The relationship between religious and national identity in the case of Transylvanian Saxons (1933–1944)

Abstract

Hitler's coming to power in Germany had its key consequences upon the fate of the German minorities in Central and Eastern Europe. The German community in Romania constituted no exception. After 1933, a process of radicalization can be noticed in the case of the Transylvanian Saxons, one of the several German-speaking groups in Romania. The phenomenon has already been analyzed in its political and economic dimensions, yet not so much in its social ones. This article looks at the latter aspect, its argument being that the Nazification of the Transylvanian Saxon community can be best comprehended by using a conceptual framework developed by political scientist Donald Horowitz in the early 1970s. The analysis uses a series of contemporary sources (diaries, issues of the official periodical of the Lutheran Church in Transylvania, Kirchliche Blätter), but also a wide range of secondary sources, academic and literary. Consequently, the article shows that especially after 1933, the Lutheran affiliation, highly relevant for the production and reproduction of the traditional model of Transylvanian Saxon identity, shifted from the status of a criterion of identity to a mere identification indicium. At the same time, the attraction of a (Pan-) German identity, with its Nazi anchors, became stronger and the center of gravity for Transylvanian Saxon identity radically moved towards German ethnicity, in its National-Socialist understanding.

Keywords:

• Transylvania
• interwar Romania
• German minority
• Transylvanian Saxon identity
• Lutheran Church in Transylvania

Acknowledgments

This article is a revised and abridged version of my MA thesis, defended within the Nationalism Studies program at the Central European University in Budapest, 2007. I am extremely thankful to my supervisor, Professor András Kovács, for his support and perceptive suggestions. Dr. Michael Miller was also kind enough to read various drafts of the MA thesis and constructively comment upon it. Isabella Manassarian's criticism made me much more critical about my own arguments. My thanks also go to the Munich-based IKGS (Institut für deutsche Kultur und Geschichte Südosteuropas), where I had access to generous funding and to a library excellent for my research. Dr. Stefan Sienerth and Dr. Peter Motzan, from the aforementioned Institute, who willingly enlightened me on various issues related to Transylvanian Saxon history, deserve my special gratitude. I also have to thank Georg Aescht, Marius Babias and Matthias Volkenandt for their efforts in assuring me a fruitful and relaxed stay in Munich. Last, but not least, Dr. Ruth Wittlinger, Dr. James Koranyi, Lucy Abbott and the two anonymous peer reviewers of Nationalities Papers, through their comments and suggestions, helped me to make my arguments clearer. An earlier version of the article was presented at the 15th Annual Convention of the Association for the Study of Nationalities (ASN), New York, 15–17 April 2010.

Notes

In his analysis of the Nazification of three different German-speaking groups in Central Europe (Zipser, Swabians, Saxons), Szelényi also refers to Horowitz, more precisely to his distinction between “hierarchically ordered” societies and “parallel ordered” societies. He considers the Saxons to fit in the latter one, thus being a “sub-national society” (Szelényi; see also Horowitz, “Three Dimensions of Ethnic Politics”).

Universitas Saxonum (Saxon University), the main institution responsible with Transylvanian Saxon self-administration in the Crown Lands.

Cases of non-Saxon Lutherans in Transylvania did exist, while at the same time the Lutheran Church connected Saxons living in the Crown Lands with the ones living outside of them (Philippi 70).

All translations from German to English belong to the author of this article.

An observer from the Third Reich wrote in 1937, referring to the internal politics of the Saxons and to the internal conflicts within the Ethnic Group, between the circle of Fritz Fabritius and that of the more radical Alfred Bonfert: “He heard with his own ears how Fabricius [sic] priests read from the pulpit small articles from ‘Schwarzer Korps’ and then made them ludicrous in a derogatory or slobbering way” (“Abschrift des Schreibens”).

Zach erroneously quotes the article as being dated 20 July 1933.

Literally: home in the Reich. Nazi initiative, destined to resettle ethnic Germans from Central and South Eastern Europe in the Third Reich.

Heinrich Zillich, Transylvanian Saxon writer, strong supporter of National-Socialism. After World War II, he was active in the Landsmannschaft (Association) of the Transylvanian Saxons in Germany, and went on advocating far-right views and opinions.

Hans Otto Roth, conservative Transylvanian Saxon politician, close to the traditional ecclesiastical and industrial elites.

In original: “Soldaten der deutschen Wehrmacht im Gottesdienst.”

Already in 1933, one could read in a short notice that on stormy days, Hitler used to read for hours and hours Luther's (!) Bible (“Hitler und die Bibel”). In the issue from 19 March 1940, the end of one of Hitler's discourses was reproduced, as it was deemed to be a “great allegiance of faith” (Hitler, “Und wenn die Welt…”). The text was also published in the April issue of the supplement Die Junge Gemeinde, whose target readership were young Transylvanian Saxons. Furthermore, on 28 May of the same year a short excerpt from Mein Kampf was published, meant to prove that whoever is attacking the dogma of the church serves to its destruction (Hitler, “Vom Dogma der Kirche”).

For example, in the issue from 7 January 1941 one could read an article written by Otto Folberth, referring to the Germans as the “Saving Army.” The text recalled the days from September 1916, when the Romanian army was threatening to attack Transylvania and it was “clear what destiny was awaiting the German inhabitants of Transylvania.” Puzzlingly, taking into consideration the political and military situation of the time, the Romanians were consistently referred to as the “enemy.” No reference was made to the Hungarian population of Transylvania. The article is written in a kitschy obsolete-romanticist literary style: the author starts by describing the discouraging situation of the Transylvanian Saxons once the Romanians declared war to Germany and the Habsburg Empire. People were running away from the advancement of the Romanian armies, the lack of hope was ubiquitous within the Saxon community. The author describes a religious service in Mediasch, offering a desperate account of the situation: people praying on their knees for a miracle to come. Of course, the miracle did come: three Prussian officers suddenly appeared, prefiguring the arrival of the German troops. The end of the article has something of an apotheosis: “The miracle had happened: from that moment on, German soldiers were defending the native soil of the oldest German colonists” (Folberth).

The other reasons detected by Milata are also worth mentioning: pragmatism – strongly connected with the poor prestige of the Romanian army among the Saxons and with the widespread perception of it as an army where ethnic Germans are treated as second-class soldiers –, anti-Bolshevism, the obvious consent of the Romanian authorities to the recruitment, and the assimilationist pressures of the Romanian state in the inter-war period (Milata 174–214).

Being a post factum source, Schlattner's novel is a good example of a cultural memory product. It's a semi-biographical, semi-fictional literary work. Without wanting to enter an intricate debate regarding the relationship between literary products and historiography, I deem Schlattner's (historical) novel to be usable for my analysis. First of all, the author is a first-hand witness of the events, hence the biographical aspect of his work. Secondly, his work was not considered to be biased in terms of the depiction of the historical events. Literary theorist Ann Rigney analyzes a novel by Kurt Vonnegut, Slaughterhouse-Five (on the bombing of Dresden in World War II), pinpointing its flaws in terms of the relationship with historical truth and reaching the conclusion that a literary work can play a number of roles in the “ongoing production of collective remembrance”: relayers of knowledge, catalysts of interest, objects of remembrance, benchmarks for future critical rewriting of history (Rigney 22). The work by Schlattner definitely plays these roles in the production of a Transylvanian Saxon collective memory and as such it is worth being investigated. Further on, I cross-check the findings from Schlattner's novel with other, more “classical” historical sources, in order to back up my argument.

Horowitz remarks: “Many old identities are in the process of being slowly abandoned for new, and for this reason more than one identity is often claimed” (“Ethnic Identity” 118).

See also, historian Sabine Liebig's notes about the journey undergone by a Transylvanian Saxon woman she interviewed to Hitler's Germany: “In 1936 Mrs. B traveled without any fear to Germany, by herself – because for her it was the safest place on earth, inhabited by the most honest people – so she had learned in Transylvania and this is why she rapidly engaged in discussions with all possible people, whom she approached very openly. In the train – as a German from abroad she received a 60% discount on German railways – she met officers, whom she greeted with her habitual ‘Grüß Gott!,’ whereon one of them retorted: ‘Here, this is called ‘Heil Hitler!’” (Liebig 69).

The German Youth (Deutsche Jugend) was founded on 1 March 1939 and, from 15 October 1940 the “official duty” of membership was introduced for boys between 10 and 18 years old and for girls aged between 10 and 21 (H. Roth, “Die ‘Deutsche Jugend’ 61–62).