Becoming a Minority in Greater Romania. Integration and Forms of Political Sociability of the Transylvanian Saxons
The proposed project aims to analyze the integration policies and forms of political sociability of the Transylvanian Saxons from a crucial time of their existence, at the beginning of the 20th century. The aspects regarding the political sociability can be observed in the cities of Sibiu and Brașov, both of them with a high importance for the Transylvanian Saxons everyday life activities. The endeavor implies an interdiciplinary approach, being framed by the minority history, urban history and cultural anthropology. The research methodology is applied on the archival sources, German written press and visual sources from international and national archives and libraries, using specific tools and instruments of analysis. Of high interest is the transnational view regarding the integration process from the imperial realities of the Transylvanian Saxons to the post-imperial ones. One of the research questions is: In which way do models of political sociability change in a transnational history? At this stage, I find it important to raise the question of the metamorphosis of imperial loyalty of the Germans from Romania. Furthermore, the concept of integration of the Transylvanian Saxons and the attitudes and policies of their elite in the construct of Greater Romania shall be investigated.
Objectives
The first objective of the project is to construct the large framework of the public and private spaces from the cities of Sibiu and Brașov which will lead to the redefinition of political sociability in the interwar period.
Another objective is closely linked to the systematization and interpretation of the concept of imperial versus post-imperial loyalism of the Transylvanian Saxon elite towards the political elite from Bucharest.
In this regard, A.1. is to investigate the German written press in order to A.2. identify the most relevant sources regarding the concept of imperial versus royalist loyalism. A.3 The identified and selected sources regarding the loyalism of the Transylvanian Saxons shall be investigated in a comparative approach, underlining the metamorphosis of the imperial realities to post-imperial ones. Another objective reflects upon the integration policies of the Transylvanian Saxons in the political, social and administrative construct of Greater Romania. The investigative method of case study shall be used in order to reconstruct the major prosopographical evolutions of the relevant Saxon personalities in interwar Romania. This objective has two components, namely A.1 to analyze the network connections between the members of the Saxon elite in order to identify the ones who assume the role of a leader.
A.2 Secondly, another component of this objective is to realize the links and relations regarding the integration policies of the Transylvanian Saxon elite with the major political actors from Bucharest, who play an important role in the national politics at the beginning of the second decade of the 20th century.
A.3 The identified and selected case studies will be investigated in a comparative appropach by using the quantitative and qualitative analysis in order to recreate the political and social concept of integration of the Transylvanian Saxons in the huge scheme of national construct.