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The history of Romanian dissidence during the Cold War often seems rather barren. Yet, as this article demonstrates, the legacy of Romanian opposition to Cold War communism is vexed with conflicts over ownership in a fragmented circle of... more
The history of Romanian dissidence during the Cold War often seems rather barren. Yet, as this article demonstrates, the legacy of Romanian opposition to Cold War communism is vexed with conflicts over ownership in a fragmented circle of late Cold War era oppositional voices and actors. A daring attempt to cross the Danube by a young Romanian German student in 1970 and an earthquake in the year 1977 provide the historical backdrop to these post-communist internecine battles over opposition and conformity. The prominence of the German-speaking community in these conflicts is not accidental but is itself a commentary on the structural problems related to dissidence in Romania. This article’s focus on specific individuals – Anton Sterbling, Paul Goma, Carl Gibson, Herta Müller – reveals differing interpretations of dissidence and opposition, a diverse social fabric of Romanian dissidence, and a long tail of psychological battles over the memory and the ownership of opposition to Romani...
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Research Interests: Political Science, Cold War, Politics, World War II, German, and 4 moreNazism, Romanian, Homeland, and Routledge
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Romanian Germans, mainly from the Banat and Transylvania, have occupied a place at the very heart of major events in Europe in the twentieth century yet their history is largely unknown. This east-central European minority negotiated... more
Romanian Germans, mainly from the Banat and Transylvania, have occupied a place at the very heart of major events in Europe in the twentieth century yet their history is largely unknown. This east-central European minority negotiated their standing in a difficult new European order after 1918, changing from uneasy supporters of Romania, to zealous Nazis, tepid Communists, and conciliatory Europeans. Migrating Memories is the first comprehensive study in English of Romanian Germans and follows their stories as they move across borders and between regimes, revealing a very European experience of migration, minorities, and memories in modern Europe. After 1945, Romanian Germans struggled to make sense of their lives during the Cold War at a time when the community began to fracture and fragment. The Revolutions of 1989 seemed to mark the end of the German community in Romania, but instead Romanian Germans repositioned themselves as transnational European bridge-builders, staking out ne...
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While Ulrich Beck and Natan Sznaider advocate cosmopolitanism as a way of freeing ourselves from grand narratives and putting the subject back on the agenda of research, this article illustrates that such uses of cosmopolitanism can... more
While Ulrich Beck and Natan Sznaider advocate cosmopolitanism as a way of freeing ourselves from grand narratives and putting the subject back on the agenda of research, this article illustrates that such uses of cosmopolitanism can create more problems than they propose to solve. In the case of the Romanian Banat, the recent revival of a cosmopolitan past based on the legacy of the German and other minorities has been intricately tied up with existing cultural hierarchies. Romania has therefore utilized this past as a way of showing its “western face.“ In the Serbian Banat, by contrast, such a development has not taken place due to the absence of a dialogue with the West. As such, this article demonstrates that cosmopolitanism has become normative in its use and has created problems for both Romanian and Serbian societies.