Prof. Gerhard Seewann
Panel 5 The German Minorities
Abstract
Considering the wide assortment of nationalising agendas the newly constituted ‘Greater Romania’ sought to introduce in its various, newly acquired, provinces of Transylvania, Banat, Bukovina, and Bessarabia, the German and Hungarian minorities where from the outset forced to find a strategy of self-defence. The Romanian political elite never tried to assimilate these two minorities, which constituted a decisive difference in the Romanian minority policy – a stance exemplified by the persistent assimilatory pressures the state subjected the Tschango minority in Moldavia to since the 19 century. However, the German and Hungarian communities became the objects of a very resolutely realized policy of marginalisation in the economic, public life, educational, and administrative domains.
