte zwischen den armenischen Revolutionären und den führenden Akteuren der in Saloniki gegründeten Inneren Makedonischen Revolutionären Organisation (IMRO), wie Boris Sarafow oder Simon Radew, Mitglieder der 1899 in Plowdiw gegründeten Zelle der Armenischen Revolutionären Föderation.¹⁵ Ein weiterer wichtiger Kontakt bildete sich zwischen armenischen Revolutionären und dem bulgarischen Diplomaten, Politiker und Journalisten Simeon Radew heraus.¹⁶ Darüber hinaus entwickelten sich auch Beziehungen zu Mitgliedern der Jungtürken. Ein Beispiel für enge Verbindungen zur bulgarischen Gesellschaft war der Dichter Pejo Jaworow, der als Begründer des bulgarischen Symbolismus angesehen wird. Jaworow kämpfte Anfang des 20. Jahrhunderts aktiv für die IMRO und schrieb mehrere Gedichte über den armenischen Kampf gegen das „türkische Joch“, die wiederum Autoren aus den Reihen der armenischen Revolutionäre beeinflussten.

Gegen Einrichtungen des osmanischen Staates erfolgten 1901 erste kleinere gemeinsame Guerillaoperationen der armenischen und makedonischen Revolutionäre. Diese fanden über die bulgarische Grenze hinweg in Ostthrakien und in Istanbul statt.

Wie eng bald der Kontakt zwischen der Armenischen Revolutionären Föderation und bulgarischen Regierungskreisen war, beweist der Umstand, dass diese 1903 und 1909 ihren internationalen Weltkongress zunächst in der bulgarischen Hauptstadt und dann in Warna abhielt. Das Kontaktnetz zur IMRO und damit auch zur bulgarischen Armeeführung ermöglichte es sogar, dass armenische Revolutionäre seit 1906 an der bulgarischen Militärakademie ausgebildet wurden.¹⁷ Als Bulgarien in einem losen Bündnis mit Griechenland, Serbien und Montenegro 1912 das Osmanische Reich angriff, kämpften viele Armenier als Freiwillige im bulgarischen Heer. Dazu zählte auch eine 280 Mann starke armenische Kompanie im Makedonisch-Odrinischen Freiwilligenkorps. Der Kommandeur dieser armenischen Kompanie war Andranik Ozanjan, der später ein wichtiger Akteur der ersten armenischen Republik 1918/19 werden sollte.

Ein weiterer in diesem Zusammenhang bekannter armenischer Revolutionär war Garegin Nschdeh, der seit 1906 wiederholt in Bulgarien lebte und von dort aus an Terroranschlägen gegen osmanische Einrichtung teilnahm. Garegin Nschdeh besaß sehr gute Kontakte zum bulgarischen Militär und zur IMRO. Er gehörte zu jenen Armeniern, die eine Ausbildung an der Dmitri-Nikolow-Militärakademie in Sofia erhielten. In den Balkankriegen 1912/13 kämpfte er als Unteroffizier in der bulgarischen Armee. Später spielte auch er in der ersten armenischen Republik eine wichtige Rolle. Nach deren Untergang kehrte Nschdeh in den 1920er-Jahren nach Bulgarien zurück, wo er eine einheimische Armenierin heiratete und sich eng mit armenischen Diasporagemeinden in Rumänien und den USA vernetzte. Nachdem Nschdeh von 1933 bis 1937 in den USA gelebt hatte, kehrte er erneut nach Bulgarien zurück, gab eine armenischsprachige Zeitung heraus und spielte eine wichtige Rolle in der dortigen armenischen Intellektuellenszene des Landes. Er pflegte seine alten Kontakte zur IMRO und zu nationalistischen Kräften in Bulgarien. Während des Zweiten Weltkrieges wurde Nschdeh dadurch interessant für das deutsche Militär. Er unterstützte dieses 1942/43 bei der Formierung von armenischen Freiwilligenverbänden aus sowjetischen Kriegsgefangenen. Als kurzzeitig im Sommer 1942 in Erwägung gezogen wurde, gemeinsam mit Bulgarien einen Angriff gegen die Türkei durchzuführen, um den Kaukasus von Süden her anzugreifen oder ggf. den Nahen Osten unter Kontrolle zu bekommen (Operation Gertrud), sollten diese armenischen Freiwilligen Anschläge in der Türkei organisieren. Diese vage Idee kam allerdings angesichts der militärischen Wende auf dem sowjetischen und nordafrikanischen Kriegsschauplatz nicht über Vorüberlegungen hinaus.¹⁸ Nach dem Zweiten Weltkrieg geriet Nschdeh in sowjetische Gefangenschaft und starb 1955 als „faschistischer Kollaborateur“ in einem der dortigen Straflager.

Sowohl im Zweiten Balkankrieg als auch im Ersten Weltkrieg gehörte Bulgarien zu den Verliererstaaten. Auch die armenische Bevölkerung des Landes zahlte dabei einen hohen Blutzoll und sah sich nach 1919 von der schweren wirtschaftlichen Krise betroffen. Gleichzeitig nahm der Umfang der armenischen Gemeinde während des Genozids an der armenischen Bevölkerung im jungtürkischen Staat 1915–1918, dem griechisch-türkischen Krieg 1919–1923 bzw. infolge des Scheiterns der ersten, kurzlebigen armenischen Republik 1920 zu. Anfang der 1920er-Jahre flüchteten geschätzt rund 22.000 Armenier nach Bulgarien. Dabei handelte es sich oft um verarmte und nicht selten schwer traumatisierte Geflüchtete. Für Bulgarien war dies allerdings nur eine weitere Gruppe neben der großen Zahl von Flüchtlingen und Vertriebenen, die ab 1919 ins Land kamen und es vor immense soziale und wirtschaftliche Integrationsprobleme stellte.

Bulgarien 1919–1944 – eine Blütezeit für die Armenier?

Trotz aller Probleme gelang es aber mehreren Armeniern im Laufe der 1920er- und 1930er-Jahre, sich eine wichtige Stellung im Handel, Finanzsektor und Unternehmertum zu erarbeiten. Insbesondere aus den Reihen der Geflüchteten kamen mitunter wertvolle wirtschaftliche und künstlerische Impulse. Dazu zählten neue Methoden in der Tabakverarbeitung oder Textilherstellung, wovon die gesamte bulgarische Wirtschaft profitierte. Aber auch im künstlerischen Spektrum waren Einflüsse der armenischen Einwanderer spürbar, beispielsweise in Gestalt kleiner armenischer Theater- und Tanzgruppen sowie einer zunehmenden armenischen Verlegertätigkeit mit den Zentren Russe, Sofia, Plowdiw, Warna und Šumen.¹⁹ Einflüsse kamen auch seitens der im Dezember 1918 in Istanbul gegründeten Armenischen Allgemeinen Union der Körperkultur (abgekürzt „Homenetmen“), die an Entwicklungen europäischer Jugendorganisationen wie der britischen Pfadfinder oder den deutschen Wandervögeln anknüpfte. Von ihr ausgehend entstanden ab 1924 beispielsweise in mehreren bulgarischen Städten armenische Pfadfindergruppen und Sportvereine. 1926 erreichte die armenische Bevölkerung Bulgariens mit ca. 37.000 ihren Höhepunkt. Größte armenische Kolonien waren zu diesem Zeitpunkt Plowdiw mit ca. 6.200, Warna mit etwa 4.200, Sofia mit rund 2.900 und Russe mit ungefähr 2.200 Armeniern.²⁰ Die Zahl der Armenier schrumpfte jedoch bald wieder deutlich, da viele Migranten nach West- und Mitteleuropa bzw. nach Nordamerika weiterwanderten. Einige nutzten Bulgarien auch nur als Transitland nach Rumänien, wo die größte armenische Diaspora Südosteuropas der 1920er-Jahre entstand. 1934 zählte der bulgarische Zensus offiziell nur noch 26.000 Armenier, was 0,5% der Bevölkerung entsprach.

Festzuhalten bleibt, dass sich in den 1920er- und 1930er-Jahren eine kleine, aber spürbare armenische Mittelschicht in Bulgarien herausbildete. Dies machte sich u.a. in Gestalt einer zunehmenden Zahl aktiver Politiker bemerkbar, die kleinere armenische Parteien sowohl im konservativ-liberalen als auch im sozialistischen Spektrum gründeten. Noch deutlicher zeigte sich die armenische Mittelschicht in der Gründung von Handelsfirmen oder im Auftreten als Fabrikanten, was sich u.a. an den steigenden armenischen Kapitalanlagen in verschiedenen Banken nachweisen lässt.²¹ Einher ging dies mit einer Blüte des armenischen Schulwesens, welches auf private Spenden und die Erhebung von Schulgebühren angewiesen war. Über wohlhabende armenische Mäzene verfügten Städte wie Burgas, Russe, Warna, Sofia und Plowdiw. Dort entstandene Schulen orientierten sich nach dem Vorbild des staatlichen siebenjährigen Schulwesens. In kleineren Gemeinden konnten nur vierjährige armenische Grundschulen finanziert werden. Alle armenischen Schulen unterrichteten nur ausgewählte Fächer wie Geschichte oder Geografie in armenischer Sprache, die übrigen wurden in Bulgarisch abgehalten. Möglichkeiten für eine weiterführende Schulbildung entstanden 1922 mit einer ersten armenischen Sekundarschule in Sofia und eine weitere 1928 mit Hilfe des katholischen Mekhitaristenorden in Plowdiw.²² Man könnte diese Zeit auch als Blütezeit der armenischen Diaspora in Bulgarien bezeichnen.

Minderheiten in der Volksrepublik Bulgarien

Die Haltung der armenischen Bevölkerung zur autoritären Königsdiktatur von Boris III. und deren Kollaboration mit dem Deutschen Reich ist bislang nicht erforscht. Unbestritten ist jedoch, dass der linksgerichtete Umsturz 1944 und die Etablierung des sozialistischen Regimes in den Nachfolgejahren tiefgreifende Folgen für die bulgarischen Armenier hatte. Viele wählten die Emigration nach Westeuropa bzw. nach Übersee. 1946 wurden auch Armenier zwangsweise in die Armenische Sozialistische Sowjetrepublik (SSR) deportiert.

Für die Mehrheit der verbliebenen armenischen Bevölkerung verschlechterten sich die Lebensbedingungen bald schon sehr deutlich. Anfangs blieben die armenischen Schulen noch bestehen, wurden jedoch nach kurzer Zeit zwangsweise in staatlichen Besitz überführt. Dies hatte zur Folge, dass ihre Finanzierung nunmehr von der jeweiligen Gemeindeverwaltung übernommen wurde, was nicht selten eine Verschlechterung der Mittel zur Folge hatte. Einschneidender war jedoch die 1946 erfolgte Umstellung der armenischsprachigen Unterrichtsstunden. Dort wurde nun von der sozialistischen Regierung das bisher verwendete Westarmenisch durch das, in der SSR Armenien gesprochene Ostarmenisch ersetzt. Bei dieser Gelegenheit wurden auch die Schulbücher ausgetauscht, da diese aus Sicht der sozialistischen Regierung zu „bürgerlich“ waren. Diese Veränderungen wurden von vielen Armeniern abgelehnt und bald schon sanken die Schülerzahlen an den armenischen Schulen deutlich.²³ Das Ende des armenischen Schulwesens in Bulgarien kam 1961, als nahezu alle Schulen von der Regierung geschlossen wurden. Übrig blieb zunächst eine armenische Grundschule in Plowdiw, die aber 1976 ebenfalls – ungeachtet eines öffentlichen Protests der armenischen Plowdiwer Gemeinde – ihren Lehrbetrieb einstellen musste. Unterricht in armenischer Sprache war fortan nur noch in Form von Zusatzkursen möglich. Derartige Angebote fanden jedoch nach dem regulären staatlichen Schulbetrieb statt und waren entsprechend bei den Lernenden unbeliebt. Die Zahl jener, die die armenischsprachigen Kurse besuchten, sank entsprechend kontinuierlich. Dies führte zwangsläufig dazu, dass Generationen von Schülerinnen und Schülern heranwuchsen, die immer weniger Armenisch in Wort und Schrift erlernten und entsprechend von der spezifischen armenischen Identität entfremdet wurden. Ein weiterer Schritt zur Homogenisierung der Gesellschaft im Sinne der sozialistischen Führung war die zwangsweise Zusammenführung armenischer Vereine und Organisationen unter einer, vom Staat bzw. durch die Bulgarische Kommunistische Partei kontrollierte Dachorganisation, dem Jerewan Kulturbund. Armenische Parteien und Zeitungsredaktionen hatten bereits in der Frühphase der Volksrepublik ihre Tätigkeiten einstellen müssen. Angesichts dieser Entwicklungen in den ersten beiden Jahrzehnten der Volksrepublik Bulgarien nahm die Zahl der armenischen Bevölkerung weiter ab und betrug in den 1950er- und 1960er-Jahren weniger als 22.000.²⁴ Interessant ist, dass es während der gesamten sozialistischen Ära, von wenigen informellen Beziehungen abgesehen, keine direkten Kontakte zwischen den armenischen Gemeinden in den Ostblockstaaten wie z. B. Bulgarien zur armenischen Teilrepublik der UdSSR gab.

Zumindest auf dem Papier gab es einige Veränderungen, als 1971 die erste sozialistische Verfassung von 1947 durch eine neue abgelöst wurde. Darin wurde in Kapitel III Artikel 35 (4) das Prinzip der völligen Gleichheit aller Bürger theoretisch festgeschrieben und somit staatlich garantiert. Auch wurden grundsätzlich alle Vorrechte oder Beschränkungen auf Grund des Geschlechts, der „Rasse“ und Herkunft oder der Religion als unzulässig erklärt. Dies bedeutete aber, dass damit ein spezifischer Minderheitenschutz ausgeschlossen wurde.²⁵ Eine Ausnahme bildete das Recht, die eigene Sprache erlernen zu dürfen. In Artikel 45 (7) heißt es, dass Bürger nichtbulgarischer Abstammung das Recht hätten, neben dem obligatorischen Erlernen der bulgarischen Sprache auch ihre eigene Minderheiten-Sprache zu erlernen. Dieses Recht wurde jedoch, wie erwähnt, entsprechend unattraktiv gestaltet.

Nichtsdestotrotz prägten Angehörige der kleinen armenischen Minderheit nicht unerheblich das Außenbild der sozialistischen Volksrepublik mit. International bekannt wurde z. B. der Gewichtsheber und Olympiasieger Norair Nurikjan und die bulgarisch-armenische Tennisdynastie Berberjan. Aber auch in anderen Sportarten, im Kulturbereich, in der höheren Staatsverwaltung sowie im publizistisch-journalistischen Spektrum waren gegen Ende der bulgarischen Volksrepublik überproportional viele bulgarische Armenier zu finden. Hierzu zählen u.a. der Theaterregisseur Krikor Stepan Azaryan (1934–2009) oder der Jazzpianist und -komponist Vili Kazasyan (1934–2008).

Die armenisch-apostolische Kirche in der Zeit der sozialistischen Herrschaft

Die drastischen Veränderungen infolge des Einbezugs Bulgariens in den sowjetischen Machtbereich hatte nicht nur im Schulwesen nachhaltige Auswirkungen. Mindestens ebenso gravierend war der sehr bald sehr schnell wachsende Druck auf die kleine armenisch-apostolische Kirche.

Bis zum Untergang des Osmanischen Reiches unterstanden die armenisch-apostolischen Kirchgemeinden dem armenischen Patriarchat von Konstantinopel. Bereits während des Ersten Weltkrieges, 1916, wurde das Patriarchat aber von der jungtürkischen Regierung aufgelöst. Der amtsenthobene Patriarch Zaven Der Yeghiayan kehrte zwar 1919 kurzzeitig in sein Amt zurück, emigrierte aber unter Druck der nunmehr kemalistischen Regierung 1922 nach Bulgarien und später nach Bagdad. In dieser Zeit übernahm als neuer Erzbischof Stepanos Howagimian die Leitung der armenisch-apostolischen Diözesenführung in Bulgarien. Nach dem Zweiten Weltkrieg wurden die bulgarischen Gemeinden dem rumänischen Diözesenbischof Wasgen unterstellt. Als dieser 1955 neuer Katholikos der armenisch-apostolischen Kirche wurde, blieb die Diözesenverwaltung sowohl in Bulgarien als auch in Rumänien zunächst vakant. Erst 1960 übernahm in Gestalt des vergleichsweise jungen, 1930 in Beirut geborenen Primas der armenischen Diözese in Aserbaidschan, Dirayr Mardigian, die Leitung der beiden Diözesen Bulgarien und Rumänien.

In der Sowjetunion hatte die armenisch-apostolische Kirche lange Zeit unter erheblichen Repressalien zu leiden.²⁶ Erst unter Katholikos Georg IV. gelang es ihr während der späten stalinistischen Zeit die Beziehungen zur Sowjetregierung schrittweise etwas zu entspannen. Diese Entwicklung setzte sich auch nach 1955 unter seinem bereits erwähnten Nachfolger Wasgen I. aus der Doppel-Diözese Rumänien-Bulgarien fort. Nichtsdestotrotz standen die armenischen Diözesen im sowjetischen Machtbereich unter spürbarem Druck. Dies traf auch auf die armenisch-apostolische Kirche in Bulgarien zu. Zwar wurde es ihr erlaubt, ihre Gemeindearbeit fortzusetzen, doch wurden ihre Handlungsspielräume mehr und mehr eingeschränkt. Dies geschah – parallel zur bulgarisch-orthodoxen Kirche – nicht zuletzt durch Entzug fast sämtlicher finanzieller Einnahmequellen. Phasenweise reduzierte sich das Einkommen auf den Erlös von Verkäufen eigener Waren wie Kerzen oder Ikonen an die schrumpfende Zahl der Gläubigen. Auch die traditionellen Vorrechte der Kirche in administrativen Fragen,wie die Registrierung von Geburten, Todesfällen oder Eheschließungen wurden nach und nach entzogen und fortan von den lokalen Behörden des sozialistischen Staates übernommen.²⁷ Ein nicht minder folgenreicher Schlag war das vorgenommene Verbot des schulischen Religionsunterrichts. In den Städten Pazardjik, Sliwen und Stara Zagora wurden die dortigen armenischen Kirchen abgerissen, um Platz für die sozialistischen Stadtentwicklungspläne zu schaffen. Diese Gemeinden verloren damit ihre Gebetshäuser. Auch fehlte es seit den 1960er-Jahren immer mehr an Priesternachwuchs. Zeitweise konnten kleinere Gemeinden wie jene in Šumen, Dobrič oder Silistra nicht durch priesterliche Seelsorger betreut werden.

Auch wenn es bis heute ein wissenschaftliches Desiderat ist, muss davon ausgegangen werden, dass auch die armenisch-apostolische Kirche in ihrer Gesamtorganisation vom bulgarischen Geheimdienst frühzeitig infiltriert wurde.²⁸ Wie auch in den anderen Glaubensgemeinschaften nahmen auf diese Weise die Religiosität und die kirchlichen Aktivitäten der armenischen Gläubigen im Laufe der vier Jahrzehnte sozialistischer Herrschaft und deren atheistischen Politik spürbar ab. Dies trug zusätzlich zur Zurückdrängung armenischer Identitätsgefühle der nachwachsenden Generationen der bulgarischen Armenier bei. Bis zum Ende der Volksrepublik Bulgarien schrumpfte der Anteil der armenischen Bevölkerung an der Gesamtbevölkerung auf 0,2%.

Das Ende des Sozialismus und die Gründung einer demokratischen Republik ohne nationale Minderheiten

Im Winter 1989/90 wurde das bisherige sozialistische Regime in einer “samtenen Revolution“ gestürzt. 1991 wurde die neue Verfassung der Republik Bulgarien erlassen. Aus Perspektive der nationalen Minderheiten bedeutete die Verfassung aber nur eingeschränkt eine Verbesserung. Genau genommen wurden Minderheiten verfassungsrechtlich als nicht existent erklärt, da in ihr mit keinem Wort nationale Minderheiten erwähnt sind. Es wird bis heute lediglich in Artikel 36 (II) die Formulierung verwendet, „Bürger deren Muttersprache nicht Bulgarisch ist“.²⁹ Später wurden zwar vom bulgarischen Staat mehrere internationale Abkommen zum breiten Spektrum des Minderheitenschutzes unterzeichnet, doch blieb die Situation der meisten nationalen Minderheiten im Land prekär. Grundsätzlich ausgeschlossen wurde die Gründung von Parteien auf nationaler Basis. Ein Recht auf Berücksichtigung im nationalen Fernsehen oder Rundfunk, zum Beispiel in Gestalt von Sendungen in der jeweiligen Minderheitensprache, wurde nicht gewährt.

In der Praxis entwickelte sich ein unterschiedlicher Umgang mit den einzelnen Minderheiten. Einige, wie die große türkische Minorität, oder jene, die auf größere Unterstützung aus dem Ausland rechnen konnten, wie die kleine jüdische Bevölkerungsgruppe, wurden indirekt anerkannt. Dazu zählten auch die Armenier. Theoretisch wurde es nationalen Minderheiten erlaubt, in Gerichtsverfahren einen Dolmetscher gestellt zu bekommen. Dies wurde jedoch oft nicht umgesetzt, sei es aus fehlendem Willen, sei es aus Mangel an den nötigen, vor Gericht zugelassenen Dolmetschern. Dies betraf auch den Umgang mit Behörden. Anders als etwa die Roma oder Aromunen erlebten hier Armenier allerdings wesentlich seltener diskriminierende Erfahrungen. Ohnehin sprach die jüngere armenische Generation in Bulgarien mittlerweile nicht selten Bulgarisch besser als Armenisch. Die Bulgarisierung durch die sozialistische Bildungspolitik war diesbezüglich spürbar erfolgreich gewesen.

Im neuen Schulgesetz wurde theoretisch allen nationalen Minderheiten zugesichert, in den ersten acht Schuljahren bzw. ab 1999 bis zur 12. Klasse, die eigene Sprache erlernen zu können. Voraussetzung wurde jedoch, dass solche Klassen mit Kursen in der jeweiligen Muttersprache mindestens acht Schüler umfassen.³⁰ Die Probleme glichen damit jenen der sozialistischen Zeit. Wenn Unterrichtsstunden in armenischer Sprache angeboten wurden, fanden diese in der Regel zu unbequemen Zeiten am Nachmittag statt. Es bestand ein gravierender Mangel an ausgebildeten Lehrkräften für armenischsprachigen Unterricht und es fehlte an entsprechendem Unterrichtsmaterial. Der armenischen Minderheit kam mittelfristig zugute, dass sie Unterstützung seitens ausländischer Organisationen oder einzelner Förderer der armenischen Diaspora erhielt. Dazu zählte auch die Wiederbelebung der Kultur- und Jugendarbeit. Die in der Anfangszeit der 1990er-Jahre in erster Linie in Plowdiw und Sofia gegründeten neuen armenischen Jugend-, Studenten- und Kulturorganisationen gingen zwar in erster Linie auf die Initiative ehemals regimetreuer sozialistischer Kader zurück und erlangten daher nur bedingt Verbreitung, ab Mitte der 1990er-Jahre machte sich jedoch immer stärker die Hilfe aus der armenischen Diaspora Westeuropas und Nordamerikas bemerkbar. Zu den frühen Unterstützern zählte die 1970 in den USA gegründete Hamzkayin Cultural Association, die in ihren Ursprüngen auf eine 1928 in Kairo gegründete armenische Hilfsorganisation zurückgeht. Es gab aber auch Förderung durch populäre Einzelpersonen, wie des armenisch-kanadischen Sängers George Tutunjian (1930–2006).

Eine weitere Institution, die bereits früh in Erscheinung trat, war das 1926 gegründete Melkonische Bildungsinstitut im zypriotischen Nikosia. Von dort konnten mittelfristig erste Armenischlehrkräfte gewonnen werden. Auch nahm das Institut 60 bis 70 armenische Kinder aus Bulgarien zur Ausbildung auf, was jedoch in Anbetracht des großen Nachhol- und Wiederaufbaubedarfs im Bildungswesen kaum mehr als ein erster Anfang sein konnte, um den immer größeren Bedeutungsverlust des Armenischen in Bulgarien zu stoppen.³¹ Spürbare erste Schritte zur Besserung gelangen erst, als 1995 die Sofioter Universität das Bachelor-Studienfach der Armenisch- und Kaukasusstudien an der Philologischen Fakultät mit Schwerpunkt armenische Literatur und Kultur einführte, was langfristig die Ausbildung nötiger Fachkräfte für armenische Sprache ermöglichte.³² Für den Bedarf an armenischsprachigen Unterrichtsmaterial musste indes noch viele Jahre auf gespendete Lehrwerke armenischer Gemeinden aus Syrien und dem Libanon zurückgegriffen werden. Weitere Lehrkräfte kamen aus der unabhängig gewordenen Republik Armenien. Auch nach 1990 blieb Plowdiw das wirtschaftliche und kulturelle Zentrum der Armenier in Bulgarien. Dort wurde im September 1990 die 1976 geschlossene erste armenische Schule mit zunächst 276 Schülern und 28 Pädagogen wiederbegründet und nach dem Stiftungspaar der 1940er-Jahre Victoria- und Krikor-Tutunjian-Schule benannt. Weitere armenischsprachige Schulklassen wurden später an einzelnen Schulen in Warna, Sofia, Burgas und Silistra eingerichtet.

Als kleine Minderheit konnten die Armenier von Anfang an kaum auf eine Berücksichtigung des Armenischen im staatlichen Fernsehen und Rundfunk hoffen. Verhältnismäßig positiv, vergleicht man die Entwicklung mit anderen kleineren Minderheiten in Bulgarien, entwickelte sich aber auf der nichtstaatlichen Ebene ein durchaus gut frequentiertes armenisches Pressewesen. Bereits 1991 erschien in Plowdiw die erste neue armenischsprachige Zeitung (Wahan). Später folgte die Zeitung Armenzi in Burgas sowie die Wochenzeitung EreWan aus Sofia.³³ Nach der Jahrtausendwende kamen mehrere armenischsprachige Internetportale wie beispielsweise Parev.net hinzu.

Identitätsfragen, die armenische Kirche und armenische Zuwanderung

Die „Bulgarisierungspolitik“ in den Jahrzehnten vor 1990 hatte tiefe Spuren in der armenischen Minderheit hinterlassen. Besonders in den 1960er- und 1970er-Jahrgängen assimilierten sich junge Armenier zunehmend, fühlten sich immer stärker primär als Bulgaren und kannten die armenische Sprache und Kultur nur noch aus dem engsten Familienkreis. Ehen zwischen Armeniern und Bulgaren waren keine Seltenheit mehr. Als 1992 die Republik Bulgarien eine erste Volkszählung vornahm, erklärten sich lediglich noch rund 13.700 Menschen als Armenier.³⁴ Dies war neben den Assimilierungsprozessen auch durch die durchaus spürbare Auswanderung von Armeniern ab 1990 zu erklären.

Die langsame Wiederbelebung des armenischen Schulwesens, vor allem aber das Wirken der armenisch-apostolischen Kirche bremsten nach 1990 zumindest teilweise diese Entwicklung. Dank einer 1993/94 vom bulgarischen Staat erlassene Rückgabegesetzgebung wurden der Kirche viele enteignete Immobilien und Grundstücke zurückgegeben. Unter sozialistischer Herrschaft zerstörte Kirchen konnten nach und nach, auch dank Spenden aus dem Ausland, durch Neubauten ersetzt werden. Dazu zählte zum Beispiel die 2011 eingeweihte armenische Kirche in Pazardžik. 2006 begann der Bau einer neuen armenischen Kathedrale im traditionell armenischen Stil nach Plänen des bulgarisch-armenischen Architekten Agop Karakshian.³⁵ Gegenwärtig [Stand 2025] verfügt die armenisch-apostolische Kirche in ganz Bulgarien wieder über elf Kirchen und vier Kapellen. 2010 starb der langjährige Erzbischof Dirayr Mardigian. An seine Stelle trat der im Irak geborene Datew Hagopian. Ein Jahr später wurde die ursprünglich unabhängige armenische Diözese in Bulgarien wieder hergestellt. Neben der armenisch-apostolischen Kirche existieren heute auch fünf armenisch-protestantische Kirchgemeinden.³⁶ Es kann also aus heutiger Perspektive von einer deutlichen Wiederbelebung des armenisch-religiösen Lebens in Bulgarien gesprochen werden.

Während die schrumpfenden Gemeinden mit Identitätsfragen zu kämpfen hatten, entstanden zusätzliche Reibeflächen durch die Einwanderung von Armeniern. Nach dem Zerfall der UdSSR und dem armenisch-aserbaidschanischen Bergkarabach-Konflikt, wurde Bulgarien in den 1990er-Jahren für mehrere Zehntausend Armenier eine wichtige Durchgangsstation in Richtung Westeuropa und Nordamerika. Nicht wenige blieben einige Zeit, einige wenige dauerhaft. Die Neueinwanderer sprachen allerdings den ostanatolischen Dialekt des Armenischen, während die bulgarischen Armenier trotz sozialistischer Schulpolitik weiterhin am westarmenischen Dialekt festhielten. Generell war diese Einwanderung insofern nicht unproblematisch, als die Migranten angesichts der dramatischen Wirtschaftskrise im postsozialistischen Bulgarien Konkurrenten im täglichen Überleben auf dem Arbeitsmarkt waren. Erleichtert wurde diese Situation jedoch dadurch, dass sich der bulgarische Staat sehr früh um gute Beziehungen zur Republik Armenien bemühte, was sich auch durch die gemeinsame Distanz zur Türkei erklären lässt. Bereits 1992, wenige Monate nach der Unabhängigkeitserklärung Armeniens am 21. September 1991 nahmen beide Staaten diplomatische Beziehungen auf. Neben einer armenischen Botschaft in Sofia wurden anfangs auch armenische Konsulate in Warna und Plowdiw eingerichtet. Eine bulgarische Botschaft in Jerewan wurde 1999 eröffnet. Spätestens seit der Jahrtausendwende entwickeln sich zunehmend intensivere diplomatische, wirtschaftliche und kulturelle Beziehungen zwischen Bulgarien und Armenien. Beispielsweise erfreut sich die bulgarische Schwarzmeerküste einer immer größeren Beliebtheit bei Touristen aus der Republik Armenien. Auch wenn die persönlichen Beziehungen der armenischen Bevölkerung Bulgariens zu Armenien keine unmittelbar große Bedeutung erlangte, so wirkte diese vertiefenden Beziehungen der beiden Staaten doch auf die Minderheit der bulgarischen Armenier zurück.

Natürlich ging die allgemeine Auswanderungsbewegung, die die bulgarische Gesamtbevölkerung seit dem Ende der Volksrepublik von rund 8,5 auf kaum mehr als 6,5 Millionen Einwohnern 2022 sinken ließ, nicht spurlos an der armenischen Minderheit vorüber. Zur Volkszählung 2001 ließen sich noch 10.832 Menschen als Armenier registrieren (0,14%). Davon lebten 3.140 in der Provinz Plowdiw, 2.240 in der Provinz Warna, 1.672 in Sofia und 904 in der Provinz in Burgas.³⁷ In der Volkszählung von 2011 wurden nur noch 6.552 (0,09%) gezählt.³⁸ Wie viele Menschen sich dabei als ethnische Bulgaren registrierten, sich aber trotzdem als Armenier empfinden, ist ein Feld großer Spekulationen. In jedem Fall sind bulgarischen Armenier im öffentlichen Leben präsent, sei es in Gestalt von Sportlern wie dem zeitweiligen Fußballnationalspieler Armen Ambartsumjan oder Künstlern wie dem Dirigenten Levon Manukjan und dem Filmproduzenten Margardič Halvadjan.

Eine große Bedeutung erlangte in den vergangenen Jahren das immer spannungsreichere Verhältnis Bulgariens mit der Türkei, gepaart mit einer zunehmend konservativ-nationalen Entwicklung der gesellschaftlichen und politischen Landschaft. Die konservative bulgarisch-orthodoxe Kirche gewann ein spürbares Maß an gesellschaftlichem Einfluss zurück. Nationalistische und rechtsextreme Bewegungen haben Zulauf. Unter dem konservativen Politiker Bojko Borissow kamen sogar rechtsnationalen Parteien mit in die Regierung. Teil derer Außenpolitik war und ist eine distanzierte Politik gegenüber der türkischen Erdoğan-Regierung. Plakativ nahmen die Besuche hochrangiger bulgarischer Regierungsvertreter in Armenien zu. In einer Zeit, in der sich Bulgarien 2015/16 angesichts einer zunehmenden Migration und steigender Flüchtlingszahlen aus dem Nahen Osten gegenübersah, präsentiert sich die damalige Borissow-Regierung gerne als (christlich-abendländischer) „Frontstaat“ Europas. Teil dieser politisch-gesellschaftlichen Entwicklung war die konfrontative Anerkennung des Armenier-Genozids im April 2015 und die Förderung einer entsprechenden Gedenkkultur, was 2016 zu starken diplomatischen Verstimmungen mit der Türkei führte.³⁹

Heute sind die Armenier in Bulgarien weiterhin eine kleine, immer wieder von Auswanderung und Assimilation bedrohte Minderheit. Diese ist aber ebenso seit über einem Jahrtausend ein wahrnehmbarer Bestandteil der bulgarischen Gesellschaft. Inwieweit die armenische Gemeinde infolge des russischen Krieges gegen die Ukraine seit 2022 geflüchtete ukrainische Armenier aufnahm, ist noch nicht bekannt.

Garo Mardirosjan: Koj koj e v armenskata obštnost v Bălgarija? [Wer gehört der armenischen Gemeinde in Bulgarien an?] Sofija 2002; Evgenija Georgieva Miceva: Armencite v Bălgarija. Kultura i identičnost. [Armenier in Bulgarien. Kultur und Identität] Sofija: Mezhdunar 2001; Sarkis Sarkisjan (Hg.): Armenskata duchovnost. Meždunarodna naučna konferencija. [Armenische Geistlichkeit. Internationale wissenschaftliche Konferenz]. Sofija: Iztok-Zapad 2010; Donka Săbotinova: Koleloto na života. Semejni i običai na bălgari, armeni, rusi staroobredci, turci i cigani/roma [Das Rad des Lebens. Sitten und Gebräuche von Bulgaren, Armeniern, Russen, Türken und Zigeuner/Roma], Sofija: RITT 2015 und Siranush Papazian-Tanielian: The community life of Armenians in post-socialist Bulgaria. In: Konrad Siekierski, Stefan Troebst (Hgg.): Armenians in Post-Socialist Europe, Köln 2016, S. 193–204. ︎
Siehe dazu u.a. Garo Mardirosjan: Armenskata diaspora v Bălgarija [Armenische Diaspora in Bulgarien]. In: Armenskata duchovnost, S. 289–296, hier S. 289 und Siranush Papazian-Tanelian: The Community Life of Armenians in Post-Socialist Bulgaria, S. 193. ︎
Papazian-Tanelian: The community life, S. 193f. ︎
Siehe dazu u.a. Petăr Golijski: Bălgaro-armenskite vrăski prez X–XV. v. kato izjava na ličnosti. In: Armenskata duchovnost [Armenische Geistlichkeit], S. 168–190. ︎
Nicolas Adontz: Samuel l’Arménien, Roi des Bulgares. Bruxelles 1938, S. 37. ︎
Garo Mardirosjan: Armenskata diaspora v Bălgarija. In: Armenskata duchovnost meždunarodna naučna konferencija. Sofija Iztok-Zapad 2010, S. 289–296, hier S. 290f. ︎
Agop Garabedjan: Prinosite na armencite v bălgarskite zemi [Die Beiträge der Armenier zur bulgarischen Erde]. In: Armenskata duchovnost, S. 43–70, hier S. 45–47. Zu den Schriften von Bischof Bakšev siehe Lilia Ilieva: The First Tractate on Bulgarian History Found: Petar Bogdan. On the Antiquity of the Father’s Land and on the Bulgarian Things. In: Balkanistic Forum. (2018) Vol. 16, S. 98–103. ︎
Agop Garabedjan: Prinosite na armencite v bălgarskite zemi, S. 45. [Die Beiträge der Armenier zur bulgarischen Erde] ︎
Nadežda Ivanova: Armenskata kolonija v Plovdiv i nejnata tsărkva „Surp Kevork“ [Die armenische Kolonie in Plovdiv und die neue Kirche „Surp Kevork“]: , 01.02.2025. ︎
Festrede zum 160. Jahrestag der ersten armenischen Schulgründung in Plovdiv 1994. , 10.01.2025, Informationen anlässlich des 175. Jubiläums hat , 01.02.2023 sowie Informationen der Schulseite anlässlich des 180. Jubiläums , 01.02.2021. ︎
Louise Nalbandian: The Armenian Revolutionary Movement. The Development of Armenian Political Parties throught the Nineteentrh Century. Berkeley 1963, S. 113 und 149. ︎
Evgenija Miceva: Armencite v Bălgarija – Kultura i identičnost. Sofija 2001, S. 181. ︎
Nachdem infolge der Jungtürkischen Revolution die osmanische Verfassung von 1876 wieder in Kraft gesetzt worden war, verzichteten viele armenische Revolutionsgruppen vorerst auf Gewalt und terroristische Anschläge. Andreas Oberender: Gegen Zar und Sultan. Armenischer Terrorismus vor dem Ersten Weltkrieg. In: Osteuropa, 66 (2016) H. 4, S. 49–62, S. 58. ︎
Agop Garabedjan: Prinosite na armencite v bălgarskite zemi, S. 51 bzw. Zahlenangaben nach: , 31.01.2025. ︎
Nalbandian: The Armenian Revolutionary Movement, S. 175 und Hratch Dasnabedian: History of the Armenian Revolutionary Federation Dashnaktstiun 1890/1894, Paris 1990, S. 59f. ︎
Dasnabedian: History of the Armenian Revolutionary Federation Dashnaktstiun, S. 56. ︎
Dasnabedian: History of the Armenian Revolutionary Federation Dashnaktstiun, S. 60. ︎
John Keegan: MacNally Encyclopedia of World War II. Toronto 1977, S. 54. ︎
Evgenija Miceva: Armencite v Bălgarija – Kultura i identičnost. S. 177, Papazian-Tanelian: The Community Life, S. 194 und Miceva, Papazân-Tanielân: Armencite razkazvat za sebe si, S. 436 und 490. ︎
Agop Garabedjan: Prinosite na armencite v bălgarskite zemi, S. 51. ︎
Agop Garabedjan: Prinosite na armencite v bălgarskite zemi, S. 53–55. ︎
Papazian-Tanielian: The community life of Armenians in post-socialist Bulgaria 198f. ︎
Papazian-Tanielian: The community life of Armenians in post-socialist Bulgaria, S. 199. ︎
Garo Mardirosjan: Armenskata diaspora v Bălgarija. In: Armenskata duchovnost, S. 289–296, hier S. 292. ︎
Verfassung der Volksrepublik Bulgarien vom 18. Mai 1971: , 31.01.2025. ︎
Zur Situation der armenisch-apostolischen Kirche zur Sowjetzeit siehe u.a. Hacik Rafi Gazer: Die armenische Kirche in Sowjetarmenien zwischen den Weltkriegen. Anatomie einer Vernichtung. LIT Münster 2001. ︎
Papazian-Tanielian: The community life of Armenians in post-socialist Bulgaria, S. 196. ︎
Björn Opfer-Klinger: Die bulgarische Staatssicherheit vom Kalten Krieg bis zur gescheiterten Vergangenheitsbewältigung. In: Halbjahresschrift für südosteuropäische Geschichte, Literatur und Politik, 22 (2010) H. 1/2, S. 90–110, hier: S. 94f. ︎
Verfassung der Republik Bulgarien vom 12. Juli 1991: , 31.01.2025. ︎
Christoph Pan: Die Minderheitenrechte in Bulgarien. In: Christoph Pan, Beate Sibylle Pfeil (Hgg.): Minderheitenrechte in Europa. Handbuch der europäischen Volksgruppen. Bd. 2. Wien 2002, S. 64–74, hier: S. 70. ︎
Miceva/Papazan-Tanielan 2007, S. 392–397. ︎
Papazian-Tanielian: The community life of Armenians in post-socialist Bulgaria, S. 200. ︎
Miceva: Armencite v Bălgarija, S. 182. ︎
Garo Mardirosjan: Armenskata diaspora v Bălgarija. In: Armenskata duchovnost, S. 289–296, hier: S. 292. ︎
Papazian-Tanielian: The community life of Armenians in post-socialist Bulgaria, S. 196f. ︎
Vahram Hoyan: Armenian Angelical Community in Bulgaria (26.07.2010): bzw. die Website der armenisch-evangelischen Kirche in Bulgarien mit Sitz in Plovdiv: , 02.02.2025. ︎
Angaben des nationalen statistischen Instituts zur Volkszählung 2001, , 15.01.2023. ︎
Angaben des nationalen statistischen Instituts zur Volkszählung 2011 , 01.05.2022, , 01.08.2022. ︎
Armenian Genocide in Bulgarian Parliament (03.19.2010): , 01.02.2025. Auf lokaler Ebene hatte beispielsweise bereits 2008 die Stadt Burgas in einer Erklärung des Stadtparlamentes den Genozid anerkannt, damals auf Betreiben der dortigen Fraktion der rechtsnationalen Partei ATAKA. Siehe u.a. Turski natisk sreschtu bălgarski obschtini zaradi armenskija genozid (14.03.2016): , 01.02.2025; Georgi Gotev: Turkey blackmails Bulgarian municipalities over the Armenian genocide (15.03.2016): , 01.02.2025. ︎

Der Beitrag Armenische Diaspora in Bulgarien in Vergangenheit und Gegenwart erschien zuerst auf Halbjahresschrift für Geschichte und Zeitgeschehen in Zentral- und Südosteuropa.

Post-Imperial Biographies in the Russian–Romanian Borderlands. The Case of the Bessarabian Pantelimon V. Sinadino

IKGS-Admin_2 — Fri, 01 Mar 2024 12:12:46 +0000

Svetlana Suveica, University of Regensburg

The profound political changes which occurred in Eastern Europe during World War I and immediately thereafter had a profound impact on local society. By the end of 1917, the region of Bessarabia, after a short period of independence, had separated from the Russian Empire to merge with Romania in April 1918. The examination of the biographical path of Pantelimon V. Sinadino, the former mayor of Chișinău and a large landowner, provides valuable insights into how the representatives of the former imperial elite perceived the complex transformations, adapted to new political realities, and coped with various social and economic challenges. Sinadino’s letters and personal notes reveal his simultaneous mourning the dissolution of the Russian Empire, the fear of the coming of the Bolsheviks, the hesitation when Bessarabia united with Romania and the search for a role within the new political entity. Moreover, during the 1919 Paris Peace Conference, Sinadino became very active in supporting the Bessarabian émigrés who worked with the Russian Whites for the restoration of a “Greater Russia” and the return of his native Bessarabia to Russian protection. In this article, I reconstruct the path of Sinadino’s biography to reveal how he reacted both as an individual and as a prominent representative of the regional elite in Bessarabia to the political changes in a time of great distress.

Writing a Post-imperial Biography: The Methodological Challenges

As Tim Buchen and Malte Rolf put it, writing an imperial biography of a member of the elite means showing how the empire was entangled with their life and career.¹ Putting together pieces concerning their public activity, reconstructing the social milieu in which an individual acquired their education and practised their profession, and depicting social interactions that show connections and joint activities are indispensable parts of the process. As successfully demonstrated by other scholars, biographies – be they of a public employee, an academic, a military or a political figure, an expert or an entrepreneur – allow, on the one hand, the presentation of the subject’s path within the empire and after its dissolution, while on the other hand they enable us to see the empire through the eyes of an individual, as an amalgamate of opportunities and restraints.²³

Writing a post-imperial biography means facing additional challenges, since reconstructing the trajectory of someone’s life during the aftermath of empire often means collecting pieces of information about the life of an émigré across borders or even across continents.⁴ Such is the case of former representatives of the imperial elite, nobles and landowners, as well as other inhabitants of Bessarabia who emigrated from the region for the political, economic or security reasons related to the war, the Revolution of 1917, or Bessarabia’s change in status as a Romanian province in the spring of 1918. Regardless of their decision to stay in Bessarabia or leave, the inhabitants had to face the changes and adapt to challenges, and often had to fight for their security and even their daily bread.

When the Russian Empire collapsed in the spring of 1917, the borders shifted, and Petersburg (from 1914 on, Petrograd) disappeared as a centre of power. On the former western periphery of Bessarabia, the new revolutionary elite took over the levers of power from the imperial elite. The situation was challenging due to the spread of anarchy following the dispersal of the Russian army on the Romanian front.⁵ To establish control over the region and secure the lives and wealth of its inhabitants, on 23–27 October 1917 (O.S.),⁶ at the initiative of Moldovan militaries on the Russian front, the regional diet of Sfatul Țării was created. Following the declaration of Ukrainian autonomy, and then Ukraine’s separation from the Russian Federative Republic, the Moldavian Democratic Republic was created on 2 December 1917 (O.S.). After the entrance of the Romanian troops in Bessarabia, the independence of the Moldavian Republic was declared on 24 January 1918 (O.S.). This corresponded to the military-strategic and economic interests of both the Entente and the Central Powers. The latter pushed for separate peace negotiations with Romania and approved the union of Bessarabia under the condition that Romania would cede control of the Dobruja region to Bulgaria.⁷ The negotiations between the Romanian Government and the Bessarabian regional diet, the Sfatul Țării, were finalised with a compromise decision: on April 9, 1918, Bessarabia united with Romania on the condition that its autonomous status would be preserved.⁸ Six months later, the union’s conditions were abolished.⁹

Undoubtedly, biographies overlap with the social and cultural histories of the society in which they evolve.¹⁰ For the Bessarabians who had lived in the region for decades, it was a liminal state, a state of in-betweenness dominated by feelings of loss, insecurity, and uncertainty.¹¹ The Russian “motherland” had vanished, and Romania had yet to become a point of political and economic reference; it would take time for the change to rules and regularities, social norms, and categories to be acknowledged. At the same time, in the new social and political context they questioned their own identity and formulated visions of belonging. The biography of Pantelimon V. Sinadino is one of many life paths that reveal segments of larger regional and international (hi)stories after World War One. How Sinadino perceived profound political and social changes in his native region Bessarabia, in which ways he was affected by them, how he envisaged the future of his region, and what he did to fulfil his visions will be discussed in the following pages.

Pantelimon V. Sinadino: A Short Biography

Pantelimon V. Sinadino was born in 1875 in the city of Kishinev (Chișinău) in the Russian gubernia of Bessarabia. Sinadino’s family was well known in the city: his grandfather, Pantelimon I. Sinadino, of Greek origin, served as mayor of Chișinău for two terms (1837–1839 and 1840–1842), and his father, the merchant Victor Sinadino, was the founder of several banks and enterprises in Bessarabia and Odessa.¹² The Sinadinos were active supporters of the Bessarabian Greek community’s cultural and religious life in the region.¹³ In 1905, Sinadino married Kseniia Il’inichna Kobieva, from a family of hereditary nobles from Tiflis gubernia,¹⁴ with whom he had two children. The family possessed around 3,535 desiatines of land, located in the centre of Bessarabia.¹⁵

Pantelimon acquired a university degree in medicine and studied economy and finance at Taras Shevchenko University in Kyiv. He remained loyal to the latter domain, embarking upon a career in public administration and publishing on the economy and credit system in Bessarabia.¹⁶ He began his rise as an administrator as a member of the Orhei Council of the local zemstvo. In 1902, he was appointed vice-mayor of Chișinău, and in 1903 he became a member of the Chișinău executive body (uprava). He was appointed mayor of Chișinău on 25 April 1903, immediately after the Jewish pogrom that gained the city notoriety throughout the world.¹⁷ After a short break (20 January 1904–11 November 1905), Sinadino was re-elected as mayor for a four-year term. This was after the Russian Revolution of 1905, the events of which also played out in the region on a moderate scale.¹⁸ Sinadino’s political affiliation with the conservative monarchists (he was a member of the Bessarabian Centre Party) opened the door to the State Duma, a duty he honoured, with interruptions, between February 1907 and February 1917.¹⁹ As a member of the Duma, Sinadino initiated a series of legislative acts.²⁰ Between 22 October 1909 and 15 February 1910, he served a third term as mayor of Chișinău.

The last days of the empire found Pantelimon V. Sinadino in his native city. After the creation of the regional diet, the Sfatul Țării, on 21 November 1917, he joined the legislative body on behalf of the national organisation of the Bessarabian Greek community. In the inaugural session of the Sfatul Țării, he greeted the assembly “in the name of the Greek minority,” expressing the hope that it would “install in our native land order, legality and peace, to protect the life, liberty and wealth of all those who will have the highest honour to live under the freed Bessarabia. […] Long live the free autonomous state of Bessarabia!”²¹

In early 1918, at the invitation of the president of the Sfatul Țării, Ion Inculeț, Sinadino agreed to act as an economic expert within a Bessarabian delegation that was supposed to meet with Gen. August von Mackensen,²² but the initiative was cancelled. Sinadino also advised the Directorate of Finances – a ministry of the Moldovan Autonomous Democratic Republic – on the possibility of the republic issuing its own currency. He honoured his mandate as a Sfatul Țării deputy with interruptions; in December 1917 he was excluded from the legislative body due to the precarious condition of his health.²³ According to another version, his exclusion followed after the events described below.

On 24 January 1918, the Sfatul Țării declared the independence of the Moldovan Democratic Republic. This was facilitated by the Romanian troops’ having already entered Bessarabia. The destruction to property and other acts of anarchy in the region by the Russian soldiers passing through on their way home had done little to make the wealthy of Bessarabia feel secure. On 18 March 1918, Sinadino led a delegation of the Union of Bessarabian Large Landowners to King Ferdinand in Iași. The delegation requested the union of Bessarabia with Romania as a solution for saving the region from the Bolsheviks. The request was made a couple of weeks before the Sfatul Țării voted for the union of Bessarabia with Romania. During the summer of 1918, Sinadino could be found leading the Bessarabian Progressive Party. In this function, in an interview for a Romanian regional newspaper, Sinadino expressed “feelings of admiration and gratitude” towards the Romanian Army that had “saved” the region from Bolshevism. He argued that the union was a “general desire and should not be attributed to isolated persons,” or solely to the decision of the Sfatul Țării of 9 April.²⁴ After their return from Iași, the Sfatul Țării deputies had threatened landowners from the counties²⁵ of Bălți, Soroca, Orhei, and Bender with prosecution for the “betrayal of the Moldavian Republic.” A memorandum addressed by the Union of Bessarabian Large Landowners to the Romanian parliament in September 1918 indicates that Sinadino lost his mandate as a deputy after making the trip to Iași and requesting the union of Bessarabia with Romania.²⁶

Between 1924 and 1940, Sinadino was the head of the insurance division and a member of the board of the People’s Bank of Bessarabia. As for his political preferences, in 1933, at the proposal of the Liberal leader Ion Gheorghe Duca, Sinadino became a member of the National Liberal Party (Partidul Național Liberal, PNL) and actively engaged in the electoral campaign for the district of Chișinău, which he represented as a senator in the Romanian Parliament (1933–1937). In 1937, he joined the National Peasants Party (Partidul Național Țărănesc, PNȚ). A year later, when King Carol II banned political parties, all public employees were automatically included in the sole party, the National Renaissance Front (Frontul Renașterii Naționale, FRN).²⁷

The occupation of Bessarabia by the Soviet army in June 1940 proved fatal for Sinadino. On 9 July 1940, he was arrested and charged with “counter-revolutionary activity, directed against the revolutionary working class of Bessarabia and its defender – the Communist Party.”²⁸ The last piece of information about Sinadino indicates that he was put in the Penza prison, where he presumably died.²⁹ His family managed to escape to Bucharest. Such was the dramatic end to Sinadino’s tumultuous life.

This rather brief version of Sinadino’s biographical path indicates the fact that after 1918 he successfully adapted to the new life and continued his career within Greater Romania. At the same time, new archival sources from various countries and in various languages³⁰ reveal hitherto unknown details about the period from 1917–1919, in which the dramatic shifts in Sinadino’s life occurred.

A Landowner Fights for his Property

In July 1940, when Pantelimon V. Sinadino was arrested and questioned by the Soviet secret police (NKVD), he testified that the actions he took in 1918 in support of the union of Bessarabia with Romania were solely motivated by the urgent need to preserve his private property. The situation in Bessarabia and the circumstances which facilitated the landowners’ decision to go to Iași and seek the protection of the Romanian king will be examined more closely in this section.

In the summer of 1917, in Bessarabia, similar to other Russian gubernias, peasants began to take over the landowners’ estates. The anarchic expropriation of the land gained in intensity by the autumn, the regional bodies being unable to control the situation.³¹ After the Romanian troops entered the region, Sinadino initiated the creation of the Union of Bessarabian Large Landowners, intending to represent the landowners’ interests to the Romanian authorities. On February 21, 1918, the Sfatul Țării issued a decree according to which the land was “socialised.”³² Following the advice of the Military Commissioner of Bessarabia, Duiliu Zamfirescu,³³ the large landowners’ representatives went to meet the Romanian King Ferdinand in Iași. The memorandum addressed to the king described the “revolutionary attempts” in the region and requested that it merge with Romania.³⁴ In another memorandum issued several days later, the landowners requested the instalment of the Romanian military administration in Bessarabia, which was gripped by anarchy. The document emphasised the impotence and institutional arbitrariness of the Sfatul Țării.³⁵ Fearing the Sfatul Țării’s promises of radical expropriation of land, which found significant support among the peasants, many of whom were war veterans, the landowners hoped that the change in political status would help avoid the region’s and their own economic ruin. At the same time, while engaging in negotiations with the Romanian authorities for the protection of property, the landowners received assurances from Alexandru Marghiloman, Romanian prime minister and head of the Conservative Party, of future participation in political, economic and social life in the region.³⁶

After April 9, 1918, the Sfatul Țării deputies continued to exercise their duty, contrary to Marghiloman’s statement on the existing plans for its immediate dissolution. The elaboration of the agrarian legislation for Bessarabia by the Sfatul Țării was one of the conditions of the union. In such a situation, the Romanian government looked for ways to reconcile the two sides – the Sfatul Țării and the large landowners – which had contradicting solutions to the agrarian issue. This difficult task was handed over to the government representative in the region, Constantin Stere, who earlier had played a crucial role in persuading the Bessarabian deputies to vote in favour of the union. From March to June 1918, Stere met privately several times with Sinadino, discussing the situation in the region and possible solutions to the social and economic crisis. Stere assured Sinadino that the Romanian government would insist before the Sfatul Țării that the expropriation of land would take place “with redemption and within the limits of necessity.” While emphasising that in Bessarabia, the agrarian reform was “revolutionary, bottom-up, and not evolutionary, from top to bottom, as in Romania,” Stere proposed that the landowners work together with the Romanian government and the Sfatul Țării to “finally give Bessarabia what it has wanted for so long: progress, knowledge, order and statehood.”³⁷

Stere’s proposal that landowners participate in the works of the Agrarian commission of the Sfatul Țării, which elaborated the agrarian draft law for Bessarabia, was first rejected by the large landowners.³⁸ Sinadino then assumed the role of a mediator, inviting Stere to explain the proposal’s advantages before his counterparts. As a result, seven landowners, including Sinadino, took part in two sessions of the commission, albeit without success. According to a memorandum drafted by the Union of Bessarabian Large Landowners, the commission’s reaction to the landowners’ proposals, namely the extension in Bessarabia of the agrarian legislation of the Old Kingdom and the legalisation of free sale of land, was “unfriendly” to say the least: while some claimed that proposals would delay the work of the Agrarian commission, others referred to the 1917 “peasants’ movement,” threatening the landowners with a “new night of St. Bartholomew.”³⁹

During other private meetings between the two, Stere explicitly told Sinadino that the Romanian government was interested in solving the “agrarian question” in the region “primarily in terms of solving the national question here,” that is, when it came to both expropriation and endowment, it was the Romanians who had priority. For Bessarabia to become “definitively Romanian,” there were plans to re-populate the land with the Romanians in areas where they were in the minority. For that purpose, around 600,000 desiatines were to be expropriated; Stere claimed:

The land will be taken from the landowners who are not Moldovans or, more precisely, who do not like the idea of the union of Bessarabia with Romania. For example, all land must be taken in exchange for retribution from Count Sviatopolk Mirskii, Krupenskii, Ermolinskii and others, but others whom we need will keep their lands. We need sympathisers, we need to keep the large landowners who will be later entrusted with the administration of this land.⁴⁰

According to Stere, those large landowners who merged with Romanians would receive the state’s support, while the others, in contrast, would have to “liquidate their corners and leave.”⁴¹

The differentiated attitude towards the landowners based on their expression of loyalty to the Romanian state did not come as a surprise for Sinadino. One of the disloyal landowners was Alexander N. Krupenskii, who left Bessarabia for Odessa in April 1918, but the status of his estates remained unclarified.⁴² In his letters to Krupenskii, written between September 1918 and January 1920,⁴³ Sinadino expressed his profound disappointment with the fact that the Romanian government had left the agrarian reform to the regional diet, which opted for the radical expropriation of land.⁴⁴ These letters also reveal that the passive position of the Romanians towards the agrarian issue was the essential motive for the landowners’ critical attitude towards the union of Bessarabia with Romania. Moreover, many would prefer the region’s return to Russia’s protection. At the beginning of 1919, when the regional autonomy of Bessarabia inside Romania was cancelled, Sinadino wrote to Krupenskii, who was in Paris, that “the best thing would be for the Great Powers to consider Bessarabia what it was before, that is, Russian, for the decisions of self-proclaimed Bolshevik institutions [Sfatul Țării] cannot be taken seriously.”⁴⁵

A Mediator between the Chișinău Mayoralty and the Romanian Government

After Bessarabia merged with Romania, the process of Romanianisation began. Regional officials and local employees expressed dissatisfaction with the intention of the new authorities to eliminate the Russian language from the administration and educational and cultural institutions. Teachers and lawyers refused to take the oath to the king to enter Romanian public service. There was little prospect of the government’s cooperation with the former local elite. During one of the meetings with Pantelimon V. Sinadino, the governmental representative Constantin Stere complained that the effort of the Romanian government was met by the former elite representatives with reluctance. Sinadino himself turned down the position of minister of finance. Due to the “plot” concocted by the locals, claimed Stere, the government was left with no option but to take a radical step: “To establish effective governance in the country, the public officials from the [Old] Kingdom will be invited.”⁴⁶

The new government attempted to persuade the local public employees to comply with the legal and administrative changes. One such attempt was to change the social and political composition of the Chișinău executive council (uprava). Led by mayor Alexander K. Schmidt, the son of a former Chisinau mayor of German origin, Karol Schmidt, the uprava did not want to accept the region’s new political status. Elected in the autumn of 1917 under the pressure of local revolutionary organisations, the uprava rejected the cooperation proposals coming from the Sfatul Țării and the regional Board of General Directors (ministers).⁴⁷ At Stere’ insistence, Sinadino took on the role of a mediator between the uprava and the government, taking into account the new political circumstances. On 29 April 1918, he insisted before the city executive on changing the composition of the uprava to preserve regional autonomy and to avoid discrediting the idea of local administration. Sinadino’s effort remained in vain: “You can imagine what impression my words have made,” he later shared told Stere.⁴⁸ On September 18, 1918, King Ferdinand issued the decree on the dissolution of Chișinău’s legislative and executive councils.⁴⁹

For the “Holy and Just Cause:” In Support of the Return to Bessarabia under Russia’s Protection

Sinadino and other representatives of Bessarabia’s former elite hoped that under the new regime, they would regain economic and social privileges and participate in the administration of the region’s economic and social affairs. The abolishment of Bessarabia’s autonomous status on 12 December 1918, was the “last stroke.” Therefore, when the Peace Conference was launched in the French capital, he urged Alexander N. Krupenskii to go there, “where a new world map is redesigned,” and represent Bessarabia’s interests to the victorious Allied Powers.⁵⁰

In the spring of 1918, a group of Bessarabian émigrés led by Alexander N. Krupenskii had founded the Committee for the Liberation of Bessarabia in Odessa. The committee contacted the Russian political émigrés in Paris, who advised them to send a “Bessarabian delegation” to the peace conference.⁵¹ On 10 April 1919, a “Bessarabian delegation” was created in Odessa, to obtain from the international conference the “liberation” of Bessarabia from Romania and a free expression of the “will” of the Bessarabian inhabitants through a plebiscite.⁵² Another aim of the “delegation” was to counterbalance the activity of the Romanian delegation at the conference, which argued for the recognition of Bessarabia as a Romanian territory. The activity of the “delegation” was part of the “Russian cause” (Russkoe delo) – the campaign led by the Russian political émigrés and ambassadors, mandated by the Kolchak government to negotiate with the Allied Powers anti-Bolshevik military support and possible restoration of Russia’s pre-war western borders. Members of the “Bessarabian delegation”, besides Alexander N. Krupenskii, who acted as its president, were the former mayor of Chișinău, Alexander K. Schmidt, the former director of imperial theatres in St. Petersburg, Alexander D. Krupenskii, a relative of A.N. Krupenkii, and a former Sfatul Țării deputy, Vladimir V. Tsyganko.⁵³ Sinadino’s name also figured among the potential “delegates” on behalf of Bessarabia; others – from left-wing organisations and the Jewish minority – were expected to join. According to Sinadino’s notes, he never left for Paris and never intended to do so. In his letters to Krupenskii, Sinadino complained about his poor physical state, emphasising that his presence in Chișinău was much more helpful than his eventual stay in the French capital. Sinadino considered that having “a set of mandates and working together, being aware that you act for a unique holy and just cause!” was crucial for the success of the latter.⁵⁴

In contrast to Alexander N. Krupenskii, Sinadino, remained anonymous outside the country, although he was well-known in Bessarabia, proving very useful inside the region as Krupenskii’s main informant on the Bessarabian affairs. Sinadino wrote detailed letters, sometimes five times a day⁵⁵ – informing Krupenskii in Paris about the political, economic and social state of affairs inside the region. Due to strict censorship, to send a letter to Paris, Sinadino travelled to Bucharest in search of opportunities to send letters or a parcel with documents which contained “everything that can be of interest to the larger public on the Bessarabian question,” so that one would have “a clear picture of our life, our rights and our situation!”⁵⁶ Krupenskii used the detailed information to draft memoranda and protests, as well as to publish newspaper articles in various newspapers in which he criticized the Romanian regime and expressed the “will” of the inhabitants of Bessarabia to merge with Russia.

In his letters, Sinadino wrote that the Bessarabians followed the political debate in Romania; nevertheless, “this fight leaves everyone with indifference, for these parties are disgusting to us, but it’s still good that these gentlemen are fighting and in [illegible word] polemic they say little truth about each other!”⁵⁷ He criticised Romanian propaganda for its excessive emphasis on saving the region from the Bolsheviks, but at the same time, he described the dangerous and destructive facets of Bolshevism. The landowner acknowledged that with the region’s union with Romania, the Bolshevik danger was eliminated. At the same time, he characterized the agrarian politics of the Sfatul Țării as “revolutionary” and “leftist.” For instance, the so-called “agrarian commissions” (comisiile celor trei – Ro.), endowed by Sfatul Țării with first expropriation activities, were qualified as a “troika of former Bolsheviks – villagers of reprehensible repute, prisoners of war and other bastards.”⁵⁸ The occupation of Odessa by the Bolsheviks in April 1919 also gave severe cause for concern.⁵⁹

Sinadino also criticised the administrative changes the Romanians initiated inside Bessarabia. He claimed that the dissolution of the gubernia’s zemstvo and the Chișinău executive council were “pushed through” by the Romanians without reaching a compromise with the locals; Sinadino himself attempted to mediate between the Chisinau city council and the Romanian government, but to no avail. He wrote that the Romanians ignored regional peculiarities familiar only to the former elite, and that the cooperation and support of the latter were not sought.

In his letters, Sinadino praised those Bessarabians who, one way or another, expressed criticism of the Romanian regime. He reported that a group numbering thirteen former Sfatul Țării deputies doubted the rightfulness of the union and expressed their readiness to withdraw their signatures from the declaration of 9 April.⁶⁰ The refusal of certain groups of teachers and lawyers to take the oath to the king was qualified as resistance to the “temptation” to serve the new regime, despite the daily struggle with the lack of resources; nevertheless, he admitted that the resistance was not for free, and asked the Bessarabian émigrés for money to support the former public employees:

It is getting harder, and the ranks are beginning to thin out! We need a living word, we need moral support, to keep us alive and to support us, after all, temptations are incredible, and heroes are few! The Romanians [illegible word] caught, all their henchmen are bought with money, but our faithful people are hungry and are selling the last pieces of furniture and their white linen! If possible, send money for the former employees, thousands of them are starving. And yet we stand, we still live.⁶¹

The documents and testimonies he collected in this regard were valued in Paris, being used by Bessarabian “delegates” as proof of the “abusive instalment” of the Romanian regime contrary to the “people’s will.”

Sinadino repeatedly expressed worries about the situation on the anti-Bolshevik front and the way it could influence the situation inside the region, as well as about the solving of the Bessarabian “question” in Paris. Despite the fact that the news of such events as the advancement of the Volunteer Army in Southern Ukraine or the advancement of the Romanian Army towards Budapest always reached Bessarabia late, these were commented on by Sinadino as developments that required a swift adjustment of agenda by the Bessarabian “delegation” in Paris. Sinadino formulated concrete suggestions on the main directions of activity of the “Bessarabian delegation” before it was even officially set up. For instance, in a letter to Krupenskii of 12 January 1919, Sinadino suggested that the “delegation” request from the peace conference that an international commission be sent to Bessarabia, “to whom everything will be said if immunity is guaranteed; therefore, the presence of the representatives of France, America, England – of their consuls – is necessary.”⁶² Another suggestion was to invite the Greek troops to establish order in the region with the approval of the Allied Powers: “If the Romanians have to leave here, we would not be upset, so we need to regulate this and order the Greek troops to be sent to Chișinău.”⁶³

Sinadino disagreed categorically with the abolishment of Bessarabia’s autonomy inside Romania, sealed on 9 April, considering that the Sfatul Țării had reneged six months later under pressured circumstances.⁶⁴ Since the conference did not give its verdict about the fate of Bessarabia, the Romanian parliamentary elections and the implementation of the agrarian reform were to be stopped, he wrote.⁶⁵ He supported the idea, fiercely advocated by the “Bessarabian delegation” in Paris and other European capitals, that only a plebiscite could clarify the region’s status, and that the local inhabitants would express their will to leave Romania and return to Russia. Since the Great Powers expected that a democratic regime would be installed in the Russian Federative Republic, the “delegation” preferred to avoid indicating what kind of regime was preferred in Russia.

Other topics of correspondence were the activity of the Romanian delegation in Paris, the Great Powers’ stance on various territorial questions, questions such as where to find the money for propaganda, and how to intensify anti-Romanian propaganda at home. Another topic of discussion was the situation inside Ukraine: “The riots in Ukraine have greatly cheered up the Romanians here and have a depressing effect on us; when these stupid people will realize that they are pushing Russia into the abyss!”⁶⁶

Sinadino described the economic disaster in the region in detail, complaining that the Romanians were doing little to stop the deterioration of infrastructure, regulate inflation, and control the rising prices for grain and everyday products. The lack of these and the high prices were a new dramatic experience; comparing the situation with the enjoyable everyday life in the Russian Empire added even more drama. Another aspect that deeply concerned Sinadino was the institution of censorship in the region:

Now, in fact, we have a total terror, everything is closed and all nailed down [underl. in text]; newspapers are silent, because of the censorship that never existed before – even the speeches of the highest French authorities, like that of Clemenceau on Russia, are banned, the newspapers publish only what is permitted, or what and how they have been ordered to write; there were cases of the rulers ordering placing an article and information about their activities, then these articles and newspapers are placed where necessary, as a confirmation of their useful care. Nobody can say anything directly because the army of agents and spies will transmit further; they spare no expense, buying as much as they can, and whom they can. No public meetings, or even plays or charitable events, are allowed; today, the Assembly of the Nobility is closed – our club and all other clubs because they consider them the source of all the false rumours about Romania.⁶⁷

Those who initially saw the union as only a rational decision then became unhappy with the political, social and economic changes that did not correspond to the promises made by the Romanian government to landowners. On the other hand, the perspectives imagined by the former elite did not coincide with the reality that the Romanian state was able to construct. They hoped that one day life would return to “normality.” From Sinadino’s reflections, one can conclude that it was precisely Krupenskii’s letters from Paris⁶⁸ with details on the “Bessarabian cause” that lit the flame of hope for Sinadino and others who believed that the restoration of “Greater Russia” was possible. Nevertheless, “normality” belonged to the future, but one needed to live in the present. The entrepreneurial attempts of Sinadino during the transition shows that he was in search of ways to adapt to the new life and benefit from new economic conditions.

An Entrepreneur: Founding a Sugar Factory Society in Northern Bessarabia

Sinadino’s critical positioning towards the Romanian regime did not impede him from planning to found a business enterprise inside Bessarabia. Among his business partners were none other than Alexander N. Krupenskii and his uncle, Pavel N. Krupenskii. On 29 August 1918, Sinadino wrote to Alexander N. Krupenskii, who was then in Odessa, proposing that they set up their joint company, the Sugar Factory Society (Obschestvo Sakharnogo Zavoda). That was precisely the reason why Krupenskii left with Sinadino a consistent sum of money, which the latter administered in the following manner: of a total of 160,000 lei exchanged from roubles, 5,000 lei were deposited in the account of the society on behalf of A. N. Krupenskii. Apparently, the latter agreed to initially contribute to the statutory capital of the society with 50,000 lei.⁶⁹

Sinadino planned to request from the Romanian authorities the approval of the Sugar Factory Society with a statutory capital of 10 million lei. The publication of the company’s statute by the District Court in Romania needed to be speeded up. He wrote to Krupenskii that to start the business, a sum of around 15–16 million lei was necessary. By the end of August, the joint capital was “about three million lei,” which made securing the opening of the first plant near Târnova train station in northern Bessarabia a difficult one. “There are frantic rates, this is a beet region,” wrote Sinadino.⁷⁰ Two more plants outside Bessarabia were also planned. Meanwhile, he considered the state of affairs inside Bessarabia being unfavourable to the development of a business, since there was

no order, there is no goal and no system of control, and all streets are one-sided: there is need for [road] construction in this Romanian region. I just cannot understand what has actually been achieved by this system? It is very difficult to get used to this situation! Whether all this will come to an end – I do not know! In fact, I do not even want to know, since all of this is just extremely annoying and disgusting.⁷¹

In the spring of 1918, after the region merged with Romania, the planning of the joint enterprise continued. In the early January of 1919, the sum of 2,000 lei was paid into the account of the future sugar factory by Alexander D. Krupenskii on behalf of A. N. Krupenskii.⁷² By the time of Krupenskii’s modest investment, 30 percent of the sum (six million lei) had been deposited into the account of the National Bank, which was supposed to lend another six million lei. Sinadino’s letters to Krupenskii were full of worries about due rates; he also enquired about Krupenskii’s next payment.⁷³ In February 1919, Alexander N. Krupenskii decided to sell his share and leave the business.⁷⁴ The fate of the sugar enterprise remains unknown.

A Post-imperial Subject in Search of (New) Self-identification

According to Rogers Brubaker and Frederick Cooper, “self- and other-identification are fundamentally situational and contextual.”⁷⁵ Sinadino’s letters to Krupenskii prove this statement by showing the author’s embracing a relational mode of identification in which kinship, friendship and other forms of relationships played an important role. Sinadino shared his profound and moving solidarity with those who after the collapse of the Russian Empire were frustrated and disappointed with the deprivation of their prosperous life and the loss of a leading social and economic role in the region:

Costs are hyperbolic; prices are rising every week, and you cannot see the end of this misfortune! We become poorer every day, and it is a terrible feeling when you think that not so long ago we were people with a certain income.⁷⁶

Despite the daily difficulties and restraints and his poor health, Sinadino rather lamented the situation faced by those formerly employed in Russian public service than his own. “Everything has been redesigned as in Romania, which, however, only exists on paper.” The postal service was still dysfunctional, and while the courts were in place, “nobody undertook legal action since justice could not be expected.”⁷⁷

To motivate former public officials to reject job offers from the Romanian state, Krupenskii was asked to mediate some funds from Admiral Kolchak as a temporary solution for those in need.

Sinadino blamed the new regional elite who brought the revolution to the Russian periphery and who later agreed to collaborate with the Romanians for destroying the region and making it alien. Although Sinadino remained in the region, unlike Krupenskii, who emigrated, it was another Bessarabia he identified with – the region in which he was born and lived before the Russian Revolution of 1917. Sinadino’s letters point out his loss of the place of his family roots, and the loss of Bessarabia as part of “Greater Russia.”

During the spring of 1918, the representatives of the former elite hoped to gain the full support of the Romanian authorities for the preservation of their estates and to play a role in the administrative life of the region. The primary sources indicate the readiness of the “old” elite to transfer their loyalty to the Romanian king. During the summer and autumn of 1918, when the disappointment from the implemented agrarian reforms grew, their readiness, although fragile, was replaced by indignation, repulsion, and even hatred concerning the Romanian authorities. The once acclaimed “liberation” from the Bolsheviks was forgotten; every measure of the Romanians in the region was criticised, and they were blamed for the disastrous economic and social situation. In such a confused state of mind, references to the past were often made and a sense of belonging to the Russian space was awakened.

For Sinadino, who was of Greek origin, it was the Russian imperial identity he related to. Longing for Russia and “Russianness” was synonymous with preserving the connection with the lost Motherland and resisting the Romanian regime and Romanianisation:

You cannot imagine how hard life is here for these little but honest Russian people who have remained faithful to their homeland but are deprived of all means of livelihood and even of shelter! When will the torments of these people end?! […] Repressions multiply and grow, all that is Russian is godlessly persecuted and eradicated, so that nothing resembles this hateful word “Russia,” of which they are all afraid, like of a fire.⁷⁸

He described how under the new regime “everything that was Russian, even a hint towards what is Russian, is punished cruelly and shamelessly,” and those who identified with Russia suffered. He thus called for “immediate [underl. in text] measures to protect “Russian people by name and in the soul” from the arbitrariness of the Romanian authorities. “In such a situation, it is simply incomprehensible how the Russian spirit still survives and how people do not give up, and still believe in the coming of justice and law.”⁷⁹

Pantelimon V. Sinadino’s multiple facets of self-identification were revealed in different settings and under different circumstances. In a time of great distress, one needed to be flexible, adjust quickly to various political settings, and negotiate new roles. When the agrarian issue was at stake, Sinadino identified as a “landowner.” When it came to discussing the situation of minorities within Greater Romania, he associated himself with the many “Russians” who felt marginalised under the new regime. His pleas to stop economic disaster were formulated on behalf of the “wealthy.” Sinadino’s situational identification as being of Greek origin was emphasised when he asked the Greek diplomatic representative in Iaşi to intervene with the Romanian government to secure the status of estates belonging to St. Mount Athos and other Greek monasteries and the private estates belonging to the Greek landowners.⁸⁰

Against the Bessarabian “Workers”?!: the 1940 Soviet Police Interrogation

Sinadino’s case proves a rare opportunity to cross-check the information on his political alignment and activity after World War I with his NKVD interrogation file of August 1940.⁸¹ During interrogation, he admitted that

as an active member of the Sfatul Țării on behalf of the Greek minority, as president of the Union of Large Landowners, I have indeed directed my activity towards the fight against the revolutionaries, the Bolsheviks, and towards escape from the revolution. With this aim, I insisted on the separation of Bessarabia from Soviet Russia and on its forceful union with Romania, I therefore plead guilty before the workers of Bessarabia and Soviet power.⁸²

At the same time, he stated that the regional diet, the Sfatul Țării, composed of former deserters from the Russian army on the Romanian front,⁸³ was an “adventurous” and “anarchist” body. The Sfatul Țării was to be considered solely responsible for the “forceful union,” which was contrary to the “people’s will.” The landowners’ “considerable role” in the process was dictated by the specific circumstances instead: in Romania “it was accepted to recognise that we were also not against.”⁸⁴

Sinadino stated that from 1917 to 1918 he had not joined any political party or movement, but nevertheless, as a landowner, he exposed his political opinion in the March 1918 address to the king, and thus “contributed to the shameful transfer of Bessarabia into the hands of the Romanian occupiers.”⁸⁵ In the landowners’ memoranda addressed to the king and the prime minister, the Statul Țării was indeed described as “revolutionary,”⁸⁶ with the aim of persuading the Romanian authorities to “suppress” the Bolsheviks’ attempt to seize power in Bessarabia and push for the union of the region with Romania. In such a way, the redistribution of land among the peasants, launched by the Statul Țării, was to be stopped. Sinadino admitted that, at a later stage, he became a member of the National Liberal Party, which supported the position of the “bourgeoisie” and would guarantee the status of the “prosperous class.” It was obvious for Sinadino, but not for the Soviet regime, that “living in a bourgeois state, being a representative of the bourgeoisie, [he] had to fight against any attempt to change the existing regime.”⁸⁷

Sinadino was accused of “counter-revolutionary activity” against the Bessarabian “workers” and the Communist Party. He did not deny the accusations but pleaded guilty instead. He had probably sensed that his fate had already been decided, the NKVD interrogation being a formality. According to the Moldovan historian Iurie Colesnic, it was Sinadino’s naivety that moved him to give sincere answers to formal questions. The annihilation of the Romanian politicians, public employees, and cultural activists involved in the “national construction” of interwar Romania and the establishment of the “bourgeois-inheriting Romanian regime” in Bessarabia and Northern Bukovina occurred immediately after the two regions were occupied by the Red Army in June 1940. The NKVD identified the presence in Bessarabia of

a significant number of anti-Soviet elements among the landowners, merchants, policemen, gendarmes, white guards, mayors, and refugees from the USSR, and other foreign social elements that were carrying out counter-revolutionary activity in collaboration with the Romanian secret service.⁸⁸

After their arrests, the “anti-Soviet elements” were subjected to interrogation, conducted by the State Political Directorate (GPU),⁸⁹ and then “sent to places where nothing is known of their fate.”⁹⁰ Sinadino was one of many former members of the “bourgeoisie,” landowners and political leaders who fell victim to the Soviet machinery of repression.

Conclusions

The biography of the Bessarabian Pantelimon V. Sinadino falls into the category of individual stories, which are extremely important for challenging the official accounts of national (in this case Romanian and Moldovan) histories. Sinadino was a representative of the Bessarabian imperial elite, which experienced radical social change within the region during World War I and the Russian Revolution of 1917. In his post-imperial biography, one encounters both continuity and change, comprised of both destructive and formative elements. In contrast with Romanian historiography, which has rather ignored the existence of the Russian “old” elite in the newly-acquired Bessarabia, and Moldovan historiography, which has concentrated on the representatives of the new regional elite who contributed to the union of Bessarabia with Romania (făuritorii Marii Uniri – Ro.), the findings of the present study point to an elite which did not “disappear” but continued to live and act while having ambiguous feelings of distress, fear, and insecurity and was in search of new benchmarks in life.

The dissolution of the Russian Empire meant the separation of Bessarabia from a well-established imperial political and geographical frame that offered security and protection, detachment from a power centre and the dismantling of institutional structures. The former elite was dispossessed, lost its political, administrative and social status, and was detached from the imperial customs. Living under major threat to their person and family in the summer and autumn of 1917 placed such individuals under extreme pressure. Almost overnight, they were disempowered by the new revolutionary elite. Under unique, often unpredictable circumstances, the former elite underwent psychological transformations characterised by feelings of uncertainty, vulnerability, fear, and loss. They mourned the loss of the empire while simultaneously searching for solutions for guaranteeing individual and group security. Romania was not yet present on the Bessarabians’ mental map; nevertheless, due to growing Bolshevik danger, they had to acknowledge that in these complex circumstances, it was only with the support of neighbouring Romania that the anarchy inside Bessarabia could be stopped.

Between a vanishing past and a very uncertain future, Sinadino self-identified in multiple ways. He was, simultaneously, an “imperial subject,” a “landowner,” “wealthy,” an “entrepreneur,” and a “politician,” and then a Greek. During the transition from the empire to the nation-state, ethnic origin did not seem very important; other types of self-identification facilitated the adaptation to the new social and political reality. Previously acquired social capital was used to build further contacts and relations.

Due to his political vision that transcended the regional boundaries and the intense contact which extended to Rome, Paris and other European cities, Sinadino’s life path bore the characteristics of transnational life. In his correspondence to Krupenskii, it is nearly “impossible to segregate the public from the intimate, the economic from the cultural or the political from the personal.”⁹¹ His letters contained an abundance of diverse topics, from strategies for persuading policy-makers in Paris to arguments on the Russian character of Bessarabia, from the prices at the local market to a business plan to open a sugar factory, from observations on the depressed mood of the Bessarabians who served the Russian Empire to reflections on what Clemenceau and Wilson were up to in Paris. Sinadino’s reflections, profound or sporadic, alternated with strategic thoughts, occasionally rational and calculated or, at times, idealistic, and grand business plans, which remained mostly on paper, show the entire complexity of the transition, with its ambiguity, contradictions, and questioning.

“I am very sorry that I have such terrible handwriting and that it is deteriorating further. I ask you to store my manuscripts, as all this will ever be useful for the history of Bessarabia,” Pantelimon V. Sinadino wrote to Alexander N. Krupenskii on 9 October 1918. Sinadino considered that his account could enrich future generations’ understanding of the complex times in which he was living. Indeed, his letters and notes present a unique perspective of an active participant in transition, as well as revealing the transformative power of the dramatic events on his personality, beliefs, and dreams.

Svetlana Suveica is a historian of Eastern and Southeastern Europe who lectures at the University of Regensburg (venia legendi) and an associate researcher at the Leibniz-Institute for East and Southeast European Studies (IOS) in Regensburg. She graduated from the Moldova State University in Chisinau, obtained her doctorate from the “A.I. Cuza” University in Iași, Romania, and habilitated at the University of Regensburg. She has extensively published on World War I and the post-war transition, the interwar state-building in Eastern Europe, the World War II and the Holocaust and the post-Soviet social and political transformations with the focus on Bessarabia, Transnistria, and Moldova. Her latest monograph is entitled: Post-imperial Encounters. Transnational Designs of Bessarabia in Paris and Elsewhere, 1917–1922 (De Gruyter 2022).

Tim Buchen, Malte Rolf (eds.): Eliten im Vielvölkerreich. Imperiale Biographien in Russland und Österreich-Ungarn (1850–1918). Berlin, Boston 2015; Stephen M. Norris, Willard Sunderland (eds.): Russia’s People of Empire. Life Stories from Eurasia, 1500 to the Present. Bloomington 2012. On biographical approach as revealing experiences of mobility in imperial and colonial settings see also Achim von Oppen, Silke Strickrodt: Introduction. Biographies Between Spheres of Empire. In: The Journal of Imperial and Commonwealth History 44 (2016), pp. 717–729. ︎
See Martin Aust, Benjamin Schenk (eds.): Imperial Subjects. Autobiographische Praxis in den Vielvölkerreichen der Romanovs, Habsburger und Osmanen im 19. und frühen 20. Jahrhundert. Cologne 2015. ︎
Ian W. Campbell: Writing Imperial Lives. Biography, Autobiography, and Microhistory. In: Kritika: Explorations in Russian and Eurasian History 18 (2017) 1, pp. 151–165. ︎
See Willard Sunderland: The Baron’s Cloak. A History of the Russian Empire in War and Revolution. Ithaca (NY) 2014; Barbara Henning: Narratives of the History of the Ottoman-Kurdish Bedirhani Family in Imperial and Post-Imperial Contexts. Continuities and Changes. Bamberg 2018. ︎
On the worsening situation in Chișinău city due to the chaotic return of Russian soldiers through Bessarabia, see, Svetlana Suveica, Virgil Pîslariuc, Gorod Kishinev: Ot zapadnoi okrainy Rossiiskoi imperii k vostochnoi okraine Velikoi Rumynii [Chișinău: From the Western Borders of the Russian Empire to the Eastern Borders of Greater Romania]. In: Alexei Miller, Dmitrii Chernyi (eds.): Goroda imperii v gody Velikoi Voiny i revoliutsii. Sbornik statei [Cities of the Empire during the Great War and the Revolution. Collection of Studies]. Saint Petersburg 2017, pp. 370/409. ︎
Dates in Old Style (O.S.) are indicated accordingly, otherwise, New Style. ︎
See Claudiu Topor, “Auf nach Rumänien!” Beligeranța germano-română 1916–1918 [“Auf nach Rumänien!” German-Romanian Belligerency 1916–1918]. Iași 2020. ︎
Sfatul Țării continued to act as a regional legislative diet in charge of solving the “agrarian question”, while the local “zemstvo” and city councils remained as local administrative bodies. Two representatives of the region entered the Romanian government, inhabitants elected their deputies to the Romanian parliament on the basis of a direct, equal, secret and universal ballot proportionate to the population, and civil liberties and minority rights were guaranteed. ︎
See, at large, Ion Țurcanu: Unirea Basarabiei cu România 1918. Preludii, premise, realizări [The Union of Bessarabia with Romania 1918. Preludes, Premises, Achievements]. Chișinău 1998, pp. 165–187. ︎
Lois Banner: Biography as History. In: American Historical Review 114 (2009) 3, pp. 580–581. ︎
On liminality as a concept, see Arnold van Gennep: The Rise of Passage. Chicago, London 1960; Victor W. Turner: The Ritual Process. Structure and Anti-Structure. Harmondworth 1969; Agnes Horvath, Bjorn Thomassen, Harald Wydra (eds.): Breaking Boundaries. Varieties of Liminality. New York 2015; Arpad Szacolczai: Liminality and Experience. Structuring Transitory Situations and Transformative Events. In: International Political Anthropology 2 (2009) 1, pp. 141–172. ︎
The Kishinevskii Kommercheskii Bank [Chișinău Comercial Bank] and the Bessarabskii Tavricheskii Zemelinyi Bank [Bessarabian Tavricheskii Zemelinyi Bank] in Chișinău, the Black Sea-Danube Shipping Company and the wine production and trading company Brati’a I. i V. Sinadino i Ko in Odessa. On commercial activity of the Sinadino family in the 19^th century, see Valentin Tomuleț, Victoria Bivol: Reprezentanți ai elitei burgheze din Basarabia. Negustorul grec Pantelei Sinadino (anii ’30–’50 ai sec. al XIX-lea) [Representatives of the Bourgeois Elite in Bessarabia. The Greek Merchant Pantelei Sinadino (1830s–1850s)]. In: Tyragetia 7 (2013) 2, pp. 157–167. ︎
Together with his brother Ivan, Victor built the Greek Church of St. Pantelimon in Chișinău. See Vladimir Tarnakin, Tatiana Solovieva: Bessarabskie istorii [The Bessarabian Stories]. Chișinău 2011, pp. 26–30. ︎
Svidetel’stvo, g. Tiflis, 13.10.1898, Agenția Națională a Arhivelor – Direcția Generală a Arhivei Naționale a Republicii Moldova [National Archive Agency – General Directorate of the National Archives of the Republic of Moldova], hereafter ANA–DGAN), fonds 88, inv. 2, d. 215, p. 5. ︎
1 desiatina (Ru.) = 1,097 hectares. The land was located as follows: 316.12 desiatines in the village of Izbiște, 2,184 in Mihalașa, 130 in Susleni, 550 in Oniţcani in Orhei county, and 355,0786 deseatines in Hârjești, Chișinău county. See: Formuliarnyi spisok o sluzhbe Kishinevskogo Golovy, Kolezhskogo assessora Panteleimona Viktorovicha Sinadino [Record of service of the Mayor of Chișinău, counselor Panteleimon Victor Sinadino]. ANA-DGAN, fond 9 Bessarabskogo gubernskogo po zhemskim i gorodskim delam prisutstviia [Bessarabian city and town prosecutor’s office], inv. 2, d. 626. ︎
P. Sinadino: Creditul în Basarabia [The Credit System in Bessarabia]. Chişinău 1929; P. Sinadino: Ce este necesar pentru însănătoșirea vieții economice în Basarabia [What Is Needed to Improve Economic Life in Bessarabia]. Chișinău 1930. Sinadino’s earlier publications were dedicated to city of Chișinău: P. Sinadino: Naş Kişinev [Our Chișinău] (1904–1906); P. Sinadino: Vospominaniia [Memoirs] (1911). A short bibliographical note of Sinadino’s publications can be found in: Colesnic: Generația unirii, p. 293. ︎
See: Steven J. Zipperstein: Pogrom. Kishinev and the Tilt of History. New York, London 2018. ︎
On the political situation in the region around the 1905 revolution, see: Andrei Kusko, Viktor Taki (pri uchastii Olega Groma): Bessarabiia v sostave Rossiiskoi imperii [Bessarabia in the Russian Empire] (1812–1917). Moscow 2012, pp. 283–285; Rossiiskoe dvorianstvo v revoliutsii 1905 goda. “Besedy” gubernskikh predvoditelei [Russian nobility and the Revolution of 1905. „Talks“ of gubernatorial leaders], Sost. I. V. Lukianov, SpB 2017 (passim). ︎
See: A. B. Nikolaev: Sinadino Panteleimon Viktorovich. In: Gossudarstvennaia Duma Rossiiskoi Imperii [The State Duma of the Russian Empire]. 1906–1917. Entsiklopediia v 2-kh tomakh [Encyclopaedia in two volumes]. Moscow 2008. ︎
For example, Sinadino was among the initiators of the 1910 bill “On the improvement of public sanitation in Russia” (Gosudarsvennaia duma [The State Duma]. Sozyv 3-i. i3-ia. Prilozheniia k stenograficheskim otchetam, Sankt-Peterburg 1910, tom 1, no. 17, pp. 143–145) and the 1912 bill “On the designation of towns as special zemstvo units,” which aimed to ease the towns’ taxes and facilitate commercial activities (Gosudarsvennaia duma. Sozyv 4ij. Sessiia 1-ia. Prilozheniia k stenograficheskim otchetam, St. Petersburg 1913, tom 1, no. 22, p. 55). ︎
Here, and elsewhere in the text, translated by the author. Protokol no. 1 zasedaniia Bessarabskogo Kraevogo Organa – Sfatul Țării, 21 noiabria 1917 g. [Countrz Council, 21^st November 1917]. In: Ion Țurcanu (ed.): Sfatul Țării. Documente [Country Council. Documents], vol. 1, p. 109. ︎
General August von Mackensen was the military governor of the part of Romania (mostly Wallachia) occupied by the Central Powers in December 1916. ︎
This detail was revealed by P. V. Sinadino after his arrest and his subsequent interrogation by the Soviet Secret Police on August 9^th 1940. Arhiva Consiliului de Securitate a Republicii Moldova [Archive of the Security Council of the Republic of Moldova] (hereafter ASRM), d. 28653, Protokol doprosa obviniaemogo Sinadino Panteleimona Viktorovicha [Protocol of the prosecution of the accused Sinadino Panteleimon Viktorovich], 9.8.1940, pp. 113–114. Copies of the dossier were kindly offered by Dr. Igor Cașu. Excerpts from the interrogations were also published in: Iurie Colesnic: Basarabia necunoscută [Unknown Bessarabia]. Chișinău 2007, pp. 20–45. ︎
Based on an interview given by Sinadino to the newspaper Basarabia, Piatra Neamț, 29.6.1919. In: Iurie Colesnic, Generația Unirii [The Union’s Generation]. Chișinău, pp. 292–293. ︎
After the union, the Russian “uezd” became the Romanian „județ”. ︎
Rozdano chlenam Rumynskogo parlamenta v Kishineve 8–9 sentiabria 1918 goda ot imeni Soiuza Zemelʹnykh Sobstvennikov [Given to the members of the Romanian parliament in Chișinău on 8–9 September 1918 in the name of Soiuza Zemelʹnykh Sobstvennikov]. Hoover Institution Archives (hereafter HIA), Mikhail N. Girs papers, box 39, folder 39.8 Bessarabia, Conditions and Events, 1917–1918. ︎
ASRM, d. 28653, Protokol doprosa obviniaemogo Sinadino Panteleimona Viktorovicha [Protocol of the prosecution of the accused Sinadino Panteleimon Viktorovich], 9 August 1940, pp. 127–127v, pp. 129–130. ︎
Ibid., 12 August 1940, p. 133. ︎
Iurie Colesnic’s inquiry at the Penza prison did not produce any results. ︎
In this article, primary sources in the US, Moldovan, Russian and Romanian archives are consulted. ︎
After rejecting the help of the newly created Moldovan cohorts, who were also involved in anarchy, the landowners turned to the cavalry militia for help, but without success. HIA, Vasilii A. Maklakov Papers, Box 19 Subject file, Folder 19.1 Bessarabia Military telegram, February 4, 1918. Obshchestvo Bessarabtsev [Bessarabia District]. ︎
Instrucția agrară către comitetele pământești [Agrarian instruction to land committees], ANA-DGAN, fond 1417, inv. 1, d. 6, p. 1–2. ︎
Duiliu Zamfirescu: În Basarabia [In Bassarabia], ed. by Ioan Adam. București 2012, pp. 63–64; here, a short biography of Sinadino, pp. 93–94. ︎
Other members of the delegation were: N. Botezatul, Socrate Cavaliotti, Victor Scherer, Gheorghe Gonata and Alexandru Sinadino. See Memoriul cu cererea pentru unirea Uniunii proprietarilor agricoli din Basarabia. In: Ştefan Ciobanu, Unirea Basarabiei. Studiu şi documente cu privire la mişcarea naţională din Basarabia în anii 1917–1918 [Bessarabia’s Union. A Study with Documents on the National Movement in Bessarabia in the Years 1917–1918]. Chişinău 1993, pp. 253–254. ︎
Din memoriul asupra stării în Basarabia, înaintat guvernului român de către Uniunea marilor proprietari din Basarabia, 10 martie 1918 [From the Memorandum on the Situation in Bessarabia, Submitted to the Romanian Government by the Union of Large Owners of Bessarabia, March 10, 1918]. In: Țurcanu, Unirea Basarabiei cu România, pp. 247–249. ︎
Beseda P.V. Sinadino. Marghiloman IV, HIA, Vasilii A. Maklakov Papers, Box 18, Folder 18.10 Bessarabia. Soiuz Zemel’nykh Sobstvennikov, p. 4. See Svetlana Suveica: Post-imperial Encounters. Transnational Designs of Bessarabia in Paris and Elsewhere, 1917–1922. Berlin, Boston 2022, pp. 154–155. ︎
Ibid. ︎
Ibid., pp. 11–12. ︎
HIA, Vasilii A. Maklakov Papers, Box 18 Subject file, Folder 18.11. Bessarabia, Motivirovannaia zapiska ob otkaze ot uchastiia v Agrarnoi Kommissii Sf[atul] Ts[ării] [Memorandum on the refusal to participate in the Agrarian Commission of the State Council], 5.6.1918. Soiuz Zemelinykh Sovstvennikov. During the interrogation by the Soviet secret police on August 9, 1940, Sinadino confirmed his participation in the two sessions, claiming that the “provocative interventions” of the Romanian representative had served as a motive for ending cooperation. ASRM, d. 28653, Protokol doprosa obviniaemogo Sinadino Panteleimona Viktorovicha, 9.8.1940, p. 112. ︎
Beseda P.V. Sinadino. Marghiloman IV, HIA, Vasilii A. Maklakov Papers, p. 15. ︎
Ibid. ︎
Alexander N. Krupenskii was a large landowner who belonged to an ancient Bessarabian family that was close to the tsar and held important regional and local duties. Krupenskii was a marshal of the Bessarabian nobility and a former president of the gubernial zemstvo. ︎
Between September 1918 and March 1920, P. V. Sinadino maintained intense correspondence with A. N. Krupenskii. Some twenty letters, written in Russian by Sinadino, form part of Alexander N. Krupenskii’s papers in the Hoover Institution Archives. ︎
The agrarian bill for Bessarabia, voted by the Sfatul Țării during its last meeting of December 10, 1918, allowed each landowner a maximum 100 hectares of land (Proiectul legii de reformă agrară pentru Basarabia din 27 noiembrie 1918. In: Sfatul Țării, 30 November 1918; Legea de reformă agrară pentru Basarabia: In: Monitorul Oficial [The Official Gazette], no. 258, 13.3.1920). By way of comparison, in the Old Kingdom the land was expropriated on the basis of a progressive scale, a maximum possession of 500 hectares being allowed. ︎
P. V. Sinadino – A. N. Krupenskii, Kishinev, 12.1.1919, HIA, Alexander N. Krupenskii Papers, Box I, Folder Sinadino. ︎
Beseda, f. 18. ︎
Consiliul Directorilor Generali – Ro. The board, which was the executive of the Moldavian Democratic Republic, was dissolved on 12 December 1918, when the unconditional union of Bessarabia with Romania was approved by the Sfatul Țării. The directorates functioned, nevertheless, till 3 April 1920 (Decret-lege pentru desfiinţarea directoratelor din Basarabia, 3.4.1920.I In: Constantin Hamangiu, Codul general al României [General Code of Romania]. Vol. IX–X, 1919–1922, Legi uzuale. Bucureşti 1926, pp. 293–294. ︎
Beseda, f. 18–19. ︎
Monitorul Oficial, no. 133, 5.9.1918, p. 2185. ︎
P. V. Sinadino – A. N. Krupenskii, Kishinev, 12.1.1919. ︎
According to a certificate, A. N. Krupenskii and A. K. Schmidt were “dispatched to Paris as couriers carrying documents and letters to the representative of Russia to the Peace Congress – Minister Serge Sazonov.” HIA, A. N. Krupenskii papers, Box 2 Subject file, Folder Krupenskii, A.N., Certificat, Odessa, 27.1.1919. ︎
HIA, Alexander N. Krupenskii Papers, Box II Subject File, 1918–1934, Folder Bessarabian commission of the Paris Peace Conference, Declaratsiia, Odessa, 10.2.1919. ︎
On Tsyganko’s activity, see, at large, Svetlana Suveica: The Bessarabians “between” the Russians and the Romanians. The Case of the Peasant Party Deputy Vladimir V. Țsyganko (1917–1919). In: Sorin Radu, Oliver Jens Schmitt (eds.): Politics and Peasants in Interwar Romania. Perceptions, Mentalities, Propaganda. Newcastle upon Tyne 2017, pp. 215–250. ︎
P. V. Sinadino – A. N. Krupenskii, Kishinev, 12.8.1919. ︎
Ibid., 27.8.1919. “During the last period I wrote to you many times, I did not count previous letters, but on July 3 I wrote to you twice from Bucharest, then twice from Chișinău, and today I am writing for the fifth time, I do not know, what have you got? It is very difficult to keep correspondence.” ︎
Ibid., 1.1.1920. ︎
Ibid., 3.6.1919. ︎
Ibid., Kishinev, 3.6.1919. ︎
Ibid., 22.4.1919. ︎
Ibid., 28.10.1918. In fact, the deputies signed a memorandum demanding the re-establishment of regional autonomy, which most likely remained unanswered by the Romanian government. ︎
Apparently, money was requested numerous times from Kolchak with the mediation of Krupenskii; there is evidence that there was some financial support from Kolchak for the “Bessarabian delegation” in Paris, which, in turn, distributed some sources to Odessa and Chișinău. P. V. Sinadino – A. N. Krupenskii, Kishinev, 7.7.1919. ︎
Ibid. ︎
Ibid., 5.6.1919. ︎
Instead, the opponents of the union criticized the lack of transparency to the decision that “destroyed autonomy”, with the effect that the Romanian government “got rid of the Sfatul Țării. The Bessarabian “Parliament”. A. N. Krupenskii Papers 1918–1936, Box III Speeches and Writings, 1919, Folder The Bessarabian “Parliament” (Sfatul Tzerii). ︎
P. V. Sinadino – A. N. Krupenskii, 12.1.1918. ︎
Ibid., 23.11.1918. ︎
P. V. Sinadino – A. N. Krupenskii, Kishinev, 12.1.1919. On the closure of the Assembly of the Nobility (Klub Blagorodnogo Sobraniia), see, Suveica, Pîslariuc, Gorod Kishinev: Ot zapadnoi okrainy Rossiiskoi imperii, pp. 395–398. ︎
No letters authored by Krupenskii were available to us. ︎
When it came for money issue, Sinadino was very precise: 150,000 were bought at the exchange rate of 54.5; the other 10,000 at 55.5. P.V. Sinadino – A.N. Krupenskii, Kishinev, 29.8.1918. ︎
Ibid. ︎
Ibid. ︎
Alexander D. Krupenskii left for Paris as member of the “Bessarabian delegation” at a later stage. ︎
P. V. Sinadino – A. N. Krupenskii, Kishinev, 19.12.1918. ︎
Ibid., 26.2.1919. ︎
See Rogers Brubaker / Frederick Cooper, Beyond “identity.” Theory and Society 29 (2000), no. 1, pp.
1–47, here 14. ︎
P.V. Sinadino – A.N. Krupenskii, Kishinev, 22.4.1919. ︎
Ibid., 12.8.1919. ︎
Ibid., 3.6.1919. ︎
Ibid. ︎
Ibid., 26.2.1919. ︎
For a case study of Soviet repression of a former member of the Sfatul Țării, see: Igor Cașu: Dușmanul de clasă. Represiuni politice, violență și rezistență în R(A)SS Moldovenească, 1924–1956 [Class enemy. Political repression, violence and resistance in the Moldovan R(A)SS, 1924-1956]. Chișinău 2014, pp. 163–164. ︎
ASRM, d. 28653, Protokol doprosa obviniaemogo Sinadino Panteleimona Viktorovicha, 9.8.1940, f. 113. ︎
The Sfatul Țării’s “Moldovan basis” consolidated after Romanian troops entered and Constantin Stere arrived in the region, claimed Sinadino. ︎
Protokol doprosa, 9.8.1940, p. 111. ︎
Ibid., p. 108. ︎
The Sfatul Țării became radicalised towards the end of 1917. See Katja Lasch, Der Landesrat in Bessarabien: Ethnische Zusammensetzung, politischen Orientierung, Sozialisation und Bildungsstand der Abgeordneten, Transylvanian Review, XXI, no. 2 (Summer 2012): pp. 19–37. ︎
Protokol doprosa, 12.8.1940, f. 133. ︎
The deportation plan for Bessarabia included 980 bourgeois party leaders, 137 landowners, 285 White Army officers, 83 tsarist army officers involved in “anti-Soviet activity”, 1948 traders, and 411 large landowners. See: Rossiiskii Gosudarstvennyi Arkhiv Sotsial’no-Politiceskoi Istorii [Russian State Archive o f Social and Political History] (further RGASPI), fond 573 Upolnomochennyi TsK VKP(b) i SNK SSSR po Moldavskoi SSR (1945–1950) [Commissioner of the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks (b) and the USSR Council of People’s Commissars for the Moldavian SSR (1945-1950)], inv. 1, d. 1, p. 77. ︎
Gosudarstvennoe Politicheskoe Upravlenie (Ru) [The State Political Directorate]. ︎
RGASPI, fond 573 Upolnomochennyi TsK VKP(b) i SNK SSSR po Moldavskoi SSR (1945–1950), inv. 1, d. 1, p. 76. ︎
Desley Deacon, Penny Russel, Angela Woolacott (eds.): Transnational Lives. Biographies of Global Modernity, 1700–Present. Basingstoke 2010, p. 5. ︎

Der Beitrag Post-Imperial Biographies in the Russian–Romanian Borderlands. The Case of the Bessarabian Pantelimon V. Sinadino erschien zuerst auf Halbjahresschrift für Geschichte und Zeitgeschehen in Zentral- und Südosteuropa.

Alternatives to a Takeover of Power. Košice 1918–1919*

IKGS-Admin_2 — Fri, 01 Mar 2024 11:16:21 +0000

Attila Simon, Fórum Minority Research Institute in Šamorín (Somorja in Hungarian), Selye János University in Komárno (Komárom in Hungarian)

In the last year of World War I, there were several conflicting national scenarios for the transformation of the Central European region. In the space where eventually the Czecho-Slovak state was to be established, there were at least three such visions, namely the Czech, the German-Austrian, and the Hungarian, in addition to the Slovak (which was not in complete harmony with the Prague plans), and various additional ideas for smaller regions. Of the rival schemes, the winner was clearly T. G. Masaryk’s Czech scenario, which basically aimed at restoring Czech statehood in a larger than earlier territory. One of the most significant elements of this idea was guaranteeing the historic Czech borders, which was such an important goal that, according to the renowned Czech historian Jan Galandauer, the Czechs would have been ready to give up their sovereignty for it.¹

Another vital pillar of the Masaryk scenario was obtaining the northern parts of historic Hungary inhabited by Slovaks, Hungarians, and Germans. For the Czech elites, that were dreading German dominance, this held the simultaneous promise of breaking out of being encircled by Germans and building a bridge towards the big Slavic brother, Russia. Not only was the Czech scheme in stark contrast to the German and Hungarian plans but to some extent it also disregarded the local ideas of the Slovak movement based in Turčiansky sv, Martin (Turócszentmárton in Hungarian, Turz-Sankt Martin in German) and of the Upper Hungarian regions that were later to become Slovakia.

This paper examines the conflicts the Prague scenarios generated in the case of the town of Košice (in Hungarian Kassa) and introduces the alternative visions emerging in late 1918 and early 1919 concerning the future role and operation of this major regional centre.

Debates about Košice’s character

In the Slovak-Hungarian historical and public discourse, Košice has always borne symbolic significance, as both parties have considered it their own.² This is partly because in the apparently contradictory series of data in 19th and 20th century censuses, both the Hungarian and the Slovak parties can find evidence to support their argument.

	Hungarians	Slovaks (Czecho-Slovaks)	Germans
1851	28.5	26.5	15.6
1880	39.8	40.9	16.7
1910	75.4	14.8	7.2
1921	21.2	59.7	6.0
1930	16.5	60.2	4.6
1938	76.6	16.3	4.0
1941	83.5	11.0	2.5
1950	2.6	93.5	0.04
2001	3.8	89.1	0.2

Table 1: Percentages of the three main ethnic communities in Košice over the past two centuries³

As Table 1 demonstrates, Košice, that had a considerable German majority in the Middle Ages, repeatedly went through major ethnic changes between 1851 and 1950, or at least this is what census data suggest. It is to be noted, however, that statistics do not necessarily mirror the actual changes in the town’s ethnic composition. As confirmed by Ondrej Ficerinek’s so-called situational identity research, whenever a census was taken, Košice citizens’ language competences enabled them to adjust their declared national identity to the current state law.⁴

In this situation, it was the post-1945 forced transformation that led to a noticeable shift in the ethnic character of the region within Czechoslovakia that intended to build a purely Slavic nation state: not only was the decisive majority of Germans forced to leave, but every effort was taken to eliminate the Hungarian population in Slovakia by a population exchange imposed on Hungary, by deporting to Czechia Hungarians living in Slovakia, and also by their “Reslovakization”.⁵ Although this drive was not fully successful, the ethnic composition of Southern Slovakia underwent a major transformation, and the formerly multilingual town of Košice became primarily monolingual.⁶

Contemporary memoirs, diaries, and archival sources about Košice offer a more plastic image of the impact of the 1918-1920 state transformation than statistics, witnessing a town with strong Hungarian dominance. The man in the street would mostly speak Hungarian, and the larger part of citizens identified with the idea of Hungarian statehood. This image is confirmed by a Czechoslovak security report dating back to the time following the state formation: “Slovaks in Košice, whose mentality is completely Magyarised and have no national identity, are indifferent to the events of historic significance and do not at all understand their importance.”⁷ Looking back, Anton Granatier, one of the leaders of the Slovak League, that in the interwar period supported the Slovakizaton of the territories inhabited by Hungarians, wrote in 1947: “thirty years ago Košice appeared to be as Hungarian as Budapest.”⁸ Naturally, this image is confirmed by Hungarian sources as well, but it needs to be added that while Hungarians talk of a completely Hungarian town, according to Slovak views, under the Hungarian surface there was a genuine Slovak core hidden. When minister Vavro Šrobár visited Košice in July 1919, the first County Sheriff of Slovakia, Ján Sekáč, greeted him as follows:

Minister, I would like to offer you a very warm welcome to Košice, a town which has always been ours and will continue to be ours. This town, which is of utmost importance not only for Eastern Slovensko, but for the entire Slovensko, is of Slovak origins; the core, the roots are Slovak, and only the surface plastering is foreign. However, we hope that following a fertilizing Slovak shower, this plastering will fall off by itself.⁹

Naturally, it must be remembered that the monochromatic exterior was not due exclusively to the higher number of citizens with Hungarian sympathies. It was a spinoff of socio-political relations: up to 1918, accepting the Hungarian state ideology was a basic precondition to acquiring social positions. Thus, Hungarians or those living as Hungarians were the leaders of the town, occupied important offices, managed educational institutions, and were in charge of the press. Thus, they were much more visible than the Slovak craftsmen on the town’s outskirts or the Slovak-speaking market women.

Alternative to double control: December 1918

Although Košice had no special significance in the Slovak national life, from the very beginning Czechoslovakia insisted that the town should be under their control, and they spoke of it as a future centre of Slovak culture because, without it, governing eastern Slovakia and Subcarpathia would have been impossible. Nevertheless, Košice citizens took little notice of this aspiration, not connecting the declaration of the Czechoslovak state with their own fate. They still saw their future in Hungary. The agreement over the temporary demarcation lines signed on 6^th December, 1918 by the Budapest deputy of the Czechoslovak government Milan Hodža and minister of war Albert Bartha confirmed their conviction, as it left the town under Hungary’s control.¹⁰ This demarcation line suggested an alternative that would have based Hungarian-Slovak separation on ethnic principles and – mostly in line with its ethnic composition – would have left Košice to Hungary. Considering the support in Paris for the demands of the Czechoslovak political elite headed by foreign minister Edvard Beneš, this option was not realistic.

When Košice citizens were still hopeful, for the Hungarian National Council that had controlled the town from the Aster Revolution in October 1918 and for its government commissioner Miklós Molnár, by mid-December the Czechoslovak intentions were transparent. Although initially people in Košice seemed to be ready for the armed defence of their town, when it turned out that the Budapest government refused to help, they abandoned the idea.¹¹

Modifying the original plan, they spent their energy on ensuring that if the occupation was unavoidable, there should be as few conflicts and sacrifices as possible. This is why on 21^st December Molnár started negotiations with the Czechoslovak government’s envoy Milan Hodža, who was staying in Budapest, on the practicalities of the occupation. Although they managed to conclude the agreement the same, Hodža requested that only the following day should they put their signatures on it, but then with reference to the change of circumstances, the Slovak politician refused to sign it.

In this context, two questions arise. Firstly: Why did Hodža’s view change in one day? And more importantly: If it had been signed, what would the agreement have meant for Košice? The answer to the first query is to be found in the constantly changing situation: on 21st December Hodža launched negotiations with Molnár believing that the demarcation line he had bargained for on 6th December was still in force, leaving Košice under Hungary’s control.¹² In other words, agreement on the way of occupation seemed favourable to him even if he had to make compromises with the town’s leadership. Meanwhile, however, a new demarcation line was drawn in Paris, according to which Košice could be taken under Czechoslovak control. Hodža must have received notification of the new demarcation line sometime in the evening of 21st December, i.e., not much after he had talked to Miklós Molnár.¹³ In possession of this information, Hodža was no longer interested in signing an agreement that would have tied the Czechoslovak party’s hands.

The main content of the ten-point agreement, whose text was later made public by Miklós Molnár,¹⁴ can be summarized in three important messages. According to the first, led by French officers, the Czechoslovak occupation would happen on 2^nd January 1919 in the way planned ahead. According to the second, following the occupation, the town would be jointly controlled by the Hungarian and the Czechoslovak government commissioners, relying on the Hungarian legal system. The third vital point was that the occupiers would ensure that citizens could exercise their fundamental human and nationality rights.

The content of the agreement was in essence built on the view adopted by the Hungarian party and originating from the Belgrade Convention that the eventual occupation of Košice would be temporary and that, before the final decision of the peace conference, the town should be legally regarded as part of Hungary. This reflected the intentions of Miklós Molnár, who resigned himself to the occupation, but saw it as a temporary solution and wished to diminish its weight.

While Molnár’s intentions are easy to understand, Hodža’s motivation is harder to decipher. This is because the interpretation following from the agreement’s wording, namely that Košice should be regarded as part of Hungary up to the signing of the peace contract, was in stark contrast to the Czechoslovak view that the territory they referred to as Slovakia had already belonged to the new state since 28^th October. This means that Hodža wanted the agreement only in order to gain time and to speed up the occupation of Košice, while he must have assumed that the agreement he had signed did not tie Prague’s hand and freedom of action.

Another major issue is how realistic the enforcement of the agreement was. The text Molnár presented suggested the possibility of a takeover built on a balance of the old and the new power, thereby, resulting in a type of double control up to the peace conference. No matter how attractive this solution might seem, the idea that the town should be controlled jointly by commissioners representing two different governments was rather irrealistic.

The town’s first occupation: the period of parallel power structure

The occupation of Košice, which the Czechoslovak party was entitled to carry out according to the new demarcation line marked out by the Entente, finally happened on 29^th December, 1918. The occupation had been preceded by an agreement between the town’s representatives and the commander of the occupying forces, which unlike the agreement between Molnár and Hodža, merely specified the way of occupation without carrying any political content. It is partly due to this agreement that, defying citizens‘ earlier fears,¹⁵ the occupying troops marched into the town in an orderly manner, under Czech and Slovak banners, and “singing joyfully all the way,” as reported by the local newspaper.¹⁶ There was no fighting or bloodshed.

When the Czechoslovaks occupied the town on 29^th December, 1918, they took over directly from its former power holders. This meant that although public order was weakened, there was no power vacuum in the sense of leaving the town without administration for a shorter or longer period. Even in the days of the occupation, most offices and institutions worked without interruption, and continued in the days following the occupation. Therefore, the days and even weeks following 29^th December are best described with the term “parallel power”. In the first weeks of the occupation, besides the new state structures, the old ones were still in operation. Even though officially Prague denied the fact, they had to share their authority with Budapest.

The causes of “parallel power” are to be found primarily in the insecure constitutional status, as the peace conference had not even started yet, and for Prague it was vitally important that Paris should be receiving news of consolidation thanks to the Czechoslovak occupation, rather than of armed conflict and a violent takeover in Košice.

It was this constitutional insecurity that forced the new power holders (i.e., the Czechoslovak side) to compromise, while strengthening the resolution of the old power holders (i.e., the Hungarian side) not to accept the new system as legitimate. Compromise was additionally necessitated by a shortage of the Czechoslovak state’s human resources required for the town’s full takeover. For this reason, while they took over the main positions in a few days and appointed their own cadres (mayor, county sheriff, chief of police, and attorney general), people at lower levels of urban institutions and public administration were allowed to stay. Symbolic completion of the takeover process happened on 7^th January, when the new government-appointed Slovak Mayor Vladimír Mutňanský had the Czechoslovak flag planted on the town hall.¹⁷ Members of the old guard did not even have to take the oath of allegiance (as earlier planned); they were only expected to conscientiously perform their duties and not to openly turn against the new state. Stressing the incomplete nature of the power takeover, one Czechoslovak report notes that although a Czech had been appointed head of the urban police, members of the police force were so unreliable that “during more serious events, their guns had to be taken from them.”¹⁸

In other words, while the new mayor and police chief derived their power from decisions taken by the Prague administration, most officers derived theirs from the Hungarian constitution. Inevitably, this led to numerous conflicts, but at this point the new power did not always come out victorious. Thus, when Mayor Mutňanský ruled in a decree of 18^th January, 1919 that all state offices and institutions should have the Slovak and Czech flags flying and that signs on public buildings should be displayed in Slovak in addition to Hungarian,¹⁹ most institutions refused to obey. In turn, after consultations with the central government in Bratislava (Pozsony in Hungarian), the local mayor backed down.

Although already in the first weeks of the occupation there were certain conflicts between the new regime on the one hand, and the citizens and the old elite on the other, they did not take the form of violent clashes, which is owed to both parties. Public sentiment in Košice was characterised by a ‘wait and see’ approach and a belief that the situation was only temporary, while the Czechoslovak power showed a type of reserved determination. The recollections of the Košice theatre director Ödön Faragó also portray a disciplined and polite but determined opponent:

On the last day of the year, two Czechoslovak army officers came to see me. Their visit, conduct, and voice took on the politest forms. They showed the respect due to a host, but they tactfully informed me that this was no longer Hungary… “a lost war and everything belongs to the Czechoslovaks.”²⁰

The realities of dictatorial power

From mid-February, a growing number of cracks were tangible under the peaceful surface, eventually leading to open clashes between the two sides. The turning point came with a general strike in mid-February, crippling the town for five days from 14^th February.²¹ Although the strike was prompted by social and economic issues, it was a type of silent but determined sign that most of the population rejected Czechoslovakia.

Bratislava and Prague labelled the strike an irredentist action organised from Hungary²² and, in return, started applying aggressive methods. The pace of nationalizing education and public spaces was increased, and 17^th March saw the first fatal fusillade that required casualties.²³ Coupled with the state of emergency measures (early evening curfew and closing of bars and restaurants, and increasing numbers of internments)²⁴ introduced after the declaration of the Hungarian Council Republic on 21^st March 1919, this further deepened the animosity between the Czech state and Košice’s citizens. In the meantime, because of the armed conflict that erupted between Czechoslovakia and Bolshevik-led Hungary, from 24^th May, martial law tightened: a total ban was imposed on freedom of association, and a curfew was set from 9 p.m. At the same time, rounding up hostages on a massive scale was started, putting some sixty citizens (mostly honest craftsmen) in custody. As County Sheriff Sekáč’s poster informed the public on 25^th May, the hostages had their life and property at stake: in case law and order was not maintained, members of the Czechoslovak army were attacked, or a rebellion broke out, they were to be immediately executed by a firing squad.²⁵

With the growing possibility that, due to the changing military situation, the Czechoslovak army might have to give up the town, the local population’s resistance against the authority was on the rise. In the first days of June, the Czechoslovak army started to withdraw while, almost unnoticeably, the town was reassuming its old image, and the abandoned offices were repossessed by representatives of local Hungarians. When on 6^th June the troops of the Hungarian Red Army appeared on the outskirts of the town, local citizens welcomed them as liberators.²⁶ This time, the Hungarian rule lasted for only a month and, on 5^th July, the Czechoslovak troops invaded and permanently occupied Košice.

Compared to the first occupation of Košice, the Czechoslovaks’ second invasion was planned as the town’s conquest and humiliation. This is indicated by the fact that already on 5^th July the envoys of the Czechoslovak troops had given the town’s Hungarian police chief, Béla Cselényi, the scenario for the occupying army staff’s march into town on 7^th July. It was requested that the Czechoslovak corps of officers, led by French General Hennocque, should be greeted in Košice’s main street, the Fő utca, by the entire former city management, including the entire Civil Guard and the Red Guard, as well as a large turnout of local citizens expressing their reverence. It was also specified that the town should be decorated with Czechoslovak and French flags, and while the General was marching in across a ceremonial gate erected at the end of the Fő utca, all the bells in town had to be ringing loud.²⁷ With young girls in white showering his feet with flowers, the General was met by the Town’s Council followed by Mayor Béla Blanár handing over the town’s keys.²⁸

This ceremony was another indication that, in July 1919, the Czechoslovak troops were arriving much more confidently than in the last days of 1918 and wanted the population to sense their power. At the time of the first occupation, they were more cautious because the terrain was unfamiliar; moreover, it was a period when not only was there no decision on the new state borders, but the peace conference had not even been convened yet. In July 1919, they already knew who they were facing, namely the town and its inhabitants; more importantly, the Supreme Council of the Peace Conference had also confirmed their possession of Košice.

Compared to the former situation, the new occupation was a complete takeover of power. Not only at the highest levels of public administration did they start changes but also in offices and state-run companies. At the same time, the nationalisation of public spaces, public life, and education was gaining momentum. In the autumn of 1919, the question was no longer whether Slovak signs could be placed on facades of institutions, but whether Hungarian signs could be kept at all next to the Slovak ones.

Summary

The state changes following World War I in the region of present-day Slovakia are usually described as a struggle between clearly distinct forces, whereby the semi-feudal Hungarian Kingdom was replaced by a democratic Czechoslovak state. However, as evidenced by the case of Košice, this is not what the local inhabitants sensed, neither was the dividing line between the two worlds as sharp as we earlier thought. Admittedly, the Czechoslovak troops’ march into Košice marked a new era in the town’s life, but it did not mean the end of the former era. In the weeks and months following the occupation, a type of double authority was developed in Košice (as well as in other southern Slovak regions) in which the old and the new state’s institutions of power were both present. While the new mayor would follow Prague’s orders, at lower administrative levels and in local institutions, Budapest was still regarded as the legitimate centre of power. This duality was manifest in the economy (for weeks, the town had two catering offices, one of which was trying to acquire food from Prague, the other one from Budapest), in language use (while the town would communicate with Prague and Bratislava in Czech and Slovak, in the various urban fora everything was still done in Hungarian for several months to come), but most of all, in the attitude of local citizens, who felt that events could be reversed and were reluctant to adjust to the Czechoslovak state structure. The Hungarian Council Republic’s conquest of about a month in June 1919 confirmed citizens’ conviction that a return was possible.

The breaking down of Hungarian state structures and the town’s administration was accelerated only after the Czechoslovaks’ July takeover of Košice. By this time, the final state borders had been established, and Košice citizens had to face the Czechoslovak state’s reality. However, there were several factors that eased this process. One was the return of a sense of security. The second occupation of Košice and the finalization of state borders gave people the feeling that the First World War was over, and that violence and uncertainty were no longer part of their life. In addition, integration into the Czechoslovak state was eased by the democratisation of public life and politics, a process that led to the adoption of a democratic Constitution in February 1920 and the first parliamentary elections. The events starting in the autumn of 1919 demonstrated that the authorities had to resign themselves to the fact that the town administration was impossible without the local community’s involvement. At the same time, Hungarians in Košice also saw the inevitability of coming to terms with the state law and adjusting to it. The development characterising Košice in the interwar period would have been impossible without this compromise.

Simon Attila is director of the Fórum Minority Research Institute in Šamorín (Somorja in Hungarian), and associate professor at Selye János University in Komárno (Komárom in Hungarian) in Slovakia. His professional interests are centered on the history of Hungarians in Slovakia between the two world wars. He is the author of about a hundred academic works, including eight monographs.

Translated from Hungarian into English by Eszter Tímár

* The author gratefully acknowledges the contribution of the Slovak Research and Development Agency under the project APVV-20-0336 Transformations of the Community of Hungarians in Slovakia over the Last Hundred Years, with Special Emphasis on Their Everyday Culture
¹ Jan Galandauer: Vznik Československé republiky 1918. Programy, projekty, perspektivy [The Birth of the Czechoslovak Republic 1918. Programs, plans, perspectives]. Prague 1988, p. 157 ︎
Most recently, the well-known Slovak historian Roman Holec has contributed to the debate about Košice’s ethnic character: Trianonské rituály alebo úvahy nad niektorými javmi v maďarskej historiografii. In: Historický časopis [Historical Journal] 58 (2010) 2, pp. 191–208. The English translation of Roman Holec’s study is published as: Trianon Rituals or Considerations of Some Features of Hungarian Historiography. In: Ibid., 59 (2011) suppl. pp. 25-48. From the Hungarian side, Csaba Zahorán reacted to Holec’s somewhat one-sided perspective: Csaba Zahorán: Válasz Roman Holec cikkére [Answer to Roman Holec’s article], Történelmi Szemle [Histrical Review] 53 (2011) 4, pp. 591–613. For details, see Ondrej Ficeri: Potrianonské Košice. Premeny etnických identít obyvaťeľov Košíc v medzivojnovom Československu. Etnické identity obyvateľov Košíc v medzivojnovom Československu [Košice in the Post-Trianon Era. Transformations of the Ethnic Identities of the Košice Population in Interwar Czechoslovakia]. Bratislava 2019; Veronika Szeghy-Gayer: A szlovák–magyar–zsidó–cseh Kassa a 20. század első felében [Slovak-Hungarian-Jewish-Czech Košice in the First Half of the 20th Century], Korall [Coral], 18 (2017) 68, pp. 99–121. ︎
Data source: Ficeri: Potrianonské Košice [Košice in the Post-Trianon Era], p. 25.; Forum Minority Research Institute. Szlovákiai Magyar Adatbank. A szlovákiai települések adatbázisa. <http://telepulesek.adatbank.sk/telepules/kassa-kosice/> [Hungarian Databank for Slovakia. Database of Settlements in Slovakia], 1 March 2017. ︎
At the time of the 1910 census, 41.7 percent of those regarding themselves Hungarian spoke Slovak as well, while 28.8 percent also spoke German. 70.7 percent of those regarding themselves German spoke Hungarian, and 42.8 percent spoke Slovak as well. 56.5 percent of those regarding themselves Slovak spoke Hungarian, and 5.8 percent spoke German as well. Source of data Ficeri: Potrianonské Košice [Košice in the Post-Trianon Era], pp. 103–104.; For the multilingualism of Košice citizens, see Frank Henschel: “Das Fluidum der Stadt …”: Urbane Lebenswelten in Kassa /Košice/Kaschau zwischen Sprachenvieltfalt und Magyarisierung 1867–1918. Munich 2017, pp. 52–54; Juliane Brandt: Mehrsprachigkeit – ein Weg, verkehrsfähig zu sein. Die Stadtbevölkerung von Kaschau/Kassa/Košice und ihre Sprachen um 1900, In: Spiegelungen, 8/1 (2013), pp. 52–67. ︎
For the elimination of the Hungarian minority in Slovakia, see László Szarka: Significance of Czechoslovakian-Hungarian Population Exchange in the History of Intended Elimination of Hungarian Minority in Czechoslovakia. In: Minorities Research 10 (2008), pp. 5165; Imre Molnár, László Szarka (eds): Memories and Reflections of the Dispossessed: A Collection of Memoirs for the 60th Anniversary of the Czechoslovak-Hungarian Population Exchange. Komárom 2010. ︎
Bálint Varga: Multilingualism in Urban Hungary 18801910, In: Nationalities Papers, 42/6 (2014), pp. 965–980, here: p. 972. ︎
Národní archív České republiky [National Archives of the Czech Republic], Praha (NA ČR), fond Presídium ministerstva vnitra [Presidency of the Ministry of the Interior], AMV 225 (AMV-PMV 225), card 1455, č. 225-1455-3b. ︎
Slovenský národný archív, Bratislava [Slovak National Archives] (SNA), fond A. Granatier, card 2, Národnostný vývoj Košíc a ich okolia [National Development of Košice and its Surroundings], s. 2. Ficeri: Potrianonské Košice [Košice in the Post-Trianon Era], p. 114. ︎
Návšteva ministra dra Šrobára [Visit of Minister Dr. Šrobár]. In: Slovenský východ, 24 July 1919, p. 1 (without author). ︎
The agreement on the demarcation line that Hodža had concluded as temporary but that the Hungarian party wished to be final was based mainly on ethnic considerations. ︎
First, Molnár sent a cable to request help, then travelled to Budapest with the same agenda, but both times his efforts failed. Molnár Miklós: Kassától Košicéig. Történelmi adatgyűjtemény az 1918–19 évi forradalom, vörösuralom és a csehszlovák köztársaság megalakulása idejéből. II. [From Kassa to Košice. Historical Data Collection from the Period of the 1918-1919 Revolution, the Red Rule, and the Establishment of the Czechoslovak Republic. II] 1942, p. 343 and pp. 399–402. ︎
This is supported by the fact that in answer to Vix’s note sent to Milan Hodža on 19^th December, in which the French officer representing the Entente powers reproaches Hodža for the Czechoslovak steps taken to occupy Košice, the Slovak politician answers two days later, on 21st December, implying that the Czechoslovak party has no intention of violating the agreement of 6^th December. Cf. Archiv Ministerstva zahraničních věcí České republiky (AMZV) [The Archives of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Czech Republic], f. Parížsky archív (PA) [Paris archives], card 23, č. 2557. ︎
This is suggested by the fact that while on the 21^st he is still promising Vix to observe the 6th December agreement, the following day he is asking the French officer to acknowledge the new demarcation line. Magda Ádám, Mária Ormos, József Barabás: Francia diplomáciai iratok 1. 1918-1919 [Documents on French Policy 1. 1918-1919]. <https://www.tankonyvtar.hu/hu/tartalom/tkt/francia-diplomaciai-1/pr01.html>, 6 July 2017. ︎
Molnár: Kassától Košicéig [From Kassa to Košice], pp. 402–404. ︎
In the days before the occupation, there were regular stories circulating about looting and violence by the “Czech” army allegedly made up of irregular bands and mobs, but in most cases, they proved to be false. Ibid, p. 406. ︎
A város a megszállás első órái alatt [In the First Hours of the Town’s Occupation]. In: Kassai Újság [Košice Newspaper], 31 December 1918, p. 2 (without author). ︎
Kassai Hírlap [Košice Gazette], 9 January 1919, p. 1 (without author and title). ︎
NA ČR, fond AMV-PMV 225, card 1455, č. 225-1455-3b. ︎
Molnár: Kassától Košicéig [From Kassa to Košice], p. 185. ︎
Ödön Faragó: A szlovenszkói és ruszinszkói magyar színészet 25 éves története. 1918 évtől a szovjet felszabadítási harcokig. p. 26 [Twenty-five Years of Hungarian Theatre in Slovensko and Rusinsko from 1918 to the Russian Liberation Fights] (Manuscript, National Széchényi Library, Theatre and Music Collection, boxes no. 47–48). ︎
For details of the strike, see Harc az életért és szabadságért [Fighting for Life and Freedom]. In: Kassai Munkás. 22 February 1919, pp. 1–4 (without author). ︎
The Czechoslovak party’s position on the strike is well represented by the town’s chief police officer. Jozef V. Kohout: Obsadenie Košíc československým vojskom 29. decembra 1918. – Udalosti v januári a februári 1919 [Košice’s Occupation by the Czechoslovak Army on 29^th December, 1918. – Events of January and February 1919]. In: Karol A. Medvecký (ed.): Slovenský prevrat IV [Slovak State Change IV]. Bratislava 1931, pp. 288–299, here: p. 297. ︎
Two people were shot dead by soldiers when the crowd protesting against the defeat of the 1848 war of liberation was attacked by Czechoslovak soldiers. ︎
No research has been done yet on issues of internment. Most internees were transported to the internment camp in Ilava in Slovakia and Terezin in Czechia. For conditions there, see Todd Huebner: The Internment Camp at Terezín, 1919. In: Austrian History Yearbook. 27 (1996), pp. 199–211; Attila Simon: Internácie z južného Slovenska v roku 1919. Dodatok k charakteru dobového Československého štátu [Internment of People from Southern Slovakia in 1919. A Supplement to the Character of the Emerging Czechoslovak State] In: Historický časopis 68 (2020) pp. 271–290. ︎
Molnár: Kassától Košicéig [From Kassa to Košice], pp. 450–455. ︎
Kassai Hírlap commented on the return of Hungarian rule as follows: “The long- awaited day has arrived. The hour of liberation has struck. The sky has cleared up over the town of Košice, and, on 6^th June, we have the sun of freedom beaming on us. Its shining crown radiates peace on us. Alas, the old virtue of Hungarians is not dead. They are ready to shed their last drop of blood for the homeland, a gem of which has been repossessed today.” Kassa felszabadult [Košice is Liberated]. In: Kassai Hírlap, June 7, 1919, p. 2 (without author). ︎
Police Captain Kohout claims that the pompous reception of the occupiers’ staff was a part of Košice Hungarians’ two-faced strategy to win Hennocque’s sympathies. This interpretation, however, does not seem realistic. SNA, fond Jozef Kohout, card 11, Panu ministrovi plnou mocou pre správu Slovenska [To the Minister for the Administration of Slovakia] 9 July 1919. ︎
Molnár: Kassától Košicéig [From Kassa to Košice], pp. 12–20. ︎

Der Beitrag Alternatives to a Takeover of Power. Košice 1918–1919* erschien zuerst auf Halbjahresschrift für Geschichte und Zeitgeschehen in Zentral- und Südosteuropa.

Slovene Ethnolinguistic Nationalism as Rhetoric and Practice in Post-Imperial School Administration in Prekmurje

IKGS-Admin_2 — Fri, 01 Mar 2024 10:44:20 +0000

Jernej Kosi¹, University of Ljubljana

In July 1919, the Yugoslav delegation at the Paris Peace Conference received permission to occupy segments of two western counties of the Kingdom of Hungary: Vas/Železna and Zala. In early August 1919, Yugoslav forces therefore crossed the state border and acquired control over the Hungarian region, in accordance with the demarcation lines drawn in Paris. A year later, the Yugoslav territorial acquisition was confirmed by the Treaty of Trianon. Except for a short interruption during World War II, the area has since been under Slovene administrative control and officially recognized as Prekmurje (in Hungarian, Muravidék).

Parts of Vas/Železna and Zala were a rather small “land grab” in comparison to other, sometimes enormous, territorial demands that representatives of newly created states put on the table in Paris. But given the circumstances, the occupation of Prekmurje was a great success for Slovene members of the Yugoslav delegation: in early January 1919, when the delegation of the Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes began to convene in Paris, even the majority of Yugoslav diplomats and experts from different parts of the recently established South Slav state had never heard of Prekmurje. It was not included in the preliminary list of territories claimed for the new polity and was only later outlined on the map that depicted Yugoslav territorial expectations – at the insistence of Slovene delegates, who strove to acquaint other members of the delegation with this small fragment of Hungary. In the months following January 1919, Slovene experts hastily gathered ethnographic, linguistic and historical evidence, creating a seemingly convincing scholarly substantiation for their claim that the majority of the inhabitants of Prekmurje were without doubt of Slovene nationality and origin.²

In 1919, however, the notion of Slovenes populating western parts of Hungary was far from a new invention of contemporary diplomats and experts. In Cisleithanian intellectual circles – and, most of all, among middle-class Slovene national activists living in the Cisleithanian crownlands – belief in the existence of Hungarian Slovenes had been gaining ground since the mid-nineteenth century. In ethnographic studies, travelogues, newspapers and journal reports, the public could acquire many enlightening pieces of information on the supposed Slovenes living on the “other side” of the river Mura/Mur. Thus, the most informed Cisleithanian Slovene nationalists always described Slavophone Hungarians from Vas/Železna and Zala as members of the Slovene nation and imagined this Hungarian region as the easternmost part of Slovene national territory. Slovenes regarded local Slavophones on the other bank of the river Mura/Mur as compatriots, even though few Slovene national activists actually crossed the border and visited this remote and rather underdeveloped Hungarian region in the decades before the collapse of Austria-Hungary. There were, however, strong reasons for adherents to the nationally framed Slovene worldview living in Imperial Austria in the late nineteenth century to believe in the “Sloveneness” of Catholic and Evangelic Slavophone communities in the aforementioned counties. After all, local Slavophones self-described themselves either as (Hungarian) Slovenes or as “Sloveni,” and cultivated the local Slavic literary language that they called the “old Slovene language,” the “Slovene language” or “our language.”³ Following the premises of Slovene ethnolinguistic nationalism, the use of the same, or almost the same, ethnonym and the designation of the local literary language as Slovene were understood as objective markers of Slovene national belonging.⁴ At the Paris Peace Conference, Slovene members of the Yugoslav delegation responsible for the “case of Prekmurje” thus simply followed the pre-war arguments of Slovene nationalists and amassed “objective evidence” that should have persuaded the decision makers of the righteousness of Yugoslav territorial claims. Working tirelessly, day and night, for months, they were eventually successful – but only after the outbreak of the Hungarian revolution and the promise of Yugoslav forces potentially contributing to its suppression encouraged the Supreme Council to show more understanding for the additional Yugoslav territorial demands.⁵

Soon after Yugoslav forces crossed the border in early August 1919, the Slovene central executive in Ljubljana established an ad hoc office of civil commissioner in charge of public administration in Prekmurje. The commissioner, who had his office in Murska Sobota (in Hungarian, Muraszombat), was subordinate to the Slovene Provincial Government in Ljubljana, which retained exclusive authority to assign and dismiss officials in the region. Unsurprisingly, the government began replacing Hungarian administrators with Slovene ones immediately after the occupation, transferring the latter from their posts in the former Cisleithanian crownlands to Prekmurje. At the same time, the Slovene government in Ljubljana began sending experts to the occupied territory in order to gather information on social, cultural and political circumstances in the region.⁶ Lacking reliable and verifiable information, Slovene politicians and public servants who worked in Ljubljana sought precise observations about the state of affairs in Prekmurje. It was, after all, without a direct railway connection to other Slovene territories; as such, it was a very remote and almost inaccessible area far to the east of the national heartland.

About a month after the occupation, the Higher School Council in Ljubljana, the leading administrative body responsible for the school network under the control of the Slovene National Government, sent Franjo Cvetko to Prekmurje. Cvetko, a head teacher from the neighboring East Styrian village of Vučja vas, departed on a mission to assess the existing situation and report in detail on the organization of the school network in the region. In a series of documents dispatched to Ljubljana in the following weeks, Cvetko meticulously described the cultural circumstances and social conditions in local schools and evaluated the competence of the existing teaching staff (see below). In addition, he suggested the measures that should be taken in Prekmurje’s schools, focusing first and foremost concerning the language of instruction.⁷

Given that in autumn 1918, the Slovene language was declared the official language of the territory under the control of the Slovene government, Cvetko proposed an immediate dismissal of teachers who were fluent only in Hungarian or German and their replacement with Slovene speakers from the former Cisleithania. His proposal was certainly quite common in a post-1918 Central European transitional period marked by the triumph of the “principle of nationality.” It also corresponded with the prevalent discourse spread by Slovene politicians, national activists and journalists that described the annexation of Prekmurje as the redemption of Slovene brothers who had suffered for centuries under the Hungarian yoke. What is much more surprising, however, is Cvetko’s attitude towards the local literary Slavic language, which was traditionally used as an unofficial auxiliary language of instruction in several elementary schools in Prekmurje. Cvetko claimed that that this local Slovene should be prohibited in schools as well. Instead, the official Slovene national (standard) literary language should be the exclusive language of instruction in Prekmurje. However, such a linguistic transformation could only happen if the local Slavophone teachers, fluent in the local Slovene but with a very limited knowledge of standard literary Slovene, improved their poor language skills. A cohort of “native” local Slovene teachers should, Cvetko concluded, take courses in the standard Slovene national language and pass a test of fluency to continue teaching in Prekmurje elementary schools.

Cvetko’s stance on the “school question in Prekmurje” gained many vocal supporters among Slovene officials, school experts, teachers and journalists. In their eagerness to re-educate their supposed local Slovene compatriots, both pupils and local teachers, it turned out that Slovene school authorities did not want to waste more time than necessary. Preparations for school reform along the proposed lines thus began even before the Treaty of Trianon (1920) confirmed the annexation of Prekmurje. But why such a hurry? Why was it so important to start transforming the linguistic image of Prekmurje immediately after acquiring the region? By presenting several illuminating and telling fragments from newspaper articles, administrative reports and official measures employed after the occupation and annexation of Prekmurje, I argue that Slovene officials who came to Prekmurje regarded monolingual Slovene schools as an essential tool for the dissemination of Slovene national ideas and the socialization of pupils into members of the Slovene nation. The Slovene administrators’ zeal regarding the transformation and the reestablishment of local schools was rooted in the pre-1918 rhetoric and practices of Cisleithanian Slovene ethnolinguistic national activists. Having experienced the late Imperial Austrian “national struggles” as conflicts over the use of language, Slovene officials believed proficiency in the standard Slovene national language to be a necessary precondition for identification with the Slovene nation.⁸

Local literary Slovene language or Prekmurje dialect of the standard Slovene national language?

Cvetko wrote his report after four short trips to Prekmurje in the early autumn of 1919. His accounts later formed the core of state policy concerning the incorporation of local schools into the broader framework of educational institutions controlled by the Slovene government. In particular, politicians and public servants in Ljubljana followed his line of reasoning with regard to the language of instruction and the question of the future employment of local Slavophone or bilingual teachers. What was it then that Cvetko proposed and how did he substantiate it?

The starting point of Cvetko’s proposition was an “ethnographic fact.” According to his “findings”—which, as it soon turned out, did not correspond with the actual linguistic situation in the region—all children in Prekmurje were Slovenes. They were fluent in a variation of the Slovene language similar to the vernacular spoken by their compatriots, the so-called Prleki, who lived in Prlekija, the territory between the rivers Drava and Mura in neighbouring (Slovene) Styria. The language of Prekmurje children was, Cvetko claimed, pure and utterly comprehensible to every Slovene speaker. In Cvetko’s opinion, even discussing the existence of a special “Prekmurje dialect” was thus meaningless, as there was no such idiom in Prekmurje. In other words, Cvetko believed that a distinctive regional Slovene language of Prekmurje did not “de facto” exist.⁹

While Cvetko hailed the impeccable language skills of Slovene-speaking Slovene children in Prekmurje, he could not hide his contempt for the local teachers. Many of them were non-native “foreign-born Hungarians,” who, according to Cvetko, either were not able to communicate in Slovene or had a tremendously poor knowledge of it and should thus be laid off. Yet he also considered teachers born in Prekmurje or of Slavic origin to be of questionable character. They were presumably incapable of holding Slovene classes due to their insufficient language skills. They spoke

worse than the common folk, and one cannot talk of grammatical knowledge. Despite that, the Higher school council could keep them where they are, or possibly transfer them to other positions, but under the condition or, better said, with a downright categorical demand that they immediately start learning proper Slovene and, in a year or two, take a complementary exam in Slovene or else be dismissed.… [T]hese people have been infatuated only with noble Hungarian, and when it comes to our Slovene literature they are utterly ignorant. Because they are our people and because they have a number of children to take care of, they should not be laid off; that would be inhumane. It would be graceful if we reached out a helping hand.¹⁰

Because local schoolteachers were raised and educated in pre-war Hungary, they were, contended Cvetko, “soaked with Magyaron spirit and emotions and speak only Prekmurje Slovene, some of them very badly.”¹¹ By pejoratively describing domestic educators as Magyarons (Madžaroni), Cvetko implicitly claimed these pro-Hungarian Slavophone locals could not be trusted, for they had accepted Hungarian identity at the expense of their own original, presumably Slovene, ethnicity. For this reason, Cvetko continued, the schools in Prekmurje that had only one class and a single teaching post should be taken over by “our younger teachers,” that is, by Slovene personnel from the former Cisleithanian regions. In schools with several classes and more than one teacher, however, a local teacher could remain if “our Slovene teacher” were appointed beside him to serve as a translator and his personal educator. Local teachers left in their posts should be subjected to the strict control of the newly assigned schoolmaster or school supervisor.¹²

Although, as mentioned above, Cvetko did not acknowledge the existence of a specific regional Slovene idiom, he simply could not avoid the question of the local literary Slovene that had already been present in printed and scripted writings in Prekmurje for at least two centuries. He somehow had to address the fact that the local Slovene was the unofficial auxiliary language of instruction in many Prekmurje elementary schools with Slavophone pupils, the language of religious instruction in schools and the language of liturgy in local Evangelic churches. Yet, as already mentioned, a general intolerance towards the linguistic peculiarity of the region underlay his proposal regarding the use of the local literary Slovene language in schools. The language of instruction in Prekmurje, he claimed, should be the standard Slovene national language from the former Cisleithanian lands, because “with the proper, that is our literary, Slovene, we would culturally elevate and assimilate the local common folk – who are, after all, a branch of our trunk.”¹³

Cvetko’s line of reasoning was not surprising. As a former Cisleithanian teacher in schools with Slovenian as the language of instruction, his world view was heavily influenced by the fundamental ideological assumption of Slovenian ethnolinguistic nationalism. Since 1848, Slovene national activists had postulated that members of the Slovenian nation were speakers of the Slovenian language who densely inhabited a rounded territory. In other words, the Slovenian language was understood as the only objective marker of Slovene national identity. Therefore, proponents of Slovene ethnolinguistic nationalism believed that the nourishment of a proper Slovenian national language in its standardized form contributed to the facilitation of Slovenian national identity. Only one official written form of standardized language could thus be tolerated in Slovenian schools. Dialectical particularities and digressions that were not incorporated into the standardized Slovenian written language had to be eradicated, as they could undermine national homogeneity.

The majority of contemporaneous reports on Prekmurje published in Slovene newspapers in the former Cisleithanian regions echoed Cvetko’s argument. In Učiteljski tovariš [Teacher’s Comrade], for instance, a newspaper devoted to the education of Slovene teachers and the development of the teaching profession in the Slovene language, an anonymous author called upon the Higher School Council to supply schools in Prekmurje with textbooks in the proper Slovene language, “and not in some ‘dialect of Prekmurje.’ The common folk’s opinion is that children acquire the knowledge of this dialect at home, whereas in school they should learn proper Slovene.”¹⁴ The daily newspaper Jugoslavija, published in Ljubljana since the autumn of 1918, reiterated a similar point of view: “The language of instruction, it goes without saying, must be the Slovene language, that is, literary Slovene. There is no need or reason to introduce the dialect of Prekmurje to schools.”¹⁵ But Slovene newspapers also published some slightly different opinions. In an article in the newspaper Murska straža [The Watch on the Mura], printed in the nearby Styrian town of Radgona, an author well acquainted with circumstances in Prekmurje argued for a different tactic. He also identified the linguistic homogenization of Prekmurje as the goal of school reform. Yet, drawing on the supposed pre-war experiences of Styrian Slovenes in accepting the standard Slovene language, he claimed that the linguistic measures should be introduced gradually, in order not to upset the locals. He opined that the use of school books in the dialect of Prekmurje should be permitted in local schools, because the people of Prekmurje – the Prekmurci

lived culturally and politically separated from us for centuries. Other Slovene regions were in close contact with one another and in general shared the same past. And precisely this is the reason why, for instance, Styrian Slovenes readily adopted the common literary language. Meanwhile, the Hungarian Slovenes were separated from our development. The dialect thus meant more to them than it meant to us; what we saw in our literary language they saw in their dialect. They had their own writers, their own literature. They still maintain this consciousness even today – after the liberation. /…/ It is true that the common folk in general express positive feelings about unification with Yugoslavia. But their idea of Yugoslavia is slightly different from ours, for we instilled a general national consciousness and a deeper political worldview in the common folk. People of Prekmurje (nationally conscious circles excluded) are still afraid of the Styrians, Carniolans, Serbs, etc. This fear will steadily disappear, but the levelling of education demands time and proper means. One such means would be keeping the dialect in schools, while simultaneously introducing the common literary language. The people will gradually feel the need to abandon the dialect for a public purpose, but the fact is that they do not feel it yet, because they cannot feel it.¹⁶

Immediately after annexation, the majority of the educated Slavophone inhabitants of Prekmurje held a different view of the Slovene literary language prevailing there than the “Cisleithanian” Slovene journalists or the incoming Slovene administrators and teachers. They did not regard it merely as the Slovene dialect of Prekmurje or as a non-standard variant of the official (national) Slovene language. On the contrary, the local Slavophone intelligentsia perceived their Slovene language as a unique phenomenon, a distinct Slavic literary language which was different both from the Croatian language and the vernaculars further south and from the Slovene language and the vernaculars used across the river Mura in the former Cisleithanian crownlands. Indeed, many locals in Prekmurje described the latter language as ‘kranjski’ (Carniolan), ‘štajerski’ (Styrian) or ‘slavski’ (Slavic) and not as ‘slovenski’ (Slovene), employing the term ‘slovenski’ exclusively for their own spoken and literary language.¹⁷

The notion of the individuality of the Prekmurje Slovene literary language or the “old Slovene language” was rooted in its distinctive origins and its continuity of usage. The local Slovene literary tradition had been developing at least since the early 18^th century, building upon local Slavic vernaculars. It emerged as a result of liturgical necessity among local Protestants but was soon also adopted and cultivated by Catholic writers. However, the language did not stay limited to religious content, nor was it spread exclusively in printed form. Right up until Prekmurje became a part of Yugoslavia, many handwritten texts were also written in the language. For a time after 1868, it was also the language of textbooks in Catholic schools, while from the early 20^th century on, it was the language of a newspaper and a series of educational books and booklets for a broader readership, edited by a Catholic priest named Jožef Klekl.¹⁸

The perceived linguistic exclusiveness of the region went hand-in-hand with the established local collective identifications. Despite what nineteenth- and twentieth-century Slovene national activists from Cisleithania believed, by 1919, the majority of the educated Slavophones of Prekmurje certainly did not identify as members of the Slovene nation. The Slovene national category of identification, which Slovene national activists devised and propagated in Cisleithanian crownlands during the 19^th century, was almost completely unknown in Prekmurje. Until the annexation, the Slovene national movement simply could not take root in the region, due to the local social composition and institutional differences that regulated the political and cultural landscape in the Kingdom of Hungary. Before the outbreak of the First World War, standardized written Slovenian language was recognised as an official language in the Austrian half of the Dual Monarchy – it was used in schools and offices. School books and newspapers in Slovenian language that freely circulated in Cisleithania were a crucial medium for spreading the message of Slovene ethnolinguistic nationalism among the Slovene-speaking population from the middle of the 19th century onwards. In the Austrian crown provinces of Styria, Carinthia, Carniola and the Austrian Littoral lived a relatively small, but nevertheless politically and culturally engaged educated class (lawyers, priests, teachers, merchants, etc.) – a Slovenian nationalist elite that actively propagated the Slovene ethnolinguistic discourse. At the same time, the enactment of municipal autonomy in Cisleithania created an institutionalized space of political conflict in which social and cultural demands could be articulated by nationalist rhetoric and, in this way, used to mobilize rural population under a national flag. All that was missing in pre-1919 “Prekmurje”.

As a consequence, by 1918, less than a dozen Catholic priests from parishes close to the Styrian-Hungarian border actively sympathized with the ethnolinguistic idea of Slovenes who spoke a particular Slavic language, namely Slovene, and who densely populated the area from the very north of the Adriatic Sea to the westernmost patches of Hungary.¹⁹ The understanding of Prekmurje as a historical, ethnographical and linguistic part of Slovene territory, which the Slovene experts promoted and argued for at the Paris peace conference, was thus not shared by the majority of local, predominantly rural and barely literate Slavophones in 1919.²⁰ They held a very different perception of collective belongings and specific linguistic preferences, and in fact mostly responded to the imported idea of “Sloveneness” with suspicion and, in many cases, outright rejection. Instead, they persisted in expressing the established loyalties and identifications that had been shaped and disseminated before the 1919 annexation by the Hungarian nationalizing state and the local Catholic and Lutheran Slavophone clergy. Immediately after the occupation, the educated Slavophones did not share with incoming Slovene officials and teachers the notion that the Slovene standard language was a sign of adherence to the Slovene nation either. On the contrary, they regarded the introduction of the “new” official Slovene standard language – perceived as an emblem of national identity by the Slovene government – as a sign of administrative intrusion at best or symbolic violence at worst.²¹

Removal, re.education and re-socialization of the local teachers in the first years after annexation

To his meticulously written assessment of school affairs in Prekmurje, Cvetko attached a spreadsheet that provided the civil servants in Ljubljana with a condensed and multifaceted overview of his findings and recommendations. In this document, the future path of Prekmurje teachers – the implicit common theme of the entire report – came to the fore in an unambiguous way. Starting with the school network’s organizational dimension, Cvetko listed school locations in the first column of the spreadsheet, thus delivering an insight into their territorial dispersion. The second column of the report revealed the founders and financial backers of every single elementary school. In 1919, schools in Prekmurje were financed by the municipalities, by churches (Catholic and Protestant) or by the state itself. The third column defined the number of grades. Schools had between one and four grades, the exception being the state school in Murska Sobota (Muraszombat), which had five. The fourth column focused on school attendance. On average, each school was attended by a few hundred pupils, with only 50 enrolled in Predanovci (Rónafő) and as many as 520 in Turnišče (Bántornya). In the following column, the headmaster listed all the teachers employed: in the autumn of 1919, there were 124 in total in Prekmurje. In the next column, these teachers were categorized according to their “nationality.” The spreadsheet reveals that Cvetko labelled the majority of teachers either as Hungarians (59) or as Slovenes (57), but there were also four Slovaks, two Germans, a Serb and a “Hungarian Serb” who taught in the region.²²

The last two columns contained the most interesting data, however, for they somehow sealed the destiny of the existing teaching staff. The penultimate column described each teacher’s “knowledge of Slovene.” Only six of the 59 teachers categorized as Hungarians were considered to be qualified in Slovene. Beside 53 Hungarians, five Slovenes and one German were also evaluated as being unable to speak Slovene. Interestingly enough, the Slovak’s and Serb’s knowledge of Slovene proved to be sufficient, which was also true in the case of one German. Cvetko’s overview of the local schools ended with a column euphemistically titled “Suggestions” or “Remarks”. In this column, Cvetko “suggested” or “remarked” that teachers capable of communicating in the Slovene language—regardless of their nationality—should keep their posts, while all those with an insufficient command of Slovene should simply be dismissed.²³

Unlike the merciless views on the local teaching staff and the general intolerance towards Prekmurje’s linguistic distinctiveness that Cvetko expressed in length in the written report, his “Suggestions” and “Remarks” showed greater empathy for the local teachers, and also for the broader expectations of the local elite regarding the continuing usage of local literary Slovene in schools. In the spreadsheet, the local Slavophone teachers were not evaluated from the viewpoint of their loyalty to the new regime, nor was their competence in standard Slovene language assessed. On the contrary, their future destiny depended merely on their ability to continue teaching in local schools with Slavophone pupils by using the local Slavic vernacular.

On 30 October 1919, the Higher School Council issued the decree that put an end to the period of uncertainty and conclusively regulated the question of language in Prekmurje schools. It seems that a decision made by civil servants in Ljubljana somehow reflected the linguistic reality on the ground. The decree unsurprisingly proclaimed standard literary Slovene the language of instruction in all Prekmurje schools, where supposed Slovenes represented the majority of enrolled pupils. Yet the officials also left the door open for necessary compromises. In those schools where teaching in the Slovene national language was not possible due to a lack of appropriate teaching staff, the decree allowed the use of “Prekmurje Slovene” or the “dialect of Prekmurje.” Still, the pupils educated in schools where local Slovene was used were expected to acquire a satisfactory level of knowledge of standard Slovene pronunciation, writing and reading by the time they finished their schooling. The decree also made standard Slovene a compulsory course in places where the population was prevailingly Hungarian and/or German and hence the language of instruction was either Hungarian or German.²⁴

It seems, however, that there were also other, very practical reasons for their tolerating local literary Slovene in schools. The general circumstances in the post-war period dictated a gradual approach, for the all-embracing lack of material and human resources in war-torn Yugoslavia hindered more ambitious ideas for a radical alteration of existing conditions. From the annexation onwards, the Slovene Provincial Government in Ljubljana constantly requested that the central authorities provide funds necessary to hire teachers, restore school buildings and deliver necessary teaching materials and textbooks – mostly to no avail.²⁵

The local authorities nevertheless followed many of Cvetko’s suggestions: they introduced a number of measures and, in general, took responsibility for a gradual linguistic re-education and political realignment of local Slavophone teachers. As early as the late autumn of 1919, for instance, the civil commissioner asked the teachers who had not departed or been fired to notify the Prekmurje school council whether they wished to retain their teaching positions. The case of Ivan Benkovich, the headmaster in Dokležovje, sheds light on the procedure that followed. In November, Benkovich sent his answer, written in Prekmurje Slovene, to the Local School Council in Murska Sobota. He formulated it as a request, stating he would like to keep his post. In his letter, Benkovich revealed that he was born in 1862, that he was Catholic and that his mother tongue was “Prekmurje Slovene,” while he was also fluent in Hungarian and even understood a little German. Enclosed with his application was a written statement, delivered by the specific demand of the Local School Council, in which he pledged to acquire the necessary knowledge of standard literary Slovene in the next twelve months. Only two weeks later, headmaster Benkovič – no longer Benkovich – received a positive reply. The civil commissioner informed him that since December 2, he had already been employed once again in his old teaching post.²⁶

Benkovič assured the authorities he would soon obtain the official certificate of fluency and indeed began to learn the standard literary Slovene. In 1920, the authorities organized language preparation courses for the Slavophone teachers in Murska Sobota. Yet local teachers needed to travel outside of Prekmurje in order to take an oral examination to verify their competence. The assessment took place before special committees in either Maribor (in the former Styria) or Ljubljana (in the former Carniola). There, the candidates had to prove not only sufficient fluency in standard Slovene grammar and proper pronunciation, but also a knowledge of the most important works from the canonical corpus of national literature, especially those commonly present in Slovene school readers. Ironically, while preparing for the exams, they were to use textbooks otherwise used by pupils in the upper grades of elementary schools.²⁷

Slovene officials wanted to intertwine the process of learning the proper Slovene language with the attempts to politically re-educate local teachers who remained in Prekmurje. The civil commissioner even contended that the language courses should take place in Ljubljana or its surroundings. This would enable the teachers to

recognize Slovenes as their sincere friends, admire our marvellous homeland and get to know our capital, with all of its ancient and modern attractions. Without thinking, the love for their new homeland, Slovenia, will anchor in their hearts; they should know it!²⁸

While treating local teachers practically in the same manner as their pupils, the civil commissioner believed the course ought to have a sort of “nationally enlightening” component, for this was the only way the teachers would learn standard Slovene with enthusiasm. He also believed that the prevailing broader political and cultural circumstances in Prekmurje were not encouraging for the cultivation of national sentiments. If such courses took place in Murska Sobota, he contended, the participants would stay in touch with Hungarians and “Magyarons” and use only Hungarian to communicate with one another. Furthermore, the local Hungarian intelligentsia would expose the teachers to Hungarian nationalist rhetoric. For that reason, the success of the course would not be certain. In the civil commissioner’s words,

Above all, the course taking place in Murska Sobota would miss the key moment—the moment of nurturing love for the motherland and sensing Slovene, and at times also Yugoslav, mutuality, the feeling that Prekmurje is merely a twig on the green Slovene branch growing from the majestic Slavic trunk. Just as Hungarians did all they could to suppress Slovene consciousness among teachers in Prekmurje – and unfortunately also among the majority of priests – we have to do all we can to purify them of the Hungarian spirit, tear them out of national unconsciousness and convert them to worthy members of the Slavic nation. Only a nationally aware teacher can stir national consciousness and love for the kinfolk and homeland among the youth. Every teacher can read, write and calculate, even a Magyaron; but only a teacher permeated with love for his kinfolk and homeland can teach in a nationally conscious way.²⁹

The process of linguistic and ideological adaptation was in any case gradual. From the report the School Council of Prekmurje sent to the Higher School Council in Ljubljana in July 1921, it is possible to discern that more than a year and a half after the latter body had issued the first decree related to teaching, a large number of Prekmurje’s teachers had still not managed to successfully pass the Slovene language exam. In Slovene schools, there were as many as 75 teachers that lacked the required certification, while there were 25 in Hungarian schools and two in German ones. Consequently, by the end of 1921, new authorities began to employ harsher re-education measures. In November 1921, for instance, 20 teachers from Prekmurje were replaced with teachers from “Slovenia,” a term which in this case denoted the former Cisleithanian territories under Yugoslav rule. The teachers from Prekmurje were sent across the River Mura to other Slovene territories to learn the language and be resocialized in the new post-Hungarian social and cultural reality. Nevertheless, not all teachers who were ordered to leave Prekmurje consented to depart. As a consequence, the authorities stopped their pay checks. In response, at least one of the teachers, Aleksander Kurz, left for Hungary rather than agreeing to transfer out of Prekmurje.³⁰

Gradual transformation of schools in Prekmurje as a continuation of pre-war Slovene nationalists’ rhetoric and practice

A few weeks before the occupation of Prekmurje actually took place in early August 1919, a concerned Slovene citizen published an article on Prekmurje Slovenes in the Styrian Slovene newspaper Murska straža. He claimed that Slovene compatriots on the Hungarian side lacked any political or economic organization. The sole role of the schools scattered across the region had been “to teach pupils Hungarian and raise them to become loyal renegades.”³¹ There were very few nationally conscious educated locals in Prekmurje, the author continued, and Slovene national consciousness had hence been better preserved among peasants, regardless of their continual subjection to Hungarian and in some places even to German influence. When it came to Slovene awareness, the situation in Prekmurje was terrible:

Of approximately 100,000 Slovenes living in Prekmurje, the majority are nationally and politically indifferent, even though the common folk express lively natural intelligence. Schools, offices and the fierce pressure from above created a large number of renegades that had since forever been the strongest pillar of Hungarian exploiters, who had built splendid palaces in Budapest and elsewhere out of Prekmurje Slovene’s spiritual and material abandonment.³²

While describing the grim national oppression supposedly taking place in neighbouring Prekmurje, the author repeated the tropes that had been invented and spread by national activists throughout the Late Imperial Austrian era. When discussing rural communities on the language frontier, nineteenth-century Cisleithanian nationalists often uncovered the “national indifference” of locals and the role of schools in their presumed denationalization.³³ The post-war temporal and spatial transfer of these tropes to Prekmurje thus should not come as a surprise: the region bordered the former Lower Styria, a stage of vicious pre-war “national struggles” between German and Slovene national activists who fought – most of the time with words – for the hearts and souls of the “indigenous” Lower Styrian population. By mentioning “national indifference” and the role of schools in turning Prekmurje Slovenes into renegades, the author vividly illustrated a certain continuity in the Slovene nationalist worldview and rhetoric that obviously had not vanished with the collapse of Austria-Hungary.³⁴

The mental patterns of the pre-war Slovene national activists must also have steered the Slovene administrators, who began forming the new Yugoslav authority in Prekmurje several weeks later. Indeed, many of the officials, civil servants and teachers who proposed and implemented measures in schools after the region was given to the Kingdom of Serbs, Croats, and Slovenes at the Paris Peace Conference came directly from the neighbouring Slovene Styria, across the river Mura. Such was, for instance, the case of Srečko Lajnšic, the first civil commissioner in Prekmurje and a former district prefect in the Styrian town of Maribor/Marburg. Another such case was that of the headmaster Cvetko, whose report on the existing schools in Prekmurje strongly influenced the decision makers in Ljubljana. In the first years after the annexation, the Yugoslav government transferred to Prekmurje several dozen teachers and officials from the former Austrian Littoral, where they had been laid off by the Italian authorities that now occupied the territory. As veterans of the pre-1918 Slavic–Italian animosities, they too were familiar with the ethnolinguistic nationalist discourse and consequently considered schools crucial for preventing the locals living at the language frontier from sympathizing or even identifying with the “national enemy.”³⁵

In this sense, the significance ascribed to the language of instruction in Prekmurje encapsulates the continuity between pre-war Slovene Cisleithanian nationalist activities and the post-war transformational efforts of the new Slovene government in Prekmurje. The lack of understanding of the tradition of local literary Slovene – so often expressed by the new Slovene administrators – was grounded in the fact that by the time Austria-Hungary collapsed, the notion of the (standard) Slovene literary language as the national language of Slovenes had already been firmly established in the (former) Cisleithanian crownlands. In the second half of the nineteenth century, Cisleithanian Slovene national activists embraced the idea of preserving and cultivating the Slovene language, declaring its usage in all spheres of life the most crucial prerequisite of national survival. In addition, Cisleithanian promoters of Slovene ethnolinguistic nationalism regarded the individual’s ability to fully express himself in Slovene as a patriotic duty. Many Slovene linguists, writers, poets and journalists thus contributed to the invention of the modern Slovene literary language. Building on the tradition of sixteenth-century Slovene written by Carniolan Protestants and purifying the literary norm of lexical and grammatical influences regarded as German, these Slovene members of the Austrian educated middle class established the highest and most developed form of the Slovene national language that was used in the public as well as private spheres, and in communication with government offices. The Austrian government further facilitated the cultivation of the written Slovene language and its placement on the pedestal of Slovene national symbols by officially recognizing it as a common language of the Slavophones in the Austrian Littoral, Styria, Carniola and Carinthia.³⁶ By 1900, the literary Slovene language was thus already in use as one of the official languages in state offices and in courts, as a language of instruction in many schools, as a regimental language in the army, and as one of many possible languages of daily use declared in decennial censuses. In addition, due to successful national agitation, by 1914 the idea of the Slovene language as a distinctive indicator of Slovene nationality had gained considerable, though uneven, support among the Slavophone population living in those regions.

For this reason, many Cisletihanian Slovene national activists found the circumstances that they encountered in Prekmurje difficult to accept. After their post-war transfers to Prekmurje, many Slovene officials from the former Cisleithania thus often acted and spoke as if they were on a “civilizing mission,” demanding locals become fluent in the national literary language and adopt a higher level of imported Slovene national culture. Unsurprisingly, the officials’ hostile attitude towards the cultural peculiarities of Prekmurje provoked strong reactions among the local educated Slavophones. To the vast majority of educated locals, the idea of “Sloveneness” that had been invented on the other side of river Mura long before 1919 meant almost nothing. They also did not share the idea that standard literary Slovene was the national language of Slovenes and continued to use and express sympathies for their local literary Slavic language. However, regarded as “unredeemed Slovene brothers” by the nineteenth-century Slovene national activists, many local Slavophones persisted in expressing utterly different loyalties and notions of self-belonging for years, if not for decades, after partition from the Kingdom of Hungary.³⁷

At the end of the day, the verdict of the late-nineteenth-century national activists that schools were sites where pupils ought to be forged into compatriots proved correct. In the long run, Yugoslav schools with Slovenian language of instruction in interwar Prekmurje contributed to the diminishment of bilingualism, traditional loyalties and local categories of identification. The new school curricula inhibited the cultivation of pre-First-World-War collective identifications and contributed to the extinction of the two-centuries-old tradition of the local literary Slavic language. However, on the basis of an analysis of the efforts to “Slovenize” education in Prekmurje, a clear distinction can be identified between a relatively rapid act of political and ideological transition of education agenda on the one hand and a gradual transformation of the existing school network on the other. The normative and ideological transition of education – from the Hungarian to the Yugoslav (Slovenian) system – passed smoothly. Reforms began immediately after the arrival of the Yugoslav authorities. In line with the expectations of the new school administration – based on the premises of ethnolinguistic nationalism – unfit teachers were dismissed. Upon a report by Cvetko and similar views of other education experts sent to Prekmurje by the Ljubljana regional government, in the autumn of 1921 the organisation of the local school network was finally unified with the rest of the “Slovene territories” of Yugoslavia by decrees. Schools were successfully “Slovenized” – but on paper only.

In reality, the process of “Slovenisation” of education was much slower and was not fully completed until the end of the interwar period. In the gradual process of transformation, both the imported Slovene teachers and the re-educated local teachers did indeed become agents of nationalization in Prekmurje. Approximately ten years after the annexation, some former pupils that had been educated in standard literary Slovene in Prekmurje schools were already publicly denouncing their parents’ traditional loyalties and identifications and instead identifying as proud members of the Slovene nation and loyal citizens of Yugoslavia.³⁸ In this sense, the “Slovenian School” accomplished its task. However, the post-1919 transition aspirations, which from the outset focused on the language of instruction and also on keeping only loyal and reliable staff in classrooms, were not entirely successful. Although Slovene was the only official language of instruction, teachers in primary schools still used the local dialect in the first post-1919 decade. Standard Slovene was often simply not understood by pupils in Prekmurje. The most stubborn proponents of the local Slovene literary language were Lutheran pastors and Catholic priests. Lutheran religious instruction in schools in Prekmurje was conducted in the local written tradition until the Axis attack on Yugoslavia in 1941, a practice guaranteed to the Lutheran Church in Prekmurje by King Alexander. The same was the case with Catholic religious instruction. When the authorities ordered that the Catholic textbook for primary schools in the local Slovene dialect be replaced by an edition written in standardized Slovene, the Prekmurje clergy revolted. A political scandal erupted, and the issue of language in Prekmurje schools was debated in the Belgrade Parliament. The conflict between the state school administration and local Catholic priests ended only after the intervention of the Bishop of Maribor, who in 1927 ordered those books in the “Prekmurje dialect” could no longer be used. However, among the local Catholic clergy, final acceptance of the new language did not prevail until the mid-1930s, when a younger generation of priests – locals who had been educated in Slovene seminaries after the Yugoslav annexation – began to work in Prekmurje.³⁹ Similarly, the transformation of the “hearts and minds” of local Prekmurje Slavophone teachers was not entirely successful, despite the re-education efforts. When Prekmurje was occupied by the Hungarian army in April 1941, the older generation of local teachers immediately began to cooperate with the new leadership of the Hungarian Education Department for Prekmurje. During the Second World War, the Hungarian occupation administration used means to organise education in Prekmurje similar to those the Yugoslav administration had used twenty years earlier: the Slovene teachers were dismissed, the local teachers of the older generation who expressed loyalty to the Hungarian administration were left in place, and Hungarian teachers were brought in to fill the vacancies. In Prekmurje schools, Hungarian replaced Slovenian as the language of instruction.⁴⁰

Jernej Kosi is an Assistant Professor at the University of Ljubljana and a postdoctoral researcher on the ERC research project NEPOSTRANS at the Institute of Political History in Budapest. He has done research on various dimensions of Slovenian and Habsburg history and published books and articles on nationalism, World War I, and post-imperial transition.

The author gratefully acknowledges the financial support of the Slovenian Research Agency (research core funding No. P6-0235 and research project J6-2573). I would like to thank Daša Ličen, Oliver Pejić and Rok Stergar for their suggestions, help and advice. All translations are my own. ︎
On the negotiations over Prekmurje at the Paris Peace Conference, see Rudi Kyovsky: Trianonska pogodba in slovensko-ogrska meja [The Treaty of Trianon and the Slovene–Hungarian Border]. In: Janko Liška (ed.): Revolucionarno vrenje v Pomurju v letih 1918–1920 [Revolutionary unrests in Prekmurje, 1918–1919]. Murska Sobota 1981, pp. 236–259; Bogo Grafenauer: Slovenska Koroška v diplomatski igri leta 1919 [Slovene Carinthia in the diplomatic game in 1919]. In: Janko Pleterski (ed.): Koroški plebiscit [The Carinthian plebiscite]. Ljubljana 1970, pp. 295–378; Andrej Mitrović: Razgraničenje Jugoslavije sa Mađarskom i Rumunijom 1919–1920 [Boundary delimitation of Yugoslavia with Hungary and Romania]. Novi Sad 1975. On the Paris Peace Conference, see Margaret MacMillan: Peacemakers. The Paris Conference of 1919 and Its Attempt to End War. London 2001; Volker Prott: The Politics of Self-Determination. Remaking Territories and National Identities in Europe, 1917–1923. Oxford 2016. ︎
Jernej Kosi: The Imagined Slovene Nation and Local Categories of Identification. “Slovenes” in the Kingdom of Hungary and Postwar Prekmurje. In: Austrian History Yearbook 49 (2018), pp. 87–102. ︎
On ethnolinguistic nationalism, see Tomasz Kamusella: The History of Normative Opposition of ‘Language versus Dialect’. From Its Graeco-Latin Origin to Central Europe’s Ethnolinguistic Nation-States. In: Colloquia Humanistica 5 (2016), pp.164–188; idem.: The Politics of Language and Nationalism in Modern Central Europe. Basingstoke 2009. Following Tomasz Kamusella’s notion of ethnolinguistic nationalism, I regard Slovene ethnolinguistic nationalism as a rhetoric and practice that draws on the idea of the postulated Slovene nation being associated with the Slovene-speaking population. It emerged in 1848, when the Carinthian priest Matija Majar emulated contemporaneous expressions of German nationalism that dominated the public debate and claimed that the usage of the Slovene language was a distinctive cultural feature of Slovenes, that is, of people densely inhabiting Habsburg lands between the upper Adriatic and western Hungary. As the very first Slovene nationalist activist, Majar built his concept of a separate Slovene population upon the linguistic classification of Slavic languages devised by Bartholomeus/Jernej Kopitar; see Jernej Kosi: Kako je nastal slovenski narod [How the Slovene Nation Was Created]. Ljubljana 2013. On the emergence of the Slovene national movement, see also Joachim Hösler: Von Krain zu Slowenien. Die Anfänge der nationalen Differenzierungsprozesse in Krain und der Untersteiermark von der Aufklärung bis zur Revolution 1768 bis 1848. Munich 2006. ︎
Matija Slavič, the member of the Yugoslav delegation responsible for Prekmurje, later vividly described the exhausting process of preparing the material that was later used to substantiate the annexation. See Matija Slavič: Naše Prekmurje [Our Prekmurje]. Murska Sobota 1999. ︎
Miroslav Kokolj: Prekmurski Slovenci od nacionalne osvoboditve do fašistične okupacije 1919–1941 [Slovenes in Prekmurje from National Liberation to Fascist Occupation 1919–1941]. Murska Sobota 1984, pp. 19–33. On measures taken against Hungarians in Prekmurje, see Attila Kovács: Številčni razvoj prekmurskih Madžarov v 20. stoletju [Demographic Trends of the Prekmurje Hungarians in the Twentieth Century]. In: Razprave in gradivo: revija za narodnostna vprašanja [Treatises and Documents, Journal of Ethnic Studies] 48–49 (2006), pp. 6–36. ︎
The Archives of the Republic of Slovenia (henceforth: ARS), SI AS 53, 20, Prekmurje 20/49, Višji šolski svet v Ljubljani [Higher school council in Ljubljana] (henceforth: Prekmurje 20/49), Šolske razmere v Prekmurju [School Conditions in Prekmurje] (henceforth: School Conditions). ︎
As I seek to demonstrate in the following pages, the Slovene post-war makeover of the school network in Prekmurje corresponds with the notion of “transformation” as a “more or less enduring process which is set in motion long before a remarkable ‘turn’ takes place and which ends with a certain, sometimes even significant, temporary distance to this moment.” Florian Kührer-Wielach, Sarah Lemmen: Transformation in East Central Europe. 1918 and 1989. A Comparative Approach. In: European Review of History. Revue européenne d’histoire 23 (2016), pp. 573–579, here: p. 575. ︎
ARS, SI AS 53, 20, Prekmurje 20/49, School Conditions (4–13 September). ︎
Original: “slabše kot narod, o kakem slovničnem znanju, pa se sploh ne da govoriti. Kljub temu bi jih mogel višji šolski svet obdržati na njihovih mestih, eventuelno tudi premestiti, a pod pogojem, oziroma z neizprosno kategorično zahtevo, da se takoj lotijo učenja pravilne slovenščine ter položijo čez en ali dve leti dopolnilne izpit iz slovenščine sicer se odpuste iz službe. /…/ ker ti ljudje so bili zaverovani samo v nobel madžarščino, in so glede naše slovenske in leposlovne literature pravcati ignorantje. Ker so naši ljudje in z ozirom na to, da imajo mnogi kopico nepreskrbljenih otrok jih ne kaže odpustiti to bi bilo nehumano. Dobro delo usmiljenosti bo, če jim segnemo pod pazduho in jim pomagamo.” ARS, SI AS 53, 20, Prekmurje 20/49, School Conditions (4–13 September). ︎
ARS, SI AS 53, 20, Prekmurje 20/49, School Conditions (21 September). ︎
Ibid. ︎
Original: “S pravilno t.j. našo književno slovenščino bi ondotni narod najprej dvignili kulturno ter ga asimilovali sebi – saj je veja našega debla.” Ibid. ︎
Original: “/n/e pa morda v kakem “prekmurskem” narečju. Ljudsko mnenje je, da se otroci tega “narečja” nauče doma, v šoli se naj uče pravilne slovenščine.” Položaj šolstva in učiteljstva v Prekmurju [The Condition of the Educational System and the Teaching Staff in Prekmurje]. In: Učiteljski tovariš [Teacher’s Companion], 8 October 1919, p. 2. ︎
Original: “Samoumevno mora biti učni jezik slovenski in to pismena slovenščina. Prav nikake potrebe in nikakega vzroka ni, da bi uvajali v šole prekmurski dialekt.” Iz Prekmurja [From Prekmurje]. In: Jugoslavija [Yugoslavia], 11 October 1919, p. 1. ︎
Original: Prekmurci so “živeli dolga stoletja kulturno in politično ločeni od nas. Vse ostale slovenske pokrajine so imele ozke stike med seboj in v splošnem isto zgodovino, in baš to je vzrok, da so n. pr. štajerski Slovenci brez težkoč sprejeli skupni književni jezik. Medtem pa so bili ogrski Slovenci odtrgani od našega razvoja in jim je bilo narečje več kot je nam; oni so videli v njem tisto, kar smo mi videli v našem književnem jeziku. Imeli so svoje pisatelje, svojo književnost. To zavest imajo še danes – izza osvobojenja. /…/ Res je, da se ljudstvo po večini veseli združenja z Jugoslavijo, toda njegov pojem Jugoslavije je malo drugačen kot je naš, ki smo vsled lepega prosvetnega razvoja vcepili ljudstvu občenarodno zavest in globlje politično naziranje. Prekmurci (izvzeti so v resnici narodnozavedni krogi) še se vedno boje Štajercev, Kranjcev, Srbov itd., kar bo jim sicer polagoma minilo, toda za prosvetno izenačenje je treba časa in dobrih sredstev. Eno teh sredstev je, da se jim deloma pusti narečje v šolah, da pa se z druge strani smotreno uvaja skupni književni jezik. Ljudstvo bo sčasoma samo čutilo potrebo, da se v javnosti opusti narečje, toda dejstvo je, da te potrebe zaenkrat ne čuti, ker je ne more čutiti.” Narečje v prekmurskih šolah [The dialect in Prekmurje schools]. In: Murska straža [The Watch on the Mura], 4 October 1919, p. 1. ︎
Kosi: The Imagined Slovene Nation, pp. 95–100. ︎
On the Prekmurje Slovene literary language, see Marko Jesenšek: Poglavja iz zgodovine prekmurskega knjižnega jezika [Chapters from the history of the Prekmurje Slovene literary language]. Maribor 2013; Marc L. Greenberg: Prekmurščina med slovanskimi jeziki [Prekmurje language among Slavic languages]. In: Marko Jesenšek (ed.): Prekmurska slovenska slovnica – Vend nyelvtan [Prekmurje Slovene Grammar – Vend nyelvtan]. Maribor 2013, pp. 401–412; Martina Orožen: Prekmurski knjižni jezik [Literary Prekmurje Slovene]. In: ibid., pp. 413–428; Vilko Novak: Slovar stare knjižne prekmurščine [Dictionary of the Old Literary Prekmurje Language]. Ljubljana 2007, pp. V–VIII. ︎
Ivan Jerič: Zgodovina madžarizacije v Prekmurju [History of Magyarisation in Prekmurje]. Murska Sobota 2001, pp. 42–50. ︎
According to Hungarian statistical data, in 1910 the rate of literacy in “Prekmurje” stood at 61–62 %. Miha Štampah: Šolstvo in pismenost v večjezičnem prostoru med rekama Rabo in Muro od 1870 do 1910: diplomsko delo [Education and Literacy in the Multilingual Area between the Rivers Raba and Mura from 1870 to 1910: Graduation Thesis]. Lendava 2016. ︎
On the role of the Hungarian state and the local Catholic and Lutheran clergy in shaping collective identifications in pre-1919 “Prekmurje”, see Kosi: The Imagined Slovene Nation, pp. 95–102. ︎
ARS, SI AS 53, 20, Prekmurje 20/49, 236/1919. ︎
Ibid. The exception to the rule were four Hungarian teachers in schools with predominantly Hungarian pupils, who were expected to stay and later learn Slovene. In fact, in the subsequent months, many Hungarian teachers were indeed fired or decided to leave Prekmurje. As a result, as late as March 1920, Prekmurje still lacked 53 teachers. Kokolj: Prekmurski Slovenci, p. 28. ︎
Ibid., p. 289. ︎
See for instance ARS, SI AS 53, 20, Prekmurje 20/49, 14806/1919, Ureditev prekmurskih osnovnih šol [The Regulation of the Prekmurje Elementary Schools], 24 December 1921. ︎
Regional Archives Maribor (henceforth: RAM), sig. 1133004/1, p. 43. ︎
RAM, sig. 1133004/6, 281. ︎
Original: “/s/poznali v Slovencih svoje iskrene prijatelje, bi se divili naši prekrasni domovini in spoznali bi našo prestolnico z vsemi njenimi starinskimi in modernimi zanimivostmi. Ne vede se jim bo usidrala v njih srcih ljubezen do nove domovine Slovenije, naj jo le spoznajo!” ARS, SI AS 53, 20, Prekmurje 20/49, Prekmurje: ureditev šolstva; počitniški tečaj [Prekmurje: The Organization of Educational System; Holiday Course]. ︎
Original: “Vrhu tega bi tečaj v Murski Soboti popolnoma pogrešal glavni moment – moment vzgoje domovinske ljubezni in čuta slovenske in pri tem in onim tudi jugoslovanske vzajemnosti, čuta, da je Prekmurec mladika na zeleni slovenski veji, ki raste na mogočnem slovanskem deblu. Kakor so Madžari storili vse, da so zatrli čut slovenske zavednosti prekmurskih učiteljev – žal tudi v pretežni meri večini duhovnikov – tako moramo mi storiti vse, da jih očistimo madžarskega duha, iztrgamo iz narodne nezavednosti in jih spreobrnemo, da postanejo vredni člani slovanskega naroda. Le narodno zaveden učitelj zamore vzbujati v mladini narodno zavest in ljubezen do rodu in domovine. Čitati, pisati in računati uči vsak učitelj, tudi madžaron; ali narodno zavedno vzgojevati zamore le učitelj, ki ga prešinja ljubezen do rodu in domovine.” Ibid. ︎
RAM, sig. 1133004/6, 15131, Seznam učnih oseb, ki se iz službenih ozirov zamenjajo iz Prekmurja v Slovenijo in obratno [The list of teaching staff who will be transferred due to professional reasons from Prekmurje in Slovenia and vice versa]. ︎
Original: “Šole so imele doslej edino razlogo, da nauče deco madžarskega jezika in jo vzgoje za zveste renegate.” Prekmurski Slovenci [Prekmurje Slovenes]. In: Murska straža, 21 June 1919, p. 1. ︎
“Od približno 100.000 Slovencev,ki žive v Prekmurju,je največji del narodno in politično indiferenten, čeprav kaže ljudstvo živo prirodno inteligenco. Šole, uradi in silni pritisk od zgoraj je ustvaril veliko število renegatov,kiso bili vedno najmočnejši steber madžarskih izkoriščevalcev, kateri so iz duševne in gmotne zapuščenosti prekmurskega Slovenca zidali sijajne palačev v Budimpešti in drugod.” Ibid. ︎
Pieter Judson: Guardians of the Nation: Activists on the Language Frontiers of Imperial Austria. Cambridge (MA) 2006; Pieter M. Judson: The Habsburg Empire. Cambridge (MA) 2016, pp. 302–309. ︎
On the pre-1918 rhetoric, practices and consequences of ethnolinguistic nationalism in Lower Styria, see Janez Cvirn: Das “Festungsdreieck”. Zur politischen Orientierung der Deutschen in der Untersteiermark (1861–1914). Vienna 2016; Filip Čuček: Svoji k svojim. Na poti k dokončni nacionalni razmejitvi na Spodnjem Štajerskem v 19. stoletju [Each to Their Own. On the Road to the Final National Delineation in Lower Styria in the 19th Century]. Ljubljana 2016; Karin Almasy: Wie aus Marburgern “Slowenen” und “Deutsche” wurden. Bad Radkersburg, Graz 2014; Pieter Judson: Nationalist Emotion as Fin-de-Siècle Legal Defense? A 1908 Trial in Celje/Cilli. In: Acta Histriae 21 (2013) 4, 735–747; Martin Moll: Kein Burgfrieden: Der deutsch-slowenische Nationalitätenkonflikt in der Steiermark 1900–1918. Innsbruck, Vienna, Bozen 2007. ︎
Andrej Vovko: Nekateri vidiki življenja primorskih priseljencev v Prekmurje med svetovnima vojnama [Some Aspects of the Life of the Primorje Immigrants to Prekmurje Between the Two World Wars]. In: Dve domovini – Two Homelands 24 (2016), pp.187–204. ︎
On the role of the Austrian state in the creation of a special Slovene “ethnic category” and the recognition of the Slovene language as a national language of Slovenes, see Rok Stergar and Tamara Scheer: Ethnic Boxes: The Unintended Consequences of Habsburg Bureaucratic Classification. In: Nationalities Papers 46 (2018), pp. 575–591. ︎
Kokolj: Prekmurski Slovenci, pp. 286–295. Janko Liška: Porajanje in rast narodne zavesti prekmurskih Slovencev [The Emergence and Growth of National Consciousness among Prekmurje Slovenes]. In: Janko Liška (ed.): Revolucionarno vrenje v Pomurju v letih 1918–1920 [Revolutionary Unrest in Prekmurje, 1918–1919]. Murska Sobota 1981, pp. 260–300, here: pp. 273–279. ︎
See, for instance, Kokolj: Prekmurski Slovenci, pp. 336–340. ︎
Miroslav Kokolj, Bela Horvat: Prekmurski šolstvo. Od začetka reformacije do zloma fašizma [Schooling in Prekmurje. From the Beginning of the Reformation to the Collapse of Fascism]. Murska Sobota 1977, pp. 324–333. ︎
Ibid., pp. 381–388. ︎

Der Beitrag Slovene Ethnolinguistic Nationalism as Rhetoric and Practice in Post-Imperial School Administration in Prekmurje erschien zuerst auf Halbjahresschrift für Geschichte und Zeitgeschehen in Zentral- und Südosteuropa.

Bohemia’s Eastern Border in Transition, 1918–1919

IKGS-Admin_2 — Fri, 01 Mar 2024 10:00:03 +0000

Ségolène Plyer,¹ Université de Strasbourg

Introduction

The passage of supranational empires to national democracies at the end of the First World War has recently been the subject of a plethora of publications.² Even if these historiographies are still in the making, one can safely assert that they stress the importance of contexts, actors and representations in a situation of rapid transformations brought about by the sudden, quite unplanned break-up of empires, in this case the Austro-Hungarian Empire. Thus, regional, non-central territories take on a new status. How they and their inhabitants were involved in the building of the subsequent Central European states may shed new light on this process.

The proclamation of the First Czechoslovak Republic on 28 October 1918³ created a country ex nihilo. Territorial control proved to be a major challenge for the new state.⁴ While the integration of Slovakia and Subcarpathian Ruthenia was partly violent,⁵ the western (Czech) lands saw less trouble. Nevertheless, the immediate post-war period was marked by tensions. The Republic was highly criticized in a variety of ways, by citizens hostile to its liberal features, by others nostalgic for the Empire, and by the secessionists in the German-speaking border districts in November and December 1918. Nevertheless, the situation was pacified within a few months. Numerous arguments have been put forward in order to explain this, ranging from military occupation of the border to acceptance of a regime guaranteeing national affirmation, „the democratic idea“, „social legislation“ and „cultural progress“.⁶ Beyond general explanations, the few existing studies on sub-regional situations show that reactions in the young Republic were far from homogenous.⁷

In order to discover more about the dynamics of local experiences, we will adopt a dual perspective on the changes between the end of the Great War and the second part of the year 1919, when the Treaty of Versailles and the first social measures of the Republic entered into force. The first perspective focuses on the re-organization of the state administration in Bohemia: if the transition between empire and nation state went comparatively smoothly, it was largely because this administration stayed in place after the war. But this perspective, reinforced by files from the National Archive in Prague,⁸ is hardly able to show local dynamics often decisive for arrangements or – on the contrary – escalations leading to serious conflicts. From a second perspective, we will analyse how the base political elite experienced the changes in Eastern Bohemia (our usual field of work). Diverse sources, such as the press, chronicles, and rare published memoirs will help reconstruct the expectations and strategies of local actors from the southern episcopal, Czech-speaking city of Hradec Králové/Königgrätz to the northern German-speaking textile town of Trutnov/Trautenau.

Ensuring change of sovereignty without revolution

The proclamation of the Czechoslovak Republic by the National Committee (Národní výbor) on 28 October 1918 in Prague took public opinion by surprise. While the Austro-Hungarian army was disbanding, a „State of the Czechs and Slovaks“ was founded on the territory of the Czech and Slovakian provinces of the Austro-Hungarian Empire (plus Subcarpathian Ruthenia). The future president, Tomáš Garrigue Masaryk, had prepared the State with the Entente and could count on the support of the American president Wilson.

A century later, it is striking to note how easily the new state could form in the area formerly administrated by Austria, that is, Bohemia, Moravia and Silesian Moravia, as in the case of Bohemia within a few weeks between 28 October and Christmas 1918. The term „revolution“ seems to be ill suited, even if it has sometimes been used to describe the establishment of the First Republic. Furthermore, contemporaries largely rejected it, some out of fear of Bolshevism, others out of disappointment with what they considered to be the socio-economic inadequacies of the new state, a liberal democracy that to them was insufficiently social.⁹ The concept of „transition“ which, after 1989, dominated the studies on the exodus of communism from Central and Eastern Europe seems better suited than „revolution“ to describe the political changes in 1918 and the years thereafter. First used to describe how the former Eastern Bloc countries adopted the market economy, this concept has since been expanded to new geographical areas¹⁰ and other areas of human activity, especially concerning administration in developing countries facing thorough transformations in their political-economic orientation.¹¹ Indeed, the ability of the administration to transform itself has proven to be one of the key factors in the change of sovereignty from Empires to the building of new states after 1918.¹²

Enthusiasm dominated as the Bohemian province learned of the proclamation of the Republic: to the prospect of the end of the war was added the birth of a long-desired state, considered a „national liberation“ of the Czechs. On 30 October, Max Julius von Coudenhove, governor of the Bohemian kingdom, had given way to the vice-governor Jan Kosina, a Czech. After some hesitation, the military command refrained from using the non-Czech troops stationed in the country.¹³ But if the path was clear for the National Committee, the situation spiralled out of control „in the chaos of the first days“,¹⁴ with a procession of troubles accompanying the removal of imperial insignia. These disturbances, sometimes serious, were only seldom a matter for the state administration on the local level (called the “political administration”), and most of them are not reflected in our sources. They have been finely analysed elsewhere.¹⁵ A strong trend emerges: the perpetrators of violence, provided they went beyond the food riot, had more or less confused views about establishing the new regime and redefining the national community. However, they did not show principled hostility to the Republic¹⁶ – on the contrary.

Since the slogan of the National Committee, addressed to public authorities, was to maintain „public tranquillity“,¹⁷ the troubles that arose had to be quickly stamped out.¹⁸ Pending the peace negotiations, the new state had to prove itself able to fulfil its missions. The National Committee, then after 14 November the first Czechoslovak government, headed by Karel Kramář, followed a strategy of appeasement, including when disturbances arose in Bohemia between nationalities or took an anti-Semitic turn.¹⁹ In the period before a new constitution was established, which did not happen until January 1920, the authorities sought to ensure the continuity of the law²⁰ and administration.²¹ Their objective was to contain opposition within the framework of the institutions, particularly that of the political administration. The latter, therefore, sought to present itself as a guarantor of profound political changes and as a purifier of negative Austrian heritage.

As the first Czechoslovakian administrative circulars in the National Archives files assert, unpopular restrictions and control measures during the war were associated with the Austrian Empire, while the new Republic was “the triumph of national principles and, moreover, of democracy”. The political administration had to convince the citizens of its being not at the service of an “old state more and more estranged to the people’s will” and “the will of its nations”, but an offshoot of national sovereignty.²² In the “Czech or mixed districts”, the officials were asked to encourage “the [Czech] nation” to fulfil “its centuries-old dream” (of building a state).²³

In fact, competent Czech speakers had gradually populated the Bohemian administration, which had been bilingual since the 1890s, even if they rarely reached the top of the imperial hierarchy.²⁴ In response to the cleansing demanded on the local level by the Czech National District Committees (Okresní Národní Výbory or ONV), often constituted by trained managers of national Czech associations, foremost the Sokol (Falcons) gymnastics society, prefects (hejtmani, German Hauptmänner) who were unpopular or too closely linked to the old regime were discharged. They constituted 10% of the total,²⁵ among them the prefect of Plzeň/Pilsen, who had had demonstrators shot at, and his colleague from Hradec Králové, Josef Smutný. As soon as 29 October 1918, the latter phoned to report that

The Národní okresní výbor just dropped me off because I have exposed myself too much in the interest of the Austrian state and [out of?] patriotism. I am allegedly dangerous to public peace and order. My deputy, Chief Commissioner Pacovský, would take over my duties.²⁶

The episcopal city had been shaken by strikes throughout 1918. The rural surroundings were heavily hit by grain requisitions twice as high as the year before, which were said to go to Berlin. At the beginning of October, schools were shut down for two weeks due to Spanish flu’. Not rarely, the disease proved deadly among children and young people lacking proper food and heating.²⁷ The Czech Social Democrats organized a “giant” demonstration on 14 October which gave “our city a Czech appearance for the first time in the present war”, with houses decked out in Czech colours and young people wearing folk costume. A “proclamation of the Czechoslovak working people” was issued, heralding an autonomous republic.²⁸ “Forbidden to administrate” on 29 October,²⁹ the prefect retired with the assurance he could claim his pension.³⁰

Nonetheless, these measures proved insufficient in the face of the radical questioning of the administration by the ONVs, with the support of the Prague National Committee. In many districts, according to prefects‘ reports, the ONVs considered that in the name of „the Czech spirit“, it was up to them to secure all local authorities.³¹ They took over two strategic activities, the distribution of foodstuffs and the direction of the gendarmerie, and organized the surveillance of the „political administration“, posting guards at the doors of the district prefectures, or even inside the buildings. They wanted to seize the administrative archives, to receive the money for the food supplies, in short, to take the place of the administration. And worried telegraphs or telephone calls from the prefects mounted at the Bohemian government in Prague (i.e. the head of the political administration), demanding support for their own hierarchy and the end of that of the ministries for the ONVs. At Čáslav, the prefect reported with a touch of humour that the ONV had wanted to occupy his offices and isolate him in his private apartment:

I thanked these gentlemen for this suggestion […] and refused [moreover] that they set up at the prefecture a liaison […] who would only complicate the negotiations between the prefecture and the ONV […]. Not to mention the secrecy of the matter: I would like to be able to handle them without fifteen people being aware.³²

What was at stake was to decide between the establishment of a fully nationalized administration under street control and the restoration of a „Weberian“ administration, that is to say, a professional one only at the service of the common good, far from partisan (or national) conflicts.³³ To a large extent, Prague decided in favour of this solution, which had the advantage of not disrupting the country and relying on the ethos of the civil service, whose traditional mission was to ensure „order and calm“.³⁴ At the beginning of November, posters bloomed on the walls of the localities, showing the main points of circulars of the general government and the very first laws of the new state: the prefects – and they alone – were indeed responsible for the food supply and helped build „our dear homeland Czechoslovakia“.³⁵ ONVs were banned on 4 December.³⁶

The new state was therefore in a position to be obeyed, deriving its legitimacy from its democratic nature. However unchanged, the administration, placed under the authority of the National Committee, was no longer that of the Empire, but the emanation of popular sovereignty – which further justified state control down to the local level. The Czechoslovak Republic, whose inhabitants were almost as linguistically diverse as those of the former Austria were, sought to bring together the two definitions of the term “people” as a whole, as an abstract civic community of citizens, and as a cultural community defined firstly by its main language and culture and therefore understood as an ethnic group. It offered the possibility for nationalisms to contribute to the construction of the new state. To put it in 1918 terms, „the affirmation of the sovereignty of the people” implied the recognition of „ideas that led the great cultured peoples, once politically reborn, to the flourishing of national forces“, after a world war that had helped ensure “the victory of the national principle“.³⁷ However, the inhabitants of the predominantly German-speaking territories seemed to refuse this offer en bloc between 1918 and 1919.

“The Czechs caught on more quickly”. The German secession attempt on the local level

Emperor Charles’ manifesto on 16 October 1918, which opened the door to the federalization of the Austrian part of the Empire,³⁸ launched on a provincial level intense activity building German and Czech polities on the territory in which each nationality lived. For some German-speaking representatives of Bohemia-Moravia, it looked like recognition of the efforts they had made since their election to the Austrian Imperial Assembly (the Council of the Empire – Reichsrat) in 1907 or to the Bohemian Diet in 1908. They wanted to ensure clear separation between the Bohemian districts on the basis of main language. During the war, they also achieved a reinforcement of the administrative status of German-speaking towns in the north. Furthermore, Wilson’s Fourteen Points, published in January 1918, provided the international basis on which it seemed the peace would be settled.

This German-Bohemian activity was taken aback by the proclamation of a Czechoslovak Republic on 28 October. As a German politician later acknowledged, the Czechs were quicker.³⁹ On 29 October, the German-speaking representatives of Bohemia-Moravia at the Imperial Council (which still existed) proclaimed from Vienna the attachment of their constituencies to „German-Austria“ (Deutschösterreich, that is to say, what remained of the Austro-Hungarian Empire and corresponds to present-day Austria). The conservative politician Rudolf Lodgman von Auen headed this attempt at regional secession.⁴⁰ Quite surprisingly, he enjoyed the support of the leader of the German-speaking Social Democrats in the Czech countries, Josef Seliger. The Social Democrats were well established in the political landscape, having won 87 of the 516 mandates in the Imperial Council elections of 1907. They hoped for a unification of the Bohemian constituencies with Germany, where the Social Democrat Friedrich Ebert became chancellor on 9 November 1918.⁴¹

For the founders of the Czechoslovakian Republic, there was no question that any inch of the Bohemian territory would be given up. Between mid-November and mid-December 1918, the newly formed Czechoslovak army, armed by the Allies, pending the final decision on the definitive state borders to be made in the forthcoming peace negotiations, occupied the secessionist districts. In this connection, our East Bohemian sources recount a serious incident which seems to have been unique in its gravity and received a great deal of attention. Nine notables or local authorities of Choustníkovo Hradiště/Gradlitz, a German-speaking locality near Dvůr Králové/Köninginhof (where the majority was Czech-speaking), were arrested on 8 December 1918 by a detachment of the Czechoslovak army after the mayor had flaunted the German colours. In Dvůr Králové, the crowd almost lynched them on the way to the prison, from where they were brought to the court in Hradec Králové.⁴² German homes in Choustníkovo Hradiště/Gradlitz were searched, and arms and food were confiscated. That same week, the imperial insignia were removed from public buildings and in the nearby village of Žireč/Schurz the soldiers were „forced“⁴³ to spit on a bust of the emperor thrown into the square.

The mix-populated district of Dvůr Králové was then beset by the hostility of the urban labouring population to the countryside, which had drastically raised food prices since the beginning of blockade by the Allies in 1916.⁴⁴ Czechs and Germans disagreed over the imperial plan to give Choustníkovo Hradiště/Gradlitz a court to reduce the influence of the nearby Czech-speaking court of Jičín. Finally, the 32 German-speaking municipalities (out of the 38 district municipalities) attempted to secede in November 1918. This accumulation of tensions can explain the degree of radicalization reached in these „revolutionary days“ – revolutionary in the sense that those seen as grain hoarders were arrested, the old regime was broken with and its representatives (the mayor, two teachers and two gendarmes) were interned and mistreated by the crowd (all participating so that no one in particular could be held responsible), especially the Gendarmeriewachtmeister Scharf (the former direct representative of the abolished authority).⁴⁵ The trouble ended with a mandatory declaration of loyalty to the new regime via the public desecration of a symbol of the old regime in the village of Žireč/Schurz. The lack of support shown by the authorities (on 21 December, the Hradec Králové court freed the nine men arrested in Choustníkovo Hradiště/Gradlitz) fits in with the above-mentioned strategy of appeasement. Furthermore, some days before the 8 December incident, „several mayors of German villages“ around Dvůr Králové wrote to the prefect to „assure [him] that the situation will soon clear up” (they evidently did not believe in the success of secession) and that they intended to „remain in the district and continue to supply it“.⁴⁶

This divergence of opinions is representative of the lack of uniformity, even consistency on the regional level. For his part, the German Minister Plenipotentiary in Prague stressed the difference in attractiveness of the German provinces on the other side of the border. Only „Saxony attracts“; Bavaria (then one of the poorest regions in Germany) and Prussian Silesia aroused little interest, if not none at all.⁴⁷ The troops were sent to the east of Bohemia late and briefly, whereas they had been sent to its west as early as November 1918.⁴⁸

In order to obtain an idea of public opinion in Trutnov/Trautenau, let us open the two periodicals of the time. They had been published for several decades. One, entitled Neue Trautenauer Zeitung from 1918 to 1919, had become nationalistic and anti-Semitic in the late 19^th century. Its opposition to the young Republic was absolute and did not waver for several months. According to this publication, the whole of Eastern Bohemia was ready to secede and had only renounced by force of bayonets. The other, known as the Ostböhmische Presse during the period in question, remained faithful to the liberalism of its beginnings. The organ of the Trautenau linen exchange,⁴⁹ it tried harder than its competitor to provide its readers with an objective description of the world and the context of the moment. Following its front-page news between October and December 1918 shows a rapid evolution: from the preparation of the transformation of the Empire into a federation of states, we move to stupefaction on 28 October – „the world is collapsing“ – and then to a succession of spotlights on the environment of the new Czechoslovakia, dominated by the fear of „Bolshevism“. The conclusion is clear: only Czechoslovakia is a reasonable option. It should be added that the Trutnov/Trautenau linen weavers had a competitive relationship with the economically mightier province of Prussian Silesia and that the memory of the miseries of the 1866 war „with Prussia“ might still have been present.

Nevertheless, a priori, the formation of a „German“ state in Bohemia-Moravia fulfilled the wishes of a German-speaking population that had been increasingly on the defensive since the 1880s due to the rise of Czech nationalism, which it interpreted as a threat of extinction.⁵⁰ So Dr von Sterneck, prefect of Trautenau, after learning from the newspapers on 31 October that he no longer answered to the imperial and royal Bohemian administration and was now part of an administration working with the Czech National committee,⁵¹ shared his inner turmoil with his superiors. How would his German-speaking constituents understand that he refused to follow the Lodgman von Auen government in Liberec/Reichenberg, which stood in the continuity of the Empire and whose demands were based on Wilson’s Fourteen Points? At the same time, he certainly did not approve of the partitioning of the state.⁵² Apart from a few German nationalists (including the mayor), he wrote, the majority of the population and industrialists considered the attachment of their district to German-Austria an impossibility; „the most reasonable believe that entry into Czechoslovakia is inevitable“.⁵³ The best solution, the prefect concluded, was that his substitute swear an oath to Reichenberg while he himself took a well-deserved holiday „after four years of overwork during the war“.⁵⁴ Karel Kramář, the head of the Czechoslovak Provisional Government, actually granted himself a holiday, as well as the prefect of Braunau (Broumov), the next German-speaking city, who had chosen the same avoidance tactics.⁵⁵ On his early return on 15 December due to the occupation of Trutnov/Trautenau by the Czechoslovak army, Dr von Sterneck had made his mind up. In Liberec/Reichenberg, secessionists retreated from a clash with the Czechoslovak army: they had failed to gather enough armed men,⁵⁶ or to secure the support of Germany.⁵⁷ An attempt to take control of the railway line between Trutnov and Liberec on 2 December had fizzled out. As for Sterneck himself, he wanted to continue to serve the state with loyalty, meaning the state as the guarantor of the laws and the public good.⁵⁸

As we see, by promoting the old organization of the territory and stability, the Republic took advantage of the divisions in German-speaking public opinion and could count on the tacit approval of a part of it. However, tensions lasted until the summer of 1919. Before the definitive frontiers of Czechoslovakia were recognized (in April 1919)⁵⁹, German-Austria publicly supported the attachment of the periphery of the Bohemian quadrilateral. Parts of the German-speaking population (or at least its spokespersons) took refuge in passive resistance, pending the final decision of the peace conference, showing the same confidence in Wilson and the Fourteen Points as the Czechs almost until the signature of the Treaty of Versailles.⁶⁰ Thus, the government continued to encourage Czech speakers to make themselves more visible within the confines of the German-speaking regions. Beside other manifestations,⁶¹ the ONVs “of the Czech minority” in the mixed settlement territories were authorized by the National Council to remain in force after 4 December 1918,⁶² despite the tension their disordered initiatives fuelled.⁶³

The year 1919 began in a turbulent manner within the confines of the country. The “Bohemian-German government” still tried to maintain a shadow existence by issuing decrees and attempting to collect funds, through an appeal to the (German-speaking) population to take out loans, and it prepared clandestine elections for a German-Bohemian assembly. In the same month of January, the Trutnov/Trautenau town council was dissolved because, although it accepted members of the Czech minority, it rejected the principle of bilingualism.⁶⁴ The prefect von Sterneck was removed to Karlovy Vary/Karlsbad.⁶⁵

On 4 March 1919, the opening day of the Austrian Constituent Assembly, from which the Germans of Czechoslovakia were excluded, the German-speaking Social Democratic Party called for a general strike to protest the occupation by the Czechoslovak Army,⁶⁶ but also the end of convertibility with the Austrian currency. At that time, the already considerable weight of the left in Bohemia was reinforced by the serious social problems linked to the food shortage.⁶⁷ The call to demonstrate was taken up by the masses throughout the new Republic on 4 March (and in some cases already on the 3^rd) the subject of mass emulation throughout the new Republic. The demonstrations were put down by the army, with fifty-two deaths in the Czech lands.⁶⁸ In Hostinné/Arnau (5 km south of Trutnov/Trautenau), where soldiers opened fire with machine guns, two women watching the demonstration as mere spectators were killed, whereupon the demonstrators flew into a rage and, turning on the soldiers, forced them to flee.⁶⁹

The same day, sixty kilometres away in Broumov/Braunau, a crowd of about ten thousand people threw the court’s archives out of a window. When authorities sent soldiers, they happened to be from the same battalion as the rioters, some of them being from Braunau and the others from Náchod: a few months before, they had been fighting alongside each other at the front. Negotiations took place and the day ended without serious incident.⁷⁰ The border nevertheless remained an area of tension, with crossings to and from Germany being closely monitored. For instance, in Vrchlabí/Hohenelbe in the late March, two Germans were killed “for no good reason” by the Czech gendarmerie.⁷¹

These flashpoints notwithstanding, the situation was slowly easing. The already existing workers‘ parties in the border region feared competition with the Spartacists (later to become the Communists) and they made every effort to curb their influence.⁷² For instance, the German-speaking Social Democratic Party was said to be “double-dealing“,⁷³ apparently supporting German secession, but deep down favouring joining Czechoslovakia. In March 1919, a new high-ranking officer was named to take command of the troops stationed in Trautenau, most of whom were returning from operations in Slovakia.⁷⁴ Colonel von Macha was well received, being “a former General Staff officer, most recently in Salzburg”.⁷⁵ Indeed, there were repeated peaks of tension, particularly in the June, during the conclusion of the Versailles negotiations and the municipal election campaign. Attacks on facilities of local Czech minorities (schools for example) took place. However, the municipal elections of June 1919, held for the first time on the basis of universal suffrage, seem to have marked a decisive turning point towards appeasement.

After the elections of June 1919: starting a new dance

Although characterized by multiple social and political disorders, at the same time the year 1919 was marked by a general tendency to reduce conflict outside the framework of institutions. The new rules of operation began to be known and accepted by a population, albeit with multiple expectations. In meeting them, Czech-speaking municipalities seem to have enjoyed an advantage over the German-speaking ones.

Dr. Tauer, the official who, since the February, had been the commissioner of the Republic in charge of controlling the municipality of Trutnov/Trautenau, welcomed the newly elected officials in the July in these terms:

Ladies and Gentlemen!

[…] We all have in mind the recent events before the war, those of the war and those that accompanied the change of regime [Umsturz]. […] In the Czechoslovakian state, that is to say in our Republic, liberal and democratic laws have been passed which make it possible for it to occupy one of the leading places in Europe in terms of social reforms. […] This, however, requires our patience, our tenacity; not the passive patience that was once demanded, but the patience that comes from the intimate conviction that all progress, according to the eternal law of nature and history, can only be achieved through work, slow development, and efforts to improve [….]

The Germans have lost the war and we see to what conditions Germany and German Austria are subjected […]. Here the Germans are on an equal footing with the Czechs and are with them on the side of the victorious Entente […]. Soon we will see Germans and Czechs living here happily again, side by side and with each other; how they will begin to dance together again, to love each other, to marry, to send their children to each other on language exchanges, etc.⁷⁶

This conciliatory presentation of the situation ends with a long-term and depoliticized view of everyday life. In the present, it was still strained by every possible shortage the municipality was struggling to overcome. But without connection to the new state authorities, which would control the economy like in wartime until 1921, it was an almost desperate enterprise. The situation was quite different in the neighbouring town of Náchod.

Before the Great War, strong political tendencies in this small, thriving Czech-speaking town between Trutnov and Hradec Králové saw on the one side anarchist young workers and on the other „Young Czechs“, whose nationalist and democratic electorate was composed of both workers and members of the growing middle class.⁷⁷ Since 1900, these Young Czechs had dominated the town hall. In 1908, the constituents sent Young Czech deputy Jaroslav Preiss to the Bohemian parliament. In 1918, the municipality brought in the anarchists they knew already. The latter accepted a power share in order to avoid the appearance of the Communist Party in the city. Having declared themselves for the Czech National Democratic Party, founded in March 1919, the mayor Josef Čížek and the councillors maintained the best relations with Karel Kramář, the leader of the party and prime minister from November 1918 to July 1919. In addition, Kramář had recently acquired (in 1916) a spinning mill not far away in the Giant Mountains. He entered the world of Czech textile manufacturers, who generously financed the Czech National Democratic Party under the Republic – figures such as the Bartoň family, who owned and ran Náchod’s largest factory.⁷⁸ During the First Republic, the former deputy Jaroslav Preiss devoted himself to economic activities, initially as the manager of the most important Czech bank, the Živnostenská banka, from 1917 to 1938. In 1918, he also became the vice-president of the Central Union of the Czech Industrials (Ústřední svaz českých průmyslníků).⁷⁹

Here we can observe close relations between business and politics which were forged not at the end of the war, but before it. Between 1900 and 1912, the gradual opening of suffrage to male voters led to a reshaping of political forces, while the booming Czech industry allowed the promotion of new elites.⁸⁰ The compromise between political and economic actors established a strong link between Prague and Náchod, intensively connecting the peripheral textile town to the new political and economic centre after 1918.

Conversely, for the elites in Trutnov/Trautenau, it was a question of finding a place for themselves in the new Republic while retaining power at the local level, now that the census suffrage (or householder franchise) in force for municipal elections under the Empire had been abolished.

The elites themselves opened the city council to selected Social Democrats in late 1918 to make headway “under the black, red and gold banner [of German unity in 1848]“, and to Czechs in January 1919, “all speak[ing] German”.⁸¹ The elections of mid-June 1919 merely confirmed the arrival of delegates from the Czech minority and a numerous Social Democrat group. The municipality thus accepted the normal game of Czechoslovak institutions and entry into the new state,⁸² even when clashes demonstrated that links with Prague were difficult to establish.⁸³ In fact, the mayor, the former deputy Hironymus Siegel, remained a German nationalist, like many of his German-speaking colleagues from Bohemia and Moravia who, during the interwar period, belonged to Lodgman von Auen’s German National Party (DAP).⁸⁴ This party granted relative independence to its members. It was personalities that carried the elections more than a program, as before the introduction of universal suffrage in municipal elections. Barely represented on the national level, the party existed only as an emblem of Germanness in Czechoslovakia.

This did not preclude other social groups from making greater integration efforts, provided that the new state met their expectations. During 1919, the chronology of the politico-social demands of the German-speaking districts of Eastern Bohemia was in line with that of the Czech districts. The reports of the prefect of Náchod, for example, show a rise in tensions from mid-January 1919 to September due to unemployment. The lack of raw materials aggravated food shortages: starving workers found no work in idle textile factories.⁸⁵ The decoupling of the Czechoslovak koruna from the Austrian currency in February, though the latter was in a vertiginous fall, was poorly received everywhere. Grain distribution bureaus were subject to strong criticism that sometimes spilled over into physical aggression. Thus, the fall in the prices of staple foods had become one of the mainstays of social democracy.⁸⁶ If employed, the workers demanded a wage increase of at least 50 per cent to cover the high cost of living.⁸⁷

In the mid-May, the demonstrations took on the appearance of insurrection in Náchod. The district had 4,500 unemployed, barely 500 of whom could benefit from the public interest works funded by the local authorities. „Appeals against state bodies and employers“ were heard.⁸⁸ Beside intervention with the Ministry of Commerce to accelerate the arrival of cotton wagons, an inter-ministerial meeting was then convened in Prague to discuss specific social measures: roadworks and train shipments of American rye.⁸⁹ Shortly thereafter, these measures were extended to the other municipalities in Eastern Bohemia, without privileging the Czech ones. They were part of a political consensus at the end of war to make Czechoslovakia a “social Republic” with some of the highest social spending in Europe.

Post-war difficulties were indeed the same for everyone in Czechoslovakia. In the archives consulted, the only experience formulated jointly by members of different social groups concerned the war disabled and support for dead soldiers’ families. In the conservative Hradec Králové, for example, the freethinking newspaper Kraj Královéhradecký could call on the Catholic ladies of the Red Cross to collaborate with the nondenominational Republic on their behalf;⁹⁰ in the same way, of all the Trutnov/Trautenau associations founded or re-founded in the immediate post-war period, only the Red Cross was supranational.⁹¹ The German-speaking war-disabled protested (they and the „very numerous” women who accompanied them)⁹² with the same intensity as in the Czech districts. They used the same classical forms of parliamentary democracy that were already well established in Bohemia, especially the petition solemnly transmitted to the prefecture in the company of local politicians and sent to the competent ministry, in this case the Ministry of Social Care, in Prague.⁹³ Old habits of a “nationalized” society in which each linguistic group organized itself without collaboration with the other one⁹⁴ soon took over again. The German-speaking war disabled tried to open their own emergency funds „for fear of being reduced to the smallest portion” in a common fund because they were not Czech. As this was not possible, they openly placed conditions on their loyalty to the state: the state had to guarantee them social benefits in the due proportions.⁹⁵

Conclusion

The transition in Bohemia to a republic that would avoid a Bolshevik-type revolution was based, on the local level, on a strong continuity of state administration and on the military occupation of the borders. In a society organized in a quasi-communitarian way in two groups divided according to the Czech and German languages, the ex-Austrian administration in Prague succeeded in convincing the Czech speakers of its national spirit and the German speakers that they would receive fair treatment. Using its knowledge of sub-state contexts, it worked to establish the Republic by taking advantage of the diversity of local opinions and interests. The integration was noticeably quicker when the local elites were well connected to the centre. In Náchod, these ties were strengthened around the provincial elections of 1908. After the war, local elites and national politicians came closer again, gathering around Karel Kramář and Jaroslav Preiss, who were now in key positions in the young Republic, while the municipality managed to integrate workers’ representatives, including anarchists, in the name of the Czech nation.

The situation in the German-speaking districts was more difficult, as there was very little scope for interaction between German and Czech speakers. The representatives of the German-speaking districts had to build networks with Prague. In the sources consulted, the mediation of high-ranking officials and officers appears to have been indispensable. Despite some reassignments, most of the officials remained in their posts. Reports of the state representatives working in Trutnov/Trautenau show that the citizens felt understood when they had to deal with people who spoke the same language as them and who could act as a bridge between them and the central authorities. It was also a matter of learning the new rules of the game. The social benefits related to the human losses of the war seem to have been at the centre of this learning process.

Finally, our examination of local sources shows that the Republic was accepted earlier than suggested by studies based on the central archives, which focus on the parliamentary elections of 1920. By the end of November 1918, some of the actors appearing in the documents consulted seemed to have made up their minds, and as soon as the municipal elections of June 1919 were over, the majority of political actors began to work on the „social contract“ to be concluded with the new state.

Translation from French into English by Michelle McNamara, PhD edited John Heath.

Ségolène Plyer received her PhD from the University Paris I in 2007 on expellees’ integration into Germany after 1945 and has been a lecturer in contemporary history at the University of Strasbourg since 2010. She is currently conducting research on textile businesses in northeastern Bohemia between 1870 and 1930 in order to analyse how this remote region, whose population was Czech and German, participated in globalisation. Besides Austrian and Czech social history, she is also interested in topics comparing Alsace with other borders of the German-speaking world.

Senior researcher, ERC project NEPOSTRANS The project leading to this application has received funding from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under grant agreement no. 772264.
I would also like to thank Dr. Jan Kahuda (Národní archiv) and Dr. Martin Klečacký (Masaryk Institute at the Czech Academy of Sciences), who gave useful advice. Kind thanks are also due to the district archives of Trutnov (Luděk Jirásek) and Náchod (Dr. Jaroslav Čáp) for their help, and to the Trutnov museum staff. ︎
For an introduction, see Georgios Giannakopoulos: An Age of Ages. Nation, Empires and their Discontents, In: Contemporary European History 29 (2020) 2, pp. 232–242. ︎
See Antonín Klimek: Velké dějiny zemí Koruny české [The big history of Czech crown lands]. Vol. XIII, Prague, Litomyšl, Paseka 2000, p. 9; Ines Koeltzsch, Ota Konrád: From ‘Islands of Democracy’ to ‘Transnational Border Spaces’: State of the Art and Perspectives of the Historiography on the First Czechoslovak Republic since 1989. In: Bohemia 56 (2016) 2, pp. 285–327; Zdeněk Kárník: České země v éře První republiky. Vznik, budování a zlatá léta republiky (1918-1929) [The First Republic in the Czech Lands. Birth, Development and Heyday]. Prague 2017 [2000]; Volume 3 of Český Časopis Historický [Czech Historical Journal] (2018), especially Jiří Pešek: Vznik, charakter a konec první Československé republiky (Několik úvah k aktuálním diskusím) [Birth, Character and End of the First Czechoslovak Republic (Some Reflections on Current Debates)], pp. 659–692; Lukáš Fasora, Miroslava Květová, Richard Lein, Ondřej Matějka (eds.): Demokratická monarchie, nedemokratická republika? Kontinuity a zlomy mezi monarchií a republikou ve střední Evropě. Prague, Masarykův ústav a Archiv AV ČR, “Publikace Stálé konference českých a rakouských historiků”, 2020. Because this article was originally written for the summer of 2018, it only marginally takes into account publications that occurred afterwards. ︎
Peter Haslinger: Nation und Territorium im tschechischen politischen Diskurs 1880–1938. Munich 2010, especially pp. 197–207. ︎
For example, Etienne Boisserie: Asserting Czechoslovak Authority in Slovakia. Context and Obstacles in the Immediate Aftermath of the Great War, In: Christoph Cornelissen, Marco Mondini (eds.): The Mediatization of War and Peace. The Role of Media in Political Communication, Narratives and Public Memory (1914–1939). Berlin, Boston 2021, pp. 109–124; Bohumila Ferenčuhová: Qu’a signifié la naissance de la Tchécoslovaquie pour les Slovaques ? Historiens et opinion publique, In: Antoine Marès (ed.), Mémoires et usages de 1918 dans l’Europe médiane (Memories and Customs of 1918 in Central Europe), Paris 2020, pp. 195–212. ︎
Deset let pány ve svém domově [Ten Years Masters in Their Own Home]. In: Litoměřické listy [LitoměřiceNnewspaper], 20.10.1928, no. 21, front page. ︎
Karel Řeháček: Němci proti Československu na západě Čech (1918–1920) [Germans against Czechoslovakia in Western Bohemia]. Plzeň 2008. ︎
Especially České místodržitelství (Bohemian general government), prezidium (presidium), 1911–1920 (henceforth ČM PM), series “Převrat” [coup d’Etat, revolution]. The prefects’ letters and reports quoted below are all addressed to the presidium. ︎
Jiří Hnilica: Dynamiques du 28 Octobre tchécoslovaque aux XX^e et XXI^e siècles, In: A. Marès: Mémoires et usages, pp. 161–74, here: p. 166. ︎
Cf. Paul Hare and Gerard Turley (eds.): Handbook of the Economics and Political Economy of Transition. Abingdon, New York 2013. ︎
See Philippe Bezes (ed.) : Réformes de l’Etat et transformations démocratiques. Le poids des héritages, In: Critique internationale 35 (2007). ︎
See for example Olivier Bouquet: Old Elites in a New Republic. The Reconversion of Ottoman Bureaucratic Families in Turkey (1909–1939), In : Comparative Studies in South Asia, Africa and the Middle East 31 (2011) no. 3, pp. 588–560. ︎
Luboš Velek: Češi ve víru světové války (1914–1918) [Czechs in the Whirlwind of the World War (1914–1918)], In: Dagmar Hájková, Pavel Horák (eds.): Republika československá 1918–1939 [The Czechoslovak Republic 1918–1939], Prague 2018, pp. 48–71, here: pp. 67–71. Martin Klečacký: Převzetí moci. Státní správa v počátcích Československé republiky 1918–1920 na příkladu Čech [The Rise to Power. State Administration at the Beginning of the Czechoslovakian Republic. The Bohemian Example, 1918–1920], In: Český Časopis Historický 3 (2018), 697–732, here: pp. 695, pp. 698–699. ︎
ČM PM, 1-6-28-68, archive box (henceforth b.) 4548, Administrator (name illegible), prefectory of Ledeč, 7.11.1918: “Nový duch úřadování [New spirit of administration]”. The author remarked benignly that “Všecky tyto zjevy nikterak nepřekvapují a jsou pouhým výsledkem chaosu prvých dnů, vždyt´radostný převrat tak náhle a neočekávaně všechny vrstvy národa překvapil” [nothing of this is surprising in any way, as it is only the result of the chaos of the early days, when the revolution that happened so fortunately surprised all the parts of the nation]. All translations by the author. ︎
For Ota Konrád, the level of violence in Bohemia matched those in Austria, even if it declined quite soon after the end of the war (Two Post-War Paths. Popular Violence in the Bohemian Lands and in Austria in the Aftermath of World War I, In: Nationalities Paper, 46 (2018) 5, pp. 759–775). ︎
A hostility nevertheless existed in Bohemia and Moravia, especially on the part of Catholics: see for example the protests against the destruction of the Prague Virgin Mary column on 3 November 1918 recorded in the file “Stížnosti a udání na nepřístojné chování duchovních 1918 [Complaints against improper behaviour of clergymen]”, State District Archiv Hradec Králové (henceforth SOKA HK), series Okresní národní výbor Hradec Králové I. [District National Committee Hradec Králové I]. On Catholicism and its political situation at the beginning of the Republic, see Jaroslav Šebek: Za Boha, národ, pořádek [For God, Nation, and Order]. Prague 2016, pp. 47–67. ︎
ČM PM, 1-6-28-68, b. 4548, circular signed by Jan Kosina “Nové úkoly [New tasks]” “to be handed to the directories of each prefectory and to the chief of the Prague police”, 30.10.1918 (henceforth Circular “Nové úkoly”, 30.10.1918). The entire quotation reads: “Zachováním rovnováhy ve správním organismu, jakož i zabezpečením klidu a pořádku za všech okolností splnili onu část nových úkolů, která vložena jest na jejich bedra.” ︎
Klimek: Velké dějiny, p. 18. ︎
See Michal Frankl, Miloslav Szabó: Budování státu bez antisemitismu? Násilí, diskurz loajality a vznik Československa [Building a State without Anti-Semitism? Violence, the Discourse of Loyalty and the Creation of Czechoslovakia]. Prague 2015, pp. 34–98, especially pp. 35–38. ︎
Paragraph 2 of the law instituting the independent state of Czechoslovakia, 28.10.1918: “all imperial laws remain in force for the time being”. ︎
See M. Klečacký: Převzetí moci, and ČM PM, 1-6-28-68, b. 4548: circular of 30.10.1918 to the leaders of the political administration and the chief of the Prague police signed by the newly self-appointed governor Kosima: “Die Organisation und der Wirkungskreis [der politischen Behörden – handwritten addition] bleiben sowohl in territorialer als auch in sachlicher Hinsicht unverändert.” ︎
All quotations from the same circular of 30.10.1918, “Die Organisation… bleib[t] unverändert, p. 1: Das, was der grossen Umwälzung ihr Gepräge gibt, ist – abgesehen von dem erfolgreichen Durchdringen des nationalen Gedankens – in erster Linie der Sieg der demokratischen Grundsätze [emphasis in the original] [n]ach vier Kriegsjahren, während welcher sich der alte Staat immer mehr und mehr von dem Willen und den Wünschen des Volkes entfernte […].” John Deak and Jonathan Gumz have insisted on this dimension of an empire at war with its own population: How to Break a State: The Habsburg Monarchy’s Internal War, 1914–1918, In: The American Historical Review 122 (2017) 4, pp. 1105–1136. ︎
Circular “Nové úkoly”, 30.10.1918. ︎
After Richard Česaný, prefect of Chrudim (ČM PM, 1-6-28-68, b. 4548, letter of the 6.11.1918). See also Martin Klečacký: Český ministr ve Vídni: ve službách císaře, národa a politické strany [A Czech Minister in Vienna: Working for the Emperor, the Czech People and a Political Party], Prague 2017. ︎
Martin Klečacký: Poslušný vládce okresu. Okresní hejtman a proměny státní moci v Čechách v letech 1868-1938 [Obedient Masters of the Districts. Bohemian Prefects in Changing Times, 1868–1938]. Prague, Masarykův ústav a Archiv AV ČR, 2021, p. 213. See also the political administration biographies before and (despite the book’s title) after 1918 in: M. Klečacký et al., Slovník představitelů politické správy v Čechách v letech 1849–1918 [Heads of the Bohemian Political Administration, 1849–1918. A Biographical Dictionary], Prague 2020. ︎
“Der ‘Národní okresní výbor’ hat mich soeben für abgesetzt erklärt, weil ich mich im Interesse des österreichischen Staates und Patriotismus zu viel exponiert haben und deshalb der öffentlichen Ruhe und Ordnung gefährlich sei. Die Amtsführung würde meinem Stellvertreter, Oberkommissär Pacovský, übergehen.” ČM PM, 1–6–22–10, b. 4516, transcript of prefect Smutný’s phone call to the presidium, 29.10.1918. ︎
State District Archive Hradec Králové, City Archive Hradec Králové, inventory no. 531, Pamětní kniha [Chronicle] 1918-1921, book no. 232 (henceforth Chronicle HK), pp. 101, p. 117, p. 118, p. 120. ︎
Chronicle HK, pp. 122–123. ︎
Chronicle HK, p. 125. ︎
As M. Klečacký shows in Poslušný vládce okresu, pp. 213–215, the dismissal of senior officials was undertaken in a consensual manner. ︎
ČM PM, 1-6-28-68, b. 4548, Administrator (name unreadable), prefectory of Ledeč, 7.11.1918. ︎
ČM PM, 1-6-28-68, b. 4548, letter of the prefect Karel Vojáček, Čáslav, 25.11.1918. ︎
Ph. Bezes: Construire des bureaucraties wébériennes à l’ère du New Public Management ? [Building a Weberian bureaucracy in the era of New Public Management?]. In: Critique internationale [International Review] 35 (2007), pp. 9–31, here: p. 9, pp. 11–12, p. 22. ︎
Circular “Nové úkoly”, 30.10.1918. ︎
ČM PM, 1-6-28-68, b. 4548, posters of prefect Šprongl in Příbram (1.11.1918) and Mann in Ledeč (4.11.1918). ︎
“Unanimous decision of the Council of ministers, 4 December 1918”, forwarded by the presidency of the Home Ministry to the Bohemian government, 6.12.1918. ČM PM, 1-6-28-68, b. 4548. ︎
“Und so bekennen sich die neuen Gebilde, die auf den Trümmern der alten Ordnung entstehen, freudig zu jenen Ideen, welche den großen Kulturvölkern seit ihrer politischen Wiedergeburt eine segensreiche Entfaltung der nationalen Kräfte gebracht haben, welche heute der leidenden Menschheit den langersehnten Frieden wiederbringen – zu den Ideen, die in der Erkenntnis gipfeln, dass das Volk [sic] dessen natürliche Fähigkeiten, Begabung und Fleiß die einzige Machtquelle des Staates bilden.“ ČM PM, 1-6-28-68, b. 4548, circular of 5.11.1918. ︎
See Christopher Brennan: ‘Eure Majestät fragen mich etwas spät’ (à propos de Charles Ier). In: Austriaca, 87 (2018), pp. 77–102. ︎
State Regional Archive Litoměřice – henceforth SOAL – series Lodgman von Auen, b. 4, inventory no. 152: letter (copy) of deputy Josef Mayer, Eger/Cheb, to R. Lodgman von Auen, 7.01.1924. “Lieber Freund! Mit Entsetzen verfolge ich in der letzten Zeit die Verschiedenen [sic] Aufsätze, in denen sich die Führer der Umsturzzeit gegenseitig die Schuld am gänzlichen Versagen unseres Volkes in den kritischen Herbsttagen 1918 vorwerfen. […] [M]eine alte Auffassung [habe ich bestätigt], dass die Tschechen ursprünglich genau so von den Ereignissen überrascht wurden, wie wir, daß sie aber als der geschontere Teil sich rascher erfangen konnten und dann den Augenblick besser ausnützen […].” ︎
See Susannne Maurer-Horn: Die Landesregierung für Deutschböhmen und das Selbstbestimmungsrecht 1918/1919. In: Bohemia 38 (1997), 37–55; Hanns Haas: Im Widerstreit der Selbstbestimmungsansprüche: vom Habsburgerstaat zur Tschechoslowakei die Deutschen der böhmischen Länder 1918 bis 1919. In: Hans Mommsen, Dusan Kovác, Jirí Malír (eds.): Der Erste Weltkrieg und die Beziehungen zwischen Tschechen, Slowaken und Deutschen. Essen 2001, pp. 141–220; Francesco Leoncini: La questione dei Sudeti 1918–1938 [The Sudete Question 1918-1938]. Venezia 2005; Johann Wolfgang Brügel: Tschechen und Deutsche. Vol. I: 1918–1939. Munich 1967, pp. 524–525. ︎
Jean-Numa Ducange: Quel(s) droit(s) pour quel(s) peuple(s) ? Les dilemmes du socialisme autrichien. 1918-1918 [Which Right(s) for which People(s) ? The Dilemmas of Austrian Socialism. 19181918]. In: Revue d’Allemagne [German Review], 52 (2020) 2, pp. 289–302. ︎
Offenes Schreiben an den Herrn Präsidenten der tschechoslowakischen Republik Dr. Thomas Masaryk zur Besetzung der deutschen Gemeinden des Königinhofer Bezirkes, In: Neue Trautenauer Zeitung (henceforth NTZ), 18.1.1919, front page. See also Radomír Roup: Jakschův kámen [The Jaksch Stone], In: Vlastivědné čtení o Královědvorsku [Historical Reading about the Královědvor Region], 3 (2018), pp. 26–28, here: p. 27, quoting the Schönauer Anzeiger of 29.12.1918. Unfortunately, it was impossible to compare the version printed by the newspapers with the court records, as the court in Hradec Králové referred the case to the one in Dvůr Králové, whose records are only partly accessible to research. ︎
NTZ, ibid. ︎
According to prefect Veselý of Dvůr Králové in his report of 26.8.1915: “[ich] muss jedoch zugleich bemerken, dass die dem Landwirtestande angehörende Bevölkerung ohne Unterschied der Nationalität den wünschenswerten Sinn für das Gemeinwohl nur insolange bekundet hat, als von Seite des Militaerärars Prämien und von Seite der Konsumenten […] fabelhaft[e] Preise (bis 60.– K. pro q. Korn) bezahlt wurde[n].“ ČM PM, 1-6-19-14, b. 4512. ︎
Cf. also villagers’ refusals to obey hunting laws in the name of liberty in January 1919, quoted by Ota Konrád in: Widersprüchlich und unvollendet. Die Demokratie der Ersten Tschechoslowakischen Republik 1918 bis 1938, In: Vierteljahreshefte für Zeitgeschichte 66 (2018) 2, pp. 337–349, here: p. 345. ︎
„Různí starostové německé mne však ujišťovali, že situace se v nejbližší době vyjasní a naznačili, že se od okresu neodloučí a dodávati budou.“ ČM PM, 1–6–22–10, b. 4516, report by the prefect Josef Ruth, Dvůr Králové, 30.11.1918. ︎
„Für uns Preußen ist es nicht gerade schmeichelhaft, dass die Lust zu einer Vereinigung mit Schlesien im östlichen Böhmen weit schwächer ist, als diejenige zu einer Vereinigung mit Sachsen und Bayern in den westlicheren Gebieten. Am stärksten ist die Hinneigung zu Sachsen […] nur die bayerischen Grenzbezirke sind für Bayern.“ Wedel (German embassy in Vienna) to Chancellor Max von Baden: Die Stimmung der Deutschböhmen (14.10.1918). In: Manfred Alexander (ed.): Deutsche Gesandtschaftsberichte aus Prag. Innenpolitik und Minderheitenprobleme in der Ersten Tschechoslowakischen Republik. Vol. I: Von der Staatsgründung bis zum ersten Kabinett Beneš, 1918–1921. Munich 2003, p. 543. ︎
Prague had the railways in Stříbro and Mariánské Lázně/Marienbad occupied as early as 11 November. The army retired soon but came back after physical assaults against local authorities on 21 November. K. Řeháček: Němci, p. 177. ︎
Trautenau was then the capital of the Austrian linen industry. See our article on the subject: L’internationalisation des industriels liniers en Bohême du XIX^e siècle à la Première Guerre mondiale. Deux documents inédits, In: Source(s). Art, civilisation et histoire de l’Europe. Vol. 17 (2021), pp. 141–190 [online] DOI: 10.57086/sources.122. ︎
See Petr Mücke, Renáta Růžičková, Jiří Vaněček. Orlíčky dolů! Východní Čechy v dokumentech z období vzniku republiky. Zámrsk 2018, pp. 53–63 for documents issued by the secessionists in North-eastern Bohemia. ︎
ČM PM 1–6–22–10, b. 4516, letter from Dr Jakob Daublesky von Sterneck, prefect of Trutnov/Trautenau, 31.10.1918 at 11 pm, pp. 1–2. The letter is referring to the “decree Z 34849, also printed in Prager Tagblatt”, p. 1. ︎
ČM PM 1-6-22-10, b. 4516, von Sterneck’s letter of 1.11.1918. ︎
“Die allgemeine Stimmung im Bezirke ist etwa folgende: Die Besonnenen halten ein Zusammengehen mit den Čechen für unerlässlich, die wirklich einsichtsvollen sogar ein Aufgehen im Čechischen Staat für das Richtige. Dem stehen aber, zunächst die Stadtvertretung gegenüber, die unbedingt einem Anschlusse an die deutschböhmische Provinz das Wort redet […] aber auch eine Vielheit der Bewohner […] weniger aus Überzeugung, als aus Furcht, etwa als ‘Nicht deutsch’ gesinnt gebrandmarkt zu werden.“ ČM PM 1-6-22-10, b. 4516, Von Sterneck, 31.10.1918, p. 3. ︎
Ibid. ︎
ČM PM 1–6–22–10, b. 4516; letter of the Braunau/Broumov prefect, Dr Jaroslav von Kořistka, 2.12.1918. Incidentally, von Kořistka was von Sternek’s son-in-law. ︎
The German-speaking soldiers showed very little motivation to fight for secession. Hence at the beginning of November in Aussig (Ústí nad Labem), the city authority had to call the Czech military to the rescue in order to avoid looting. The German soldiers went home or even took part in the plundering: “Wir [in Aussig] müssen mit großem Bedauern und mit Beschämung feststellen, dass wir in dieser Lage tschechische Sicherheitstruppen, die uns vom Leitmeritzer Militärkommando angeboten wurden […] anzunehmen [gezwungen waren] aus dem Grunde, weil unsere deutschen Soldaten […] in alle Winde auseinander gestoben sind [und die Urlauber sich] an den Plünderungen in erster Reihe beteiligten.“ SOAL, series Lodgman, b. 3, no. 78, Dr Osthof’s report, 2.11.1918. See also the diplomatic report “Verhandlungen mit den Tschechen. Die Zukunft Deutschböhmens” of 13.11.1918: Von Gebsattel to Chancellor Ebert on the occupation of the airport in Eger (Cheb) by “400 Czech soldiers” without any opposition from Bohemian German regiments (Alexander: Gesandtschaftsberichte, pp. 81, 107). ︎
Alexander: Gesandtschaftsberichte, report of 27.11.1918, pp. 575–578. ︎
ČM PM 1-6-22-10, b. 4516, von Sterneck, 22.12.1918. ︎
Haslinger: Nation und Territorium, pp. 257–258. ︎
For instance, a circular of the (German) municipal committee called on all villages of the Eger district to make use of their right to self-determination by insisting on being attached to Austria on the basis of Wilson’s Fourteen Points (6.1.1919) (“das vom Präsidenten Wilson feierlich verkündete Selbstbestimmungsrecht über die Staatszugehörigkeit in Anspruch nehmen”, ČM PM, 1–6–22–10, b. 4516). See also the speeches of Wilhelm Kiesewetter, a Trutnov/Trautenau councillor and popular social democratic journalist, for example on 26 January 1919 before an audience of 700 (ČM PM, 8-5-22-2, b. 5340, report of the Trutnov prefecture) or even “thousands” on 1 May 1919 (NTZ, 3.5.1919, p. 2). ︎
See for example the Czech burial described by the private chronicler Oskar Nimsch: „The late Anton Melicharek, a merchant who in his lifetime had not been supported very much by the Czechs either [this probably refers to the Czech minority in Trautenau], was buried with great pomp and circumstance, with the army and the Sokol“. “Dem verstorb. tsch. [sic] Kaufmann Melicharek Anton, der auch von den Tschechen nicht sonderlich unterstützt wurde, wurde von den Tschechen ein großes Begräbnis bereitet, an der Spitze des Leichenzuges marschierten Militär u. Sokoln.“ State District Archive Trutnov, series “Pozůstalost Oskara Nimsche”, b. 2: “Kronika Trutnova 1910–1934” (henceforth Nimsch´s Chronicle), p. 1715, entry of 31.3.1919. ︎
Handwritten note on the “Unanimous decision of the Council of Ministers, 4 December 1918”. ︎
For instance, in Trutnov/Trautenau on 15 December 1918, prefect von Sterneck had to accept a “celebration of the Czech national resurrection” (“slavnost českého Národního vzkříšení”) by members of the Czech minority, although they had not applied for due authorization. A call from the general government in Prague forbade him to oppose in any way “demonstrations of Czech spirit” (ČM PM, 1-6-22-10, b. 4516, letter 22.12.1918 and handwritten note with Prague’s order). ︎
Auflösung der Trautenauer Stadtverwaltung, In: NTZ 1.02.1919, front page. ︎
The Bohemian political administration (former Bohemian general government) proposed to the Home Ministry as his successor Dr. Šorf, underlining that he was “an ethnic Czech” (“jenž je národnosti české”), 24.02.1919. ČM PM, 1–6–29–8. Ultimately, Dr. Jan Tauer served as prefect in Trutnov between 1919 and 1922. ︎
See for example the Memorandum of the Bohemian-German government, Vienna, 11.04.1919. SOAL, Series Lodgman, b. 3, no.100. ︎
“Übereinstimmende Berichte aus Deutschböhmen […] melden, dass sich in nordböhmischen Industriebezirken Hungerkatastrophe vorbereite […]. [Es] ist in vielen Gegenden Deutschböhmens z.B. in Karlsbad seit einem Monat nicht nur kein Fleisch und kein Fett[,] sondern nicht einmal Brot zu erhalten.” SOAL, Series Lodgman, b. 4, n°116, “Telegramy do Bernu”, telegram signed Lauermann of 2.4.1919. Although well informed about the economic situation, Logdman von Auen paid little attention to social issues (Minister Saenger to the German Foreign Office, Prague 4.11.1919, In: Alexander: Gesandtschaftsberichte, p. 217). ︎
See Karl Braun: Der 4. März 1919. Zur Herausbildung sudetendeutscher Identität, In: Bohemia 37 (1996), pp. 353–380; SOAL, Series Lodgman, b. 4, no.106: Zusammenfassender Bericht über die letzten Ereignisse in Böhmen […], Bern, April 1919, p. 2. In Cheb (Eger), Karlovy Vary and Stříbro, the army shot at the protesters (with whom the local police sided) and killed ten (K. Řeháček: Němci, p. 179). ︎
NTZ, 8.03.1919, pp. 1–2, “Deutschböhmen trauert!” ︎
Account of Josef Pohl, who fought in the Second Chasseurs until the fall of 1918. Records of Heimatkreis Braunau/Sudetenland (Association of Former Inhabitants of Braunau in Bohemia), Forchheim, Bavaria, b.10/5/3, no date (1960s?) ︎
Nimsch’s Chronicle p. 1715, entry of 29.3.1919: “Hohenelbe 29. März […]. Auf der Hohenelber Straße u. bei Rennerbauden wurde je ein deutscher Mann ohne triftigen Grund von tsch. Gendarmerie angeschossen, tödlich verletzt.” (“On Hohenelbe Street and near the Renner inn, one German man was shot [in each location] [and] mortally wounded without good reason by [the] Cz. Gendarmerie”). ︎
For instance, in the western part of Bohemia, Spartacists from the Bavarian towns of Selb and Klingenthal dominated the German secessionist movement of Cheb/Eger, Aš/Asch and Karlovy Vary/Karlsbad (Řeháček: Němci, pp. 181–182). On the animosity of the Social Democrats towards Communists on the northeastern border, see for example Franz Krejci: Das Aupatal im Riesengebirge und seine Textilarbeiter um die Jahrhundertwende. Aarau 1961, pp. 180–182. ︎
ČM PM 1-6-22-10, b. 4516, von Sterneck, 31.10.1918. See also Alexander: Gesandtschaftsberichte p. 161, entry of 7.05.1919, on the closeness of the Czech and German Social Democrats. ︎
Ota Holub: Obsazení Trutnovska československou armádou a její poslání v letech 1918–1921 [The Occupation of Trutnov by the Czechoslovak Army and its Mission in 1918-1921], In: Krkonoše–Podkrkonoší 2 (1966), pp. 25–39. ︎
Nimsch´s Chronicle, entry of 31.3.1919, p. 1715. ︎
Dr. Tauer, speech on the first meeting of the city council of Trutnov/Trautenau, 7.07.1919, published in German in Amtsblatt der Bezirkshauptmanschaft und des Bezirksschulrates in Trautenau, no.8 (1.8.1919), p. 1. ︎
Lydia Baštecká, Jaroslav Čáp, Jan Čížek: Vývoj městské samosprávy v Náchodě [Development of the Autonomous City Administration of Náchod]. Náchod 2007, p. 28. ︎
Zdeněk Sládek: Češti textilní průmyslníci a československá národní demokracie [Czech Textile Entrepreneurs and Czechoslovakian National Democracy] In: Z dějin textilu. Studie a materiály 11 [From the History of Textiles. Studies and Materials] (1987), pp. 183–1919, here: pp. 183,188. ︎
For a biography of Preiss, see Alain Soubigou: Banques et banquiers dans la Tchécoslovaquie de Masaryk. Le cas de Jaroslav Preiss [Banks and bankers in Masaryk’s Czechoslovakia. The case of Jaroslav Preiss], In: Catherine Horel (ed.): Nations, cultures et sociétés d’Europe centrale aux XIX^e et XX^e siècles. Mélanges offerts à Bernard Michel [Nations, Cultures and Societies of Central Europe in the XIXth and XXth Centuries. Combinations Offered to Bernard Michel], Paris 2006, pp. 251–264. ︎
For the same period, Martin Klečacký has highlighted the close ties between Czech politicians and the Bohemian–Moravian high administration, which continued unchanged after 1918. See M. Klečacký, Převzetí moci, p. 696 about Jan Kosima, and Český ministr ve Vídni. ︎
Erste Sitzung des Gemeinderats, In: NTZ 18.1.1919, p. 4; NTZ, 18.01.1919, p. 4. Although divergences quickly emerged between „nationalists“ and the socialists, on 1 May 1919, the Social Democrats marched with the slogan “Proletarians of all countries unite”, while the National Socialists (markedly less numerous) followed the black, red and gold flag. Nevertheless, the two processions met up in the city square in the name of German unity (Erster Mai. In: NTZ 3.5.1919, p. 2). ︎
For instance, Councillor Mainr held a vote that passed “unanimously without debate” on the financing of Czech courses in the Trutnov/Trautenau schools at the city’s expense (the state took it over after 1919). Aus der Trautenauer Stadtvertretung. In: NTZ, 9.8.1919, p. 3. ︎
In August 1919, the mayor and three councillors were rebuffed when they attempted to address Minister Klofáč in Prague (concerning the town’s difficulties supplying the local garrison) because they did not speak Czech. (Der Trautenauer Bürgermeister muss Tschechisch können. In: NTZ 16. 8.1919, p.6, quoting the newspaper Bohemia of 14.8.1919). ︎
Rudolf Jaworski: Vorposten oder Minderheit? Der sudetendeutsche Volkstumskampf in den Beziehungen zwischen der Weimarer Republik und der CSR. Stuttgart 1977, p. 69. ︎
On 30.4.1919, the prefect of Nová Paka reported that no textile factory was working in the district due to a lack of raw materials (ČM PM, 8–1–55–11, 1919). ︎
In the spring of 1920 for example, the city hall of Hradec Králové authorized 46 members of the Social Democratic party to enquire “tactfully” about the prices in the city’s shops (ČM PM, 1–6–19–11, report of the prefecture to the Home Ministry in response to Senator Josef Thoř’s claim, 23–24.6.1920). ︎
Informační zprávy politických úřadů [Weekly Prefectural Reports], State District Archive of Náchod, presidentiální spisy 1918–1939, b. 19, J 80, 1919; ČM PM, 8–5–22–2, b. 5340, military police report on the strike in the Úpa/Aupa Valley, 29.2.1919; front page of Vorwärts (Social Democratic newspaper of Liberec/Reichenberg) of 27.5.1919 on the successful textile workers’ general strike in Northern Bohemia. See also the series Dělnické hnutí 1919, 1920 (Workers’ Movement 1919, 1920) published by the Bohemian political administration in Prague (ČM PM, 8–1–55–11). ︎
ČM PM, 8–1–55–11, report of the Náchod prefecture to the Ministry of Social Care, 17.5.1919. ︎
Ibid., final report of the inter-ministerial meeting of 20.5.1919 (copy). ︎
“Občanstvu okresu královéhradeckého!” [To the Citizens of the Hradec Králové District!] Appeal to the population signed Jan Černý, head of the Hradec Králové ONV, In: Kraj Královéhradecký 2.11.1918, p. 1. ︎
State District Archive Trutnov, Okresní úřad 1910–1936, Spolky a politické strany [Associations and political parties], 18–22–1. ︎
NTZ 6.12.1919, p. 2. ︎
Here: ČM PM, 8–5–22–2, b. 5340, report about a demonstration with around 500 participants on 22.02.1919 in Trutnov. ︎
See Kristina Kaiserová, Jiří Rak (eds.): Nacionalizace společnosti v Čechách 1848–1914 [The Nationalization of Bohemian Society, 1848–1914]. Ústí nad Labem 2008. ︎
An attitude justified by Eckert, Trutnov leader of the war-disabled, at the demonstration of 30 November 1919: “If we are citizens of this state, we have to defend our rights”; “all nations are to cooperate to build this state” (NTZ 6.12.1919, p. 2). Natali Stegmann observed the same attitude in 1923 in Cheb, where some speakers said, at the meeting of 18.11.1923 “Unser Vaterland ist dort, wo man für uns sorgt.” Cited in: Deutsche Kriegsgeschädigte in der Tschechoslowakei 1918–39, In: Bohemia 48 (2008) 2, pp. 440–463, here: p. 446. ︎

Der Beitrag Bohemia’s Eastern Border in Transition, 1918–1919 erschien zuerst auf Halbjahresschrift für Geschichte und Zeitgeschehen in Zentral- und Südosteuropa.

Fiume’s Political Elites and Their Challengers, 1918–1924

IKGS-Admin_2 — Thu, 29 Feb 2024 16:31:46 +0000

Ivan Jeličić, Faculty of Philosophy and Social Sciences, University Rijeka

This article was written partially under the auspices of the project NEPOSTRANS, “Negotiating post-imperial transitions: from remobilization to nation-state consolidation. A comparative study of local and regional transitions in post-Habsburg East and Central Europe,” financed by the European Research Council (ERC) Consolidator Grant agreement no. 772264. I would like to thank the NEPOSTRANS team members, in particular Gábor Egry and Cody J. Inglis, as well as Dominique Kirchner Reill, for their constructive remarks on previous versions of the manuscript.

Fiume’s Political Elites and Their Challengers, 1918–1924

The city of Fiume, now Rijeka in Croatia,¹ faced one of the most complex geopolitical puzzles at the end of the First World War. Immediately after the breakup of the Habsburg Empire in October–November 1918, rival national councils struggled to incorporate the industrial port city into the two nation-states to its west (the Kingdom of Italy) and to its east (the newly forming State of Slovenes, Croats, and Serbs (SCS); from 1 December 1918, the Kingdom of Serbs, Croats, and Slovenes). From September 1919 on, Gabriele D’Annunzio and his followers occupied Fiume to force its annexation by Italy. When smooth annexation failed, additional political trajectories opened, including the proclamation of an unrecognized independent state in 1920.² Most importantly, after Italian–Yugoslav territorial negotiations, the city briefly existed as independent state (1921–24), falling to a fascist coup d’état in March 1922 which preceded formal annexation to Italy. The transition from the (Austro-)Hungarian context to the Italian nation-state was anything but straightforward. From October 1918 to January 1924, institutions involved in administering or trying to administer the city on different levels were multiple and competitive, while political options were heterogeneous to say the least.³

Taking as its point of departure data gathered on figures involved in political life in the early twentieth century and after 1918, this essay seeks to address questions of continuity and rupture within the Fiumian political arena. First, I will show the continuity and discontinuity between municipal councils of the late Habsburg period and the Italian National Council established in 1918. I will then present the alternative political projects which disputed the Italian annexation project and trace the political trajectories of the political elites and their challengers from 1918 to 1924. The essay will demonstrate that the Executive Committee of the Italian National Council was a combination of sections of the old municipal elite and the Italian irredentist minority. From October–November 1918, most of the 1915 wartime municipal councillors disappeared and many of their pre-war municipal predecessors returned to the political scene as members of the Italian National Council. However, inside the Council’s Executive Committee, the loyal supporters of Riccardo Zanella’s – a former leader of the Fiumian Autonomist Party and one of the most popular local politicians – were marginalized. This faction of the pre-war municipal elite returned to the political scene when Zanella engaged in a new political struggle from September 1919 on, in a new international context. These longtime members and supporters of the Autonomist Party gathered around Zanella, such as Matteo Paicurich or Mario Blasich, were elected members of the Constituent Assembly in April 1921. Aside from the old-new municipal elite which countered or formed the Italian National Council, another group of challengers, comprising Socialists and Autonomist Democrats, attempted to establish their own political agenda. Hence, in 1918, there was no national revolution of formerly oppressed nationalities which obtained their coveted freedom from the Habsburg Empire. Rather, old and new political elites and their challengers attempted to maintain or (re)gain positions of power in an unstable and uncertain sovereignty context that lasted more than five years after wartime hostilities had ended. For many, the Empire and its institutions did not disappear in 1918–or 1924. In fact, Fiume’s privileged (and semi-autonomous) administrative status from the Habsburg era continued to be an inspiration for those who challenged the “natural” course of Italian annexation further down the line. International interests and brute force, thanks to local and nation-states’ support (or lack of it), were key factors explaining why the option of Italian annexation ultimately prevailed.

Italian Nationalists, Magyarons, or National Renegades?

The monograph Povijest Rijeke (The History of Rijeka), published in socialist Yugoslavia in the late 1980s, claims that Fiume’s Magyarons (mađaroni) almost entirely transformed into false Italians (talijanaši, i.e., national renegades that became or acted as Italians) in 1918. Those political figures, and the older Italian structures of Fiume, opposed the Slovene, Croat, and Serb (SCS) National Council’s attempt to unify the city with the coalescing South Slav state. Alongside these two national options, an autonomist option appeared, advocating for the city’s independence.⁴ According to the Povijest Rijeke, the Autonomists were representatives of an anational oligarchy and other sections of the population, mostly comprising locals and national renegade Croatians, and pursued their own material interests in an independent state.⁵ Older Italian-language monographs, on the other hand, tended to stress the continuity of the city’s Italian character through the centuries. While statements about the slow emergence of Italian national consciousness are present in these works, the Italian nationality of the population and of the local elite remained unquestionable.⁶ These two opposing historiographical visions tended to simplify rather ambiguous local conditions and political options on national bases. According to nationalistic accounts, it would seem that the Habsburg historical presence vanished almost overnight and that the citizens of Fiume and their elite easily abandoned their (Austro-)Hungarian backgrounds and heritage. Any claims that do not adhere to Italian or Croatian/Yugoslav national affirmations are labelled as bizarre, artificial, and anachronistic, as if the nation-state had been the sole natural option.⁷

Analysis of the political elites⁸ and their challengers shows that, at the end of the Hungarian state’s presence in Fiume, multiple possible future statehoods existed. The fading state order was substituted by national political actors that advanced solutions combining the local Habsburg historical framework and political ideologies with emerging worldwide slogans such as democracy and self-determination.⁹ But national revolutions were neither the only nor even the natural solutions to the power vacuum.¹⁰ Habsburg historical structures were reconceptualized in other terms, transformed in terms of class emancipation, economic development, or multinationality. The political interests of contending states, international support for certain options, the lobbying activities of local actors, and sometimes purely circumstantial events allowed singular national annexation to prevail over other options. In other words, from 1918 to 1924 there was no lack of political alternatives to the nation-state.

Hungary’s Italian-Speaking Port

The legal position of the city of Fiume and its belonging to imagined national communities became problematic around the second half of the nineteenth century.¹¹ The ideology of Croatian state right and the Croatian national movement considered the city part of its national body, while the city’s Italian-speaking local elite was averse to the Croatian vision. Without expressing Italian annexationist attitudes, the local elite wanted to maintain the city’s position as an autonomous municipality and thus aligned itself with the Hungarian political elite. The result of the 1868 Croatian–Hungarian Settlement (Nagodba) was a provisional agreement that the city, geographically separated from Hungary proper, would be considered attached to the Hungarian crown and not to the nearby Kingdom of Croatia-Slavonia. As a corpus separatum, Fiume was assured a degree of autonomy and placed under Hungarian authority.¹²

Consequently, Fiumian citizens elected their municipal council as well as one deputy to the lower house of the Hungarian parliament, the House of Representatives (Képviselőház), but not representatives to the Croatian Diet (Sabor). To add a layer of complexity, the city was entitled to elect representatives to the Croatian Diet, a political right denied it by the civic elite in order to demonstrate Fiume’s lack of connection to Croatia-Slavonia. The right to vote in local and parliamentary elections was restricted to a minority that, over the years, slowly increased. Furthermore, the modalities of the elections were also restrictive: although local ballots were written and secret, parliamentary elections were, as in the rest of the Kingdom of Hungary, public and oral.¹³ Members of the municipal council were initially representatives of a merchant, industrial, and artisan elite, while the local patricians’ presence was almost insignificant.

On the local level, the Hungarian state was represented by the governor. The governor, appointed by the (emperor-)king upon agreement with the Hungarian prime minister and the minister of commerce, was a member of the Hungarian nobility, and ex officio the Fiumian representative to the House of Magnates (Főrendiház). Municipal institutions, such as local schools and the hospital, used Italian as the official language, and Fiumian officialdom also possessed the right to communicate with the Hungarian state in Italian. While this was perhaps surprising considering the policies of Magyarization in late-nineteenth-century Hungary, in practical terms, it made sense to use Italian as Fiume’s working official language: until at least 1910, most of Fiume’s population did not know Hungarian, while Croatian (which many did speak) was seen as a language which would upset the administrative division of the city from Croatia-Slavonia, thereby threatening the maintenance of the corpus separatum.¹⁴ Just beyond Fiume’s administrative border, in territory under Croatian-Slavonian authority, a new suburb, Sušak, developed and served as a sort of Croatian counterpart to the Italian-speaking enclave of Fiume. United in curbing Croatian political incursion into the corpus separatum, Fiume’s local elite and the Hungarian authorities enjoyed a quite successful “honeymoon” in the first decades after 1868. However, towards the turn of the century, things began to change, partially due to Fiume’s increased size and importance, partially in response to Budapest’s increased efforts to centralize its kingdom.

The result was the formation of a new local political group, the Autonomists, who collected ever more votes by advocating self-government for Fiume, something the Hungarian metropole was not willing to concede. The Autonomists were also an expression of an emerging middle class that, through appeals to the Italian language and local patriotism, sought to maintain at least the existing system of self-government. The only Hungarian port and the only official Italian-language territory thus became something of a political issue for Hungary. Furthermore, Hungarian political alliances and domestic instability affected the local scenario. A first split inside the Autonomist Party occurred during the parliamentary elections of 1901. While the then-leader of the Autonomist Party, Michele/Mihály Maylender, supported the former Hungarian governor as candidate for the lower house of the Hungarian Diet, another group advocated the election of Riccardo Zanella (Fiume, 1875–Rome, 1959) as a genuine Fiumian candidate. The former Hungarian governor won the election, but it was the start of a division of the party into two factions, one close to the former Liberal Party, and another closer to the Coalition Parties. As the Coalition Parties’ candidate, Zanella, now champion of the Autonomist Party, won a parliamentary seat in 1905 and again in 1906.¹⁵ After the overthrow of the Coalition government, the Autonomists split between István Tisza’s supporters and opponents and created two rival factions: the Autonomist Party and the Autonomist League. Tisza’s opponents, the Autonomist Party, held the majority in the municipal council until 1911, when the body was dissolved by order of the prime minister. The newly elected Autonomist League council majority lasted until 1913, when the governor commissioned the municipal council, inciting a few Italian irredentists to plant a bomb at the Governor’s Palace. Tisza’s autocracy increased political animosity, enhancing the appeal of Italian irredentism among a segment of Fiume’s youth. Radical action was an expression of politically active youngsters who were members of Giovine Fiume (Young Fiume) and who considered the Italian nation-state a real alternative state structure to the Kingdom of Hungary. As we will see, some members of that political minority would become important in the events after 1918.

New elections were held in 1914, again resulting in a majority on a municipal council hostile to Tisza and in the election of Zanella as mayor. The mayor’s election by the municipal council had to be confirmed by the king, but Zanella’s mayorship was rejected by Franz Joseph under the influence of higher Hungarian authorities. After Italy’s entry into the war on the side of the Entente, and evident conflicts between Budapest and Fiume regarding the city’s self-government rights and the degree of centralization,¹⁶ elections for the complete renewal of the municipal council were held in July 1915. With only one official list of candidates, ethnic Hungarians gained a significant number of seats in the municipal council for the first time.¹⁷ Antonio Vio (Fiume, 1875–Bolzano, 1949), the Fiumian parliamentary deputy elected in 1911 as representative of the Autonomist League (the pro-Tisza faction), became a municipal councillor and was chosen as the city’s wartime mayor. After parliamentary by-elections in the autumn of 1915, Vio’s parliamentary seat was filled by Andrea Ossoinack (Fiume, 1876–Merano, 1965),¹⁸ another champion of the Autonomist League.

The municipal council continued to operate throughout entire war, exposing its (Hungarian) Habsburg loyalty. As Vio stated after accepting the position of mayor, “we will find the best protection for all our heritage [Fiumian language and rights, author’s note] only in faith to the Nation and in sincere attachment to the Hungarian state which arose and made this city flourish.”¹⁹ Symbolically, in 1916, Fiume’s main promenade was renamed to honour the recently deceased Franz Joseph, while just a few months beforehand the municipal council had decided to award honorary citizenship to Tisza.²⁰ At the same time, Italian citizens, Fiumians, and prominent members of political and cultural associations considered potentially hostile to the Hungarian state were arrested and sent to camps in the Hungarian hinterland. Local Italian historiography recalled the pressure and persecution from the Hungarian state police, which replaced the municipal police in 1916. Additionally, food shortages made the situation in the city difficult.²¹ Reasonably, the end of the war was perceived as a moment of relief and freedom.

From Hungarian State Presence to Italian Annexation

During the four years of war, nine municipal council mandates became vacant due to deaths and resignations. Thus, in September 1918, the last Habsburg-era by-elections were held. These elections were considered almost worthless, according to a local newspaper, since half the voters were still conscripted and there was only one list of candidates, which represented mostly, if not exclusively, the upper social strata.²² On the contrary, a significant part of the electorate turned out,²³ but the period of political participation within the existing local Habsburg-Hungarian system was brought to an end by subsequent events. The newly elected had the opportunity to attend only two sessions of the municipal council, since the events of October 1918 changed the entire system of power. When Emperor Karl’s federalization manifesto was read in the Hungarian House of Representatives on 18 October, Fiumian deputy Ossoinack declared that Fiume would not become part of Croatia and the city, of Italian character, would adhere to its right to self-determination, demanding that historic rights be respected.²⁴ A day later, the Central Committee of the SCS National Council in Zagreb also rejected the emperor’s manifesto, asking for the union of all its people in their ethnic territory. Fiume, or rather Rijeka, was listed as part of this ethnic territory. In Fiume itself, the atmosphere became tense. Five days after Ossoinack’s speech, following a Croatian (Yugoslav) national manifestation in Sušak, regular military troops of Croatian nationality clashed with the Hungarian state police, provoking the assault by many citizens on the prison and the local court. Furthermore, the events of 23 October were an opportunity for night-time looting of stores.²⁵ The riots would become another expedient propaganda device with which to demonstrate the potential violence the Croatian menace would direct towards Italian Fiume. Meanwhile, the Hungarian prime minister resigned, making the situation precarious on both the central and the local levels. On 29 October, in a meeting called by the mayor, many civic representatives decided to confirm Antonio Vio as acting mayor and to create an (Italian) National Committee under the chairmanship of Antonio Grossich (Draguccio/Draguć, 1849–Fiume, 1926).²⁶ The next day, the Italian National Council, enlarged by new members, confirmed the mayor once more, declared the municipal council’s mandates terminated, and took its place.²⁷ On 29 October, the Croatian Sabor dissolved all ties with Cisleithania and the Kingdom of Hungary and proclaimed Dalmatia-Croatia-Slavonia with Rijeka as an independent state, recognizing the SCS National Council as its supreme authority. That day, the Hungarian Governor, left without instructions, handed over the Governor’s Palace to representatives of the SCS National Council of Rijeka-Sušak. As the name indicates, the SCS National Council perceived the two separate administrative units as a nationally unified entity. However, the SCS National Council was composed mainly of figures active in Sušak, the actual challengers to the Fiumian municipal elite, while the Italian National Council was comprised of Fiumians.²⁸ The two national councils established relations, and on 30 October the head of the Sušak District, Konstantin Rojčević, took office as Commissioner for Rijeka and Sušak, designated by the SCS National Council in Zagreb. A day later, the lawyer Rikard Lenac (Rijeka, 1868–1949) was designated high sheriff (veliki župan) of Rijeka and the district by the SCS National Council in Zagreb and claimed the prerogatives of the former office of governor without abolishing Fiumian local civic institutions.²⁹ The Italian National Council argued that, with the Hungarian state’s presence terminated, the city, as a legal body, was free to decide its own future. For the SCS National Council, Fiume was part of the newly proclaimed South Slav state with its own newly established institutions. Despite the legal dispute, the predominance of one national council over the other was determined rather by the progress of events. As in the case of the governor, the Hungarian central institutions abandoned their offices without any opposition. The state police force, introduced in 1916, was disbanded by the Hungarian prime minister on 29 October and replaced by a civil guard created under the authority of the city.³⁰ On the other side, Croatian Habsburg military units and Croatian youth volunteers organized in a national guard recognized the SCS National Council as the political authority to which they owed allegiance. None represented a war-winning party, and the Italian National Council, fearing usurpation, asked for the intervention of the Italian army. On 4 November, an Italian fleet came to town “to protect the Italians,” albeit without landing troops. On 15 November, two Serbian battalions arrived in Fiume, taking charge of the Croatian troops there. After negotiations with Italian occupational authorities, and following orders from superiors from the Entente, the Serbian army retreated. On 17 November, the city of Fiume was occupied by Italian troops, some American soldiers, and British officers, making the occupation an Interallied one. The Italian general dismissed the Croatian high sheriff from the Governor’s office and recognized the Italian National Council as the only local authority.³¹ This way, the transition to the South Slav state was sidelined as a potential option. In the following days, French troops, commanded by a general with a higher rank than the Italian general, arrived in the town to establish a logistical base for the Armeé d’Orient. In response, the Italian government substituted their general with another of higher rank than the French one. Fiume, which was not promised to Italy in the Treaty of London, became a contested object between Italy and the newly forming South Slav state. However, these were not the only contestants.

In July 1919, tensions between the Italian National Council’s armed group, pro-Italian civilians, and Italian and French soldiers escalated, resulting in the death of a few Vietnamese soldiers, members of the French colonial troops. The Entente forces reacted, creating a commission that decided that most of the Italian armed units had to leave Fiume. Fearing that the city’s annexation to Italy was threatened, the Italian National Council hailed D’Annunzio’s arrival in September 1919—doing so without opposition from the Italian army. Soon, the Interallied units abandoned the city, but the Italian National Council’s plan to force the Italian government to proclaim annexation was a failure. Peace talks continued until the end of 1920, while D’Annunzio tried to transform the town into his own political project antithetic to liberal democracy.³²

When a treaty was signed between the Kingdom of Italy and the Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes in November 1920, D’Annunzio and his legionnaires were forced to leave the city after a brief conflict with the Italian army in the late December of 1920. The Italian National Council had to prepare elections to hand over power to a new, to-be-elected government of the Fiumian Free State. The Free State of Fiume was politically unstable, however, due to the fierce rivalry between Italian annexationists and Fiumian Autonomists, with the annexationist group substantially continuing to hold onto power on the local level. Although the April 1921 elections gave the majority to the Autonomists, this faction was able to exercise power in Fiume only from October 1921 to March 1922, subsequently languishing in exile in the Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes. Negotiations between Italy and the Kingdom of SCS reassumed, and another peace treaty was signed at the beginning of 1924, marking the official annexation of the city to Italy.

The Italian National Council

Though the membership of the Italian National Council increased following the events of October 1918,³³ the real political power was held by an Executive Committee, elected by members present at the meeting of 29 October 1918. By the end of 1918, the ten-member Executive Committee had been enlarged by another eight figures, followed by a further three in January 1919 and five more in June 1919.³⁴ None of the first ten members of the Executive Committee had participated in the municipal council elections of July 1915 or September 1918.³⁵ Six had been deputies of the municipal council in previous years, while others appear to have never been elected previously.³⁶ On the other side, the Committee’s eight new members, chosen before the end of 1918, were largely deputies elected in May 1915, among them the mayor from 1914 and the former deputy for Fiume in the Hungarian parliament.³⁷ Among the three figures chosen in January, none of them were municipal councillors elected in 1915 or in 1918. However, one had previously been elected a member of the municipal council in the Habsburg era, one had a family member who had been elected in 1915, and one had both been previously elected and had a family member elected.³⁸ The final enlargement in June 1919 was undertaken at the request of Fiumians who had fought in the war as Italian army volunteers. The group was composed of a younger generation, with the exception of Mario Blasich, elected municipal councillor in 1914, who did not actually accept the position on the Executive Committee of the Italian National Council.³⁹ The Executive Committee included two others who had never been elected previously,⁴⁰ while six were members of the irredentist association Giovine Fiume.⁴¹ Only three had no political experience at all, though two were engaged in the city’s social life as members of an association that promoted Italian language and culture.⁴² Thus, the Executive Committee was mostly made up of individuals with previous political experience and institutional familiarity with the local Hungarian power structure. This group was joined by elements of the former Italian irredentist movement, some of whom had fought as volunteers in the Italian army. There was no complete continuity between the wartime municipal council and the Italian National Council, and a revolution—in terms of the rise to power of an entirely new elite—certainly did not occur. Ethnic Hungarian municipal councillors completely disappeared, and with them the majority of the elected municipal councillors from 1915. Magyars and “Magyarons” did not transform into fake Italians; rather, some political figures, formerly champions of state-loyal autonomism, now presented themselves as Italian patriots. Simultaneously, an Italian irredentist minority was beginning to advance thanks to the status gained on the battlefield as Italian volunteers.⁴³

This side-switching did not go unnoticed by contemporaries. The presence of an old-new elite was recognized by a local Croatian newspaper which attacked, in articles written in Italian, members of the Italian National Council for their former Habsburg patriotism. The president of the Italian National Council, the physician Antonio Grossich, was criticized for his conduct during the war, but also for his alleged Croatian ethnic origins. Still, Grossich’s Italian annexationist position was eased by his forced removal from the town by the Hungarian authorities in 1915.⁴⁴ Someone who found himself in a more difficult position was the wartime mayor Antonio Vio. Not only had he championed the Autonomist League before and during the war, but his father and brothers had aligned themselves with Croatian national ideals and hence he found himself labelled a political and moral acrobat.⁴⁵ Former parliamentary deputy Ossoinack, on the other hand, was attacked on ethnic grounds.⁴⁶ As Ljubinka Karpowicz has noted, the two were mentioned alongside four other members of the Executive Committee as affiliates of the Hungarian Masonic lodge Sirius.⁴⁷ The champions of Italian annexation had thus previously held positions of socio-political prestige and power in the Habsburg-Hungarian system and had tried to maintain it.

The preservation of power and the lack of change to the elite is precisely the subject touched upon by opponents of the Italian National Council. In an Autonomist pamphlet published in 1920, the champions of the Italian National Council are labelled former Tisza supporters and Habsburg loyalists.⁴⁸ Furthermore, the old-new elite were publicly accused of obtaining economic advantages in the transition period by the incorrect management of supplies which had been stocked in city warehouses for the former Austro-Hungarian army. In line with political ideals adapting to new contingencies, from October–November 1918 to a large part of 1919, even for the followers of the Autonomist Party, annexation to Italy was unquestionable. What was controversial was rather the scenario in which (yet-to-be) past Habsburg figures among the most loyal to the government in Budapest led the Italian National Council and the economic malfeasance of the transition period.

Hence, the Italian National Council needed more legitimization; its authority was even questioned abroad by the Entente’s special commission investigating the violence in July 1919. And so new elections were to be organized. Unsurprisingly, they were held at a moment favourable to the new-old elite. When diplomatic negotiations over Fiume’s future seemed to have failed to bring Italian annexation, D’Annunzio was invited to the city by the Italian National Council in September 1919. A month later, in October 1919, elections were organized for the municipal council, which would function both as the municipal council and the Italian National Council. For the first time, the right to vote was extended to citizens of both sexes over the age of 20. Though women gained passive and active political rights, they only received three of the 56 seats and were the least voted-for. More than 68 per cent of the electorate voted for the sole list present, that of the National Union.⁴⁹ Significantly, the Autonomist Party officially abstained from proposing candidates, calling on their supporters to vote for the only list to demonstrate that the population of Fiume wanted annexation to Italy.⁵⁰

The newly elected municipal council included figures without previous political experience and was more socially diverse than the previous councils.⁵¹ Besides the female presence and some newly represented professions—for example in the form of a few journalists, a carpenter, and a tobacco factory worker—other figures maintained or regained their political positions. Former parliamentary deputy Ossoinack and at least fifteen other councillors had already been elected in previous ballots.⁵² Additionally, four other deputies had family members that had been elected previously.⁵³ Though there were cases of representatives that had previously been affiliated with the Autonomist League, only two councillors had been members of the 1915–18 municipal council. The political elite most loyal to the former Hungarian state was sidelined, but its place was not taken over entirely by a new one. The new municipal council/National Council was a combination of the Autonomist Party’s old members, former members of the Italian irredentist youth, and ascendant figures of the Italian nationalist and soon-to-be fascist movement.⁵⁴ A detailed analysis of less-known councillors’ biographies could provide further data on their political, social, and associational engagement before 1918, helping us to understand the reasons for their involvement with the National Council. Currently, it seems that the majority were not so popular, or were considered politically irrelevant. This points to one reason why, in the 1921 Constituent Assembly election, the Nationalist Bloc advanced the candidacies of only half of the municipal councillors elected in October 1919.

Though the 1921 election criteria were similar to those for the 1919 elections, women were completely excluded as candidates, social diversification decreased, and the figures proposed by the Nationalist Bloc were mainly those who had been politically established before 1914.⁵⁵ Furthermore, one former member of the 1919 city council and the Italian National Council aligned with the Autonomist Bloc, running as their candidate.⁵⁶ The annexation movement was not so solid, and the international treaties and the ousting of D’Annunzio certainly shaped the revival of political options.⁵⁷ Moreover, two years of economic uncertainty and D’Annunzio’s political experimentations conditioned the electorate to favour political options that promoted a return to normality. However, the political options that opposed Italian annexation did not appear suddenly when the Free State was established. Alternative political agendas had already appeared in October 1918, when alleged and presumed national belonging was becoming the main option.

(A)national Alternatives

Local Socialists’ response to the collapse of Habsburg state institutions was almost immediate. Juxtaposed to the two National Councils, the local Socialists established a Workers’ Council on 30 October 1918.⁵⁸ The Workers’ Council was the local Socialist Party’s class-based response to ideas driven by the nationalist and bourgeois elites. The thirty-one council members were mainly industrial workers and trade union representatives whose highest institutional activity had been with the Workers’ Sickness Fund.⁵⁹ The Socialists had been on the institutional fringes of Fiumian local society in the late Habsburg era and were challengers to the consolidated elites. The Workers’ Council, recalling President Wilson’s principles of self-determination, asked the Italian National Council for a plebiscite regarding the city’s future. The right to vote in the plebiscite had to be extended to all people 18 years of age and older, of both sexes, resident in Fiume for at least one year, regardless of their nationality. The Socialists’ position on the plebiscite, without naming the options, became more elaborate in the days that followed. When Italian troops entered the town on 17 November 1918, the Socialists organized a public meeting at which they voted against any annexation of the city, instead calling for the establishment of Fiume as a free, independent republic under the protection of the Socialist International.⁶⁰

Though class-based, the Socialists’ attitude towards the old-new elite in the city was still ambiguous. They protested against Croatian annexation plans and recognized the Italian National Council as the local political power. At the end of October 1918, the Workers’ Council established an armed unit, the Red Guards, that collaborated with the Italian National Council in guarding municipal storehouses. That way, the Socialists gave a sign that the Italian National Council was to some extent the successor to the municipal council. Their very recognition of this demonstrates that the Socialists were still thinking within legal Habsburg-Hungarian terms. For instance, they declared that the Workers’ Sickness Fund had to be autonomous and rejected intervention by the Italian National Council or Zagreb in its affairs.⁶¹ For the Socialists, the Empire and its institutions were not yet dead. If criticism in a local Italian newspaper is to be taken seriously, then the Socialists still continued to display their dynastic loyalty in November 1918: Emperor-King and Empress-Queen portraits still hung inside the building of the Socialist-controlled Fund.⁶² For the Italian nationalist newspaper, the Socialists were “non-Italians” and “black-yellow” patriots. But the Socialists gave their own reading of the corpus separatum experience in class terms. Instead of Italian self-determination, the city had to become an independent republic.

The Socialists continued to support the idea of a free state in the years to come, when the party transformed into the Communist Party of Fiume in 1921. In one of the last letters written to the Communist Party of Italy in 1923, the local Communists called for mass action against the annexation of Fiume to Italy.⁶³ The Socialists, and later the Communists, sought to maintain the previous international and local pre-1918 status by supporting the alternative option of a free state on class grounds, something they considered similar to the city’s late-Habsburg autonomy. This position was backed by their unwillingness to become part of Italy. That solution would mean the destruction of the city’s economy, and the Socialists believed that—given the multinational character of the population— annexation to a nation-state was the wrong solution. As the Socialist leader Árpád Simon affirmed in an interview published in September 1919, “Fiume is an international centre, a convergence point of various races [to be understood as ethnicities or nationalities, author’s note], for whom a political regime based on neutrality is suitable.”⁶⁴

One may argue that this internationalistic position was due to a lack of “Italians” among the Socialists. Compared to the other political options, the Socialist leaders were “more Hungarian,” as Simon and Samuele Mayländer were. Yet the Socialist and Communist base was not exclusively or even mostly made up of ethnic Hungarians—despite the fact that some of them became well known later, such as the Seidenfeld and Blüch sisters.⁶⁵ Regarding the ethnicity of these families, their Jewish origins should probably be stressed more. For instance, the mass gathering in November 1918 was attended by more than a thousand workers and May Day 1919 saw the participation of thousands of people, regardless of their nationality. On both occasions, speeches were delivered in Italian, Croatian, and Hungarian, demonstrating the multinational character of the Socialists’ supporters.

Despite its nationally inclusive character, the Socialist and Communist political option still remained on the margins. Weak connections with revolutionary Budapest, the presence and strength of right-wing military and paramilitary units in Fiume, a lack of support or interest on the part of international socialist/communist organizations—and even the lack of local radical revolutionary stances—all played a role in sidelining local Socialists and Communists in the local political arena.⁶⁶

In the political arena more generally, Hungarians and pro-Hungarian forces almost vanished during the transition period, pushed aside by the power struggle between the respective supporters of a Croatian, an Italian, and an independent state.⁶⁷ However, there was a minor attempt worth noting. In 1920, Desző Dárday (Bratislava/Pressburg/Pozsony, 1869–Budapest, 1922), a member of the former governors’ staff, wrote a small pamphlet stating that the region from Raša/Arsia in Istria (part of the Austrian half of the Empire before the war and controlled by Italy from 1918 on) to Vinodol in the Croatian Littoral (in the Hungarian half of the Empire and part of the semi-autonomous Kingdom of Croatia-Slavonia before the war, controlled by the Kingdom of SCS after 1918) had to become a territory with self-government, controlled by an administrative organ delegated by the Italians of Fiume, Hungary, and Yugoslavia, that is, the Kingdom of SCS.⁶⁸ The Hungarian presence in this “condominium,” as Dárday named it, was justified by former Hungarian state investments, by the economic importance of Fiume for the hinterland, and by the stability Hungary could provide in a territory disputed between Italy and Yugoslavia. Dárday’s proposal, as we will see, had similarities with another free state concept, but was more marginal. Contingent events are again the key to understanding why that solution was unfeasible. With revolution, counter-revolution, and the reduction of the Kingdom of Hungary to a third of its pre-war size after 1920, the Hungarian state faced internal and external challenges that precluded any significant initiatives regarding Fiume. And Hungarians in Fiume flowed out, much as their state had. By the time of the December 1918 census, the Hungarian-speaking population had fallen by 2,000, resulting in the disappearance of many of the 1915 pro-Hungarian elements from the political arena and the accusation that some of them had Bolshevik tendencies—something that was not viewed favourably by the Italian occupation authorities.⁶⁹ The vacuum opened by the disappearance of the Hungarian state and more generally the Habsburg Empire was partly filled by the (re)emerging Autonomist movement.

Returning to the immediate post-war weeks, another challenger to the Italian National Council materialized in the political arena. In November 1918, Ruggero Gottardi/Gotthardi (Fiume, 1882–Diano Marina, 1954), a former Habsburg military officer and hitherto a politically unengaged trader, published an open letter questioning the Italian National Council’s political legitimacy and advocating a free state solution for the city instead. From 1919 on, this included an enlarged territory of roughly the same extent as Dárday’s plan.⁷⁰ Though in his letter Gotthardi was open to Fiume becoming a South Slavic protectorate if that would protect the city’s autonomous rights, the text’s crucial element was its emphasis on Fiumian patriotism. As he put it, true Fiumians were of different ethnic origins but Italian speakers and had to put economic interests before political divisions.⁷¹ Thus the city’s mainly Italian character was implicit for Gotthardi, but he maintained that national character was not antithetic to economic interests and the freedom of other nationalities within Fiume. The Italian National Council’s annexation plans were contested from this same system of ideas: the city’s historical existence as a corpus separatum and its specific national/multinational character. While for the Italian annexationist elite the historical experience of municipal autonomy was the justification for Fiume’s annexation to Italy, for Gottardhi that was exactly why the city should be independent.

Regarding their social extraction, Gotthardi’s political faction was made up of traders, figures employed in maritime businesses, and some Fiumian patrician families, and his option was even supported by dock workers.⁷² According to a report from the Autonomist Democrat Party’s general congress held in August 1919, the number of party delegates rose to 121.⁷³ The congress’s low numbers were compensated by the 950 Fiumian voters—over a third of the pre-1918 electorate—who sent a request to Paris in May 1919 to internationalize Fiume. The Autonomist Democrats’ lack of political followers has to be related to Gotthardi’s political inexperience; Gotthardi himself was not keen on engaging in politics. In a political flyer published after the coup d’état of March 1922, he stated that his party was named “Autonomist Democrat” in hope of having as its leader the one “who always wanted the full liberty of Fiume: Zanella.”⁷⁴ Gotthardi’s idea of an independent state and the Fiumian Socialists’ agenda certainly had an impact on the population. According to a British report from May 1919, aside from the Croatian and Italian annexation option, roughly one third of the population of Fiume and Sušak favoured the free state solution.⁷⁵ A few weeks later, this option seemed achievable: the French–Italian conflict resulted in the July violence and its victims, the consequent forced departure of most Italian armed forces, the planned arrival of police officers from Malta, and potential British support represented a moment when the free state solution had the strongest prospects of realization.⁷⁶ This is largely why the Italian National Council needed D’Annunzio, or another figure, to keep the idea of annexation to Italy afloat.

Still, in 1918 and 1919, the majority of the Fiumian political elite aligned themselves with the Italian National Council. They clearly considered annexation the likeliest, fastest, and simplest solution. Their Italian national engagement could help them maintain the positions of power they had held previously.⁷⁷ The Socialists had opposed annexation, in part because they wanted to overthrow the existing liberal system with a class-based one, but also for national and economic reasons. The latter issue was the same reason why Gotthardi’s party had been created in the first place. The Autonomist Democrats believed that Fiume could not flourish without a larger hinterland and, moreover, could not fend off Trieste’s economic rivalry. The working class and the lower-middle and middle classes would be hit hard by the city’s shift from Hungary’s main port to a peripheral Italian town. Further, they acknowledged that the population was not only made up of Italians, and that the Italians of Fiume were different from those within the Kingdom of Italy. All these contradictions cannot be understood without considering a key figure in the entire transition period: Riccardo Zanella.

Riccardo Zanella was the main local political figure in the Habsburg era, the leader of the Autonomist Party from 1901, elected twice as the Fiumian deputy to the Hungarian Parliament, and chosen by the municipal council as mayor in 1914—though, as we have seen, his election was not confirmed by higher authorities. For more than a decade, Zanella and his party monopolized the civic administration and city affairs. As a professional politician, Zanella had a mass following and managed to present himself publicly as a man of the people, in contrast to other local politicians. Frequently advocating the idea of universal (male?) suffrage, he had the broadest range of sympathizers across class and linguistic divides. During the World War, he was sent to the front, captured in Russia in 1916, and then, upon being sent to Italy, began representing the Italians of Fiume in Italy. When the Habsburg Empire fell, Zanella was still in Italy, far from Fiume, and thereby did not participate in the initial formation of the Italian National Council. Nonetheless, quickly and quite publicly the council offered Zanella an official position. Zanella returned in December 1918 and was welcomed by a meeting organized by the Italian National Council. At that meeting, attended by a large crowd, Zanella declared himself explicitly in favour of the city’s annexation to the Italian “motherland,” arguing that Fiume would still become a maritime outlet for other nations.⁷⁸ Even if many of his contemporaries considered his speech a little temperate in terms of annexationist fervour, no one doubted that he was aligning himself with the annexationists.

As time passed, however, Zanella came into conflict with some of the Italian National Council’s personalities. The rifts were not ideological, but personal. Zanella resented not being given leadership within the Council—and not having exponents of his wing in the Autonomist Party as members of the National Council Executive Committee—and so quickly became the champion of the free-state movement.⁷⁹ Zanella’s “flexible” political leanings were apparent to all between 1918 and 1920. As Gotthardi wrote in a flyer published after the March 1922 coup, in May 1919, Zanella stood on the annexationist side, allegedly hoping to become a prefect of a Fiumian province, given the hoped-for extension of the Italian administrative system to the city. In September 1919, when D’Annunzio marched into Fiume, Zanella backed the poet-soldier, hoping to become the political chief of the town.⁸⁰ Undoubtedly, Zanella had strong ambitions and a very high political appeal, proven at the Constituent Assembly elections. Despite divergent electoral results—and a lack of precision—the Autonomist coalition undoubtedly achieved a great victory.⁸¹ Certainly, the desire for stability contributed to Zanella’s victory, but his political potential and knowledge were key elements of his coalition’s achievement. The Autonomist coalition had at least fifteen former municipal deputies, including Zanella himself, and a few figures with family members as former deputies.⁸² Thus, Zanella could still count on former Autonomist Party followers with their economic capital and social resources. This is also why there were cases of Italian National Council members that passed over to Zanella’s side.⁸³ Nevertheless, Zanella’s triumph could not be completed without mass support obtained by gathering individuals from the lower and middle classes and by presenting the bloc as a genuinely popular faction opposing local high society.⁸⁴ The annexationist National Bloc was certainly not elitist, but the main candidates were prominent and established figures in the local community, such as Antonio Grossich, Andrea Ossoinack, and Antonio Vio. They also included former irredentists and emerging figures of what would become the new fascist post-annexation elite.⁸⁵

Zanella’s democratic victory transformed into an unconstitutional defeat, for the free state option was no longer in the international interest. Lacking real support from the Italian state, which was fundamentally interested in annexing Fiume, and with the city lacking any armed forces of its own, the free state option was hard to realize. Thus, local nationalists and even more so local Fascists became the main political elite, physically and symbolically ousting the advocates of a free state solution. Although various Autonomists exponents returned to Fiume from exile in the Kingdom of SCS on the eve of the city’s annexation to Italy, they remained politically insignificant. On the other hand, the integration of Fiume and its (nationalistic) political elite into newly fascist Italy is still a chapter to be written.

Annexation to a nation-state as a contingent outcome

This essay has shown that there was not a clear or straightforward evolution from previous Hungarian state loyalties to Italian annexationist nationalism, nor from autonomism to Italian nationalism. Rather, the international political situation influenced, enhanced, but also weakened certain political options. Obviously, there were political actors strongly committed to certain solutions: most Fiumian Italian army volunteers advocated annexation to Italy, yet the creation and the success of other, alternative political options was influenced by international, national, state, regional, or class support, all of which shifted greatly back and forth between late 1918 and the final resolution of the Fiumian question in 1923–24. Class-based projects, such as the Fiumian Republic under the Socialist International, or alternatives to nation-state annexation, such as Gotthardi’s project and the Free State of Fiume, could persist only when and if backed by other external factors. Since neither Italy nor the Kingdom of SCS were truly interested in supporting Fiume as an independent state and it was not a priority for other states and international actors either, supporters of a free state thus wound up on the defeated side of the post-Habsburg transition period.

However, social and political transformations inside Habsburg-Hungarian society also affected the development of new and old post-1918 elites. The possibility of creating political capital in the late Habsburg period and exploiting it further after the Habsburg Empire’s downfall has to be taken into account when dealing with such a transition period. Nor should generational differences and generational shifts be forgotten. Certain minor political groups were convinced well before the First World War that the disappearance of the Empire was for the best, but most of them were young and had limited political influence. That group’s rise was rather due to the unexpected fall of the Empire in the autumn of 1918, and not vice versa.

The social and political features of the aforementioned transition period were not specific to Fiume, while the political capital accumulated by the Autonomists in the early twentieth century was probably the most characteristic component of local political history.

While before 1918 Fiumian autonomism was characterized by defence of the Italian language and self-government under Hungary, from late 1918 on it was either interpreted as proto-Italian nationalism or transformed into a struggle for self-determination and independence for the city of Fiume. Fascist violence and the fascist regime added another layer to the local political specificity. While the Autonomist-led Free State disappeared under fascist violence, the Autonomists presented themselves as antifascists and among the first victims of fascism. The endurance of Fiumian autonomism is related to the tough economic situation Fiume faced during the fascist regime as a periphery of the Italian state, and by the city’s belonging being challenged once more during the Nazi occupation (1943–45), all of which was tied to the remembrance of a prosperous past not so distant, a past when the Autonomists administered the city. Additionally, autonomism had a longer political legacy than fascism and institutionalized political legitimization thanks in large part to the 1921 elections. Thus, a variously understood notion of “autonomy” remained influential among locals until the end of the Second World War, when a new radical caesura meant a fundamental change from the Italian fascist regime and German Nazi occupation to socialist Yugoslavia.

Ivan Jeličić obtained his PhD in History at the University of Trieste in 2017, defending a thesis on socialism in late Habsburg Fiume/Rijeka. From September 2018 to January 2023, he was a postdoc researcher within the European Research Council (ERC) project “NEPOSTRANS: Negotiating post-imperial transitions,” based at the Institute of Political History in Budapest. From February 2023 he is Assistant Professor (docent) at the Department of Italian Studies Department of the Faculty of Philosophy and Social Sciences in Rijeka. He collaborates on the project Rijeka in Flux: Borders and Urban Change after World War II, an international and interdisciplinary research project initiated by the University of British Columbia, Okanagan. His research interests are the political and social transformations between the 19th and 20th centuries and transition processes from the Habsburg Empire to the new states in the Upper Adriatic, particularly in the Rijeka area.

In the text I will refer to the city as Fiume and not Rijeka, since the term Rijeka can semantically include a larger territory than Fiume as a corpus separatum. ︎
For a recent detailed account of the D’Annunzian period, see Federico Carlo Simonelli: D’Annunzio e il mito di Fiume. Riti, simboli, narrazioni [D’Annunzio and the Myth of Fiume. Rituals, Symbols, and Narratives]. Pisa 2021. ︎
For the social, legal, and economic aspects of Fiume’s post-imperial transition up to 1921, see Dominique Kirchner Reill: The Fiume Crisis. Life in the Wake of the Habsburg Empire. Cambridge, Massachusetts 2020. ︎
Danilo Klen (ed.): Povijest Rijeke [The History of Rijeka]. Rijeka 1988, p. 285. ︎
Klen: Povijest Rijeke, p. 290. ︎
Silvino Gigante: Storia del Comune di Fiume [The History of the Municipality of Fiume]. Florence 1929. For a recent Italian-language monograph focused on city’s 20th century, mostly the first half, see Raoul Pupo: Fiume città di passione [Fiume City of Passion]. Bari–Rome 2018. ︎
On national indifference, see Tara Zahra: Imagined Noncommunities. National Indifference as a Category of Analysis. In: Slavic Review 69 (2010) 1, pp. 93–119 and Tara Zahra, Pieter M. Judson: Sites of Indifference to Nationhood. In: Austrian History Yearbook 43 (2012), pp. 21–27. ︎
“Elites” are defined as that “small group of persons who exercise disproportionate power and influence” and who, thanks to their location in powerful institutions, organizations, and movements, are able to shape or influence political outcomes. See John Higley: “Elites,” In: Encyclopedia Britannica, <https://www.britannica.com/topic/elite-sociology>, 17.1.2023. By contrast, challengers are simply defined as those who contest elites’ positions. ︎
Erez Manela: The Wilsonian Moment. Self Determination and the International Origins of Anticolonial Nationalism. New York 2007. ︎
On rethinking the end of the Habsburg Empire, see P. M. Judson: The Habsburg Empire. A New History. Cambridge (MA), London 2016, pp. 385–453; P. Judson: “Where our commonality is necessary…”. Rethinking the End of the Habsburg Monarchy. In: Austrian History Yearbook 48 (2017), pp. 1–21. See also: Jernej Kosi: Summer of 1919: A Radical, Irreversible, Liberating Break in Prekmurje/Muravidék? In: Hungarian Historical Review, 9 (2020) 1, pp. 51–68 and Gábor Egry: Negotiating Post-imperial Transitions. Local Societies and Nationalizing States in East Central Europe. In: Paul Miller, Claire Morelon (eds.): Embers of Empire. Continuity and Rupture in the Habsburg Successor States after 1918. New York 2019, pp. 15–42. ︎
For Fiume’s regional identification before Dualism, see Mario Maritan: National Indeterminacies at the Periphery of the Habsburg Monarchy: Nationalisms versus Multi‐ethnic Identities in Fiume/Rijeka and Trieste, 1848–1867. In: Nations and Nationalism, 27, 1, 2020, pp. 1–15. ︎
Ljubinka Karpowicz: Riječki corpus separatum 1868–1924 [Rijeka’s Corpus Separatum 1868–1924]. Ljubljana 1986; W. Klinger: Negotiating the Nation. Fiume: from Autonomism to State Making (1848–1924). Fiesole 2007. ︎
In the 1904 elections for the Fiumian deputy to the House of Representatives, around 6% of the entire population were eligible to vote (2.550 out of almost 39,000 according to the census of 1900). See: Le elezioni municipali – Le liste elettorali [The Municipal Elections – the Election Lists]. In: La Bilancia [The Balance], 20 February 1904, p. 2. ︎
According to the last Hungarian census, the population per mother tongue was divided as follows: 48.6% Italians, 26% Croatians, 13% Hungarians, 4.6% Germans, 4.7% Slovenes, and 3% others. Again, according to that census, more than 20% of the entire population (including those who spoke Hungarian as their mother tongue) knew the Hungarian language. See: A Magyar Szent Korona Országainak 1910. évi népszámlálása [The 1910 Census of the Countries of the Hungarian Holy Crown], vol. 42. Budapest 1913, p. 42. ︎
On Zanella, see Amleto Ballarini: L’antidannunzio a Fiume. Riccardo Zanella [The Anti-D’Annunzio in Fiume. Riccardo Zanella]. Trieste 1995. ︎
For an interesting study of the border police in Fiume, as part of the Budapest vs. Fiume conflict, see Ágnes Ordasi: Borderline Syndrome in Fiume. The Clash of Local and Imperial Interests. In: Hungarian Historical Review 11 (2022), 2, pp. 387–421. ︎
Edoardo Susmel: La Città di passione. Fiume negli anni 1914–1920 [The City of Passion. Fiume in the Years 1914–1920]. Milan 1921. ︎
For a critical overview of Ossoinack’s biography, see Krešimir Sučević Međeral: Businessman – The Case of the Ossoinack Family and Fiume. In: Collegium antropologicum, 41 (2017), p. 4, pp. 351–361. ︎
Original: “(…) la migliore tutela di tutto questo patrimonio, noi lo troveremo soltanto nella fiducia verso la Nazione e nello attaccamento sincero allo Stato ungarico che ha fatto sorgere e fiorire questa città. In: Avvisatore ufficiale del Municipio di Fiume, Protocollo V [Official Announcer of Rijeka Municapility, Protocol V], 2 September 1915, p. 2. ︎
Ballarini: L‘antidannunzio a Fiume, pp. 95–96. ︎
For the wartime period in Fiume, albeit from a post-war Italian propaganda perspective, see E. Susmel: La Città di passione. ︎
I candidati ai seggi rappresentatizzi [The Candidates to the Council Seats]. In: Il Giornale [The Newspaper], 26 September 1918, p. 2. ︎
Around 300 people voted. See Elezioni suppletiorie [ Supplementary elections]. In: Ibid., 28 September 1918, p. 2. For comparison, in the by-elections of 1907 around 500 voted. See Ancora sull’elezione di ieri [More on the Election of Yesterday]. In: La Bilancia, 25 May 1907, pp. 1–2. ︎
Antonella Ercolani: Da Fiume a Rijeka. Profilo storico-politico dal 1918 al 1947 [From Fiume to Rijeka. Political-historical Profile from 1918 to 1947]. Soveria Manelli 2009, p. 55. ︎
I gravi fatti di ieri [Yesterday’s Serious Events]. In: Il Giornale, 24 October 1918, p. 2. ︎
L’ora storica di Fiume [The Historical Hour of Fiume]. In: Ibid., 28 October 1918, p. 2. ︎
Il momento storico di Fiume [The Historical Moment of Fiume]. In: Ibid., 29 October 1918, p. 2. ︎
For the list of members of the Committee of the SCS National Council of Rijeka–Sušak, see Nenad Labus, Viktor Ružić: “Moje uspomene [My Recollections].” In: Dometi [Ranges], 19 (1986) 4, p. 61. ︎
According to Željko Bartulović, when the Croatian Sabor dissolved all ties with Hungary, the former governor was no longer recognized by the Croatian authorities as a representative of an existing authority. Thus, Lenac did not replace the Hungarian governor, but assumed a newly established office. See: Željko Bartulović: Talijanska okupacija Sušaka 1918. – 1923. [The Italian occupation of Sušak, 1918–1923]. In: Ivan Jurković (ed.): Bertošin Zbornik [Essays in Honor of Miroslav Bertoša], Vol. 3, Pazin-Pula, 2013, p. 166. ︎
La polizia di stato sospende la sua attività [The Police Interrupts Its Activities]. In: Il Giornale, 29 October 1918, p. 2 ︎
As Klinger notes, he could do that because the Italian National Council was recognized by the Italian authorities as the administrative continuation of the municipal council. W. Klinger: Germania e Fiume. La questione fiumana nella diplomazia tedesca [Germany and Fiume. The Question of Fiume in German Diplomacy]. Trieste 2011, pp. 20–21. ︎
See Enrico Serventi Longhi: The Father of ‘Sovereignism’: d’Annunzio in Fiume between the Crisis
of Liberalism and the Critique of Democracy. In: Modern Italy 27 (2022), pp. 35–47. ︎
See the list of 284 members and another 11 ad honorem published in Danilo L. Massagrande (ed.): I verbali del Consiglio Nazionale Italiano di Fiume e del Comitato Direttivo [The Records of the Italian National Council of Fiume and the Directive Committee]. Rome 2014, pp. 558–561. ︎
See the list published in Massagrande (ed.): I verbali del Consiglio Nazionale Italiano, p. 561. I have excluded the Italian poet Sem Benelli from the counts. ︎
There are no publications that collect all the local electoral results for the entire Dualistic period. A partial exemption is Elezioni per le cessate rappresentanze [Elections for the Ceased Councils], without place or date of publication, and attributed to Stanislao Dall’Asta, with mainly handwritten names of deputies until 1904. For the other elections I rely on newspaper articles: Elezioni suppletorie [Supplementary elections]. In: La Bilancia, 27 December 1905, p. 2; Ancora sull’elezione di ieri [More on the election of yesterday]. In: Ibid., 25 May 1907, pp. 1–2; Le elezioni di oggi [The elections of today]. In: La Bilancia, 30 December 1908, p. 1; Le elezioni di ieri [Yesterday’s elections]. In: Ibid., 14 April 1910, pp. 1–2; La città ha parlato. L’opinione pubblica ha trionfato [The city has spoken. The public option triumphed]. In: Ibid., 16 May 1911, pp. 1–2; Le elezioni amministrative suppletorie. La vittoria della Lega autonoma [The supplementary local elections. The victory of the Autonomist League]. In: Ibid., 30 December 1912, p. 1; Confusionismo [Confusions]. In: Ibid., 28 February 1914, p. 2 and Gradski izbori na Rieci [Local Elections in Rijeka]. In: Novi List [New List], 27 July 1915, p. 2. ︎
In brackets the year of their last election: Antonio Grossich (1914), Giovanni Schittar (1914), Adolfo Gotthardi (1914), Lionello Lenaz (1910), Silvino Gigante (1907), and Isidoro Garofolo (1904). Annibale Blau, Elpidio Spiringhetti, Salvatore Bellasich, and Francesco Codrich had not previously been members of a municipal council. ︎
Francesco Gilberto Corossacz, Giovanni Rubinich, Andrea Ossoinack, Ugo Venuti, and Antonio Vio were elected in 1915. John Stiglich had last been elected in 1914, while Luigi Nicolich and Gino Sirola had not previously been members of a municipal council. ︎
Attilio Prodam, Idone Rudan and Icilio Baccich were chosen as members. The father of Attilio Prodam, Giovanni Prodam, had been elected a councillor in 1915, as had Idone Rudan’s cousin, Aldo Rudan. Baccich Icilio and Rudan Idone had both been elected councillors in 1910. ︎
Riccardo Gigante (Fiume, 1881–1945), Mario Blasich (Fiume, 1875–1945), Giovanni (Nino) Host-Venturi (Fiume, 1892–Buenos Aires, 1980), Enrico Burich (Fiume, 1889–Modena, 1965) and Iti Baccich (Sušak, 1892–Rome, 1954). For short biographies of these figures, see Salvatore Samani: Dizionario biografico fiumano [Biographical Dictionary of Fiume], Dolo Venezia 1976, pp. 30–31, pp. 38–40, pp. 43–46, pp. 64–68 and pp. 79–83. ︎
Riccardo Gigante and Giovanni (Gino) Sirola were candidates for the Italian Youth in 1911. Gigante: Storia del Comune di Fiume, p. 144. ︎
Annibale Blau, Salvatore Bellasich, Attilio Prodam, Nino Host Venturi, Enrico Burich and Iti Baccich appear in the list published by Attilio Prodam: Gli Argonauti del Carnaro, pp. 371–378. ︎
Luigi Nicolich and Elpidio Springhetti appear as members of Circolo letterario [Literature Circle] from 1911 to 1914. See Archivio Società di Studi fiumani-Roma, 4/64 bis, Circolo Letterario di Fiume, invitations to congresses of the society with list of members, 1911–1914. ︎
For some considerations on this group, see Ljubinka Toševa Karpowicz, The “State of Rijeka” of the Italian National Council (23 November 1918-12 September 1919). In: Angela Ilić, Florian Kührer-Wielach, Irena Samide, and Tanja Žigon (eds): Blick ins Ungewisse: Visionen und Utopien im Donau-Karpaten-Raum 1917 und danach. Verlag Friedrich Pustet: Regensburg, 2019. ︎
Grossich Antonio. In Samani: Dizionario biografico fiumano, pp. 71–77. ︎
See also the critique of Vio’s previous political engagement noted by Henry Baerlein, who labelled him “the turncoat mayor”. Henry Baerlein, The Birth Of Yugoslavia, Volume II. London 1922, pp. 57–59. ︎
Nuove edizioni [New editions]. In: Primorske novine, 6 February 1919, p. 3. ︎
Lj. Karpowicz: Rijeka pod vlašću Talijanskog nacionalnog vijeća (23.XI.1918. – 21.IX.1919.) [Rijeka under Italian National Council Rule]. In: Sušačka revija [Sušačka Magazine] (2018), p. 107. ︎
See the accusation in Tønnes Ore: Indeficienter. Questioni di politica fiumana [Fiumian political issues]. Fiume 1920, pp. 6–11. ︎
What should be stressed is the different participation rates between the urban district and the suburban districts. Jointly, 68% of the electorate voted. In the city, however, almost 76% voted, compared to 55% in the suburban districts. The Italian newspaper emphasized that 80% of the electorate voted for the list, since some deceased or absentees were still on the electoral roll. See: Il voto di ieri afferma dinanzi al mondo folle e vile la volontà di Fiume: Annessione [Yesterday’s ballot affirms the crazy and worthless world of Fiume’s will: Annexation]. In: La Vedetta d‘Italia [Italian Lookout], 28 October 1918, p. 2. On the position of women in Rijeka, see Francesca Rolandi: A never requested triumph? Reframing gender boundaries in Fiume and Sušak after 1918. In: Italia contemporanea Yearbook, 2020, pp. 11–36. ︎
Ore: Indeficienter. Questioni di politica fiumana, pp. 26–28. ︎
See the candidates’ names, generally with their occupation, published in: La Vedetta d’Italia [Italian Post], 25 October 1919, p. 2. ︎
Adriano Cattalinich (1918), Attilio Depoli (1914), Isidoro Garofolo (1904), Antonio Grossich (1914), Luigi Maroth (1914), Ariosto Mini (1914), Edoardo Mondolfo (1902), Andrea Ossoinack (1915), Ugo Pagan (1911), Giuseppe Pus (1907), Idone Rudan (1910), Giovanni Schittar (1901), Giuseppe Sussain (1901), Stefano Tuchtan (1912), Giovanni Villich (1910), and Pietro Zandegiacomo (1901). ︎
Iti Baccich’s brother, Carlo Brazzoduro’s father or brother, Riccardo Gigante’s brother, and Attilio Prodam’s father. There is also a case of a civil deputy Serdoz, but this surname was quite common at that time in Fiume. ︎
Members of the Giovine Fiume included Salvatore Bellasich, Annibale Blau, Carlo Colussi, Carlo Conighi, Vittorio Farina, Riccardo Gigante, Giovanni (Nino) Host Venturi, Clemente Marassi, Carlo Minca, Attilio Prodam, and Giovanni Rusich. It is interesting to note that Vittorio Farina, one of the founders of Giovine Fiume, had been a member of the local socialist movement during the late Habsburg era. ︎
For the list of candidates with their professions, see La Vedetta d’Italia, 22 April 1921, p. 2. ︎
This is the case of Annibale Blau. Additionally, Raimondo Kucich’s wife and brother were members of the Italian National Council in 1919, while he was the candidate of the Independentist Bloc in 1921. It is interesting to note that, in the 1921 elections, the Klinz family split: the father was with the Nationalists, while the son stood for the Independentists. ︎
For a list of parties in the annexation camp, see Daniel Patafta: Privremene vlade u Rijeci (listopad 1918. – siječanj 1924.) [Provisional Government in Rijeka (October 1918 – January 1924)]. In: Časopis za suvremenu povijest [Journal of Contemporary History], 38 (1), p. 213. ︎
Si costituisce il consiglio degli operai [The Workers’ Council is established]. In: La Bilancia, 31 October 1918, p. 1. ︎
For the biographies of the members of the Workers’ Council, see Ivan Jeličić: Uz stogodišnjicu riječkog Radničkog vijeća. Klasna alternativa nacionalnim državama na sutonu Monarhije [On the Centenary of Rijeka’s Workers Council. A Class Alternative to the Nation-State at the Dusk of the Monarchy]. In: Časopis za povijest Zapadne Hrvatske [West Croatian History Journal] 12 (2017), pp. 63–85. ︎
Dite sul serio? [Are you serious?]. In: La Bilancia, 19 November 1918, p. 2. ︎
Per l’autonomia della Cassa distrettuale di Fiume [For the autonomy of the District Fund of Fiume]: In: La Bilancia, 16 November 1918, p. 2. ︎
In punta di penna [From the tip of the pen]. In: La Bilancia, 27 November 1918, p. 2. ︎
Luciano Giuricin, Mihael Sobolevski (eds.): Il Partito comunista di Fiume – Komunistička partija Rijeke 1921–1924. Documenti -Dokumenti [The Communist Party of Fiume 1921–1924. Documents]. Vol. II. Rijeka, Rovinj 1981, p. 187. ︎
“(…) Fiume è un centro internazionale, un punto di confluenza di varie razze, a cui conviene un regime politico basato sulla neutralità (…) Fiume, repubblica libera ed indipendente [Fiume, free and independent republic]. In: L‘Avanti [Forward], 27 September 1919, p. 1. ︎
Sara Galli: Le tre sorelle Seidenfeld: Donne nell’emigrazione politica antifascista [The Three Seidenfeld Sisters. Women in Antifascist Political Emigration]. Florence–Milan, 2005 and W. Klinger: Un fronte unico da Trieste a Salonicco [A Single Front from Trieste to Thessaloníki]. In: Quaderni, CRS-Rovigno [Quaderni – Yearbook of the Center for Historical Research in Rovinj], 24 (2014), 227–231. Regarding the ethnicity of these families, their Jewish origins should probably be stressed more. ︎
There were also some who switched sides in the following years. For instance, some members of the 1918 Socialist Workers’ Council sided with the Italian Republicans or, later, with the fascist regime. ︎
On the last Hungarian to act as governor and on Hungarian civil servants, see Ágnes Ordasi: Egan Lajos naplója – Impériumváltások Fiumében a kormányzóhelyettes szemével (1918–-1920) [The Journal of Lajos Egan: Changes of Empire in Fiume through the Eyes of the Deputy Governor (1918–1920)]. Budapest 2019, and Á. Ordasi: “Scale e Serpenti”? Le condizioni dei rappresentanti del potere dello Stato ungherese dopo la Grande guerra. [“’Snakes and Ladders”? The Situation of the Representatives of Hungarian State Power after World War I] In: Qualestoria. Rivista di storia contemporanea [Qualestoria. Contemporary History Magazine], 48 (2020), 2, pp. 93–112. ︎
D. Dárday: The Solution of the Fiume Question. London, New York, Budapest 1920. ︎
Luigi Emilio Longo: L’esercito italiano e la questione fiumana (1918-1921) [The Italian Army and the Fiume Question (1918–1921)]. Vol. 1, Rome, 1996, pp. 86–87. ︎
Ljubinka Karpowicz: Biografia politica di un autonomista. Ruggero Gottardi [Political Biography of an Autonomist. Ruggero Gottardi]. In: Quaderni, Vol. VII, Rovigno 1983–84, pp. 39–64; Ruggero Gottardi: Ruggero Gottardi (Fiume, 1882–Diano Marina, 1954). In: Quaderni, Vol. XVI, Rovigno 2004, pp. 395–477. ︎
Archivio Societa di Studi FIumani, Fondo Zanella: 1.4.5, Lettera aperta a tutti i veri fiumani [Open Letter to All the Real Fiumians]. ︎
Ivan Jeličić: Za slobodnu državu prije Slobodne Države, razmatranja o riječkoj Autonomnoj demokratskoj stranci / Per lo stato libero prima dello Stato libero, considerazioni sul Partito autonomo democratico fiumano [For a Free State before the Free State. Reflections on the Autonomous Democratic Party of Fiume], 80–100. In: Danko Švorinić (ed.), Zbornik radova s međunarodnog znanstvenog skupa povodom 100 godina od osnutka Slobodne Države Rijeka / Raccolta di atti del convegno scientifico internazionale per i 100 anni di fondazione dello Stato libero di Fiume [Proceedings of the International Scientific Conference for the Centennial of the Foundation of the Free State of Fiume], Rijeka 2021. ︎
HR-DARI-53, Riječka kvestura, Questura di Fiume, A8 – Sovversivi della Provincia, Fasicolo persnale di Percovich Giuseppe, Partito Autonomo Democratico Fiumano, Relazione del Congresso Generale. ︎
HR-DARI-53, Riječka kvestura, A1 – information, personal file of Giuseppe Bruss, Concittadini! [Fellow Citizens!], no date. ︎
Klinger: Negotiating the Nation, p. 169. ︎
Klinger: Germania e Fiume, p. 31. ︎
As Dominique Kircher Reill’s book makes quite clear: Kirchner Reill: The Fiume Crisis. ︎
Il memorabile comizio di ieri. Il discorso dell’on. Zanella [Yesterday’s memorable meeting. The speech of honorable Zanella]. In: La Bilancia, 13 December 1918, pp. 1–2. ︎
Ballarini: L’antidannunzio a Fiume, p. 117. ︎
HR-DARI-53, Riječka kvestura, A1 – information, personal file of Giuseppe Bruss, Concittadini! [Fellow Citizens!], no date. ︎
As Attilio Depoli counted, 6,114 voted for the Autonomists and 3,440 for the annexationists. For Zanella, the results were 8,000 to 2,800, while Gotthardi stated that the total votes were 6,478 to 3,524. Attilio Depoli: Incontri con Facta e Mussolini. Pagine fiumane dai ricordi di un dittatore involontario [Encounters with Facta and Mussolini. Fiuman Pages from the Memories of an Involuntary Dictator]. In: Attilio Depoli: Fiume 30 ottobre 1918. Scritti scelti [Rijeka 30 October 1918. Selected Writings], ed by Mario Dassovich, S. Giovanni in Persiceto 1982, p. 270; Ballarini: L’antidannunzio a Fiume, p. 238; Gottardi: Ruggero Gottardi, p. 443. ︎
Mario Blasich (1914), Romualdo Capudi (1914), Luigi Duimich (1914), Mario Jechel (1910), Davide Klein (1914), Ignazio Krieger (1914), Raimondo Kucich (1910), Giovanni Mahla (1914), Angelo Martich (1914), Ignazio Milcenich (1914), Donato Mohovich (1911), Matteo Paicurich (1910), Sennen Raicich (1910), Aldo Rudan (1915) and Riccardo Zanella (1914). Additionally, Giuseppe Cante’s, Giuseppe Dalmartello’s, and Dante Walluschnig’s fathers were former municipal deputies. Also, Giovanni Duimich (deceased in 1917) elected councillor in 1915, was probably related to Giovanni Duimich (Fiume, 1879), elected in 1921. There are further former representatives that were elected in 1921, but their position was slightly different since they represented the electors of the districts. ︎
Nicolò Biasi, Mario Blasich, Annibale Blau, Ernesto Branz, Romualdo Capudi, Antonio Crulcich, Giovanni Duimich, Luigi Duimich, Elmirio Frankl (Franchi), Mario Jechel, Giovanni Mahla, Ignazio Milcenich, Otmaro Peters, Leone Spetz-Quarnari, Alcide Steffich, Isidoro Turk, Dante Walluschnig, and Antonio Wolf were all members of the Italian National Council. ︎
For the names and the professions of the Autonomist candidates, see Fiumani! [People of Fiume!]. In: Fiume dei Fiumani [Fiume to the People of Fiume], 23 April 1921, p. 1. ︎
For the names and the professions of the annexationist bloc, see Blocco nazionale [The National Bloc]. In: La Vedetta d’Italia, 21 April 1921, p. 1. ︎

Der Beitrag Fiume’s Political Elites and Their Challengers, 1918–1924 erschien zuerst auf Halbjahresschrift für Geschichte und Zeitgeschehen in Zentral- und Südosteuropa.

The Moral Economy of High Imperial Capital? The (Non-)Nationalization of Foreign Companies in Post-WWI Romania and the Idea of a Romanian National Economy

IKGS-Admin_2 — Thu, 29 Feb 2024 14:53:50 +0000

Gábor Egry, Institute of Political History, Budapest

This article discusses how Hungarian capitalists preserved their property and sometimes gained key positions on the market in post-WWI Romania with the help of obligations established with Romanian businessmen, despite the state’s efforts toRomanianize these companies. I am going to argue that these obligations were complemented with a strategy of embedding industrial works in local society by co-opting local political elites. However, the discrepancy between the normative, nationalist discourse of statehood and the ambiguous practice of Romanianization generated a backlash at this local level which resulted in a discourse of morality-based claim-making that connected the failure to Romanianize the industrial sector with the general corruption of the country and its elites, and the persistence of ethnic others within society.

An inspection – with unexpected consequences?

As part of a Europe-wide trend, companies in the hands of non-Romanian owners in Romania in the mid-1920s were accustomed to the process called “Romanianization”, which was supposed to ensure that majority ownership of businesses would be held by ethnic Romanians. Like many others, the Lugoj Textile S.A. had devised means to deal with the pressure – rather successfully. Therefore, when industrial inspector Livius Faur and his companions, Nicolae Popovici from the commercial inspectorate and N. Zsivkovits, the auditor, entered the office of the managing vice-director of the Lugoj Textile Stock Company’s Lugoj factory at 5 p.m. on a July day in 1926, the distinguished manager, Alexander Wagner, could not know that the gentlemen arriving would cause him serious headache. Faur spent the subsequent hours with documents insistently requesting information on ownership and shareholders, registers, deposits and issuance certificates, correspondence with banks and shareholders, transfer mandates, and account numbers to verify where the dividends from the company’s profit were sent. As the manager’s long letter written after the events testifies, Faur was well prepared for the investigation and easily overcame Wagner’s objections and counterarguments. He finally proved that the company’s real shareholders were a handful of businessmen living in Hungary and not the distinguished Romanian Banks Marmorosch and Blank and the Banca Chrissoveloni as stated in the public official accounts. Therefore, the ownership structure did not correspond with the legal norms prescribing a minimum two-third majority Romanian ownership of shares and membership of the board of directors and the supervisory board.¹

After Faur completed the investigation – despite the managing director’s weak objections, he concluded that the company did not defer to nationalization rules and threatened administrative intervention – he asked the manager, whom he had known since childhood, to show him around in the factory. While pacing around and admiring the workshops and machinery, he remarked that nationalization had been done in an extremely sloppy way – it could have been arranged much more cleverly – and he disclosed that the investigation had been prompted by an article in a business bulletin from Hungary which reported on what the Pesti Hungarian Commercial Bank (PMKB) and the Kammer brothers, who owned important textile factories in Hungary, intended to do with the Lugoj factory and its shares, of which they were majority owners, although they only figured in the register of shareholders as minority ones. While the long report did not provide details, Faur seemed to have advised the manager too on how best to remedy the situation.²

Certainly, Faur was one of the numerous Romanian officials – ranging from officers of the state security police (Siguranța) to government representatives (prefects) and administrative leaders (subprefects, mayors) in Cara-Severin county – who had been diplomatically bribed by the textile company.³ They received what the company accounts called small loans, sums ranging from a few hundred to about ten thousand lei, accorded to private individuals but even to institutions, which were rarely, if ever, repaid. Thus, one aspect of the incident was ordinary corruption, something external observers and internal critics took almost for granted for interwar Romania,⁴ a state which also struggled with challenges of wartime depredations, exhaustion, and the unification of disparate provinces.⁵ Still, the encounter reveals something more important for Romanian economy and the afterlife of Austria-Hungary structurally. Faur was actually right when looking for the manipulation of securities’ accounts. The real owners of the textile company were the same Hungarian capitalists who had acquired the factory in 1911 and kept it running after the city was annexed to Romania in 1919, despite the Romanian state insisting on sidelining “foreign” capitalists and replacing them with Romanian capital. Moreover, Lugoj was not an exception, but the rule to what happened to the grandiose immediate post-war plans of Romanianizing the economy, and the failure was an open secret – which is why Hungarian and occasionally Romanian economic newspapers spoke of it openly, too. It is true that Faur, as one of the state officials bestowed with the responsibility of supervising the execution of this policy, was part of the scheme, and corruption was one of its effective tools, but it was hardly the most significant. What underpinned the efforts of Hungarian – and for that matter Viennese and German – capitalists after 1918 to salvage their business “empires” was rather the legacy of their pre-WWI expansion in Southeastern Europe and the strength and durability of their business networks fostered with local businessmen: in terms of the trust involved and the mutual benefits they provided.

Based on a rather nominalist understanding of moral economy, understanding it as mutually accepted rules and norms of economic behaviour that are different from rational profit maximizing, even this context would be enough to analyze the broader effort of salvaging ownership and management rights in the successor states – of which Faur’s visit was a paradoxical, but visible moment – through the lens of moral economy.⁶ In this article, I want to test the applicability of the concept for a sphere of economy, which is usually neglected in literature, that of the high capitalists, mostly by pointing out that the business contacts and partnerships built before 1914 were indispensable, as they created cooperation beyond rational calculation, and this aspect survived crises during and after WWI because of the trust developed earlier. The result was economic behaviour that was embedded into a set of moral assumptions regarding the appropriate behavior of business actors. However, and this is the second argument I make, morality-based claim-making did not remain restricted to the circle of capitalists. Precisely because Romania fashioned itself as a nation state of Romanians and tried to render this claim more concrete with rules intended to facilitate the transfer of assets of foreigners to Romanians, claim-making became inherent outside the field of economics in a strict sense. As a reaction to the visible failure to nationalize industrial capital, a discourse emerged which decried this failure, used it for the critique of the Romanian state, and demanded effective action – making the material and moral claim that Romania’s industry should not be in foreign hands for various reasons, mostly because it was to serve the nation and in the hands of foreigners it would only serve the profit-seeking of aliens. While the transition from Austria-Hungary ended with the victory of the “foreigners” (although they had to pay a price in the form of a changed balance within business relations) and with the tacit consent of the political elite, the broader political claim never lost its salience within politics, and, mostly due to the economic crisis after 1929, it was gradually appropriated by the political mainstream, moving increasingly to the centre of policymaking from the mid-1930s on.⁷

Post-WW1 transition and moral economy

The story I want to tell is clearly at odds with the classic account of the economic consequences of WW1 in general and for Hungary in particular. It is not about loss, depredation, poverty, and Hungary’s impoverishment due to the loss of its industrial and raw material basis that led to the Great Depression and that hit the region disproportionately. Quite the contrary, I mostly tell how those who were at the core of the Hungarian economy and owned its most valuable assets retained most of what was threatened and continued to reap the profits.

While the argument about the devastation of the economies of the Central Powers due to peace was once the almost unchallenged assumption of historiography, recent economic histories of the post-WWI era have challenged the classical views regarding Central Europe and have pointed to the relatively smooth transition and smaller than expected losses in trade and GDP throughout the interwar period.⁸ Recent literature on Hungary has also confirmed this view, showing that the country’s losses were offset by retaining its industrialized core in Budapest and successful structural transformation thereafter.⁹ Moreover, recent literature on the fate specifically of Hungarian capitalists in post-WWI Romania has painted a picture of opportunity and success, not least because of the converging interests of Hungarian asset owners and Romanian capital in creating lucrative market monopolies.¹⁰

What I hope to add to these works is first a perspective on the former imperial high capital instead of the local business elites, and an interpretation of the workings of these transactions that goes beyond profit and integrates into the interpretation pre-existing contacts and customs of management.

Key to this attempt is the concept of moral capital.¹¹ Originally developed by E. P. Thomson to analyze the traditional economies of pre-industrial England, I am going to use the term as James G. Carrier used it.¹² According to this conceptualization, the moral in the term ‘moral economy’ is not external, is not a set of values invoked for explaining economic activity (such as stealing a loaf of bread) or values that are supposedly furthered by one type of economy (for example freedom of choice by the free markets), but is rather inherent to and emerges from economic activity as a relationship between actors. Carrier argues that repeated interactions between actors create obligations that are more personal than formalized contracts and that generate expectations of behaviour and the longer these interactions last the stronger the moral aspects are. “That is the stability of the transactors, for the more stable they are the more they are likely to develop the history of transaction that leads to mutual obligation.”¹³

Certainly, the story is not only about this kind of morality, but about claim-making regarding economic strategies of survival, expansion, and redistribution. The more public this claim-making is, the more external it is to the economy. It is based – as we will see – on references to values and alleged norms that are supposed to govern the life of the state or nation, and as such subordinates the economy to this moral-based perception of the larger community’s existence too.

A lesser imperialism?

The notion that Austria-Hungary, and especially the business elites of the Hungarian part of the Empire, had economic imperialist aspirations in the Balkans and the Ottoman Empire – beyond Bosnia-Herzegovina, which was administered by the Habsburgs from 1878 on and annexed to it in 1908 – may be surprising, but it is not novel. Contemporaries had already debated the issue publicly,¹⁴ and – more importantly for this article – they exercised it too. From the late 19th century on, Budapest-, Prague- and Vienna-based banks and industrial companies actively – often frantically – established subsidiaries, transformed existing business into joint stock companies, and gained influence over ever larger sectors of the economy in these regions. While it was not necessarily as successful as German liberal imperialism,¹⁵ it was certainly a form of imperialism – and one of the owners of the Lugoj Textile Company, the Hungarian Commercial Bank in Pest (Pesti Magyar Kereskedelmi Bank, PMKB), was a flag bearer of this movement.¹⁶

This development was often inextricably linked with politics; PMKB, for example, bought the Andreevits Bank in the Serbian city of Niš at the request of the Austro-Hungarian Foreign Ministry and kept it running mostly for the latter’s use and aims despite the meagre economic return. The PMKB had been active in Romania too since the late 19th century, and its major prize was the transformation of a traditional family bank, the Marmorosch et Blank into a joint stock company in 1904, together with the German Bank für Handel und Industrie. Marmorosch et Blanc and PMKB were long-time partners well before the transformation, but in the form of a legal partnership (Kommanditgesellschaft), which however, limited the influence of the external partners over the management.¹⁷

The new form of operation changed the institute significantly. Under the direction of the new majority owners (who syndicated their shares) but with the leadership of the head of the family, Maurice, and his son, Aristide Blank, as managing directors, the bank became one of the five largest and most significant banks in Romania.¹⁸ Control over the management was mostly exerted by the delegate of PMKB on the board, Fülöp Weiss, who was vice-chair of PMKB. It was relatively strict – at least until the Romanian partners failed to recognize their room for manoeuvre. When the Blanks did not heed the “advice” of the majority owners as to which business to focus on (investment in port facilities, acquisition of industrial shares, entering into new industries such as oil, etc.) and which to drop (grain trade as commissioners, and mortgage loans), Weiss spent travelled to Bucharest in 1908 to instruct Blank.¹⁹ It seems that in the years that followed, the owners sanctioned the Blanks’ significantly altered plans, allowed them to acquire or affiliate a series of regional banks in the country and to invest in industrial railways in forestry areas and in textile companies (most importantly in Iași). Trust was also strengthened through the appointment of a delegate of PMKB, Richárd Söpkéz, as one of the managing directors of Marmorosch et Blank too.²⁰

Telling sign of the significance of the relationship and trust built between Blankbanca (as it was customarily called in Romanian parlance) and Pesti (the colloquial name for PMKB) was the moments of crises in 1912 and 1913, during the Balkan Wars. With mobilization, the public started a run on the Romanian banks and the decrease in deposits threatened the liquidity of Blankbanca. What they did was to turn directly to Pesti with a request for increased refinancing from its foreign owners, using its partners in Budapest as interlocutors with the other foreign owners. While the plans were never realized (as soon as the war was over, liquidity returned), the episode suggests that PMKB was prioritized among the foreign owners, whose ranks had included the French Paribas with a ten-year special agreement since 1905.²¹

But trust was also necessary when the Blanks involved PMKB in a politicized venture, similar to the one the Pesti had had in Serbia with the Bank Andreevits. During tensions in Greek–Romanian relations, in 1905 the Romanian Tobacco Monopoly turned to Blankbanca with an offer to help establish a bank in Thessaloniki together with one in Monastir (Bitola), Macedonia. The Monopoly promised to pay a 5% commission up to 65,000 French francs for tobacco acquired in the Ottoman lands for ten years. When it came to the realization of the plans, Blankbanca invited PMKB to participate, also disclosing the political motives of the enterprise. Thus, the Banque de Dépot et Credit du Salonqiue was a proper common enterprise under joint management, with Fülöp Weiss and Maurice Blank on its board of directors.²²

The events during WWI demonstrated again the importance of this bond for the Blanks too. After the German-Austro-Hungarian occupation of Bucharest in 1916, they fled to neutral Copenhagen. Even though they did not follow the Romanian government and the court to Iași, they refused open collaboration and Marmorosch and Blank was suspended, its assets in danger of being sold under their real value. It seems that among all of its owners, PMKB led the charge to reinstate the bank, which finally happened in early 1918. As a first step, Richárd Söpkéz, the PMKB delegate among the managing directors, could return, after intense lobbying of the Foreign Ministry and the German occupation authorities by senior figures at PMKB.²³

Söpkéz as the sole director of the bank planned new ventures, such as buying a marmalade factory, a lignite mine together with Deutsche Bank, a chocolate factory, a warehouse at the Obor market in Bucharest, and a mill in Ploești. None of these, however, were imagined as standalone operations of PMKB or Blankbanca. The 50% share of the lignite mine falling to the group led by PMKB was supposed to be bought jointly by several banks and PMKB tried to take care of the so-called Romanian interests by securing 12,5% for Banque de Crédit Roumaine. (It is unclear how Blankbanca was categorized as Romanian partners.) Thus, while it was a typical endeavour of the Central Powers’ military administration to exploit Romania’s resources for the war as much as possible,²⁴ PMKB still tried to get local partners on board. The marmalade factory was another example of the “occupation” business, as in this case a German officer approached the bank with his plan to buy and operate the factory, which was owned by the German military command. In this case, 55% of shares were supposed to be distributed among the foreign owners from the Central Powers, Darmstaedter Bank and the Berliner Handelsgesellschaft, both partners of PMKB and Blankbanca and even more important for PMKB because they had operated in the country for decades. But again, Söpkéz took care of representing Romanian interests within the new company too, inviting Banque de Crédit Roumaine and Banca Agricola to join the venture.²⁵

In the summer of 1918, after the Treaty of Bucharest was signed, the Blanks also gained permission to return home, but this time the intervention of PMKB with imperial organs (the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, the military command, the occupation authorities) was again instrumental in letting them enter the country. Moreover, PMKB cautiously followed the process of their return and used its influence over the Hungarian and Austrian authorities to remove all administrative obstacles. For example, they even asked one of their relations in the Budapest police to instruct Maurice Blank on how to obtain all the permissions necessary for travelling through Hungary.²⁶

Still, WWI also brought a crisis in the relationship. Although its details are unclear from the remaining sources, in 1918 Pesti was considering how to continue its operations in Romania – now thought to be firmly attached to a German-Austro-Hungarian Mitteleuropa. During the process they had to choose between a new offer from other Hungarian, German, and Austrian banks to cooperate – implicitly abandoning Blankbanca – and building on the existing partnership with Austrian and Romanian institutions The leaders of Pesti clearly favoured the latter, but they felt that the conduct of the Blanks during WWI was an affront to the managers of PMKB. As it was stated in an internal memorandum concerning a discussion of the plans to raise capital proposed by the Blanks, without giving further concrete examples:

I told Söpkéz how me and the PMKB were treated by Blank Sr. and Jr. Even glossing over the discomfort their behaviour caused to us in our relationship with the government, I expected them – especially as they ought to have known even in Copenhagen how I attempted to help Blankbanca in Vienna, Bucharest, and Berlin – to answer my letters. Therefore, I will decide on the matter [whether or not to participate in the emission of new shares – GE] after having spoken to Blank in person with satisfactory results. In this case we must request a role in the bank that reflects our position and it should be supported by an appropriate share too. I reminded Söpkéz that […] he has a moral obligation vis-á-vis us and the Handelsgesellschaft to represent our opinion. […] As Söpkéz is a PMKB employee paid by PMKB [!], I will have to ask him in this case whether he wants to march with us?²⁷

New winds, old partnerships?

The relationship was maintained and soon it was PMKB that needed assistance from Blankbanca. Austria-Hungary was defeated and not only PMKB assets in the Romanian Kingdom were threatened as enemy property. With the annexation of Transylvania, hundreds of millions of crowns’ worth PMKB assets and property came under Romanian jurisdiction.²⁸ It was a stated political goal of Romania to push out non-Romanian owners and create a national economy with a national capitalist class, and the first, logical step was to reduce the share of non-Romanians in these companies, wherever necessary, by creating new legal obligations.

This was, as Faur checked with the Lugoj Textile company, one of PMKB’s important assets in the newly annexed territories. But the bank had to think of salvaging more than one factory: there were its own branches in Oradea/Nagyvárad or Arad, affiliated financial institutions in Cluj/Kolozsvár and Târgu Mureș/Marosvásárhely, an ironworks in Călan/Kalán, a car factory in Arad, a cement factory in Turda/Torda, and many other assets.²⁹ As the Lugoj case shows, the situation wasn’t hopeless, since PMKB successfully managed the transition and remained an important player in the Romanian economy – although often disguised and certainly in a weaker position than it had been in in the summer of 1918.

The relative success was mainly the result of the weakness of the Romanian business elites and their reluctance to submit themselves to Western partners in order to mobilize the capital necessary for the takeover of former Austro-Hungarian businesses. It was not primarily the price of buying out owners that mattered, although it was sometimes a significant obstacle; it was rather financing the operational costs and the existing debt of the facilities the Romanians bought into.³⁰ Thus, after considering the benefits and costs from both sides, there was the possibility of agreement between the current owners and potential Romanian partners to establish joint business, especially if they could make politics accept the persisting presence of the non-Romanian owners.³¹ But the means to achieve this goal were variegated: the influence and networks of manager technocrats, the influence of Romanian business elites on politics, the cooptation of local elites, and foremost the readiness of the Romanian partners to assist the Hungarians.

The latter happened generally via fronting for the foreign owners. In Lugoj, Blankbanca and Banca Chrissoveloni were nominally shareholders with large packets of shares, but they obliged themselves not to act alone, rather heeding PMKB’s instructions.³² It often meant that they did not even have to pay for the shares; the PMKB provided the necessary capital. For example, Erdélyi Bank/Banca Ardeleană (co-owned by PMKB and Banca Chrissolveloni) was an important shareholder of Lugoj Textile, but the price of the shares came from deposits of PMKB, and interest rates on these deposits were paid from the dividends of the shares. Fronting became such a significant business that Banca Chrissoveloni (which grew rapidly after 1918, being transformed from a traditional family bank into a joint stock company) became one of the five largest banks and its owners gained entry to the upper echelons of French society, although French diplomats at least were convinced that their real business profile was simply fronting for foreign companies.³³

There were cases, however, when the Romanian partners wanted more influence, even though they often overestimated their own capacity for raising capital. An example is the reconfiguration of the metallurgical and mining industries with the creation of the Titan Ironworks from the ironworks in Galați (owned by industrialist Max Ausnit), the Reșița ironworks (Erste Österreichische Eisenbahngesellscahft – STEG, originally a French–Austrian company), and the Calan Ironworks (bought by PMKB from Rimamurányi Salgótarjáni Kőszénbánya Rt. in 1918), which also included the Nădrag/Ferdinandsberg ironworks. Originally, the Romanians wanted to buy out the Austrian and Hungarian owners, but when the price became clear, they rather settled for a partnership that provided the majority of shares for a Romanian group while the majority of the profits flowed to the minority owners. They had two means to achieve this goal: loans taken by the companies and de facto provided by the original owners, and creating a syndicate of the shareholders within which parity was established and making every decision dependent on consensus. This way, the new company (which bought the assets of the original ones for shares of the new one) satisfied the nationalization requirements, while the original owners retained influence and a stable source of revenue.³⁴

In the practical operation of these schemes, Chrissoveloni, Blankbanca or Banque de Credit Roumaine/Banca Românească de Credit were crucial. These are the financial institutions that appear in most of the new companies as shareholders and fiduciary for the syndicated shares. But as these schemes depended on informal and personal connections, a series of managers were important too. They became members of boards of directors, Romanians and non-Romanians alike.³⁵ Söpkéz – probably still an employee of PMKB after 1918 – was one of them, alongside Béla Veith from the Reșita ironworks, who was the mastermind behind Titan’s establishment. It is important to note that both of them were active in a series of companies that were nationalized after 1918, often sitting on their boards together with the same Romanian actors, effectively creating a managerial group who were active participants in the schemes and who obviously knew all the details of the operations that had derailed the official Romanianization policies.³⁶

PMKB had a special role not just as owner of a series of companies exposed to nationalization. Its expertise and contacts were sought after by other Hungarian businessmen, who found themselves exposed to the threat of nationalization or nurtured expansion plans. For example, as early as 1919, owners of the mining companies in the Jiu Valley (Petroșani, Uricani, and Lupeni) planned to use the newly created Romanian customs territory for expansion to new regions, building up a monopoly of coal provision. After their first attempts failed, they requested the assistance of PMKB, as the latter’s network was efficient and it had already successfully managed some important nationalization projects. PMKB thus received a significant portion of shares in a new company that bought up the assets of the mines –quite the same way the ironworks were transformed –as a reward for providing the necessary contacts.³⁷

Contacts with Romanian partners were even more important because of the insecurity stemming from politics and the arbitrary decision-making of the government. Every single nationalization transaction needed permission from the government. Although the background deals were not disclosed, it was still often a high barrier and at the same time an opportunity for politics to select the Romanian partners. For example, PMKB initially drew up an agreement with Banque de Credit Roumaine to save its Transylvanian branches, but a new, liberal government rejected the plan in 1922. Instead, the final construct implemented three years later involved Blankbanca and Chrissoveloni – both said to be very close to the governing liberals, while Blankbanca was also a partner of PMKB in several nationalization projects, including Lugoj Textile.³⁸ And Faur’s visit to Lugoj was also prompted by a new, non-liberal government taking power, making vice-director Wagner think that the real reason for his harassment was high politics, the intention of the new government to demonstrate it did not tolerate foreigners in the economy.³⁹

Certainly, these new partnerships manifested an altered relationship that was less asymmetric than before. Romanian partners gained more leverage, more weight, and they sometimes looked at these schemes not as saving their partners, but as steppingstones towards international significance. But Hungarian business elites in Budapest also saw some advantages in the new Romania. Titan aimed to monopolize a new market defended with customs borders – and that plan was already floated in 1920 among PMKB managers and owners.⁴⁰ Lugoj Textile became part of a new Central European textile conglomerate owned by the Kammer brothers from Budapest, who had been co-owners before 1918. They saved their holdings in Upper Hungary – to become Czechoslovak companies – and later bought the Iași textile factory from PMKB.⁴¹

Finally, local elites were brought on board too. On the one hand, it was customary to cooperate with local notables – the Lugoj Company was born out of a proposal of the then prefect of the county in 1911, who became a board member and shareholder. Furthermore, it provided good contacts with local and national politics and secured the goodwill of local authorities. The latter was probably even more important after 1920, when a new group of Romanian local politicians overtook these roles – although many of them had good contacts to Hungarian society. In Lugoj, the Hungarian prefect was exchanged for the alternating Romanian prefects of the county (one from the National Liberal, one from the People’s Party),⁴² and the subprefect and the county chief notary were also board members and shareholders. In many of these cases, the shares were not bought, but provided by the owners, who financed their acquisition with a loan. More importantly, the head of the county court, Nicolae Iovanovici, was also a board member. He was a well-known figure in legal circles, having acting as a judge before 1918, was well versed in Hungarian manners – and as the head of the court he was also responsible for assigning commercial law cases to judges in Lugoj.⁴³

However, connections with local elites did not stop there. These companies could offer money and bribes, and they did so frequently. To keep track of things and have some insurance if the other side did not fulfill its obligations, these bribes were often accounted for as small personal loan taken from the company. In this way, Lugoj Textile bribed the subprefect, several policemen, including the Siguranța (the state security service) as an institution, journalists, and officials of the industrial and financial inspectorates – – including Faur.⁴⁴ While sometimes a similar loan might certainly have been the result of pressure from those holding power, these kinds of transactions were rather customary before 1918, be they corrupt or not, and as such they created norms and expectations as regards to the role and function of certain local notables, and, however paradoxical it may sound, they sometimes led to mutual trust, not least because many of the arrangements rested on agreements it was not possible or at least not easy to bring to court and hope for the resolution of disagreements there. Agreements were kept by the partners not because they were easily enforceable: a complex set of factors, including the importance of mutual trust, underpinned these contractual obligations.

Claim-makings in conflict

In nominal terms, the arrangements to avert nationalization were embedded in a specific and visible moral economy at all levels, economic interactions based on moral assumptions, and mutually accepted expectations of behaviour and distribution of resources/outputs/profit. But the fate of companies in non-Romanian hands was also the focus of implicit or even explicit claim-making, and the conflicting nature of these claims revealed the most about the transition too. Nationalization of foreign companies was part of a nationalist economic policy and was justified by the principles of nationalism: assets within the nation state should belong to Romanians, otherwise they would not serve the moral goal of helping the nation. For those professing this belief, it was a reason to deny rights to property, transgress existing laws, and mobilize political support.

But the reality looked very different, and the shortcomings – to say the least – of this policy were rather well-known to the public too.⁴⁵ Nationalist rhetoric was easily turned against those engaged in the practice of salvaging non-Romanian assets. This was the case, for example, with Petre Nemoianu, a Banat Romanian nationalist politician, who in a series of texts complained about the hypocrisy of the liberal governments. He primarily targeted economic policy, the state subsidies, and preferential loans accorded to several companies in the Banat. He did not deny it was of foremost importance to help an emerging Romanian industrial capital – just as it was the most important argument of the economic nationalism behind the nationalization policies. But he pointed out that most of the recipients of these loans and subsidies were Romanian only in name. Nationalization was only a façade; everyone knew that foreign owners retained ownership and therefore the Romanian state effectively supported foreign capital. It was the ultimate moral failure, a flawed moral economy, as a true Romanian would and should have been helping Romanians and not foreigners.⁴⁶

It is quite clear that capitalists in Budapest and Bucharest had different ideas of the moral economy of the new Romania than the ones Nemoianu expressed. They were not loquacious about their plans and activities, nor were they concerned about morality. However, when it came to arguments, they rarely invoked inviolable property rights as part of some moral universe, and also rarely spoke of the mutual obligations they shared with Romanian or non-Romanian partners and felt obliged to follow as part of this elite network’s own moral economy. What they invoked– if they invoked anything at all – was the necessity to develop an industry for the benefit of the nation-state, and the resulting necessity to act more pragmatically than nationalist ideology prescribed, to co-opt actual owners with capital and knowledge instead of alienating them, and to get them on board with the task of developing Romania.

Finally – and as a locally committed politician and member of the local political circles, the critical Nemoianu, also a board member for some time in Lugoj, was probably aware of this – a third type of claim was present too, one that was hardly ever openly connected with the practices of transition but that helped secure the support of local and national level politicians for the diverse quasi-nationalization schemes that actually preserved foreign ownership.⁴⁷ Their participation on the boards of these companies was a customary practice and certainly corrupt. Still, if these new political elites had been put there to make a claim supporting their participation, they would most probably have invoked their role as the middle-class backbone of the nation together with their alleged modernity.⁴⁸ Yes, it looked very much like bribery. But still, as a way of justifying while admitting the moral wrongs, they might have claimed that they received a different type of income than their Hungarian predecessors who had acted in the same social and administrative position had just a few decades before. Those where – at least in the eyes of Romanians – a landed class who lived from their noble property and usurped inherited privileges. For the new, Romanian cohort, joining the boards of directors was one way of exploiting their education, their university degrees, or degrees from specialized institutions, and the knowledge they had gained in the real world. What they could claim was that theirs was a modern activity which was, despite the obvious similarity or analogy to the practice of the Hungarians, more aligned with social progress and as such morally superior to the world of the Hungarian nobility. A different one, one they deserved because it provided a life that suited their social role and their responsibility for the nation.

Dr. Gábor Egry is a historian, Doctor of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences, director-general of the Institute of Political History, Budapest. He graduated from ELTE Budapest in 2006 with a doctoral thesis on the financial system of the Transylvanian Saxons and its role in the national movement in the 19^th century. His research interests are nationalism, everyday ethnicity, politics of identity, politics of memory in modern East Central Europe. He received prestigious grants and fellowship, from the Hungarian Academy of Sciences, from Imre Kertész Kolleg Jena, New Europe College, Bucharest, Institut für Ost und Südosteuropa Regensburg, European University Institute Florence. and he was a Fulbright Visiting Research Scholar at Stanford University’s Center for Russian, East European and Eurasian Studies. Author of five volumes in Hungarian and several articles, among others in European Review of History, Slavic Review, Hungarian Historical Review, Südostforschungen. He gave invited talks among others at Cornell University, Columbia University, University of Bern, University of California Berkley, Sorbonne.

His last monograph is Etnicitás, identitás, politika. Magyar kisebbségek naconalizmus és regionalizmus között Romániában és Csehszlovákiában 1918-1944 [Ethnicity, identity, politics. Hungarian Minorities between nationalism and regionalism in Romania and Czechoslovakia 1918-1944] (Napvilág, Budapest, 2015) was shortlisted for the Felczak-Wereszyczki Prize of the Polish Historical Association, and he received the Mark Pittaway Article Prize of the Hungarian Studies Association. In 2020 he was invited to give the Anual Austrian Studies Lecture at the Universiyt of Leiden. Since 2018 he is the Principal Investigator of the ERC Consolidator project Nepostrans – Negotiating post-imperial transitions: from remobilization to nation-state consolidation. A comparative study of local and regional transitions in post-Habsburg East and Central Europe.

Hungarian National Archives (henceforth MNL OL) Z41 Pesti Magyar Kereskedelmi Bank (henceforth PMKB) 841. cs. 4918/III-7. ︎
MNL OL Z41 PMKB 841. cs. 4918/III-7. ︎
MNL OL Z41 PMKB 842 cs 4918a/XXIX Nyersmérlegek [Raw Balances]. Faur’s debt listed at the end of 1925 amounted to 850 lei. He was not among the debtors in January 1926, but appeared again in October with 1,575 lei. The accounts for February–September are missing from the file. ︎
ARA report. ︎
Irina Livezeanu: 1995. Cultural Politics in Greater Romania. Regionalism, Nation-Building and Ethnic Struggle 1918–1930. Ithaca–London1995; Florian-Kührer Wielach: Siebenbürgen ohne Siebenbürger? Zentralstaatliche Integration und politischer Regionalismus nach dem Ersten Weltkrieg. Oldenbourg–Munich 2014; Bogdan Murgescu: The Economic Performance of Interwar Romania. Golden Age Myth and Statistical Evidence. Jahrbücher für Geschichte und Kultur Südosteuropas 6, 2004, pp. 43–64; Francesco Magno: Law between Nationalism and Regionalism. The Integration of the Transylvanian Juridical Field in Greater Romania (1918–1927). In: East European Politics and Societies, 36 (2022) 3, pp. 828–849, <https://doi.org/10.1177/08883254211021135>, 12.12.2022. ︎
James G. Carrier: Moral economy. What’s in a name. In: Anthropological Theory 2018, 18 (2018) 1, pp. 18–35, here: pp. 18–25. ︎
Philippe Henri Blasen: La “primauté de la nation roumaine” et les “étrangers”. Les minorités et leur liberté du travail sous le cabinet Goga et la dictature royale [The “supremacy of the Romanian Nation” and the “foreigners”. Minorities and Their Freedom of Work under the Goga Cabinet and the Royal Dictatorship]. Cluj-Napoca 2022, pp. 22–35. ︎
Matthias Morys: Economic Change and Structural Growth in Central, East and South-East Europe, 1918–1939. In: Matthias Morys (ed.): Economic History of Central, East and South-East Europe. From 1800 to the Present. London, New York 2021, pp. 161–187; Jari Eloranta, Stefan Nikolić and Flóra Macher: Between Disintegration and Convergence, 1918–1939. Flows of Capital, Goods, and Labor. In: Morys (ed.) Economic History, pp. 216–242. ︎
Béla Tomka: Az első világháború és a trianoni béke gazdasági hatásai Magyarországon [The Economic Impact of World War I and the Treaty of Trianon in Hungary]. In: Zsombor Bódy (ed.): Háborúból békébe. A magyar társadalom 1918 után. Konfliktusok, kihívások, változások a háború és az összeomlás nyomán [From War to Peace. The Hungarian Society after 1918. Conflicts, Challenges, Changes in the aftermath of War and Collapse.] Budapest 2018, pp. 47–81. ︎
Máté Rigó: The Long First World War and the Survival of Business Elites in East-Central Europe: Transylvania’s Industrial Boom and the Enrichment of Economic Elites. In: European Review of History 24 (2017), 2, pp. 250–272; Máté Rigó: Capitalism in Chaos. How Business Elites of Europe Prospered in the Era of the Great War. Ithaca, London 2022, pp. 137–151; pp. 163-170; pp. 220–256. ︎
Jeremy Adelman: Introduction: The Moral Economy, The Careers of a Concept. In: Humanities 11 (2020) 2, pp. 187–192. ︎
Carrier: Moral Economy. ︎
Ibid., p. 31. ︎
Csaplár-Degovics Krisztián: „Nekünk nincsenek gyarmataink és hódítási szándékaink“: Magyar részvétel a Monarchia gyarmatosítási törekvéseiben a Balkánon (1867-1914) [„We have no colonies and no intentions of conquest“: Hungarian Participation in the Monarchy’s Colonization Efforts in the Balkans (1867–1914)]. Budapest 2022; Demeter Gábor: A modernizációtól az expanziós törekvésekig, a liberalizmustól a turanizmusig. A balkáni behatolás gazdasági és ideológiai alapjai [From Modernization to Expansionist Aspirations, from Liberalism to Turanism. The economic and Ideological Foundations of the Balkan Invasion]. Sofia, Budapest 2018. ︎
Stephen Gross: Export Empire. German Soft Power in Southeastern Europe, 1890–1945. Cambridge 2015, pp. 1–48. ︎
György Kövér: Bécsi és pesti bankok a Balkánon a századfordulón [Banks from Vienna and Pest in the Balkans at the Turn of the Century]. In György Kövér: A Pesti City öröksége. Banktörténeti tanulmányok [The Heritage of Pest City. Studies to Banking History]. Budapest 2012, pp. 359–364; Tomka Béla: Érdek és érdektelenség. A bank-ipar viszony a századforduló Magyarországán 1892–1913 [Interest and Disinterest. The Bank – Industry Relationship at the Turn-of-the-century Hungary 1892–1913]. Debrecen 1999, pp. 167–168. ︎
Ibid., 167, MNL OL Z41 34. cs. 421. t. 1164e/Vi, VII. ︎
Alfred Bonafous: Les grandes banques d’affaires de Roumanie [The Big Investment Banks of Romania]. In: Revue d’économie politique [Magazine of Political Economy] 1922, 36 (1922) 3, pp. 323–340. ︎
MNL OL Z41 34. cs. 421. t. 1164e/XIV, f. 52., 1164e/XXVII, XXX, XXXX, XXXXV; pp. 16–57. ︎
MNL OL Z41 34. cs. 421. t. 422 t. Aktennotiz über die Besprechung mit Herrn Direktor Richard von Söpkéz in Budapest 16. April 1918. ︎
MNL OL Z41 36. cs. 446. t. f. 1. ︎
MNL OL Z41 34. cs. 426. t. f. 5. 1164i/II, f. 24.; 1164i/XXVIII/1; Ságvári Ágnes: Források Budapest múltjából [Sources from Budapest’ Past] II. 1873–1919. Budapest Főváros Levéltára, 1971. document 85, pp. 185–6. ︎
MNL OL Z41 34. cs. 421. t. 1164e/XXV, 1164ee/I/2. ︎
David Hamlin: Germany’s Empire in the East. Germans and Romania in an Era of Globalization and Total War. Cambridge 2019, pp. 172–250; MNL OL Z41 36. cs. 443. t. f., pp. 1–7. ︎
Kövér: A Pesti City öröksége, p. 362.; MNL OL Z41 36. cs. 443. t. f., pp. 1–7. ︎
MNL OL Z41 34. cs. 422. t. 1164ee/I-2, 1164e/XXV. ︎
MNL OL Z41 PMKB34. cs. 422. t. ︎
Tomka: Érdek és érdektelenség, pp. 87–130. ︎
PMKB érdekkörébe tartozó cégek [Companies of interest to PMKB] MNL OL Z41 653. cs. 4142 items. ︎
In several agreements concerning the non-Romanian companies (Titan, Jiu Valley, etc.), the provision of contracts obliged the new, Romanian owners to pay off the existing debts of the companies in annual instalments. The takeover of all shares was conditional upon the elimination of this debt, and mostly it was that part of the contracts they could not fulfil, largely because the debt was denominated in foreign currency. ︎
Rigó: Capitalism in Chaos. ︎
MNL OL Z 41 841 cs. 4918/XXVIII., 2573g/I-3., 4918/V dossier, 842. cs. 4918a/II-18.,41918b/XI-19-8, 843. cs. 4918c/II, Letter from Balogh December 7, 1925. ︎
I am grateful to Máté Rigó, who shared with me this information he had from French diplomatic documents. ︎
MNL OL Z 41 189. cs. 2085. t. 2085oo/XXVIII-4, 2085r/XXVIII; 190 cs. 1814. t. 2085ő/V-7. ︎
On the bank – industry connection and what it entailed in terms of practical cooperation, see Tomka: Érdek és érdektelenség. ︎
Proiectul controlului industriei. Cine este autorul? [Industry control project. Who is the author?]. In: Adevărul [The Truth] 36 (1923) May 13, p. 2; Din desbaterile camerei. Declarațiile D-lui Vintilă I. Brătianu [From the chamber debates. Statements by Mr Vintilă I. Brătianu]. Viitorul [Future] 17 (1294) February 13, pp. 3–4. ︎
MNL OL Z 41 84 cs. 1015. t. Sándor Winlehner to the director general of Salgótarjáni Köszénbánya Rt., November 1, 1919. Petrozsény; 1550n/I-30 Memorandum for Fülöp Weiss on the future of the Jiu Valley mines in Greater Romania; 1550n/I/B; Salgó to PMKB, February 2, 1920.; 1550n/III; 1550n/II-5 Annex A. l ︎
MNL OL Z 41 12. cs. 138. t. 539r/I-1. Aide Memoire March 5, 1923.; August 17, 1925. Agreement with Banca Chrissoveloni; September 17, 1924. PMKB to Blankart et Cie.; 539r/I-2; 539r/I-3, Bertalan Hargitay to Fülöp Weiss, December 26, 1922; 539r/XV-1; Radio Reclam Romana SA, Cluj, March 23, 1922. in MNL OL Z 41 12. cs. 141. t. ︎
MNL OL Z 41 4918/III-7. ︎
MNL OL Z 41 189. Cs. 1812. T. 2885o/XXX. ︎
MNL OL Z 41 36. cs. 436. t. 1164p/XXV-15, f. 25., 842. cs. 4918/II-26. ︎
The first two Romanian members were Core Jurca, “Comitats-Anwalt”, and Ionel Mocsonyi, a large landowner and “Comitats-Secretär”. (MNL OL Z41 842. cs. 4918a/II-14.) Subsequently, Gheorghe Dobrin, vice-prefect, Petre Corneanu. prefect, Ioan Câmponeriu. prefect and vice-prefect, Ioan Harambașa. mayor of Lugoj, Cornel Lupea, county chief-notary, and Romolus Boldea. prefect of Severin county. received shares and/or were elected to the board of directors. 4918a/I-16, 4918/V-6, 4918/XXVIII-15, 4918a/I-18, 841. cs. 4918/V-8. ︎
MNL OL Z41 841. cs. 4918/XXVIII-15. ︎
MNL Ol Z 41 Z41 842 cs 4918a/XXIX. ︎
Proiectul controlului industriei. Cine este autorul? [Industry control project. Who is the author?]. In: Adevărul [The Truth] 36 (1923) May 13, p.2; Din desbaterile camerei. Declarațiile D-lui Vintilă I. Brătianu [From the chamber debates. Statements by Mr Vintilă I. Brătianu]. Viitorul [Future] 17 (1294) February 13, pp. 3–4. ︎
Petre Nemoianu: Ardeal și Banatul după unire [Transylvania and Banat after the Union]. Cluj1925, pp. 15–19; Petre Nemoianu: Probleme bănățene: Valea Almăjului. IV [„Problems of Banat: Valea Almăjului. IV.“]. Țara Noastră [Our Country] 9. No. 9. (1928) 11, pp. 56–60. ︎
Rigó: Capitalism in Chaos. ︎
On the claims justifying the assistance provided to the middle class on nationalist grounds, see Sergiu Delcea: Pro-Urban Welfare in an Agricultural Country? Economic Nationalism and Welfare Regime Problems of Fit. Lessons from Interwar Romania. in: Stefan Berger, Thomas Fetzer (eds.): Nationalism and the Economy. Explorations into a Neglected Relationship. New York, Budapest 2019, pp. 139–62. On the dominant view on the Hungarian gentry and their oppression of Romanians, see Luminiţa Ignat-Coman: Imagine de sine la românii ardeleni în perioada dualistă [Self-image of the Transylvanian Romanians in the Dualist Period], Cluj-Napoca 2009; Nicoleta Hegedűs: Imaginea Maghiarilor în cultura Românească din Transilvanea (1867–1918). Teza de doctorat [The Image of the Hungarians in the Transylvanian Romanian Culture (1867–1918) – PhD Thesis]. Cluj-Napoca 2010. ︎

Der Beitrag The Moral Economy of High Imperial Capital? The (Non-)Nationalization of Foreign Companies in Post-WWI Romania and the Idea of a Romanian National Economy erschien zuerst auf Halbjahresschrift für Geschichte und Zeitgeschehen in Zentral- und Südosteuropa.

Local Societies in Southeastern Europe in Transition from Empires to Nation States After WWI. Case Studies

IKGS-Admin_2 — Thu, 29 Feb 2024 14:00:56 +0000

Herausgegeben von / edited by Enikő Dácz

Introduction

The present issue of the journal can be thematically traced back to the conference Paths of Transition/ Transformation. Local Societies in Southeastern Europe in Transition from Empires to Nation States after WWI, which was organized at the initiative of Dr. Gábor Egry on the 23^rd and 24^thNovember 2017 in Munich. The Institute for German Culture and History of Southeastern Europe (IKGS), the Institute of Political History in Budapest, Collegium Carolinum, and the Graduate School for East and Southeast European Studies hosted the conference, which was tightly connected to the Budapest based research project Negotiating Post-imperial Transitions 1918–1925. A Comparative Study of Local Transitions from Austria-Hungary to the Successor States led by Egry. The research topics could be continued and deepened beginning with 2018 in the ERC Consolidator project Nepostrans – Negotiating Post-imperial Transitions: From Remobilization to Nation-state consolidation. A Comparative Study of Local and Regional Transitions in Post-Habsburg East and Central Europe, main investigator remained Egry. Thanks to this constellation the original intention of publishing the conference papers got through several modifications and major changes.

The present papers can be read as additions to the vast literature published on postimperial transitions in Southeastern Europe and aim to point out topics that need further research and encourage discussion on some aspects of this transitional period from a regional or local perspective. In this sense Gábor Egry (Institute of Political History, Budapest) focuses on questions of moral economy and high imperial capital arguing that the obligations of Romanian businessmen prior to 1918 were part of a moral economy of the high capital as opposed to the classic understanding of the term, and also complemented with a strategy of embedding industrial works in local society by co-opting local political elites. He shows some of the results of the discrepancy between the normative, nationalist discourse of statehood and the ambiguous practice of Romanianization.

Ivan Jeličić (University of Rijeka) and Jernej Kosi (University of Ljubljana) represent the young generation of academics involved in the above-mentioned research projects. Jeličić’s paper on Fiume’s Political Elites and Their Challengers in the transitional period after World War I examines continuity and discontinuity between municipal councils of the late Habsburg period and the Italian National Council. He shows that there was not a clear straightforward evolution from previous Hungarian state loyalties to new nation-state annexations. A similar situation is described by Kosi when focusing on Slovene Ethnolinguistic nationalism in post-imperial school administration in Prekmurje. His paper argues that Slovene officials who came to Prekmurje regarded monolingual Slovene schools as an essential tool for the dissemination of Slovene national ideas and the socialization of pupils into members of the Slovene nation.

The next two case studies investigate the Czechoslovak transitional period: Ségolène Plyer (University of Strasbourg) and Attila Simon (Fórum Minority Research Institute in Šamorín/Somorja and Selye János University in Komárno/Komárom) focus on Bohemia’s Eastern Border and the city of Košice/Kassa/Kaschau.

Plyer’s case study in Eastern Bohemia shows that integration was noticeably quicker when the local elites were well connected to the new political centre. Learning the new rules of the game proved to be much more difficult in the city of Košice, where the possibility of a consensus-based transition of power was ultimately not realized and at least temporarily violent solutions also emerged.

The closing paper from Svetlana Suveica (University of Regensburg) represents not only a thematical, but also an important regional shift. The life trajectory of an individual political actor from Bessarabia is examined in “national” context. The case of Pantelimon V. Sinadino, a former mayor of Chișinău and a prominent landowner, shows, how the former elite negotiated their new social roles under the Romanian regime. With these aspects of a well-researched actual topic, we hope to give an incentive to further debates and offer insights into international research projects to our regions.

Der Beitrag Local Societies in Southeastern Europe in Transition from Empires to Nation States After WWI. Case Studies erschien zuerst auf Halbjahresschrift für Geschichte und Zeitgeschehen in Zentral- und Südosteuropa.

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Das rumänische Konsulat in Wien als Drehkreuz für das Schicksal rumänischer Jüdinnen und Juden 1943

Einführung

Der Holocaust in Österreich

Der Holocaust in Rumänien

Das rumänische Generalkonsulat in Wien

Persönliche Erinnerungen an die Ereignisse in Wien 1943

Das Rumänische Generalkonsulat in Wien während des Nationalsozialismus – basierend auf der Aktenlage des Diplomatischen Archivs in Bukarest

1938

1939

1940–1941

1942

1943

1943 – Politische Fakten in Rumänien – Hintergründe

Nachsatz – 1944

Resümee

Gedenkstätten der Verschleppung und Aussiedlung der Deutschen in Ungarn. 1952–2015

Thematisierung der Ereignisse1

Forschungshintergrund und analytische Gesichtspunkte

Gedenkstätten der Verschleppung zur Zwangsarbeit in die Sowjetunion

Gedenkstätten der Aussiedlung nach Deutschland

Zusammenfassung

Armenische Diaspora in Bulgarien in Vergangenheit und Gegenwart

Armenische Einwanderungsbewegungen und Kulturleben vor 1890

Die Bedeutung der eingewanderten armenischen Revolutionäre zur Zeit der Pogrome, Kriege und Genozide

Bulgarien 1919–1944 – eine Blütezeit für die Armenier?

Minderheiten in der Volksrepublik Bulgarien

Die armenisch-apostolische Kirche in der Zeit der sozialistischen Herrschaft

Das Ende des Sozialismus und die Gründung einer demokratischen Republik ohne nationale Minderheiten

Identitätsfragen, die armenische Kirche und armenische Zuwanderung

Post-Imperial Biographies in the Russian–Romanian Borderlands. The Case of the Bessarabian Pantelimon V. Sinadino

Writing a Post-imperial Biography: The Methodological Challenges

Pantelimon V. Sinadino: A Short Biography

A Landowner Fights for his Property

A Mediator between the Chișinău Mayoralty and the Romanian Government

For the “Holy and Just Cause:” In Support of the Return to Bessarabia under Russia’s Protection

An Entrepreneur: Founding a Sugar Factory Society in Northern Bessarabia

A Post-imperial Subject in Search of (New) Self-identification

Against the Bessarabian “Workers”?!: the 1940 Soviet Police Interrogation

Conclusions

Alternatives to a Takeover of Power. Košice 1918–1919*

Debates about Košice’s character

Alternative to double control: December 1918

The town’s first occupation: the period of parallel power structure

The realities of dictatorial power

Summary

Slovene Ethnolinguistic Nationalism as Rhetoric and Practice in Post-Imperial School Administration in Prekmurje

Local literary Slovene language or Prekmurje dialect of the standard Slovene national language?

Removal, re.education and re-socialization of the local teachers in the first years after annexation

Gradual transformation of schools in Prekmurje as a continuation of pre-war Slovene nationalists’ rhetoric and practice

Bohemia’s Eastern Border in Transition, 1918–1919

Introduction

Ensuring change of sovereignty without revolution

“The Czechs caught on more quickly”. The German secession attempt on the local level

After the elections of June 1919: starting a new dance

Conclusion

Fiume’s Political Elites and Their Challengers, 1918–1924

Fiume’s Political Elites and Their Challengers, 1918–1924

Italian Nationalists, Magyarons, or National Renegades?

Hungary’s Italian-Speaking Port

From Hungarian State Presence to Italian Annexation

The Italian National Council

(A)national Alternatives

Annexation to a nation-state as a contingent outcome

The Moral Economy of High Imperial Capital? The (Non-)Nationalization of Foreign Companies in Post-WWI Romania and the Idea of a Romanian National Economy

An inspection – with unexpected consequences?

Post-WW1 transition and moral economy

A lesser imperialism?

New winds, old partnerships?

Claim-makings in conflict

Local Societies in Southeastern Europe in Transition from Empires to Nation States After WWI. Case Studies

Introduction

Thematisierung der Ereignisse¹