Germanitate şi autoimagine naţională. un studiu comparativ privind receptarea reformei lingvistice iosefine
Germanity and Self-image: A Comparative Survey Regarding the Reception of the Josephinist Linguistic Reform

Summary/Abstract: The imposition of a pragmatic linguistic reform, expected to work in favor of a better functioning of the Hapsburg empire lead to different reactions at a provincial level. Our interests consist in the comparison between two reference cases (the German ethnics from Transylvania and Bohemia) with regard to the fore mentioned reform and the long term image of the emperor. Despite the common origins, the conclusion of the study exposes two manners in which these German political-ethnic groups recollected the reformist times. If from a historiographic point of view, the Transylvanian Saxons saw the reform under discussion aimless, even dangerous for their privileged position within the province, the Czech Germans, trying to fight back pan-Slavism, later, instrumented Josephinist reforms in pro-Germanic nationalistic sense. As a consequence of the reforms, the Transylvanian Saxons came with a lasting counter-image to the one promoted by the imperial propaganda, while the Czech Germans appropriated the image of the The Emperor of the People later embezzling and turning it into a different one, namely that of The Emperor of the German People. Accordingly the memory of the emperor’s reformism depends deeply on the realities it changed and the effects of the reforms in the community’s micro level.

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