Germanissimi Germanorum: Romania's Vanishing German Culture
Germanissimi Germanorum: Romania's Vanishing German Culture
Author(s): William C. DowlingSubject(s): Political history, Government/Political systems, International relations/trade, WW II and following years (1940 - 1949), Post-War period (1950 - 1989), Migration Studies, Ethnic Minorities Studies
Published by: SAGE Publications Ltd
Keywords: Romania; Romanian revolution; Ceaușescu regime; ethnic Germans in Romania; exit visa for ethnic Germans; vanishing German culture; post-war period;
Summary/Abstract: In the wake of the Romanian revolution, which has so dramatically removed the obstacles presented by the Ceaușescu regime to German out-migration, the abrupt vanishing of Romania's ethnic German culture might well seem a mere sub-plot in the larger story of German reunification, and in particular of the ingathering of the deutsche Volksgruppe stranded after World War II in areas outside either West or East Germany: the more than three million ethnic Germans residing in the Soviet Union, in the areas of western Poland corresponding to the old Reich provinces of Pomerania and Silesia, in cultural pockets of Hungary, Czechoslovakia, and Yugoslavia, and in the Banat and Transylvanian regions of Romania. Yet the current abandonment of Romania by increasing numbers of its two hundred thousand remaining ethnic Germans is in reality the conclusion of a story that pre-dates either the Romanian revolution or the reunification of Germany. [...]
Journal: East European Politics and Societies
- Issue Year: 05/1991
- Issue No: 02
- Page Range: 341-355
- Page Count: 15
- Language: English
- Content File-PDF