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Obstacles to Nationalization on the Hungarian-Romanian Language Frontier

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  15 May 2012

Robert Nemes
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Extract

In 1863, the geologist Adolf Schmidl published a thick book on the Bihar/Bihor Mountains, a highland region on the border between the Hungarian Kingdom and Transylvania. Calling the Bihar/Bihor Mountains one of the “least known regions in the Austrian Monarchy,” Schmidl offered his work as small contribution to Vaterlandskunde and one, he hoped, that would inspire others to follow him into the region. The book provided a detailed analysis of the mountains' hydrography, topography, flora, and fauna. The biological diversity of the region especially excited Schmidl, and his discoveries included four new species of plants and a new species of animal (a leech found only in thermal waters). Schmidl was no less impressed by the ethnographic diversity of this region. Although Romanians belonging to the Greek Catholic and Eastern Orthodox churches comprised the vast majority of the population, Schmidl counted six ethnic groups and as many religions in the mountains. According to Schmidl, “national agitation” was “entirely foreign” to the region, whose inhabitants enjoyed peaceful and fraternal relations with one another. The Romanians, he underlined, “are among the most loyal in the Austrian monarchy and their devotion to the dynasty is unfeigned and unshakeable.”

Type
Sites of Indifference to Nationhood
Information
Austrian History Yearbook , Volume 43 , April 2012 , pp. 28 - 44
Copyright
Copyright © Center for Austrian Studies, University of Minnesota 2012

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References

1 Schmidl, Adolf, Das Bihar-Gebirge an der Grenze von Ungarn und Siebenbürgen (Vienna, 1863)Google Scholar. Because different people had different names for many of the places described here, I have chosen to present the Hungarian form followed by its Romanian equivalent (except in quotations, where I retain the original). The one shortcut I have taken is to use “Hungary” to mean the Hungarian half of the Dual Monarchy.

2 Schmidl, Das Bihar-Gebirge, 115, 133. As evidence of the Romanians' loyalty, Schmidl cited their behavior in 1848–1849 and their compliance with conscription and the payment of taxes.

3 György, Aladár, “A Bihar alján [At the Foot of Bihar],” Földrajzi Közlemények [Geographical Review] 24, no. 6 (1893): 294–307, at 294Google Scholar.

4 Frâncu, Teofil and Candrea, George, Românii din Muntii Apuseni (Moţii) [Romanians in the Apuseni Mountains (The Moţi)] (Bucharest, 1888), 5, 47Google Scholar.

5 See von Puttkamer, Joachim, “Kein europäischer Sonderfall: Ungarns Nationalitätenproblem im. 19. Jahrhundert und die jüngere Nationalismusforschung,” in Das Ungarnbild der deutschen Historiographie, ed. Fata, Márta, 84–98 (Stuttgart, 2004)Google Scholar, with previous bibliography.

6 See Hának, Péter, Ungarn in der Donaumonarchie. Probleme der bürgerlichen Umgestaltung eines Vielvölkerstaates (Munich, 1984), 281–319Google Scholar; Karády, Viktor, “Egyenlőtlen elmagyarosodás, avagy hogyan vált Magyarország magyar nyelvű országgá? [Uneven Magyarization, or How Did Hungary Become a Hungarian-Speaking State?]” Századvég 2 (1990): 5–37Google Scholar; Szarka, László, “Magyarosodás és magyarosítás a felső-magyarországi szlovák régióban a kiegyezés korában [Voluntary and Coercive Magyarization in the Slovak Region of Upper Hungary in the Dualist Era],” in Polgárosodás Közép-Európában [Embourgeoisement in Central Europe], ed. Somogyi, Éva, 35–46 (Budapest, 1991)Google Scholar; and Mitu, Sorin, National Identity of Romanians in Transylvania, trans. Corneanu, Sorana (Budapest, 2001)Google Scholar.

7 The Bihar/Bihor Mountains cover a sizeable area. Most of the examples in this chapter are drawn from the northern part—the area studied closely by Schmidl and contained within the historic borders of Bihar/Bihor County.

8 Scott, James C., Domination and the Arts of Resistance: Hidden Transcripts (New Haven, CT, 1990)Google Scholar.

9 Schmidl, Das Bihar-Gebirge, 117–18.

10 Today the best-known mine in the Western Carpathians is near Roşia Montană (Red Mountain, just to the south of the Bihar/Bihor Mountains), where a Canadian company's plan to open Europe's largest open-pit gold mine has sparked a strong environmental and civic movement in Romania and abroad. See Craig Smith, “Fighting Over Gold in the Land of Dracula,” The New York Times, 3 January 2007, C1, C4.

11 See Borovszky, Samu, ed., Bihar Vármegye és Nagyvárad [Bihar County and Nagyvárad] (Budapest, 1901), esp. 589Google Scholar; and Faur, Viorel, Contribuţii la cunoaşterea istoriei Bihorului [Contributions to the Knowledge of the History of Bihor], 2 vols. (Oradea, 1970–1971)Google Scholar.

12 Nagy, Sándor K., Biharvármegye földrajza Nagy-Várad város leirásával és a magyar királyság rövid áttekintésével [The Geography of Bihar County With a Description of Nagy-Várad and a Brief Survey of the Hungarian Kingdom] (Nagyvárad, 1886), 44Google Scholar; also see Hendea, Sorin Vasile, “Învăţământul confesional ortodox din Bihor în preajma izbucnirii primului război mondial [Orthodox Education in Bihor Before the Outbreak of the First World War],” Revista Arhivelor 62, nos. 1–2 (2000): 54–65Google Scholar.

13 György, “A Bihar alján,” 302–3.

14 See Dabrowski, Patrice M., “‘Discovering’ the Galician Borderlands: The Case of the Eastern Carpathians,” Slavic Review 64, no. 2 (Summer 2005): 380–402CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Murdock, Caitlin E., “Tourist Landscapes and Regional Identities in Saxony, 1878–1938,” Central European History 40, no. 4 (2007): 589–621CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and Frank, Alison, “The Pleasant and the Useful: Pilgrimage and Tourism in Habsburg Mariazell,” Austrian History Yearbook 40 (2009): 157–82CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

15 Hofer, Tamás, “Construction of the ‘Folk Cultural Heritage’ in Hungary and Rival Versions of National Identity,” Ethnologia Europaea 21, no. 2 (1991): 160Google Scholar. Also see Szegedy-Maszák, Mihály, Világkép és stílus [Worldview and Style] (Budapest, 1980), 251–86Google Scholar.

16 On imagined geographies, see Kiss, Csaba G., “Kálmán Mikszáth und der Mythos von Oberungarn,” in Geschichtliche Mythen in den Literaturen und Kulturen Ostmittel- und Südosteuropas, ed. Behring, Eva, Richter, Ludwig, and Schwarz, Wolfgang F., 337–45 (Stuttgart, 1999)Google Scholar; Keményfi, Róbert, “Az etnikai tér és a nemzetállamiság eszméje [Ethnic Space and the Nation-State Idea],” Tabula 2, no. 2 (1999): 3–26Google Scholar; Boia, Lucian, Romania: Borderland of Europe, trans. Brown, James Christian (London, 2001), 11–27Google Scholar; and Sorin Antohi, “Romania and the Balkans: From Geocultural Bovarism to Ethnic Onthology, ” Tr@nsit online 21 (2002), http://www.iwm.at (accessed 20 August 2009).

17 See Györffy, István, “Dél Bihar népesedési és nemzetiségi viszonyai negyedfélszáz év óta [Demographic and National Relations in South Bihar in the Past 350 Years],” Földrajzi Közlemények 43, no. 6–7 (1915): 257–93, at 258, 278Google Scholar. For the later use of place names as evidence of Hungarian primacy in the region, see Kniezsa, István, Keletmagyarország helynevei [Place Names of Eastern Hungary], ed. Kiss, Lajos (Budapest, 2001), which originally appeared in 1943–1944Google Scholar.

18 Márki, Sándor, A Fekete-Körös és vidéke [The Black Körös River and Its Environs] (Nagyvárad, 1877), 26–27, 119Google Scholar.

19 “‘Astra’ la Beiuş [ASTRA in Beiuş],” Tribuna, 19/31 August 1898, 717–18Google Scholar.

20 Sipos, Orbán, Bihar vármegye a népesedési, vallási, nemzetiségi és közoktatási statisztika szempontjából [Bihar County In View of Demographic, Religious, National, and Educational Statistics] (Nagyvárad, 1903), 136Google Scholar.

21 Al. Crişanu, , “Cǎse româneşti din Bihor [Romanian Houses in Bihor],” Transilvania 41 (1910): 96–97Google Scholar.

22 “Bihorul,” Tribuna, 11/23 September 1893, 806. Tribuna was published in Nagyszeben/Sibiu, outside Bihar/Bihor County.

23 Iosif Vulcan, “Salutăm asociaţiunea în Bihor! [We Welcome ASTRA in Bihor!]” Familia, 16/28 August 1898, 391.

24 The society was the Bihar Carpathian Association (Bihari Kárpát Egyesület), one of many alpine and tourist associations to spring up in Hungary in the last decades of the nineteenth century. On the Bihar branch, see Hegyesi, Márton, ed., Belényes és vidéke [Belényes and Its Environs] (Nagyvárad, 1889), 3–7Google Scholar; on tourist associations, see Vari, Alexander, “From Friends of Nature to Tourist-Soldiers,” in Turizm: The Russian and East European Tourist under Capitalism and Socialism, ed. Gorsuch, Anne E. and Koenker, Diane P., 64–81 (Ithaca, 2006)Google Scholar.

25 In calling on villages to remove non-Hungarian elements from their names, Sipos went beyond the 1898 law. Sipos thus applauded when the Bihar/Bihor County village of Korbest (today Corbeşti in Romania) changed its Romanian-derived name (corb, meaning raven, from the Latin corvin) to the Hungarian-sounding Hollószeg (holló, raven + -szeg, corner). See Sipos, Bihar vármegye, 9–32. For the text of Law 1898/IV and the debates surrounding it, see Kemény, Gábor G., ed., Iratok a nemzetiségi kérdés történetéhez Magyarországon a dualizmus korában, vol. 2: 1892–1900 [Documents on the History of the National Question in Hungary in the Dualist Era] (Budapest, 1956), doc. 100a.–100szGoogle Scholar. Also see Seton-Watson, R. W., Racial Problems in Hungary (London, 1908), 189Google Scholar.

26 Schmidl, Das Bihar-Gebirge, 131–39.

27 Márki, A Fekete-Körös és vidéke, 27.

28 Frâncu and Candrea, Românii din Muntii Apuseni, 111. Italics in original.

29 Dr. Dăianu, E[lie], “Dela Beiuş [From Beiuş],” Tribuna, 26 August/7 September 1898, 742Google Scholar.

30 Schmidl's translation of the song's second stanza reads as follows: “Die Richterin stolzirt mit gold'nen Rosen,/Der Richter trägt zerriss'ne Hosen;/Die Richterin erquickt sich an Compot/Der Richter hungert sich zu Tod.” Schmidl, Das Bihar-Gebirge, 136–37, 331–32.

31 Scott, Domination, 172–82, 189–92.

32 Sipos, Bihar vármegye, 79.

33 Czárán, Gyula, Kalauz a biharfüredi kirándulásokra [Guide to Biharfüred Excursions] (Belényes, 1903), viGoogle Scholar.

34 On logging in the region, see Papp, Lajos, A Biharhegység meghódítása [Conquest of the Bihar Mountains] (Budapest, 1939), 49–50Google Scholar.

35 István Györffy, “Dél Bihar népesedési és nemzetiségi viszonyai,” 293.

36 Popovici, Ioan et al. , eds., Bihor: Permanenţe ale luptei naţionale româneşti, 1892–1900. Documente [Bihor: Endurance of the Romanian National Struggle, 1892–1900. Documents] (Bucharest, 1988)Google Scholar. Doc. 17 contains a typical report from 1892. The district magistrate noted that agitation surrounding the recent Romanian declaration of national rights (the “Memorandum” submitted to Francis Joseph) had influenced the local Greek Catholic clergy but not yet the mass of the population. He closed by calling for “the most vigilant supervision” of the clergy by reliable men in the district.

37 Popovici, Bihor: Permanenţe ale luptei naţionale româneşti, doc. 238 and 245.

38 György, “A Bihar alján,” 301–7.

39 György was not alone in this view. For similar arguments, see “Hora vidékén [In the Land of Hora],” Pesti Napló, 19 July 1888, 1.

40 Schmidl, Das Bihar-Gebirge, 191–93.

41 “Valász,” Belényesi Ujság, 25 September 1910, 1.

42 In September 1893, for example, rumors of anti-Hungarian demonstrations (reportedly occasioned by Tsar Alexander III's nameday) began to swirl around Belényes/Beiuş, and in several villages Hungarian women and children apparently took to the fields for safety. When news of the unrest reached Nagyvárad/Oradea, the authorities promptly dispatched 200 soldiers to Belényes/Beiuş. The soldiers found little evidence of disturbances. Perhaps to save face, county officials eventually arrested two young Romanian men found in possession of “a heap of incendiary writings, full of Daco-Romanian lies.” Popovici, Bihor: Permanenţe ale luptei naţionale româneşti, doc. 40–42, 45.

43 Sipos, A Biharvármegyei Népnevelési Egyesület története, 4.

44 On the Beiuş chapter, see Faur, Viorel, “Istoricul constituirii despărţămîntului Beiuşean al ‘Astrei’ (1897–1898) [The History of the Constitution of the Beiuş Chapter of ASTRA],” Crisia 7 (1977): 389–419Google Scholar. According to Tribuna, the belated formation of a branch in Bihar/Bihor only showed the incompetence and weak national feeling of local Romanian leaders. See “Din Bihor [In Bihor],” Tribuna, 29 November/11 December, 1897, 1059. On the Romanian national movement in Bihar/Bihor more broadly, see Faur, Viorel, “Aspecte ale luptei românilor din Crişana pentru afirmare culturală între 1848–1919 [Aspects of the Romanian Struggle in Crişana for Cultural Affirmation Between 1848 and 1919],” Revista de Istorie 33, no. 5 (1980): 873–87Google Scholar.

45 For coverage of ASTRA's assembly, see “Adunarea Asociaţiunei [ASTRA'S Assembly],” Tribuna Poporului, 20 July/1 August 1898, 765–66; and “Din Beiuş, [In Beiuş]” Tribuna, 14/26 August 1898, 706, which suggests that many Hungarians in Nagyvárad/Oradea had viewed the coming assembly with apprehension, as well as Popovici, Bihor: Permanenţe ale luptei naţionale româneşti, doc. 167, 169, 196–204.

46 “A Biharmegyei Népnevelési Egyesület Belényesben [The Bihar County Society for Popular Education in Belényes],” Népnevelési Közlöny, 15 September 1899, 135.

47 “Dela Oradea-mare [From Oradea-Mare],” Tribuna, 4/16 August 1899, p. 675. Compare this with “A belényesi ünnep [The Belényes Festival],” Nagyvárad, 22 August 1899, 3–4.

48 “Ungarisch-rumänisches Verbrüderungsfest,” Pester Lloyd, 21 August 1899, 2.

49 “Az Asztra,” Nagyvárad, 26 August 1898; and “Román világ Belényesben [Romanian World in Belényes],” Nagyvárad, 28 August 1898. The phrase “Romanian-speaking, but Hungarian citizens” recalls the preamble to the 1868 Nationalities Law (1868:44), which affirmed the existence of “the indivisible unitary Hungarian nation [magyar nemzet]—to which every citizen is a member, no matter to what nationality he belongs.” This ambiguous language could be interpreted in civic terms: namely, that one could be politically “Hungarian” but “Romanian” by birth and language or, as was increasingly common from the 1890s onward, in more exclusive, “ethnic” terms, whereby ethnic Hungarians (defined by language or descent) alone constituted the political nation to the exclusion of the so-called “nationalities” (Romanians, Slovaks, Serbians, and others). In this case, Nagyvárad's language is surely civic. That it used the term “román” instead of the more derogatory “oláh” is further evidence of this.

50 “Udvariasság, udvariatlanság [Politeness, Impoliteness],” Országos Hirlap, 23 August 1898, 4; and E. Dăianu, “Dela Beiuş [From Beiuş],” Tribuna, 28 August/9 September 1898, 750–1.

51 Ede Sas, “Hegytetőn [On the Mountain Top],” Nagyvárad, 20 August 1896, 1–2. The poem was written for the occasion and had won a prize even before the BNE's assembly opened. Sas was an unlikely advocate of local accommodation; he had lived in the region only since 1890, and in 1893 he had been arrested and then tried for shouting “Down with the Romanians” during anti-Romanian riots in nearby Nagyvárad/Oradea.

52 János Lukács, “A szögesdróton túl [Across the Barbed Wire],” Krónika, 13 June 2002. http://udvardy.adatbank.transindex.ro/ (accessed 17 March 2007).