1867-1920 1940-1944






Transylvania, 1918-1940



In the Proclamation of Alba Julia (Dec. 1st 1918) the ethnic groups living in Transylvania were promised freedom of religion, the right to be educated, governed and judged in their own language, by their own teachers, representatives, judges. Representation was to be proportional. Freedom of the press and of assembly was to be granted. The proclamation further urged a land reform which would grant every peasant a farm of his own (which would come at the expense of the ethnic Hungarian nobility).
The German community of Transylvania, the latter in the Declaration of Mediasch on January 8th 1919, also opted for annexion to Romania, expecting political autonomous status of Transylvania within the Kingdom of Romania. Transylvania's Hungarians, in an assembly at Cluj Dec. 22nd 1918, reaffirmed their desire for Transylvania to remain part of Hungary.
Meanwhile, Hungary experienced the phase of a Soviet government and a period of Red Terror (April-August 1919), which was ended by a Romanian invasion of Hungary. The Peace of Trianon 1920 awarded Transylvania to Romania.

The Land Reform was implemented in 1918-1921; 310,583 peasants (of whom 227,000 were ethnic Romanians, 82,000 ethnic Hungarians) received farms - at the expense of estate owners, mainly the Hungarian nobles and the established churches (Hungarian, Saxon). Transylvania was not treated as one administrative unit; Transylvania's 15 counties, part of Romania's overall 73 counties, were such. Hitherto, there were more and better schools for Transylvania's Hungarians, than for the country's Romanian majority. The Romanian administration worked to address this imbalance; overall, the literacy rate increased. A 1930 census established 3,200,000 Romanians in Transylvania, and 1,350,000 Hungarians, 250,000 Saxons.
Contrary to the principles of the Alba Julia Proclamation (which were hardly mentioned in the Romanian constitution of 1923) Romania, a state modelled after France, was rather centralist. The school systems of the Hungarian and Cerman minorities were affected by the confiscation of land (the revenue of which in the past had been used to finance the schools). Administration officials often came from "Old Romania" and had little sympathy for the minorities.
In Hungary the Horthy administration rejected the conditions of the treaty of Trianon, complained about Romanian maltreatment of her Hungarian minority. On August 20th 1940 - Romania's protector, France, had just surrendered to the German forces - Romania found herself compelled to cede most of Transylvania to Hungary.


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EXTERNAL
LINKS 		Article Transylvania, from Wikipedia
History of Cluj-Napoca, from Wikipedia
The Transylvania Saxons, from genealogy.net
The History of Transylvania and the Transylvanian Saxons, by Konrad Gündisch, 114 K (focusses much on the settlement history; ch. 6 : Part of Greater Romania
www.statoids.com : Romania, Hungary
DOCUMENTS Transylvania's Situation in 1918 in Documents, from The Great Union of the Romanians, 1st December 1918, posted by CIMEC
Law regarding the Union of Transilvania, the Banat, Crisana, The Satmar and Maramures with the old Kingdom of Romania, 1918, from The Great Union of the Romanians, 1st December 1918, posted by CIMEC
Resolution of the National Assembly in Alba Iulia Dec. 1st 1918, from The Great Union of the Romanians, 1st December 1918, posted by CIMEC
REFERENCE Peter F. Sugar (ed.), A History of Hungary, Indiana Univ. Press 1990, 432 pp.
Isrvan Lazar, Transylvania - a Short History, Safety Harbor : Ingram 1997, 274 pp.
Milton G. Lehrer, Transylvania. History and Reality, Bartleby Press 1986 [G]
Sandor Biro, The Nationlities Problem in Transylvania, 1867-1940, (1992) posted by Hungarian History, online book
Elemer Illyes, National Minorities in Romania. Change in Transylvania (1982), posted by Hungarian History, online book


This page is part of World History at KMLA
First posted May 3rd 2006, last revised on June 5th 2006

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