Munich Personal RePEc Archive Ethno-Confessional Realities in the Romanian Area: Historical Perspectives (XVIII-XX centuries) Brie, Mircea and Şipoş, Sorin and Horga, Ioan University of Oradea, Romania 2011 Online at https://mpra.ub.uni-muenchen.de/44026/ MPRA Paper No. 44026, posted 30 Jan 2013 09:17 UTC ETHNO-CONFESSIONAL REALITIES IN THE ROMANIAN AREA: HISTORICAL PERSPECTIVES (XVIII-XX CENTURIES) ETHNO-CONFESSIONAL REALITIES IN THE ROMANIAN AREA: HISTORICAL PERSPECTIVES (XVIII-XX CENTURIES) Mircea BRIE Sorin ŞIPOŞ Ioan HORGA (Coordinators) Foreword by Barbu ŞTEFĂNESCU Oradea 2011 This present volume contains the papers of the international conference Ethnicity, Confession and Intercultural Dialogue at the European Union’s East Border (workshop: Ethno-Confessional Realities in the Romanian Area: Historical Perspectives), held in Oradea between 2nd-5th of June 2011. This international conference, organized by Institute for Euroregional Studies Oradea-Debrecen, University of Oradea and Department of International Relations and European Studies, with the support of the European Commission and Bihor County Council, was an event run within the project of Action Jean Monnet Programme of the European Commission n. 176197-LLP-1- 2010-1-RO-AJM-MO CONTENTS Barbu ŞTEFĂNESCU Foreword ................................................................................................................ 7 CONFESSION AND CONFESSIONAL MINORITIES Barbu ŞTEFĂNESCU Confessionalisation and Community Sociability (Transylvania, 18th Century – First Half of the 19th Century) ............................................................................... 15 Ion GUMENÂI Religious Minorities in Bessarabia during the ―Reaction‖ of Nikolai I (The Case of Jewish Population) ............................................................................................ 27 Eugen GHIŢĂ Population, Ethnicity and Confession in the County of Arad in the Eighteenth Century and Early Nineteenth Century .................................................................. 41 Lavinia BUDA ―Oratory or the Rosary? a Nonexistent Controversy‖ in the Greek Catholic Church ... 55 Corneliu PĂDUREAN Ethnic Groups and Denominations at Romania‘s Western Border in the Inter- War Period ............................................................................................................ 69 ETHNICITY, NATION AND NATIONALISM Mircea BRIE Ethnic Identity and the Issue of Otherness through Marriage in Northwest Transylvania (Second Half of the XIX - Early XX Century) .................................. 91 István POLGÁR The Thesis on the Historical Mission of Hungary in Central Europe and in the Balkans, and the Criticism Against it .................................................................... 107 Imola Katalin NAGY Clashes of National Identities in Interwar Transylvania ....................................... 117 Florentina CHIRODEA Ethnic and Religious Structure Aspects from the Western Border of Great Romania. The Academy of Law Students in Oradea (1919 - 1934) ........................... 137 5 Alina STOICA The Image of Romania and the Romanians, the Portuguese Legation Perspective in Bucharest ...................................................................................... 159 Anca OLTEAN Aspects from the Life of Romanian and Hungarian Jews during the Years 1945-1953 ............................................................................................................ 173 Sorin ŞIPOŞ Silviu Dragomir and the North Roman Balkan Research in the Context of Romania‘s New Political Realities ........................................................................ 189 Cătălin TURLIUC Nationalism, Multiculturalism and Minorities‘ Rights in the 20th Century Romania. Theoretical and Methodological Aspects .............................................. 215 Orsolya NAGY-SZILVESZTER Notions of Belonging in 20th-Century Romanian-German Literature ................... 227 Gabriel MOISA National Minorities in Romanian Press from Oradea. Interwar Period ................. 243 MIGRATION AND ASSIMILATION Ivan DUMINICA Romanian Historiography of the Emigration of the Bulgarians in Bessarabia at the Beginning of the Beginning 19th Century ................................................................ 261 Alexandr ROITMAN The Process of Conversion of the Jewish Population of Bessarabia, into Christian from Mosaic Religion, in the XIXth Century ......................................... 279 Arthur Viorel TULUŞ The Germans from Southern Bessarabia (Bugeac). From Colonization to Repatrion ........................................................................................................ 293 Cătălin NEGOIŢĂ The Emmigration of the Muslim Element from Dobruja ..................................... 307 6 FOREWORD In a world subject to global levelling, in a Europe of integrative efforts in multiple plans, there are alternative, natural reverse trends, of conservation of cultural specificities, especially in areas such as Central and Eastern Europe, characterized by the multiculturalism provided by the ethnic and confessional diversity, and by the sensitivities that such multiculturalism satiate. A good demonstration of this effect is the series of works contained by this volume; they have been previously presented, submitted to the thorough analysis and in- depth assessment of the participants to the International Conference titled Ethnicity, Confession and Intercultural Dialogue at the European Union's East Border, with a wide European audience, excellently organized in Oradea between 2 and 5 June 2011, by our colleague Mircea Brie, known for his ongoing and valuable research in this field. Note that the title Ethno-Confessional Realities in the Romanian Area: Historical Perspectives gathers only the works presented at the panel with the same name at the said conference, the other works being the subject of another volume; this fact proves the magnitude of the event and the interest awakened for debates regarding such current and exciting topic. The volume coordinators - Professor Ioan Horga, Professor Sorin Sipos, Dr. Mircea Brie, Lecturer - have grouped the 19 scientific contributions signed by both established historians, and by young researchers, be they historians or not, in three chapters: Confession and Religious Minorities; Ethnicity and Nationalism; and Migration and Assimilation. The first part houses works dedicated to historical realities relative to the Romanian space that are traditionally characterized by ethnic and confessional complexity such as Transylvania - understood in its broad sense - or Bessarabia, during the last three centuries. First, our study follows the impact that the confessionalization process had on the Romanian population in Transylvania, through the emergence of the Greek-Catholic denomination, which broke the previous Orthodox religious bloc, splitting the mostly peasant Romanian society of the time, creating a moment of initial confusion, of exacerbation of emotional states that led to disputes, including violence, before the Greek Orthodox and Catholics believers would accept tolerance, coexistence and cooperation. Religious sensibility and how it affects the 7 Barbu ŞTEFĂNESCU community sociability transcend from the notes left by priests or teachers of previous centuries - subjective evidence, indispensable to the research of peasant mentality, dominated by orality and with little expression in writing. Two papers - signed by Eugen Ghiţă and Corneliu Eugen Pădureanu – address the ethnic and confessional issues in today‘s western Romania from the historical demographics specialist position; in a first case, in the modern world and Arad circumscribed area; in the second case, an overview of the entire region in the period between the two World Wars. The call for statistical data processing, so characteristic to historical demography, is illustrative to marking the quantitative developments of the population in general and its adherence to various denominations. It allows for necessary and illustrative comparisons over time at different chronological landmarks, or in space between administrative units. Integrated in the general history of an era, the findings of these statistical measurements have the merit of capturing the dynamics of the evolution, in its most sensitive nuances. A pertinent analysis of the situation of confessional minorities in the province of Bessarabia turned into a gubernia of the tsarist Russia during the reign of Tsar Nicholas I, with a particular analysis of the Jewish population, is owed to the historian Ion Gumenîi. In his case we have a recurrence of one of the leading researchers of this phenomenon in the mentioned area. A reign – of the said Tsar – so controversial in the today‘s historiography, and concerned with the homogenization of the language and the common denominator of the Orthodox Christian religion, is concerned with solving the Jewish problem from anti-Semitic positions; this is the main message of the Moldovan historian and university professor, transmitted with resources of the specialist accustomed to the research theme and the tools required by such theme. The following contribution to this section signed by Lavinia Buda uses the symbolism of the Rosary introduction to the Romanian Greek-Catholic Church at the turn of XIX-XX centuries, to capture the theological debates and disputes about the possible removal of this denomination from the Eastern ritual matrix, in a context of a broader Catholic