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Romania Historical and Geographical Distribution
In the region of the Old Kingdom, the population has
traditionally been fairly homogeneous, with many areas 100
percent
Romanian. The notable exceptions are Dobruja and the major
towns in
northern Moldavia, as well as Bucharest. Dobruja was an
ethnic
melting pot, where in the 1980s the Romanian component was
estimated at less than 50 percent; it also had large
representations of Bulgarians, Tatars, Russians, and
Turks. Most of
the Jewish population settled in Moldavia, first arriving
from
Poland and the Austro-Hungarian Empire in the nineteenth
century.
By 1912 there were some 240,000 Jews in the Old Kingdom
region
alone. At that time they constituted a majority in the ten
northernmost towns of Moldavia. Some of the dwindling
Jewish
population continued to live in that region in the late
1980s--
scattered in small communities of less than 2,000,
including some
as small as 30-40 members. The largest segment of the
Jewish
population--some 17,000 people--lived in Bucharest, as did
approximately 200,000 Hungarians and a large number of
Gypsies, who
had given up their nomadic lifestyle.
Historically the most ethnically diverse regions were
the
former Hungarian territories in the northwest, which
encompass more
than one-third of Romania's total area, stretching from
the deep
curve of the Carpathians to the borders of Hungary and
Yugoslavia
(see
fig. 4). This part of Romania, most often referred to
simply
as Transylvania, in fact also includes the Maramures,
Crisana, and
Banat regions. These areas were settled by two distinct
Hungarian
groups--the Magyars and the Szeklers. The Magyars arrived
in 896,
and shortly thereafter the Szeklers were settled in
southeastern
Transylvania. Although they were of peasant origins,
Szeklers were
never serfs and in fact enjoyed a fair amount of feudal
autonomy.
Many were granted nobility by the Hungarian king as a
reward for
military service. Awareness of a separate status for the
Szeklers
still exists among other Hungarians and Szeklers alike.
The
Szeklers are regarded as the best of the Hungarian nation;
the form
of Hungarian they speak is considered to be the purest and
most
pleasant. These two groups are further differentiated by
their
religion, as most Szeklers are Calvinist or Unitarian,
whereas the
majority of Hungarians are Roman Catholic. Despite
cultural
distinctions, Szeklers, numbering between 600,000 and
700,000,
consider themselves to be of purely Hungarian nationality.
The ethnic German component of the population is also
concentrated in Transylvania and is divided into two
distinct
groups--the Saxons and the Swabians. The Saxons arrived in
the
twelfth and thirteenth centuries at the invitation of the
Hungarian
kings. They came primarily from the Rhineland (and so were
actually
not Saxons but Franks) and settled in fairly compact areas
in the
south and east of Transylvania. Like the Szeklers, the
Saxons were
frontier people tasked with defending the region against
Turks and
Tatars. They were granted a fair degree of political
autonomy and
control over their internal affairs. In addition, they
were given
a land base over which they had complete administrative
authority.
The area, known as Sachsenboden (Saxon Land), was a sort
of
national preserve, which was protected from political
encroachment
by other groups. This circumstance, coupled with their
early
predominance in small-scale trade and commerce,
established the
Saxons in a superordinate position, which helped to ensure
their
ethnic survival in a polyethnic environment.
Although there were no large exclusively German
enclaves to
sustain group solidarity, they were the dominant group in
many
areas, and cities founded on Saxon trade emerged with a
distinctively German character. By far the most important
factor in
the preservation of their ethnic identity was their
adoption of the
Lutheran religion in the mid-sixteenth century.
Subsequently, Saxon
community life was dominated by the Lutheran Church, which
controlled education through parochial schools in the
villages. Few
Hungarians and Romanians in Transylvania converted to
Lutheranism.
The church became a cultural link to Germany and remained
so until
after World War II. Thus for centuries the Saxons of
Transylvania
were fairly well insulated both politically and culturally
from
their Hungarian and Romanian neighbors.
The Swabians, who are the German population in the
Banat
region, contrast sharply with the Saxons. They arrived in
Romania
much later--in the eighteenth century--from the
Wuerttemberg area.
They were settled in the Banat by the Austrians and have
traditionally been involved in agriculture. Unlike the
Saxons, they
did not convert to Lutheranism but remained Catholic.
The Magyars politically dominated Transylvania until
the
nineteenth century, despite the fact that Romanians
constituted the
majority. Although the Saxons and Szeklers were permitted
local
administrative autonomy, the Hungarian nobility filled the
main
political and administrative positions. In contrast, the
Romanian
majority formed a distinct underclass. They were much less
urbanized than the Hungarians or Germans. Most were
peasants, and
the majority of those were enserfed and had little or no
formal
education. Furthermore, whereas most of Transylvania's
Hungarians
and Germans are Roman Catholic or Protestant and are
thereby more
Western-oriented, the great majority of Romanians belong
to the
Eastern Orthodox Church.
The ethnic Gordian knot of Transylvania, intricately
bound with
several religious affiliations and complicated by separate
social
and economic niches, was made even more complex by the
desire of
both Hungary and Romania to control and claim the region.
Throughout the nineteenth century, while Romanians in the
Old
Kingdom continued to strive for unification of the three
Romanian
lands--Moldavia, Walachia, and Transylvania--their
brethren across
the Carpathians were the primary target of a Magyarization
policy
that aspired to integrate Transylvania into Hungary.
The unification of Transylvania with the Kingdom of
Romania in
1918 deeply affected the region's ethnic structure.
Approximately
one-fifth of the Magyar population departed immediately
for
Hungary, and those ethnic Hungarians who remained had
their land
expropriated and redistributed to Romanian peasants.
Hungarian
administrative and political dominance was swept aside,
and a
Romanian bureaucracy was installed. At the same time--and
perhaps
the most shattering blow--Romanian replaced Hungarian as
the
official language of the region.
The position of the German population in Transylvania
was much
less immediately damaged. Although the Saxons did
eventually lose
their communal land holdings, their private property was
not
confiscated. In Saxon enclaves, they retained control over
education and internal affairs as well as cultural
associations and
still held economic advantages. The ability of the Germans
to
maintain their ethnic identity was not seriously hampered
until
after World War II, when all Germans were retroactively
declared
members of the Nazi Party. On that basis, they were
initially
excluded from the National Minorities Statute of 1945,
which
guaranteed equal rights to Hungarians and other ethnic
minorities.
A considerable portion of the German population--about
100,000--
fled to Germany or Austria as the German forces retreated
in 1944.
Some 75,000 Romanian Germans were subsequently deported to
warreparations labor camps in the Soviet Union. Many died
there and
many, rather than return to Romania after their release,
chose
Germany or Austria instead. By 1950 the ethnic German
element was
half its prewar level, and those German Romanians who did
stay
suffered the immediate expropriation of their lands and
business
enterprises. Some 30,000 Swabians from the Banat region
were
resettled to the remote eastern Danube Plain. Moreover,
the
remaining German population, like all other national
minorities,
began the struggle for ethnic survival against a new
force, as
communist power was consolidated.
Data as of July 1989
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