A deconstruction story: Property, memory, and temporality in a Transylvanian village

ABSTRACT

The paper explores how the reconstruction of a Baroque castle in Transylvania became an indirect strategy to speed up its restitution to the former owners. It also analyses the reactions that this reconstruction and the request for its restitution triggered among the inhabitants of the multi-ethnic village where the castle is located. The castle used to belong to a famous Hungarian aristocratic family but became nationalized as state property under the post-1945 communist regime. Drawing on archival and ethnographic research, I argue that the debates around the legal status and cultural value of the Bánffy castle reveal how various actors, ranging from the NGO experts, the lawyers supporting the heir, the state institutions, the local authorities, and the villagers engaged with one another in a struggle about meaning and value that was carried out through a struggle over competing temporalities. All of these actors strategically carved up the past, seeking particular historical periods that would ground and justify their own (legal or symbolical) claims over the castle. In response to the calls of external actors to remember a history that did not exist, such as an idyllic narrative of mutual cooperation between the castle and the village before the communist period, the villagers strategically used the divide between communism and postcommunism. They did so to both justify their past actions, including their alleged participation in the castle’s ruination, as morally sound, and to reject foreign experts’ attempts to idealize the interwar period and deny any value to the communist times.

KEYWORDS:

• Property
• memory
• post-communism
• built heritage
• Romania

Acknowledgement

I would like to thank foremost to the many people in Bontida whom I met in summer and early Fall 2007, and who shared their stories, insights, jokes, and precious time with me. For helpful criticism and comments on earlier drafts of the article, I am grateful to Katherine Verdery, Doug Rogers, Josh Reno, Andrew McGee, Donald Sutton, and the participants in the works-in-progress seminar in the History department at Carnegie Mellon University, where I presented this work. Special thanks go to Britt Halvorson, who read earlier versions of this work and offered brillant suggestions and encouragement. I also thank Davig Henig, the editor of the journal, for his flexibility, and the anonymous reviewers for the journal for their insightful feedback.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1 July 6, 2007. I conducted fieldwork in Bonţida for almost four months, between July and end of September 2007. I talked at length to local Romanians, Hungarians, and Roma, as well as the foreign experts working for the NGO rebuilding the castle (a total of thirty-seven interviewees, many of whom I met and talked more than once). Due to the sensitive topic of the castle, I did not record these conversations, but I took extensive notes during and immediately after the conversations. All of the names used in this paper are pseudonyms.

2 Conversation, the INTBAU Conference on "History, Heritage and Regeneration," Sibiu, September 23-25, 2007.

3 The INTBAU conference, Sibiu, September 2007.

4 Fieldnotes, August 9, 2007.

5 For another case of local corruption, see Katherine Verdery’s analysis (2003) of the schemes that the local mayor in a different Transylvanian appealed to in order to intervene in the land restitution and keep the best land for himself and his acolytes.

6 Cluj, August 6, 2007.

7 Fieldwork notes, Bonţida, July 15, 2007.

8 Fieldnotes, July 31, 2007.

9 Fieldnotes, September 16, 2007.

10 In 1912, the Bánffy domain included approximately 70% the total land of Bonţida, whereas the peasants had owned the rest. After the land reform, in 1928, the Bánffy land covered only 17%, while the rest of the land had been distributed to peasants (Spânul 1928, 12).

11 According to one of my interviewees, around 20 Jewish families lived in the village before 1944. September 16, 2007. In May 1944, during the Hungarian administration of Northern Transylvania, the region’s Jews were brought the Cluj ghetto, and from there shipped to Auschwitz. Bontida’s Jews were not among the survivors. Very few people remembered their former Jewish neighbors.

12 ‘Scrisoarea contesei Aranka Varady catre contele Miklos Banffy,’ Cluj, 7 decembrie 1946, National Archives Cluj branch, Fond CC al PCR 1, 9/1946, 46-47. In (Andreescu, Nastasã, and Varga 2001, 454–455).

13 August 25, 2007.

14 As early as 1947, the Union of ethnic Hungarians of Romania tried to alert the regional authorities about the Bánffy castle’s precarious condition. However, the local officials dismissed such concerns. Archives of the National Institute of Patrimony, Fond of the Commission of Historical Monuments, file 3843 (no page number).

15 Conversation with the retired Calvinist pastor, who had lived in Bontinda between early 1950s and late 1980s. He moved to Cluj-Napoca upon his retirement. Cluj, August 1, 2007.

16 Authorization nr. 1329 of February 8, 1971. ‘Memoriu Justificativ, Castelul Bánffy din comuna Bonţida, judetul Cluj,’ Octombrie 1968. I thank Architect Dávid Gyula for proving me with a copy of this document.

17 The Archives of the City Hall, Cluj-Napoca. People’s Council of Cluj county, the Executive Committee, Decision nr. 745, December, 28, 1970.

18 Fieldnotes, August 28, 2007.

19 Bonţida, August 27, 2007. Another villager, a well-situated ethnic Romanian, told me that the Roma were putting nails into the taller trees to go up to cut the branches. Once the branches were cut off, then the staff at the local Forestry office (Ocolul Silvic) could obtain approval to cut down the tree.

20 For similar arguments about the socialist states in the region, see (Kligman and Verdery 2011) for Romania and (Creed 1997) for Bulgaria.

21 July 29, 2007.

22 In some cases, under extraordinary circumstances, artists turned these abandoned factories into sites of cultural and social experimentation. See, for instance, the famous Fabrica de Pensule in the Cluj industrial region, which between 2009 and 2019 became an internationally famous art hub. (It closed in 2019 due to tensions among the stakeholders.)

23 September 17, 2007.

24 September 16, 2007.

25 Fieldnotes, September 18, 2007.

26 Dana Curcea, « Cronologie: Închiderea fabricii Nokia-Jucu, la 4 ani şi jumătate de la semnarea actului de înfiinţare, » September 29, 2011, www.mediafax.ro.

27 As of this writing, the festival was postponed until 2021 due to the 2020 pandemic. Raisa Humeniuc, ‘Primul an fără Electric Castle pune dezvoltarea localităţii Bonţida pe pauză. Cât pierd localnicii,’ June 4, 2020, www.mediafax.ro

28 Edmont Lenarth interviewed in ‘Omul care aduce artiștii la Electric Castle în fiecare an.’ Monitorul de Cluj, July 12, 2017.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by Horace H. Rackham School of Graduate Studies, University of Michigan [Grant Number Summer grant for dissertation research].