From Disadvantage to Advantage
German Minority in Transilvania

By

Emese Biro	Mate David Tamaska

We are in the newly renovated room of the Deutsches Demokratischen Forum (Demokratical Forum of Germans) in Kolozsvar (Cluj-Napoca), in the heart of Rumania. Participants, who speak different languages such as German, Rumanian, Hungarian, are celebrating the 100th lecture of the eight years old German folkhighschool in Kolozsvar.

Not only the German minority is represented on the celebration, the sympathizers of other nationalities have also came. Well, today the German culture becomes an important part of the Transilvanian. However, after the II. World War, according to the "collective sin" attributed to them, the German population of Transilvania nearly destroyed. Half of the German speaking inhabitants were deported to forced work to the former Soviet Union.

F.K. was at that time 14 years old. That was a terrible period. "One day my father didn't come home and we saw, that all of the women and men were collected to be taken away. When my mother realized, what is happening, she broke her leg, so that she could not be taken by the Russians".

The German schools had been closed, the German churches, the basic organizations and the members of the saxisch-german folk lost their properties. The process of the "ethnical cleaning began. German villages became empty, so Rumanian people from outside Transilvania were brought in the place of the German inhabitants.

Even years later, when some of the German people could return, they didn't get their houses. Moreover, it became necessary for them to hide their nationality for about 10 years until the Romanian communist state began to accept the rights of the German minority, of course, in a communist way.

Poor, the present leader of the Germans from Transilvania tells about this "freedom": "In that time we had some privileges. There were some schools, not enough, but the best pupils could learn in their mother tongue. If you consider the really bad political situation in Rumania at that time, especially the dictatorship of Ceausescu, we must say, it was OK."

The reason why the life of the German-speaking inhabitants became normal, was the so-called "German miracle". In the 1960's started the big emigration of the Rumaniandeutschen. The German government, that needed workers for its' fast developing economy, paid from 6000 to 10000 DM for every German person from Rumania, for the highly educated even more. K. J. noticed ironically: Well, Ceausescu realized, that it is worthier to educate German people than to grow pigs, because it brings more money."

However, the emigration reached its' highest point after the revolution in 1989. Whole German villages decided to leave the country. That happened in spite of the fast developing self-organization of the German minority, encouraged by the democratic change.

On the other hand, it is to be seen that people who didn't want or had no courage to show their minority in the hard times, and were more or less assimilated, came back to the German minority. In the German Democratical Forum in Kolozsvar, even than the official language is, of course, German, other languages are also spoken.

R.Z. has been born in Sathmar (the North-Western part of Rumania), than she moved to Kolozsvar. She speaks better Hungarian than German. Now she is watching only German television programs, as well as studying geography in the German department of the Babes-Bolyai University in Kolozsvar. Her grandmother and most of her relatives live in Germany. However, she decided not to leave her homeland in favour to the "motherland", Germany.

Young and old people, Germans, Hungarian and Romanian visit together the activities of the organizations in the whole Transilvania. However the number of the members of the German minority in Transilvania has never been so small (approximately 80-100 thousand), the situation of the German minority is more and more favourable. This can be attributed to the sympathy toward German language and culture, and, important to mention, to the economical interests of the Romanian State towards Germany. Moreover, considering the tradition of bringing up educated people, and its highly active social life, we can predict that the new organizations, established after 1989 will be successful in the next century.