Germans and Hungarians in Southeast Europe : Identity

Klaus-Jürgen Hermanik Germans and Hungarians in Southeast Europe Identity Management and Ethnomanagement Translated from German by Klara Stephanie Szlezák 2 Published with the support from the Austrian Science Fund (FWF):PUB 282-G28 Open access: Except where otherwise noted, this work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 Unported Li- cense. To view a copy of this license, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ Deutsche Nationalbibliothek Cataloging-in-publication data: http://dnb.d-nb.de Cover: Klaus-Jürgen Hermanik © 2016 by Böhlau Verlag GmbH & Co. KG, Wien Köln Weimar Wiesingerstraße 1, A-1010 Wien, www.boehlau-verlag.com All Rights Reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopy, recording, or any other information storage or retrieval system, without prior permission in writing from the publisher. Cover design: Michael Haderer, Wien Karten: Daniel Blazej, Graz Layout: Bettina Waringer, Wien Printing and binding: Printed on acid-free and chlorine-free bleached paper Printed in the EU 978-3-205-20528-9 Table of Contents Foreword Introduction 7 On the Individual Parts of the Book 14 1. A Theoretical Introduction to Identity Management and Ethnomanagement 21 1.1 Keyterms Ethnicity—Notion, Ascription and Tool 22 From the “I” (Subject/Object) to the Ethnic Group 32 The Term Identity Management as Antecessor 43 Identity Management and Ethnomanagement 51 1.2 Conceptual Reflections on Identity Management and Ethnomanagement Bridge-Building with Historical Anthropology and Ethnohistoire/Ethnohistory 60 Identity Management and Ethnomanagement in the Context of Globalization and the Transformation 65 Identity management & Ethnomanagement and Hybridity 71 “Ethnic Group Branding”—Identity as Brand 74 2. On the Practice of the Identity Management and Ethnomanagement of the Germans and Hungarians in Southeast Europe 80 2.1 The Research Framework Ethnicity and Nation 81 Ethnic Politics 85 Identity Management and Ethnomanagement: From the Inside – From the Outside 88 Germans and Hungarians in the Research Regions (Overview) 91 Transylvania/Transilvania/Erdély 91 Slavonia/Slavonija/Szlavónia 95 Slovenia/Slovenija/Szlovénia 98 Southern Transdanubia/Dél-Dunántúl 100 Vojvodina/Vajdaság 103 Self-Designations and Markers 107 We Danube Swabians, Germans in Hungary, Transylvanian Saxons, Gottscheers 107 Mi Magyarok – We Hungarians 113 Host State, Kin State, Loyalty 119 Theoretical and Conceptual Basis 119 Minority Protection in the Host States 124 Organizations in the Kin States (Selection) 144 2.2 Orientations Minority Organizations in the Host States 161 Umbrella Organizations 161 The Germans’ Societies (Examples from the Regions) 172 The Hungarians’ Societies – Examples from the Regions 189 Cultures of Memory 202 Remembering Correctly 202 The Germans’ Cultures of Memory 202 The Hungarians’ Cultures of Memory 219 4 2.3 Mediators and Instruments of the Identity Management and Ethnomanagement Media 227 The Germans’ Daily and Weekly Newspapers 227 The Hungarians’ Daily and Weekly Newspapers 231 Monthly, Biannual or Annual Publications of the Germans and the Hungarians 235 Radio and Television 239 Schools 248 Examples from the Germans’ Minority School Practice 249 Examples from the Hungarians’ Minority School Practice 255 Minority Literature, Fine Arts and Performing Arts 261 Examples from among the Germans in Hungary 261 Examples from among the Hungarians in Transylvania, Slovenia and Vojvodina 272 Empirically Applied Theory on the Identity Management and Ethnomanagement 278 (Results—Profits—Reverberations) Bibliography 291 Source Materials 305 Texts from Websources 305 List of Interviews (Selection) 312 Maps 313 5 Foreword The multifaceted field of minority research, which has been one of my primary research interests for more than fifteen years, is thriving and thus keeps offering new challenges. By changing perspectives and angles or by focusing on a particular aspect, new findings that lay hidden beneath the surface like precious metals may be unearthed. My first major contribution to the research literature in the field was to develop, together with two other historians at the University of Graz, the concept of (hidden) minorities. In this context I published a monograph on the Styrian Slovenes on the Soboth in 2007. Ever since, and particularly so during an extended research trip to Slovenia (2004-2005), I have regularly been in direct contact with minority societies. Based on these experiences I developed the idea to research the identity management of Germans and Hungarians in Southeast Central Europe and wrote the respective application for a FWF Stand-alone Project.1 This allowed me to conduct most of the basic research for this book (2007-2010); Eduard G. Staudinger, contemporary historian at the University of Graz, took over the project lead. Therefore I would like to extend my gratitude both to him and to the research assistants working on the project thanks to temporary FWF contracts for all their suggestions and input. I further thank Karl Kaser, who not only provided me with an academic affiliation in the department of Southeast European History at the University of Graz as of 2001, but who also became a personal example to me in the way in which he approaches the history of Southeast Europe. The disci- pline of Southeast European History at the University of Graz, to me, is inconceivable without him. In addition, I would like to thank him in his role as series editor for accepting my mansucript into the series “Zur Kunde Südosteuropas.” As this monograph is the revised version of my habilitation, I would further like to thank the three reviewers for their close reading of the manuscript and for their suggestions on how to further optimize the original manuscript. I worked on these revisions while already having taken up my di- verse responsibilities at the Zentrum für Kulturwissenschaften at the University of Graz, where I not only had access to the necessary resources but where I also found the necessary work atmosphere. This book could be published with Böhlau publishers thanks to the FWF funding in support of the publication costs (PUB 282-G28) and the reviewer’s most positive scholarly assessment. I am grateful for both. Finally, I would like to especially thank my wife Zsuzsa Barbarics-Hermanik, who patiently supported me throughout the many years of my research and writing and who accompanied me on some of my numerous field research trips. 1 The basic research as well as the field research for this book were largely conducted in the context of the FWF-funded research project P 20 060 g08. 6 Introduction Heracleitus’s ontological insight of πάντα ῥεῖ (= everything flows) implicitly lives on in the anthropo- logical concept of flows, which denote the seemingly accelerating socio-cultural phenomena and ef- fects of globalisation, transnationalism, or media networks. According to Hannerz, the term cultural flows describes a marked-out spatial dimension, yet also points into at least one, or several directions.1 This is relevant for the following theoretical reflections as well as for the analysis for a variety of rea- sons: Firstly, this draws to our attention the constant variability of cultural flows and with it the view- point of Heracleitus, who believed that one could not step into the same river twice2; secondly, the aforementioned directedness can denote a linear routing just as much as a meandering forward movement; and thirdly, the space can be expanded at will, as for instance in Appadurai’s model of global cultural flows.3 All agents4 act within what Appadurai called ethnoscapes,5 which implicitly refer to group identities or multiple identities since this model also demonstrates which powers of inner cohe- sion manage to hold a group together despite constant movement and the global expansion of space. Further comparable bonds include, for example, loyalty felt toward one or several nation states, finan- cial support through a collectivity, or simply the personal relation to a specific region for which one feels some sense of belonging. In this process, so-called “medial experiences” become increasingly important as they impact more and more the individual’s relations to his social environment as well as local and supra-local social networks.6 This has also affected the view of transnational field of inquiry. No longer can we start from the assumption that ethnic or national minorities or groups are bi-local only7; rather, as Stuart Hall pointed out two decades ago, we need to consider the ever growing signif- icance of an imaginary coherence,8 which finds expression above all in a group’s shared ideas of identity-creating characteristics and ethnic markers. 1 Cf. Ulf Hannerz. “Flows, Boundaries and Hybrids: Keywords in Transnational Anthropology.” Department of Social An- thropology, Stockholm University. 5. See: http://www.transcomm.ox.ac.uk/working%20papers/hannerz.pdf (30 August 2011). 2 See Hermann Diels. Die Fragmente der Vorsokratiker. Ed. Walther Kranz. Vol. 1. Zürich et al: Weidmann, 1993. 3 See Arjun Appadurai. Modernity at Large: Cultural Dimensions of Globalization. Minneapolis: UMP, 1993. 4 In this monograph I aim in principle at using gender neutral referents. If, for lack of space, I use the male form only, the female form is always implied. 5 Cf. Arjun Appadurai. Modernity at Large: Cultural Dimensions of Globalization. Minneapolis: UMP, 1993. 33 ff. Besides

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