CEU Electronic Theses and Dissertations, 2012
| Author | Renz, Rachel Lauren |
|---|---|
| Title | Looking to Themselves: The Tension between Self-Reliance, Regionalism, and Support of Greater Romania within the Saxon Community in Transylvania 1918-1935 |
| Summary | This thesis traces the changes in self-preservation policies of the Transylvanian Saxons from 1918 to 1935 as they transitioned from being a semi-autonomous group to an ethnic minority in the newly established Romanian state following the First World War. It examines the domestic and international alliances of both conservative Saxon elites and social dissidents on the basis of interwar cultural journals and press material. Particular emphasis is placed on the tension between rising National Socialist rhetoric from the German Reich and Transylvanian regionalism in these publications. Unlike many existing studies on this topic, the work offers a balanced approach between internal and external Saxon relations, and distinguishes between Saxon elite narratives and average outlooks. The various movements traced lead to the question of whether historians can even speak of a cohesive Saxon identity during the interwar period, or merely of fragmentation among community members. In order to give perspective to the Transylvanian Saxon experience, the thesis analyzes the differences between the rise of Pan-German sentiments in the Saxon community of Transylvania and the Sudeten German community of Czechoslovakia. |
| Supervisor | Trencsenyi, Balazs; Karady, Viktor |
| Department | History MA |
| Full text | https://www.etd.ceu.edu/2012/renz_rachel.pdf |
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