Pogromurile din Bucovina si Dorohoi • The Pogroms of Bukovina and Dorohoi

 

Carmen Tagsorean, PhD Candidate, "Babes-Bolyai" University of Cluj-Napoca:
HE LIVED TO WRITE, HE WROTE TO LIVE – MARIUS MIRCU
Abstract: Some of the most important names of Romanian cultural life belong to the writers of the Jewish community. Whether we refer to the interwar or postwar period, their talent is illustrated both in the press and in the literature of the time. One of the existential dilemmas they had to face was that of their double identity. They belonged to the Jewish community, but, at the same time, to the Romanian society. Many of the Jewish writers put their thoughts on paper either in Romanian or in German (the Jews from Bukovina). Although slightly known in 2014’s Romania, but highly valued and praised in Israel where he was nicknamed "the senior of the Romanian writers", the journalist and writer Marius Mircu was part of the elite group of Jewish intellectuals. His contribution to the preservation of the Jewish history in Romania (nineteenth and twentieth centuries) is still valued by the Jewish community. Marius Mircu’s cultural identity has been created by the blending of three cultures: Jewish, Romanian, and French (he lived and studied in France between 1929 and 1932). Through this study we aim to clarify if the writer was haunted by the anxieties of his cultural identities.

 

Conclusions: Romanians, as well as the Jews in Romania, were really fortunate to have in their service a personality so complex and well-balanced as Marius Mircu. Born and raised in a bicultural community (half Romanian and half Jewish), Marius Mircu learned from early childhood integration and assimilation that over time turned him into a personality with a great potential to represent both cultures in his writings. His dual identity was not a handicap for him; on the contrary, it gave him a vantage point from which he was able to observe, to extract the essential and to give back a wise and colorful picture of the humanity he lived in. He built a bridge between the two communities, dedicating his talent and energy to the cause of love and understanding among peoples. He did it in both languages, for both cultures. A gifted human being, he lived to write and he wrote to live.

Courtesy: Biblioteca Digitala a Bucurestilor

ÉMANCIPATION - Êtes-vous (aussi) de Czernowitz? • EMANCIPATION - Are you (also) from Czernowitz?

 

 

For his lifetime achievements Charles Rosner (1941 - 2013) was awarded by the French Republic with the National Order of the Legion of Honour, the highest decoration in France. At the award-giving ceremony in Monaco in 2001 Charles Rosner was not yet aware, that he would later write his memoirs. But his award-receiving speach anticipated this exercise. After the usual courtesy formulas, he came to say the following:

"This hour is my hour... and I dedicate it to Memory. Memory of the Past, to start with my parents. It is of good taste to mention one’s parents on similar occasions. As for me, it is neither tradition nor good taste, which drive me: it is the emotion. An emotion that grips the chest of the only son I was, with what I know of the history of my family, and with the memory of the sacrifices that my parents so naturally carried out, without even thinking of it, so that I could live a different life than the one they had known... My parents, who would have been so proud to be there today, on such an occasion. To my father and mother I say: this medal and this acknowledgement are yours!

Memory of the Past, also, with my 'friends for fifty years': you, whom I met in sixth grade at the Lyceum and who became my brothers and my family in France for so many years. Memory of the Past, as well, with all those I admired and who taught me so much. You were the spiritual parents of a part of myself, for some during my childhood, for others when already an adult, in both my private and professional lives. Today, I want to thank you, even if you cannot hear me.And Memory of the Present, to start with my wife Marie-France. When we met, I had already struck out any positive development for my private life. It’s thanks to you, and even more so, that we have been able to build a family and a home of which we can be proud. And it’s together that we struggled and made the most of it; it’s together that we traveled; it’s together that we conquered new horizons each time. And it’s together that we confronted the happiness and misfortunes of life. To you, my partner, I say: This medal is yours! And you gave me a new family, to start with 'Belle-Maman': as I often say, I wish to every man to understand as well with his mother-in-law as I enjoy understanding with mine! This new and enlarged family that 'Beau-Papa' envelops into a Provencal sunshine, and of which the new generation symbolizes so well the children of the 'Good Book'! To you, Marie-France, I again say: this medal is yours! Memory of the Present also, with all my friends and colleagues at work. In a few months, it will be thirty years that we reciprocally accept and appreciate each other. Sometimes, this was a difficult exercise for me, but always an exciting one, an exercise having its tense and satisfactory moments, as well as its times of common efforts. Together, we represent our Great Firm in the world. And, if I sometimes have a feeling that I gave a lot, I know that the reverse is also true. […]

To all of you, friends and colleagues from the past and the present, I say: Thank you! And finally, Memory for the Future, for my children. May this ceremony, and the recognition it represents for me, the son of immigrants and an immigrant myself, remain in your memory. To you, my three children, I say: always give the best of yourself, live consciously, and this medal will be yours!"

Courtesy: David Rosner 

Der Franziszeische Kataster im Kronland Bukowina • The Land Register of Francis I in the Crownland of Bukovina

 

The Land Register of Francis I (1817 – 1861) is a comprehensive cartographical and statistical documentation of the natural, economic and social circumstances surrounding the Habsburg monarchy in the first half of the 19th century.  The measurement, soil assessment and earning power of all crown lands and the arrangement in tax districts and 30,556 land registry districts was a great technical and cultural-political achievement at a time after the Napoleonic Wars in which the Austrian monarchy had reached a new low. Since January of 2008 the Universities of Klagenfurt and Innsbruck have been working on a research project (funded with the support of the Austrian Scientific Fund – FWF) whose aim is to scientifically develop and examine the maps and records of the states of Carinthia and Bukovina. [...] 

The layout of the Land Register of Francis I (with its fiscal, judicial and political objectives) sought to bring together the provinces of the union of states into a uniform jurisdiction regarding soil assessment and taxation.  As a basic part of the development of a more or less unified economic area, the “Franziszeische Surveying Unit” in conjunction with the “land registry” and the “soil assessment” had the goal of viewing the “tax assessment” (which did not take place) as an undertaking to reshape a large region economically, administratively and judicially.  For this reason the “land registry” was an important step towards a “modern state” – in the case of the Habsburg monarchy this was definitely without and against the ideological support of nationalism taking place during the start of the 19th century. In its political meaning the research into the land registry has up until now been largely ignored. There has been almost no adequate consideration for the land registry in the overall view of the Austrian management, economic and social history. The missing editorial coverage of the land registry as a source for comparison studies is a drawback whose elimination should provide new impulse to the research with a middle European perspective.

Courtesy: OAPEN Open Access

The Making of Soviet Chernivtsi • National “Reunification,” World War II, and the Fate of Jewish Czernowitz in Postwar Ukraine

Abstract: This dissertation revisits the meaning of Soviet expansion and sovietization during and after World War II, the effects of the war on a multiethnic Central-Eastern European city, and the postwar construction of a national identity. One of several multiethnic cities acquired by the USSR in the course of World War II, modern pre-Soviet Chernivtsi can be best characterized as a Jewish-German city dominated by acculturated Jews until the outbreak of World War II. Yet Chernivtsi emerged from the war, the Holocaust, and Soviet reconstruction as an almost homogeneous Ukrainian city that allegedly had always longed for reunification with its Slavic brethren. Focusing on the late Stalinist period (1940–1953) but covering earlier (1774–1940) and later (1953–present) periods, this study explores the relationship between the ideas behind the incorporation; the lived experience of the incorporation; and the historical memory of the city’s distant and recent past. Central to this dissertation is the fate of the Jewish residents of Czernowitz-Chernivtsi. This community was diminished from an influential plurality to about one percent of the city’s population whose past was marginalized in local historical memory. This study demonstrates a multifaceted local experience of the war which was all but silenced by the dominant Soviet Ukrainian myth of the Great Patriotic War and the 'reunification of all Ukrainian lands.' When the authors of the official Soviet historical and cultural narratives represented Stalin’s annexation as the 'reunification' of Ukraine, they in fact constructed and popularized a new concept of 'historical Ukrainian lands.' This concept—a blueprint for the Soviet colonization of the western borderlands in the name of the Ukrainian nation—tied ethnically defined Ukrainian culture to a strictly delineated national territory. Applied to the new borderlands and particularly to their urban centres characterized by cultural diversity, this policy served to legitimize the marginalization and, in several cases, the violent displacement of ethnic minorities, bringing to an end Jewish Czernowitz."

Courtesy: Dr. Svitlana Frunchak

Für Volkes Ehr' und Wohl! • For Peoples' Honor and Wellbeing!

History of the J.N.A.V. Hasmonaea in Czernowitz by Adolf Koenig (Tel Aviv): "On July 14, 1891 Hasmonaea was founded in Czernowitz. The founding preceded a meeting of several Jewish academicians. In a small room in the dwelling of Chief Rabbi, Dr. Lazar Igel on Landhausgasse, the so-called Boxwood House, opposite the elementary school, a small group of 10 or 12 students, inspired by the Jewish national spirit meet to form a Jewish academic association. The students were: Mayer Ebner, who already as a high school student was the leader of a group which fought against the ruling stream of assimilation, Isak Schmierer who later was chosen as one of the leaders, Philipp Menczel, Julian Sternberg from Suceava and his brother Adolf, Paul Rieber who already at that time was a deep thinker, Blum, Leonhard Gerbel who later studied medicine, Nachum Feuerstein, later a doctor in Czernowitz, Michael Feuerstein who was later know as a 'man of letters' in Austria, Burstyn, the son of the Siret Rabbi, Reinisch Ebner who became a lawyer, Josef Bierer and Siegmund Neuberger who both became doctors in Czernowitz.

Beschreibung der Bukowina • Déscription de la Bukovina • Description of Bukovina

 

"Description of Bukovina following its previous and existing consistency together with the non-binding proposal on how its state constitution up to now may be improved both politically and economically" from the year 1775 was the first account available on the situation the Austrians encountered after their incorporation into the Empire of the area they called Bukovina.

From H. F. van Drunen's thesis "A Sanguine Bunch" we learn as follows: "The author [Baron Gabriel Splény of Miháldy], a high-ranking military official of Magyar noble descent, born in Kassa153 (now Košice, Slovakia) in 1734, was assigned to Bukovina from 1 September 1774 until 6 September 1778. Previously, he had earned an outstanding reputation in the Austrian army, was promoted major in 1759 and major general in 1773. In that same year, Splény accompanied Emperor Joseph II on a trip to Galicia and his knowledge impressed the Emperor to such extent that he was assigned to supervise the occupation and administrative organisation of northern Moldavia, the later Bukovina. [...] The structure of Splény’s report is traditional: the first part is dedicated to the description of the geographical, economical and social circumstances. In this context this is the most relevant part, especially the third chapter which deals with the population. [...] Although they indicated a predominantly Romanian character of the area (Romanians 11,000 families, Ruthenians 1,261, Jews 526, Gypsies 294 and Armenians 58), other sources claim that the majority was indeed Romanian speaking, but that the census simply qualified every Orthodox as Romanian. The debatable results of Splény’s census in comparison to those of Splény’s successor Enzenberg’s efforts are at times attributed to Splény’s alleged lack of knowledge of the region and its inhabitants. More likely, the puzzling results of Splény’s census are the product of a lack of criteria, definitions and terminology. [...] The merit of Splény’s writing in the light of this study lies in the fact that it is the first written account on the state of affairs at the very beginning of Austrian rule over the territory.

Courtesy:  Internet Archive • Bielefeld University

Alma Mater Francisco - Josephina

 

• Honorary doctors, doctors and graduates of the Greek Orthodox Faculty of Theology [121-124]
• Honorary doctors, doctors and graduates of the Faculty of Law and Political Science [124-131]
• Honorary doctors, doctors and graduates of the Faculty of Philosophy [131-133]

Courtesy: Internet Archive