Oszkar Mailand and the Romanian Curse
Oszkar Mailand and the Romanian Curse

Summary/Abstract: In 1891 an interesting article about the Romanian curse, entitled Der Fluch in der siebenbürgisch-rumänischen Volkspoesie (The Curse in the Transylvanian Traditional Poetry), appeared in Leipzig in the prestigious journal Zeitschrift für Volkskunde, edited by Dr. Edmund Veckenstedt. The author, a Hungarian scholar from 19th-century Transylvania, published the article in the same issue of the renowned journal in which other Transylvanian Saxon scholars published their studies on Romanian traditions. The present paper aims to be a critical look at Oskar Mailand’s article, whose existence is known but whose content is quasi-unknown due to the fact that access to foreign journals was almost impossible in the past. What is certain, however, is that the Transylvanian scholars of the 19th century, both Saxon and Hungarian, placed Romanian culture on the European map, a merit that cannot be disputed.

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