THE TRANSYLVANIAN PRESS and NATION BUILDING Cornel
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SECTION: HISTORY LDMD I THE TRANSYLVANIAN PRESS AND NATION BUILDING∗ Cornel SIGMIREAN, Professor, PhD, ”Petru Maior” University of Târgu-Mureş Abstract : The Austro-Hungarian Compromise of 1867 radicalized the national discourse in the Empire. The governments in Budapest promoted the idea of one nation in the Hungarian state. According to the official ideology, the Hungarian nation included all the nationalities living in its territory: Romanians, Slovakians, Croatians, Serbians, Ruthenians and of course Hungarians. In response, Romanians demanded the acknowledgment of their own individuality. The Transylvanian press in the second half of the 19th century reflects the nationalist polemic generated between the official ideology and the ideology of the Empire’s nations. Keywords: Austro-Hungarian Dualism, Nation, Nationality, Transylvanian Press. In a reference work regarding the formation of nations, Benedict Anderson considers that nation is an “imagined political community - and imagined as both inherently limited and sovereign. It is imagined because the members of even the smallest nation will never know most of their fellow-members, meet them, or even hear of them […] the nation is imagined as limited because even the largest of them […] has finite, if elastic boundaries, beyond which lie other nations. No nation imagines itself coterminous with mankind”1. The new technology of communication (prints), books and the press contributed, according to Anderson, to the spread of nationalism. The press allowed a large number of people to imagine a community, in the end identifying with this community. Through the more accessible language of the press communication became more direct. Prints in various languages lead to the foundation of national consciousness. For the Romanians, as for all the nations in Central and South-Eastern Europe, the modern nation was born at the end of the eighteenth century and at the beginning of the nineteenth century. The ideological landmark of the Central European nations was the work of German philosophers Immanuel Kant, Fichte, but especially Johann Gottfried Herder, who was distinguished due to his treaty Ideen zur Philosophie der Geschichte der Menschheit 2. According to Herder, the engine of spiritual forces is language, a means destined for culture and the most profound education 3. Also, according to the German philosopher, each people has a unique collective soul – Volksgeist, that manifests itself through all the popular works, through all the songs, poems, stories and melodies of the common people. ∗ This paper was supported by the UEFISCDI-CNCS, Project PN-II-ID-PCE-2011-3-0841, Contract Nr. 220/31.10.2011. 1 Benedict Anderson, Imagined Communities, Verso, London and New York, 2003, pp. 6-7. 2 For nation building see: E. J. Hobsbawm, Naţiuni şi naţionalism din 1780 până în prezent, Chişinău, Editura ARC, Bucureşti, 1997; Ernest Gellner, Naţiune şi naţionalism. Noi perspective asupra trecutului, Editura Antet, 1997, p.7; Raoul Girardet, Naţionalism şi naţiune, Institutul European, Iaşi, 2003; Bernard Baertschi &Kevin Mulligan, Naţionalismele, Editura Nemira, Bucureşti, 2010; Hagen Schulze, Stat şi naţiune în istoria europeană, Polirom, Iaşi, 2003; Paul Lawrence, Naţionalismul. Istorie şi teorie, Editura ANTET, Bucureşti, 2005. 3 Victor Neumann, “Mitteleuropa între cosmopolitismul austriac şi conceptul de stat-naţiune”, in Europa Centrală. Nevroze, dileme, utopii, coord. Adriana Babeţi, Cornel Ungureanu, Editura Polirom, Iaşi, 1997, p. 147. 8 SECTION: HISTORY LDMD I His work represented a true pedagogy of nation formation in the space of the former Habsburg Empire, being used by most erudites from this European region. Among the first scholars who spread the work of the German philosopher in the Habsburg monarchy was the Italian Alberto Fortis, who was impressed by the way in which Herder exalted the popular genius and popular tradition in his work. Herder’s work influenced the political thinking of the Romanians Simion Bărnuţiu and Nicolae Bălcescu, of the Hungarians Kossuth, Széchenzi and Petöfi. Thus, in the first half of the nineteenth century, in the entire Central and South-Eastern European space, a movement of political revendications in the name of each nation was generated, each nation striving to discover a past that was as brilliant as possible. The Slavic peoples and the Hungarians discovered a glorious past in the Middle Ages, when they met periods of political accomplishments 4 . The Romanians in the former Habsburg Empire investigated their Ancient past, because in that era they discovered glorious moments of their origin, reclaiming themselves as descendants of the Dacians, but especially of the Romans. In mid-nineteenth century Transylvania, province of the Habsburg Empire, almost all nations had their own national project, which the elites attempted to implement. The Hungarians, considering the attribution of the Saint Stephen Crown’s territories to the Habsburg Empire as a result of a dynastic union, on March 15th 1848 they proclaimed the reconstitution of the Hungarian state within the borders of the former medieval state5. As a result, Transylvania was annexed to Hungary. The Romanians, who ethnically represented the majority element in Transylvania, opposed it and joined Vienna in a war against the Hungarians. For the Romanians, the preferred solution in 1848 was that of the Empire’s federalization. Indisputably, the 1848 moment demonstrated the birth of the nations’ destabilizing pot ential for the old political structures of Central Europe 6. After the revolution, in the Habsburg Empire, a neo-absolutist regime was established and lasted until 1860. After the defeats suffered by Austria in the war with Piedmont and France, fearing an alliance between the Hungarians and France, which would have led to Hungary’s independence, Vienna renounced the absolutist governing regime in favour of a liberal regime. Through the Imperial Diploma of 8/20 October 1860 the transition to a new constitutional system of governing was announced, and through the Imperial Patent of 14/26 February 1861, by virtue of the historical federalism principle, the target was restoring the autonomy of the countries and provinces with a state tradition7. Thus, the autonomy of the Great Principality of Transylvania was acknowledged. The Hungarian political class rejected Vienna’s political project, boycotting Hungary’s representation in the Imperial State 4 Camil Mureşanu, În templul lui Ianus. Studii şi gânduri despre trecut şi viitor, Editura Cartimpex, Cluj- Napoca, 2002, p. 248. 5 See Liviu Maior, 1848-1849. Români şi unguri în revoluţie, Bucureşti, Editura Enciclopedică, 1998; Idem, Habsburgi şi români. De la loialitatea dinastică la identitatea naţională, Editura Enciclopedică, Bucureşti, 2006, pp. 37-47. 6 Christian Chereji, Identităţi ale Europei Centrale 1815-2000, Editura Accent, Cluj-Napoca, 2004, p. 54. 7 Jean Bérenger; Istoria Imperiului Habsburgilor 1273-1918, Editura Teora, Bucureşti, 2000, p. 428; A. J. P. Taylor, Monarhia Habsburgică 1809-1918. O istorie a Imperiului Austriac şi Austro - Ungar, Editura ALLFA, Bucureşti, 2000, pp. 89-90. 9 SECTION: HISTORY LDMD I (Reichsrat), which included the Habsburg Empire province’s representatives. In 1863, the German newspaper Wiener Zeitung published the Imperial Rescript convening the Transylvanian Diet and the electoral norms of its convocation. After the elections, 48 Romanian representatives, 44 Hungarian representatives and 33 Saxons were elected. At its convocation, in 3/15 July in Sibiu, the Hungarian representatives refused to participate, considering that the Diet is illegal and the 1848 laws must be applied, which stipulated Transylvania’s unification with Hungary. Nevertheless, the Sibiu Diet inaugurated the Romanians’ presence in the Transylvanian political life 8. Two laws voted by the Sibiu Diet – The law for the equal distribution of the Romanian nation and its confessions and The law for the introduction of the Romanian language in administration granted the Romanians equality of rights with the other Transylvanian nations for the first time. It was at the core the victory of the herderian principle that language constitutes the fundamental identity element in the construction of the nation, represents a means of unifying the members of a nation, the condition of education and progress in the national culture. When presenting the project in the Diet, the Romanian deputy Vasile Ladislau Popp stated that “the nation without language is dead. A nation’s will is manifested through language” 9. Another deputy, George Roman, stated during the project’s debate that “… Today is also the day of the Romanian language’s resurrection, because from today on it will live in the official public communications. […] One cannot deny, this resurrection day has arrived” 10. Austria’s military defeat in the war with Prussia intervened, which transformed the Hungarians in Vienna’s privileged interlocutors 11 . The 1866 military failure led to the creation of Austro-Hungary by Emperor Franz Josef’s coronation in Budapest as king of Hungary on June 8th 1867. Thus, the Austro-Hungarian dualism was born, that lead to the restoration of Greater Hungary, with over 13 million inhabitants, of whom almost 7 million non-Hungarians. Transylvania, Slovakia, Voivodine, Carpathian Ruthenia and Croatia came under Budapest’s authority. The laws voted by the Transylvanian Diet between 1863-1864 were abrogated, and thus Transylvania lost its autonomy. The Ausgleich