Dietmar Muller Orientalism and Nation

East Central Europe 36 (2009) 63–99 brill.
nl/eceu
Orientalism and Nation: Jews and Muslims as

Alterity in Southeastern Europe in the Age of
Nation-States, 1878–1941
Dietmar Müller
University of Leipzig
Abstract
The process of assigning the place for Jews in the Romanian nation code and for (Albanian)
Muslims in the Serbian one is analyzed as Orientalistic. While the Great Powers served as role
models in the Romanian and Serbian identity construction, these principal Others were repre-
sented as uncivilized and non-European, preventing the nation-states from their European des-
tiny. This discursive construction of the nation in major debates is identified as a first step which
was followed by policy recommendations from intellectuals and actual attempts to fulfill the
dream of an ethnically homogenous nation-state. This sequence’s latter parts are represented by
a number of case studies, such as citizenship regulations in the Constitution and other laws, the
possibilities for representing political interests and cultural rights for Jews and Muslims, coloni-
zation projects in Kosovo and Dobrudja, and measures to “protect Romanian labor”.
Keywords
Orientalism, nation-code, Jews, Muslims, Romania, Serbia
Since the 1990s the citizen has become a favorite figure in the social sciences.1
One of the main topics of this fast growing body of literature is both the inclu-
sion and exclusion which is embodied in the notion and the social practice of
citizenship. Which person belongs to a state and is thereby part of the political
body as the sole origin of legitimate state authority and how a foreigner can
enter this body is defined by the institution of citizenship (Grawert 1987:
664). This continuous process of defining the political body can be under-
stood as the most important expression of a specific notion of the nation, as
1)
For the vast body of citizenship literature and a more detailed account of much of the addressed
issues, see Müller 2005a.
© Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, 2009 DOI 10.1163/187633009X411485

64 D. Müller / East Central Europe 36 (2009) 63–99
an historically grown and changing notion of national identity (Gosewinkel

1995: 533). Despite influential books on nation and nation-building which
stressed the longue durée character and the constructivity of this process, which
started from an ethnical center in Western Europe as well (Connor 1978,
2002), there is still the assumption present in part of the literature of
a fundamental West-East divide: Whereas in Western Europe the notion of
the nation is supposed to be a political one, in Eastern Europe the nation
is defined along ethnical lines. True, my case studies from Romanian and
Serbian/Yugoslav nation-building processes indicate an ethnonational pattern
since some groups of persons could not be part of the nation respectively
could not be citizens with full citizenship rights later due to their ascribed
ethno-ontological characteristics. However, the Southeastern European post-
Ottoman states in the late 19th century did not differ essentially from their
Western European role models in respect to the ethnonational basis of their
would-be nation-states, but only insofar as they started such an endeavor—in
comparison with France, for instance—with a considerable delay. Wolfgang
Reinhard points at the analytically necessary link between state- and nation-
building, since both in the case of the early nation-states were the process
started with the state and ended with the nation (England, France, United
States) and in late nation-states were nationalism led to secession from empires
and, finally, to states the nation-state was the central reference point: “(…)
due to the history of state power a politically mobilized people has no other
choice than to think the own nation in correspondence with its present or
future state; a national consciousness without a nation-state is a mere not yet”
(Reinhard 2000: 442). Charles Tilly, as well, points at ethnicity and national-
ity as ties of existing social relationships which were being incorporated into
the citizenship concept of nation states which is supposed to be ethnically
neutral (Tilly 1995: 9f.). Generally, starting the process of nation-building
from its ethnical margins in opposition to alterity partners seems to be one of
its pertinent patterns. Once the logic of the citizen-nation-legitimacy became
the dominant model in the American and French Revolution, the Eastern
European late comers in the nation-building process could not ignore this
rationale and had to model their constitutions in concordance.
To analyze the underlying logic of the nation and nation-state in Southeastern
Europe, that is, both the institutional framework and the patterns of social
practice, I consider Edward Said’s notion of Orientalism, which has been used
most often up to now predominantly in literary and imagological studies (Said
D. Müller / East Central Europe 36 (2009) 63–99 65
1978).2 Thereby I focus on the place which has been assigned for the Jews in
Romania and the Muslims (predominantly the Albanian Muslims) in Serbia/
Yugoslavia, as this process was shaped by their allegedly uncivilized and non-
European character. Thus, first it is necessary to analyze the discursive construc-
tion of the nation,3 conceptualized as a process which started with dramatizing
alterity towards the principal Other leading to a politicization of ethnicity and
finally, resulting in a homogenous national identity. The discourse’s product
was a nation code, which presumably defined the character of the respective
nation, its territorial borders, and the criteria for belonging to the construed
entity. The nation code, however, is not conceptualized as a stable datum, but
rather as a continuous process providing for a common language and political
field in and on which political deals could be struck. In order to observe and
analyze the nation code and some of its protagonists at work, I focus, finally,
on some political fields in the interwar period such as the representation of
minority interests and parliamentarism, and the attempt to autochthonize
economic sectors or entire regions in interwar Romania and Yugoslavia.
Jews and Muslims as Anomalies in Southeastern Europe in the Age of

Nation-States
Comparing Jews in the Romanian nation code with Muslims/Albanians in the

Serbian nation code is an endeavor which has no face value plausibility and
needs, therefore, a more detailed justification. The discursive construction of
a nation has two interrelated dimensions, identity and alterity, as the Other is
indispensable for identity constructions. Generally, I find it useful to start
with the presumption of positive and negative principal Others resulting in a
triangle of representation and power (Marković n.d.). For the Romanian and
2)
For the concept “Orientalism” in the Southeastern European context see Todorova 1997; Sund-
haussen 1999; Müller 2003. For Orientalisms used with a legitimizing purpose with the South
Slavs and the Ottomans see Bakić-Hayden, Hayden 1992; Bakić-Hayden 1995; Makdisi 2002.
3)
Since it is rather nationalism that produces nations and national identity and not vice versa,
the discursive production of nations needs to be the in the center of attention. I perceive the
relation between discourse and social reality as dialectical: On the one hand, the discourse is
shaped by situations, institutions and social context, on the other hand, the discourse shapes
social reality as well. See Wodak 1998: 42.
Serbian elites the common positive reference would be the German nation
and the French state model, while the negative reference would be the Jews
and the Muslims respectively. There is a strong link between the upper and the
lower levels of this identity construction: the Romanian and Serbian nation-
builders accused the Jews and Muslims, or that is to say their assumed social
behavior and characteristics, for being their societies’ main impediment for
progressing towards the Occident. The Jews and Muslims were held responsi-
ble in several respects for the sorry condition of their “guest countries”. These
assignments of guilt have a structure of argumentation in common, character-
ized as Orientalistic, that essentializes and ontologizes the Occident, the Jews,
and Muslims, where the latter were characterized as non-Europeans, as uncivi-
lized peoples, and definitively, as foreign to the Romanian and Serbian nation.
Due to their obscurantist and anti-Bildung religion and due to their political
culture—as agents and profiteers of multiethnical empires they were described
as profoundly antinational—they were held to be structurally unable to under-
stand, let alone to live according to modernity in its latest shape—the homog-
enous nation-state. Therefore, the Romanian and Serbian intellectuals and
politicians considered themselves perfectly in line with the Occident’s mission
civilisatrice when denying the Jews the citizenship, when driving out Turks
and Albanians, initiating processes to “de-Orientalize” social practices, certain
ethnical and religious groups, or whole provinces. More specifically, the
Romanian legitimizing discourse directed towards the Great Powers ran as
follows: Romanian citizenship could be granted to the Jews only when they
had reached the heights of European culture; in the contrary case, Romania
could not fulfill its mission civilisatrice in the Balkans. Equally Orientalistic
was the Serbian discourse, which claimed as national duty to Europeanize
Muslims and Albanians, or at least the territories inhabited by them.
The Romanian and Serbian Nation Code in the “Long 19th Century”
As indicated above in this study, nation is considered as a specific modern

phenomenon, which developed in Europe after the French Revolution. While
deconstructing the respective nation code is a necessary step in analyzing
the nation, it is, however, only the intellectual aspect of the problem, which
needs to be furthermore grounded by a thorough contextualization and by a
look, as closely as possible, at institutions and agents. There is, of course, a
strong connection between the nation code and the national movement, since
intellectuals and politicians not only defined the nation in the code, but
also outlined some political strategies for the future nation-states as to how
to (re)construct its desired shape.
Following John Breuilly’s structuralist approach towards nationalism,
national movements can be compared with regard to their functions (Breuilly
1982: 103ff.; idem 1996: 146–174). Depending on which function of
nationalism was stressed mostly in the national movements—coordination,
mobilization, legitimation—the strategy of the secession from Empires was
shaped and the governmental nationalism was structured in the emerging
nation-states correspondingly. Both the Romanian and Serbian national
movement had a component which developed its features in the Habsburg
and Ottoman Empires respectively. Whereas the movements in Transylvania
and Vojvodina directed their forces against changes in historical state law and
cultural identity, initiated in Budapest, and soon developed a considerable
power both to coordinating intellectual efforts and to mobilizing the growing
middle class around the issue of “nation,” the movements in Wallachia/
Moldavia and in Serbia remained for a long time an elite phenomenon cen-
tered on legitimization. This was mainly due to the lack of challenge offered
from the Ottoman Empire to the Romanian and Serbian elites to develop a
new language of legitimizing their local power as it has been the case with
Enlightened Absolutism and cultural hegemony of Magyardom in Hungary.
So both the Serbian (1804, 1815) and the Romanian (1821) uprisings were
aiming rather at reestablishing the Old Order than at expressing modern
national desiderata such as political freedom (Bochmann 1979; Sundhaussen
2007). Quite telling for the less developed character of a coordinating and
mobilizing force was the relative ease and speed in which the Revolution of
1848 was suppressed in the Romanian Principalities at the hands of Ottoman
and Russian troops. The national movement in the Principalities and in Serbia
before and after the “Liberation” were articulating their desire for political
autonomy at the address of the European Great Powers as national self-
determination, meaning rather the liberation of further “national” territories
and less political freedom of citizens.
This, of course, well-known finding is nevertheless of great significance
when considering the context in which Romanian and Serbian nationalism
became a mass phenomenon. This was the case in the 1880s, when in France
and Germany liberal thinking and politics came under pressure from anti-
Semitic intellectuals and politicians. Hoping for the benevolent eye of the
Great Powers, this discourse aimed at measures to close the paths for member-
ship in the nation. Southeastern European elites were framing these policies in
Orientalistic forms, describing Jews and Muslims as a perennial threat for
their nation-building processes. It seems to be a general pattern that the pros-

pects for a political notion of the nation and for a multiethnic civil society
were rather bleak when the definition of the nation and the building of a
nation-state coincided with the masses beginning to enter politics. The temp-
tation is too large for agents, both on the state level and in civil society, to
dramatize ethnoreligious alterity and to gain legitimacy thereby. Amongst the
Romanian and Serbian middle class and intelligentsia one can identify the
tendency of perceiving and using the state both as an instrument of nation-
building and as a provider of jobs and protection against competitors (Seton
Watson 1962; Baumann 1987; Müller 2003b).
The crucial years for the Romanian and Serbian nation code and the follow-
ing concept of citizenship, both in respect to Romanian-Jewish and to the
Serbian-Albanian dimension, began with the Berlin Congress 1878.
The agreement signed by the Great Powers at the Berlin Congress, that
made the Romanian sovereignty dependant on the emancipation of its Jewry,
provoked a parliamentary and public debate of hitherto unknown intensity
and length. The Jews found themselves in the center of the emerging nation
code and anti-Semitism became the pattern for explaining almost every bad
aspect of public life. The central element of the alterity-identity construction,
nation code, divided “the Jews” and “the Romanians” into ethnicized groups
bound together by common origin and ontologizing these supposed entities,
that is, providing them with identities unalterable over time and space (Volkov
1978; Holz 2001). Amongst the pairs of uneven opposites on which the sup-
posed ethno-ontological alterity was resting the most prominent was the
dichotomy of Gemeinschaft and Gesellschaft. The second social model, which
was embodied by the Jews, would destroy the first, embodied by the Romanians,
by means of trade, monetarization of the economy, the press, and Liberalism
and Cosmopolitism. This would be an obstacle for a Romanian revitalization
in the shape of the nation-state. The leading intellectuals of the time, such as
Mihai Eminescu, Bogdan P. Haşdeu, Vasile Alecsandri, and Ioan Slavici were
co-authors of the nation code which freed the Romanians entirely from any
responsibility for the sorry condition of their community. According to this
argumentation they were only victims of machinations from foreign powers or
from foreigners within the country. At the end of the debate the possibility of
individual naturalization of non-Christian persons was inserted into the con-
stitution (Art. 7). But the means and procedures for the process were con-
strued in a manner so full of preconditions that until 1912 only 189 Jews
gained Romanian citizenship in this way, whereas ca. 250.000 Jews remained
with the peculiar status of “foreigners without foreign citizenship” (Bernstein
1918: 37ff.).4 Bound to this condition they were obliged to fulfill all civic
duties, like paying taxes and doing national service, while being deprived of all
political rights. A glance at the school policy of all the Romanian governments
since the 1880s reveals the gulf between rhetoric and politics on the naturali-
zation issue (Livezeanu 1995: 34ff., 196ff.). On the one hand, the Romanian
Jews were denied citizenship under the accusation of not being acculturated or
assimilated enough, and yet, high education fees and a quota for Jews were
introduced. Significantly, the Jewish community reacted toward this policy by
creating private schools which used state curricula, and also Romanian as the
language of instruction (Rotman 1999: 93–165).
In the debate regarding how the Great Powers’ expectations were to be met,
there had not only been created a powerful nation code, but also a sociopoliti-
cal model of conduct and interaction which was successfully utilized until
the end of the interwar period. Nationalists in the opposition accused the
government of neglecting the national cause, especially toward the “Jewish
question,” and were thereby able—often in collaboration with some govern-
ing nationalists—to push the government toward more anti-Semitic legisla-
tion. In some cases pressure of this kind resulted in changes in the government,
but more often it incorporated nationalist critics into state institutions. For
the latter case, Nicolae Iorga’s political career is the most telling example.
During his second tenure as Minister for Religious Affairs and Education
(1901–1904), the national-liberal Spiru Haret initiated the journal Sămănătorul
(The Sower), financed it and entrusted its leadership to formerly freelance
intellectuals like Alexandru Vlăhuţă, George Coşbuc and, from 1903 onwards,
to Nicolae Iorga (Ornea 1998: 30, 44, 59ff.). Integrating such writers and
historians, who stressed the importance of peasants and popular culture in the
renaissance of Romanian culture, into state bureaucratic structures was moti-
vated by two goals. Firstly, they could produce material for pedagogical use in
village schools and foster thereby the peasants’ cultural integration into the
Romanian nation. Secondly, the intellectuals’ integration was meant to temper
their aggressive nationalist criticism towards the establishment. This strategy
backfired, in a way, with Nicolae Iorga, because in his case it was not the insti-
tution who changed the man, but rather Iorga who changed the institution.
Due to his initiatives for a growing reputation of Romanian culture and to his
pro-peasant stance in the 1907 jacquerie, Iorga’s influence amongst students
4)
In 1912 another 158 Jews were naturalized mainly due to their residence in Dobrudja (Iancu
1978: 213).
and village intellectuals (priests, teachers) was constantly rising. He was then
able to hijack not only the Sămănătorul but also a second state financed cul-
tural and political organization, namely, the Liga pentru unitatea culturală a
Românilor (The League for the Cultural Unity of the Romanians) (Netea,
Marinescu 1978: 208). Both institutions suffered a decisive turn under Iorga’s
leadership from a moderate nation-building strategy to a populist and anti-
Semitic course. The rationale at that time was very much in accordance with
the nation code of 1878 and would exhibit the following views: The social
disaster in the countryside was due to the Jews’ immoral business practices.
The brutality of the ruling establishment in suppressing the peasant uprising
was a sign of Jewish inspired estrangement from the peasantry. As long as this
was the case, a unification of all Romanian lands would remain a distant goal,
indeed, since the Transylvanian peasants did not feel particularly attracted by
such socioeconomic and political circumstances (Müller 2003b: 237–242).
The significance of Nicolae Iorga’s political career lies in highlighting the pat-
tern of interaction between oppositional and governmental nationalists since
1878. The nation code, with anti-Semitism shared by the largest part of the
political elite, provided for a discursive platform. As long as the negative prin-
cipal Other, the Jew, in the end could be held responsible for all things wrong,
and the social and political status quo was not in danger, then political deals
between governmental and opposition nationalists could easily be struck.
For Serbia the war of 1878, where the Serbians fought side by side with
Russian and Romanian troops against the Ottoman Empire, and the Berlin
Congress were of central importance, as in the Romanian case. The beginning
of a new quality of the Serbian-Albanian history of conflict was marked by the
expulsion of Albanian Muslims from Niš Sandžak which was part and parcel
of the fighting (Clewing 2000: 45ff.; Jagodić 1998; Pllana 1985). Driving out
the Albanians from the annexed territory, now called “New Serbia,” was a
result of collaboration between regular troops and guerrilla forces, and it was
done in a manner which can be characterized as ethnic cleansing, since the
victims were not only the combatants, but also virtually any civilian regardless
of their attitude towards the Serbians (Müller 2005b). The majority of the
refugees settled in neighboring Kosovo where they shed their bitter feelings on
the local Serbs and ousted some of them from merchant positions, thereby
enlarging the area of Serbian-Albanian conflict and intensifying it. After the
Habsburg Empire occupied Bosnia-Herzegovina in 1878 the possible territo-
rial direction of expansion for Serbia was decisively directed towards the south
and southeast, now having territory with a significant Albanian population in
sight. Until then the Serbian nation code had some anti-Ottoman elements. It
lacked, however, an unambiguous anti-Islam attitude which presumably
would have endangered an eventual incorporation of the Slavic Muslim popu-

lation of Bosnia-Herzegovina. Later, the Serbian nation code developed anti-
Muslim elements into a clear-cut anti-Islamism with an Orientalistic structure,
directed predominantly against Albanians.
Since the 1880s one can note a decisive preoccupation in Serbian politics
with Macedonia and Kosovo, hitherto seen as rather mythical lands—terra
incognita. From a discursive angle the process from the Kosovo myth to a
political program and its implementation can be described accordingly as a
process in three steps: first, Serbian intellectuals and politicians actually began
to take account of the demographic structure of the province; second, they
developed arguments for how the demographic situation would justify Serbia’s
historic claim to Kosovo; and third, they proposed quite detailed measures for
the “re-Serbianization” of Kosovo (Milosavljević 2002: 184–320).5 At first
glance, two opposite strategies for Serbianizing Kosovo can be traced. On the
one hand, the Kosovar population was declared as “actual Serbs” who had lost
their true identity under the pressure of Islamicization and Albanization. On
the other hand, the Muslim Albanians were perceived as “radical others” who
had to be cleansed from Serbian lands. The common feature of these two
policy strategies was that it did not allow the Albanians the ability to declare
their ethnicity nor act as loyal citizens after the annexation of Kosovo in the
Balkan Wars 1912/13, and gave the Belgrade elite the authority to ascribe
ethnicity and the ensuing state measures. The fighting tactics of the Serbian
troops in the Balkan Wars can be considered similar to the ethnic cleansing of
1878, but on a larger scale.
The two strategies were based on representing the Albanians in negative
Orientalistic stereotypes which in the eyes of the Serbian elite were apt to
convince the European Powers of the Serbian mission civilisatrice in the
Balkans. Mainly during the Balkan Wars several Serbian intellectuals and poli-
ticians (amongst them the well-known anthropo-geographer Jovan Cvijić)
produced articles and brochures in Western European languages6 that pro-
moted the idea of withholding any degree of civilization and any ability for
a state-building process from the Albanians living in Kosovo and the area
around Durrës. Moreover, they were considered “actual Serbs” and only under
Serbian tutelage could they (again) be elevated to the “heights of European
civilization.”
5)
For prototypes of the new books on Kosovo, see Milojević 1871/1872/1877, Gopcević 1889,
Cvijić 1908.
6)
From the masses of publications I quote only those in Western European languages: Orlovitch
1903, Županić (K. Gersin) 1913, Tomitch 1913, Gopcević 1914, Cvijić 1913.
The assumption that Kosovo’s population was in large part crypto-Serb,

after having been Islamicized and Albanianized in the Ottoman Empire
(the so-called “Arnautaši” idea), soon proved to be propaganda aimed at
legitimizing territorial aspirations (Clewing 2000: 38ff.; Hadži-Vasiljević
1939). After the incorporation of Kosovo into Serbia following the Balkan
Wars, this idea had fallen into oblivion. Had the Serbian political and military
elites themselves believed in the “Arnautaši” idea, the most likely policy
towards the “lost sons” would have been to integrate and reassimilate them.
Granting to them all the rights and freedoms that the Serbs from Serbia already
enjoyed, massive investments into the educational system, and the introdu-
cion of a workable administration in the new province would have been incen-
tives for motivating the crypto-Serbs toward a second conversion. There were,
however, some indications that the Belgrade elites considered the reconversion
of the so-called “Arnautaši” as a process which was never to reach its desired
end. First, the warfare of the regular and irregular Serbian troops in the Balkan
Wars did not distinguish between Albanians and “Arnautaši,” but was rather
meant to clear the territory of all non-Serbs (The other Balkan Wars 1993;
Trotzky 1926/1996; Freundlich 1936). Second, after the integration into
Serbia, a version of the Serbian constitution was introduced in Kosovo, which
was stripped of all participatory and democratic rights for the people, leaving
the province thereby under the rule of the military administration. Finally, an
agrarian reform and colonization scheme was implemented which left the
“Arnautaši” under an agrarian regime which had been constantly denounced
as feudal and non-European by the Serbian elites prior to the Balkan Wars.
Hence, the “re-Serbianization” of Kosovo was devised as a process which
would not be realized through the indigenous people but rather by removing
them physically or by keeping them in the legal status of second-class citizens
and by replacing them with Serbs/Slavs from other regions.
Managing Diversity in the Interwar Period
The attitudes and practices resulting from the non-emancipation of Romanian

Jews and the non-assimilation of Albanian Muslims persisted in the interwar
period, conditioning the way the nation was construed and the way minority
policies in “nationalizing nation-states” (Brubaker 1996: 79ff.) were practiced.
Particularly influential was the deeply embedded usurpation paradigm: the
claim that the respective titular nation had suffered historical injustice by vir-
tue of the fact that every part of the country had at some point been subject to
foreign rule, with the result that non-Romanians and non-Slavs had become
dominant in all social and economic areas. This injustice had to be rectified,
so the thinking went.
By signing the Paris Peace Treaties, Romanian and Yugoslav elites grudg-
ingly granted citizenship to all residents of the new provinces, including
minorities (Viefhaus 1960). So from a strictly legal standpoint there was no
ethnical dimension of citizenship in interwar Romania and Yugoslavia. The
larger part of the Jews from Romania and the Albanians from Yugoslavia
became citizens of the respective country and, according to the constitutions,
enjoyed the same rights and freedoms as the members of the titular nations.
What is more, the notion of their equality was safeguarded in special minority
paragraphs in the Paris Peace Treaties from 1919/21. But it is exactly this dou-
ble protection which allowed for questions regarding both the consistency of
the nation-state model and its applicability to aspiring Southeast European
nation-states.
Within the theory of the political notion of the nation a special protection
of minority rights is an alien element. When the liberal-democratic promise
for individual equality, irrespective of the individual’s ethnicity, religion, cul-
ture, etc., is believed to be realistic, then, indeed, no minority protection is
necessary. Therefore, the minority protection system in the Paris Peace Treaties,
which was to be applied exclusively in the new states of East Central and
Southeastern Europe, and not, say, in the French and English colonies, can be
interpreted as the “Big Four” (United States, England, France, Italy) acknowl-
edging two things. First, every nation-building process involves a certain
degree of forced assimilation of ethnicities different from the titular nation.
Second, national self-determination in East Central and Southeastern Europe
without minority protection would be a destabilizing factor. The groundwork
for the second acknowledgement was in great measure informed by Jewish
lobby groups, who even advocated collective minority rights, as well as a his-
tory of diplomatic interventions from all four states for the Romanian Jewry
even prior to the Berlin Congress of 1878 (Chasanowitsch, Motzkin 1919).
There was a sheer unanimous consensus amongst the Romanian and
Yugoslav political elite that the minority protection clauses in the peace trea-
ties were both superfluous and unjust. This view on the historically correct
settling of the boundaries and of the political meaning of the nation as suffi-
cient security against minority fears of discrimination was buttressed by lead-
ing jurists like N. Daşcovici (1922), George Sofronie (1936/1999), Ilija
A. Pržić (1933) and by social scientists like Jovan Cvijić (1920) and Dimitrie
Gusti (1920/1970). Taken together, this discourse can be regarded as the cen-
trist official position. In practice, however, there could be no talk of equal
rights for all citizens, despite the new constitutional guarantees. It was ethnic
homogenization that prevailed, that is, the seemingly inherent tendency of

any nation and nation-state to be defined in a culturally objective manner.
Legal Provisions, Cultural Discourses and Political Practice Concerning

the Minorities in Interwar Romania
The parliamentary discussions leading to the wording of the Constitution of

1923 and to the Citizenship Law of 1924, as well as the regulations them-
selves, offered, at first, insight into the promise of equal citizenship. All the
minorities present in the parliament criticized the draft for describing the citi-
zen simply as “Romanian”.7 They argued that the term “Romanian citizen”
was more appropriate since the first definition would have an ethnic connota-
tion and would assign second-class citizenship to the minorities, or alterna-
tively, would announce a political program of forced assimilation. The
Romanian participants in the debate, irrespective of the party they repre-
sented, denied these reproaches, pointing at the French model,8 saying that
“ressortissant” was equal to “Romanian” and “citoyen” “Romanian citizen.”
Opting for the first concept would include the whole population, i.e., women,
children, and prisoners without political rights, so that the definition of the
citizen was supplemented with “Romanian, without considering the ethnic
descent, language, or religion.” In the debate however, one of the important
politicians of the governing National Liberal Party, N. Hasnaş, revealed the
true meaning of this formula and the underlying thoughts of the Romanian
elite. He spoke of “Romanians and Romanian citizens” (Lascarov-Moldoveanu,
Ionescu 1925: 19). With very few exceptions the concept of citizenship of the
Romanian political elites was construed in an additive and hierarchical man-
ner. There were two kinds of citizens: ethnic Romanians and all sorts of
minorities, and the latter could lose their status as second-class citizen only by
a complete assimilation.
As I said already, a dominant topos in the pre-World War I Romanian
nation code was the notion of “historical injustice” which was given through
the alleged fact that Jews immigrated into the country as poor people and
ousted the native Romanians from economically attractive bourgeois (or
7)
As pars pro toto see the German member of parliament Hans Otto Roth, in Scurtu, Boar 1995:
550.
8)
See the leading members of the National Liberal Party (PNL) Emil Pangrati, N. D. Chirculescu,
and George G. Mârzescu, in Lascarov-Moldoveanu, Ionescu 1925: 17ff.
proto-bourgeois) positions. Replacing ethnic Romanians in positions they

naturally deserved would merely be a “reparation of historical injustice.” The
analysis of the laws and regulations concerning citizenship (Maxim 1925)
shows that this topos remained powerful even after the creation of Greater
Romania. It was applied to the Jews of the new provinces as well, and later on
to the other minorities. When it came to defining the citizenship of the new
provinces populations, the bulk of the Hungarians, Germans, Russians, and so
on, became Romanians by the simple fact that they lived in Cluj, Czernowitz,
or Chişinău, while this was not the case with the Jews.9 The Romanian politi-
cal elite invented all sorts of administrative tricks (like the Indigenat instead of
place of residence, conclusive facts which proved another citizenship of the
claimant and so on) to deny the Jews a collective naturalization. In conse-
quence, the Jews of the new provinces had to prove individually,—exactly like
their brothers in faith from Old Romania until 1918,—that they were entitled
to the Romanian citizenship.
The main Jewish spokesman in both discussions for the constitution and
the citizenship law was Adolphe Stern, a Bucharest-based lawyer, who before
1918 used to advocate for the Old Romanian Jewry’s naturalization via accul-
turation (Ursuţiu 2000). At the time assuming a role of an all Jewish spokes-
man, Stern was heavily criticized both by politicians from the governing
National Liberal Party, like the Minister of Justice, George Mârzescu, and by
the well-known nationalist Nicolae Iorga. They questioned rhetorically why
Stern was arguing for the rights of the Jews from the new provinces, such as
collective naturalization, although he belonged to the Jewry of Old Romania,
who had been naturalized. As a good Romanian patriot he should rather
advize his brothers in faith to stop publishing journals, holding political meet-
ings, and, what was worse, doing so in foreign languages.10 Iorga even ques-
tioned the legitimacy of Stern’s political organization, the “Union of Indigenous
Jews,” who were now all Romanian citizens. Taken together, the Romanian
political elite was advising the Jews from the new provinces to follow the
example of their brothers in faith from Old Romania by individual naturaliza-
tion after assimilation. This meant that they could be considered juridically
Romanian citizens, but only second-class as long as they clung to Hungarian,
German, or Russian culture. For the Jews of Old Romania the advice was
9)
See “Legea privitoare la dobândirea şi pierderea naţionalităţii române din 24 Februarie 1924,”
in Codul General 1925, vol. 11–12, 280–288.
10)
See Vladimir Athanasovici (PNL), Monitorul Oficial (MO), Desbaterile Adunării Naţionale
Constituante a Deputaţiilor (DANCD), nr. 56, 26.3.1923: 1604.
equal with a prohibition to represent political interests in a distinct organiza-

tion. Iorga’s view on the relationship between assimilation and citizenship was
that the bulk of the Jews were now Romanian citizens, from a juridical stand-
point, but “the real Jewish question” was going to be solved “in the soul of the
Romanian people”.11 In his view—and this was the interwar wording of the
nation code—acculturation or assimilation were processes with results that
could be questioned and judged each day anew and on completely arbitrary
grounds.
In case the different Romanian Jewries should not listen to Mârzescu’s and
Iorga’s advice, the suspicion was proven to be correct that the Jews were intrin-
sically unable to loyally perform Romanian patriotism, to be real Romanians.
Following the reasoning of the Romanian political elite, being loyal citizens
meant for the Jews of Old Romania to stop representing specific political
interests, while for the Jews of the new provinces it meant to forget overnight
their acculturation to Hungarian, German, or Russian culture and that they
must switch to Romanian culture. Obviously, such a sudden change for the
Jewries of the new provinces was neither feasible on the spot, nor specifically
attractive, for the long history of acculturation that the Old Romanian Jewry
had performed, since the 1870s at least, ended for them only in a second-class
citizenship.
On the discursive level the reluctance of the Jews from the new provinces to
embrace Romanian culture immediately was a major problem for the
Romanian political elite, since one of their most cherished arguments was in
danger. Namely, that the Jews always proceeded along the motto ubi bene, ibi
patria,12 which allegedly proved their intrinsic ineptness for patriotism. When
the Jews of the new provinces did not immediately take on Romanian culture,
although they had pressure to endure thereby, the whole Romanian history of
anti-Semitism would become the center of attention. On the political level,
the aim of urging the Jews from Transylvania, Bukovina, and Bessarabia to
assimilate was meant to reduce the strength of Hungarian, German, and
Russian culture and political power in the regions.
The Romanian political elite gradually became aware that it was impossible
to convert cultural identities overnight. In order to weaken the Jewish-
Hungarian connection in Transylvania in the middle of the 1920s, they were
11)
Nicolae Iorga, MO, DANCD. Nr. 56, 26.3.1923: 1603.
12)
For the largely anti-national repertoire of anti-Semitic stereotypes in Romanian culture, see
Oişteanu 2001.
ready to promote schools in Yiddish or Hebrew instead of Hungarian.13 But

this should not be misjudged as a normalization of the Jews as a minority like
the other minorities, since their school system—state and private—was never
put on viable financial and administrative grounds.14 There was never the pos-
sibility for teachers in Jewish schools to acquire a teaching diploma, for exam-
ple, with the consequence that the whole system had a rather short time
horizon and was dependant on extralegal benevolence of the administration.
Obviously promoting a “Jewish school system” was meant to be a transitory
step towards their complete assimilation into Romanian culture.15
As expressed earlier, according to the renewed nation code, acculturation
and assimilation were understood as neverending processes, whose juridical
and political definition did not consider the Jew as a full Romanian citizen,
but rather arbitrarily and on a day-to-day basis. This was not a mere theoreti-
cal possibility, but became reality in 1938. At the end of the parliamentary
period of the interwar years a government headed by two of the most famous
Romanian anti-Semites, Octavian Goga and Alexandru C. Cuza, passed a law
which resulted in half of the Romanian Jews losing their citizenship (395,000
of 746,930) under the accusation of having entered the Romanian nation by
fraud (Legislaţia antievreiască 1993: 25–31; Benjamin 2001: 32ff.).
For tackling the question of the special position of Jews in the interwar
Romanian nation code, which made them a minority amongst minorities, let
me undertake now a brief discourse analysis of some relevant texts written by
some members of a cultural group, which was to become very influential in
the 1930s, namely, the “Young Generation” and their spiritual and political
leader Nae Ionescu (Volovici 1991, Ornea 1996). Such an endeavor provides
answers to such salient questions as (1) how the Romanian nation was defined
in the interwar period, (2) what was the place of minorities, especially Jews in
the Romanian nation, (3) what should be the role of the state in locating them
to their place, and (4) which regime was suited best for this task.
13)
For the school system in the broader context of cultural politics see Livezeanu 1995: 34–186.
For the specific situation of Hungarian speaking Jews in Transylvania, see Benjamin 1995:
128–135.
14)
For the legal basis see “Legea asupra învăţământului particular,” in Codul General 1922–1926,
vol. 11–12: 582–596.
15)
Claims for establishing a pedagogical school for Jewish teachers can be found in abundance
in the minutes of both the Romanian parliament chambers. See for instance Parlamentari evrei
1998: 83, 117.
A second line of discourse shall be followed in the work of Dimitrie Gusti

and Mircea Vulcănescu, who were rather preoccupied with the peasant and
peasant culture’s role in the Romanian nation. There is, however, a strong link
between the “peasant” and the “Jewish question” in Romania, as we saw in the
case of Eminescu and Iorga. Gusti’s vision provides the center ground of the
discursive field, so that we can assess both the position of Nae Ionescu towards
the center, the mainstream political position, and the shifting of positions
from the old generation of the 1920s (then 30–45 years old) towards a more
rural-ethnicist reasoning of the new generation in the 1930s (then 20–30
years old).
Switching the focus from hard politics to cultural debates may seem odd at
first, but analyzing the opinions of intellectuals like Nae Ionescu (1890–1940)
and Dimitrie Gusti (1880–1955), Mircea Eliade (1907–1986), Emil Cioran
(1911–1991), and Mircea Vulcănescu (1904–1952) on the abovementioned
issues is of great importance. Above all, the analysis serves to show the salience
of the “Jewish question” in the Romanian nation code between the two World
Wars. Furthermore, it reveals the interconnectedness between politics and cul-
ture, between the crisis of the parliamentary system, and the radicalization of
its critics along ethnonational and anti-Semitic lines.
Nae Ionescu is considered the spiritual father and the teacher of Romania’s
most important cultural group in the interwar period, the “Young Generation,”
whose later most well-known members were Mircea Eliade and Emil Cioran.16
Ionescu taught philosophy at Bucharest University and was the editor of sev-
eral influential newspapers, like Cuvântul (The Word). For Ionescu there was
no doubt that the political definition of the nation was a danger to the Roma-
nian “ethnic-nation”. According to his reasoning, the real Romanian could only
be a Christian of Orthodox denomination and an ethno-nationalist, while
members of all the religious and ethnic minorities, as well as liberals, socialists,
and so on could only be citizens (or “good Romanians”).17 He criticized
the political definition of the nation as an ideology—calling it “citizenship-
ism” (cetăţenismul )—and advocated for a clear-cut delineation, by de-
manding, for example, “the stop of the sinister comedy called assimilation”
16)
There are abundant accounts of Nae Ionescu praised as a spiritual leader of the Romanian
nation. See Mircea Eliade in Ionescu 1937/1993. For another of Ionescu’s disciples see Vulcănescu
1992. For a deconstruction of the myth around Nae Ionescu, see Voicu 1999.
17)
This was the result of a heated debate between Nae Ionescu and a Catholic professor at the
University of Bucharest, I. Frollo. For Ionescu’s arguments see Ionescu 1937/1993; for Frollo’s
articles see Frollo n.d.
(Ionescu 1937/1993: 232f.). Including minorities and political Westernizers

in the nation would destroy all the cultural potentials and emasculate it from
a political view. In his vision all the minorities should be allowed to preserve
their cultural traits, while politically remaining second-class citizens. Obviously,
this was neither compatible with the Romanian Constitution of 1923 nor
with the reality of parliamentarism, where minority parties were important in
providing majorities for governments. Therefore Ionescu invested considerable
political energy first in convincing the National Peasant Party to abolish par-
liamentarism and create a “popular dictatorship” and then urging King Carol
II toward a “royal dictatorship.” Finally, beginning in 1933/34, he used his
considerable popular influence, especially amongst the young intelligentsia, to
promote the fascist “Iron Guard” (Ornea 1996: 220ff ).
Mircea Eliade was the most successful disciple of Ionescu, and gained
worldwide fame later as a historian of religion (Ricketts 1988, Laignel-
Lavastine 2004). In the interwar period he was acknowledged as the leader of
the “Young Generation,” last but not least due to his political articles. He criti-
cized the interwar political elite for heaving been preoccupied exclusively with
political affairs and not with the cultural and spiritual “mission of the
Romanian people”.18 Therefore he advocated a “new prophetism” whose
essence would be to “live as the whole country and people totally under the
sign of the crucifix” (Eliade 2001: 47f.). Explicitly evoking the political writ-
ings of Eminescu and Haşdeu as guidelines out of the society’s crisis, Eliade
combined two elements of the more extremist nation code (Eliade 1927/1990,
vol. 2: 162): the superposed structure (pătura superpusă) theory of Eminescu
and the notion of Jewish dominance. According to him the Romanian politi-
cal elite since 1918 would be “blind captains of the ship of state,” since they
would have allowed the minorities, especially the Jews, to take over bourgeois
positions like the free professions. The Jews on the other hand would be clear
sighted enough, not to abandon their dominant positions, a situation which
would be equal with a “state within the state” (Eliade 2001: 57f.). Like Ionescu,
Eliade was a fierce critic of the political parties and politicians since they
proved unable to organize a large-scale Romanianization of the new provinces.
Therefore, he too opted for a “national revolution” of the fascist type. At the
end of the 1930s and the 1940s he loyally served as a diplomat for the royal
18)
The series of twelve articles published in autumn 1927 were considered already by Eliade’s
contemporaries as the founding paper of the “Young Generation.” For the articles see Eliade
1927/1990.
dictatorship of King Carol II, for the National Legionary state, and for the
military dictatorship of Marshall Ion Antonescu.
The most systematic contrasting of “the Jew” with “the Romanian” was
provided by Emil Cioran.19 Due to inborn and unchangeable traces of the
Jews, they would constitute a people which was essentially different to the
Romanians. Having in mind the thousand year Romanian experience of for-
eign oppression and the alleged “Jewish invasion in the last decades” (Cioran
1936: 154f.), for Cioran it was perfectly understandable, that anti-Semitism
was an essential trace of the Romanian nationalism. Compared with other
minorities, the Jews, however, were particularly dangerous for the Romanians,
since they would attack the nation “from within” and in a particular way.
While the other minorities, according to Cioran, displayed a nationalism sim-
ilar to the Romanian one, the Jews used elements like parliamentary democ-
racy and capitalism which were dangerous for every nation: “The Romanian
democratic regime had no other purpose than to protect the Jews and the
Judeo-Romanian capitalism” (Cioran 1936: 161).
As indicated earlier, the eminent sociologist and founder of the mono-
graphical method of writing about Romanian villages, Dimitrie Gusti, used a
mainstream definition to speak of the country: “One nation, one state; one
state, one nation” (Gusti 1970: 21). He was ready to accept the principle of
limiting the internal national sovereignty through the minority clauses, since
it was dual anyway with the respect for all “national life, not only abroad, but
in the country as well,” which derived from “the principle of ethical equality
amongst the nations” (Gusti 1970: 25). However, this should not go so far as
to harm the character of Romania as a unitary nation-state. Gusti’s view is at
least open for a political definition of the nation and citizenship, but his social
philosophy remained rather on the level of declarations in this respect. This is
true especially of the relation between village life and the peasantry to the
nation. He was deeply convinced that “the village is the sanctuary were the
manifestation of the Romanian people’s life has taken refuge and is preserved”
(Gusti 1934/1968: 334), and real knowledge of the nation must start with as
large a number of village monographs as possible in all the characteristic
regions of the country. Clearly, this peasantist conviction has a serious meth-
odological flaw with even more serious political consequences. Nowhere in the
vast methodological literature of Dimitrie Gusti or amongst his collaborators
does the multiethnic makeup of provinces, such as Transylvania, Bukovina,
19)
In the 1990 reprint of Emil Cioran’s Schimbarea la faţă a României, the crucial chapter called
“National collectivism” was omitted.
Bessarabia, and Dobrudja, appear as a problem which needs systematic

reflection. So one can assume, and the published village monographs buttress
this, that almost exclusively villages with Romanian peasants were analyzed,
which was in accordance with the peasantist definition of the Romanian
nation. From this point one can question the relevance of Gusti’s declarations
concerning a political definition of the Romanian nation, comparing them
with his much deeper peasantist convictions and the underlying methodology
of his sociological school, hinting towards an ethnicist definition of the
Romanian nation.
When defining a nation with a statist and essentialist notion like the “peas-
ant as the cradle of the Romanian nation,” a twofold ontological problem
becomes clear when looking at the work of Mircea Vulcănescu. As a philoso-
pher and sociologist he can be regarded as both a disciple of Nae Ionescu and
of Dimitrie Gusti, being a close collaborator of the latter in the work on the
village monographs and during his tenure of the Ministry of Public Education,
Religious Affairs, and Arts in the early 1930s. In several articles in the end of
1932 he analyzed the phenomena of the “two Romanias” (Vulcănescu
1932/1997). The first would be the Romania of the cities, the civilized world,
and the other would be that of the villages, that is, the “Romanian Romania.”
He described the civilization of the Romanian cities as “hallucinatory, unnatu-
ral, paranoid, and greedy” due to the Babylon like mix of people with “differ-
ent origins, languages, blood, and habits” (Vulcănescu 1932/1997: 122). This
overall non-Romanian outlook of the cities might be accurate, despite the
fact that two-thirds of the urban population of three million was ethnically
Romanian, hinting thereby at Eminescu’s theme of the hybrid character of
the Romanian upper class. In the second half of the 1930s Vulcănescu came
up with policy recommendations which built on his essentialist definition
of the Romanian nation. Addressing especially the cities with the majority
of minority population in border regions, he proposed a dual strategy: since
time would be to short for the “nationalization” of these cities through
unplanned demographical processes, his advice was a subsidized coloniza-
tion with Romanians on one side and “the expropriation of the minoritarians
or the disturbance of all social life of non-Romanian character” on the
other (Vulcănescu 1937/1991: 27). Nowhere in his published works did he
address a specific minority, but taking into account his unpublished book
on Nae Ionescu (Vulcănescu 1992) and his allusions to Eminescu it
becomes clear that he foremost targeted the Jews, but also minorities living in
border areas.
In conclusion, the Romanian nation code with its strongly anti-Semitic
current was as productive in the interwar period as it was in the pre-World
War I period. Again, the nation code was present in two versions and had a
double function. Firstly, it was meant to define the Romanian nation and the
place of religious and ethnic minorities therein. In this first variation, the
Romanian nation apparently was defined by centrist politicians as a political
body, whereas in its second, it was defined by nationalist intellectuals as an
ethnic nation. A closer look at the Jewish issue revealed that both variants
rested firmly on the definition of the nation as an ethnic one. While from a
liberal-centrist point of view the only possible integration strategy for Jews was
a complete political and cultural assimilation, from the intellectual-nationalist
view this option was considered as harmful for the Romanian nation.
In the course of the 1930s the overtly anti-Semitic political tendencies
gained considerable ground, and it was no simple coincidence that this hap-
pened parallel to a crisis of parliamentarism. The minority question, and espe-
cially the Jewish one, again proved to be a very fertile political field for accusing
centrist governments of lèse-nation, since the parties and the parliamentary
system as such allegedly was unable to solve major duties, like the Roma-
nianization of Romania. The result of these attacks was a more intense anti-
Semitic and anti-minority policy of the centrist political parties. Yet, since this
was a never-ending game of radicalization, and since it was, of course, not the
minority question that stood at the center of the Romanian society’s problems,
the parliamentary system as such was dissolved in 1938.
Representing (Albanian) Muslim Political Interests and Cultural Rights

in Yugoslavia
The discourse of the Yugoslav delegation at the Paris Peace Conference after
World War I intended to convince the Great Powers of the legitimate claims
on northern Albania (the area around Durrës) and also the non-existence of
an Albanian problem in Kosovo. This discourse incorporated all the policy
elements of the interwar period towards the Albanian Muslims.20 Like in
the case of the Romanian-Jewish complex, there is a marked continuity in the
largely Serbian dominated discourse of an Orientalized representation of the
Albanians, in particular the Albanian Muslims, but as also the Bosnian
Muslims. In both cases these groups were considered a different species of
20)
For the most important published sources see Zapisnici 1960 and Jugoslovenska država i
Albanci 1998. For the minorities issue, see Lederer 1963 and Mitrović 1969.
minority compared with “ordinary” minority groups, like the Hungarians or

Germans. While the latter were part of a European pattern of nations and
national minorities, Jews and Muslims were considered structurally incompat-
ible to this scheme, due to their alleged uncivilized, non-European, and
non-national nature.
At the Paris Peace Conference the Yugoslav delegation mobilized consider-
able diplomatic skills to deny the Albanian population the status of a minority,
which had to be conceded to the “ordinary” minority groups. In the end they
managed to create considerable leeway in this respect, successfully speculating
on the rather small and inefficient Albanian lobby at the League of Nations in
Geneva (Scheuermann 2000). While it was not possible to deny altogether the
existence of Albanians in Yugoslavia,21 it remained the Yugoslav standpoint in
the whole interwar period “that there are no national minorities in our south-
ern territories, which belonged to our state or where incorporated into our
Kingdom prior to January, 1st of 1919”.22 In the official publications on
minority affairs as well as in the writings of the leading legal experts in the field
of citizenship and minority rights (such as Ilja Pržić), the Albanians were omit-
ted and, therefore, concealed altogether.23
Due to political quarrels about the structure of the Yugoslav state among
the parties which represented largely Serbian, Croatian, and Slovenian interests
there was a window of opportunity for two parties representing Muslim inter-
ests open until 1924. The Vidovdan-Constitution of 1921 could only be
pushed through the National Assembly with the votes of the Yugoslav Muslim
Organization (Jugoslovenska Muslimanska Oganizacija; JMO) which had its
power base amongst the Bosnian Muslims and with the votes of the Xhemijet
which represented the interests of the Albanians and the South-Slav Muslims
in the Sandžak around Novi Pazar (Popovic 1994, Purivatra 1974). The price
for this support was an agrarian reform which left the economic basis of some
of the local Muslim latifundia owners untouched, a price which politicians
from the dominating National Radical (NRS) and Democratic Party (DS)
where unwilling to pay already by 1922/23. The Xhemijet especially was
targeted when their representatives began to enlarge the social electoral basis
21)
After all, it was possible to declare oneself Albanian in the census conducted in 1921. In
Southern Serbia (Kosovo, Macedonia) the Albanians represented roughly 28% of the overall
population, in Kosovo alone it was 60–65%. See Predhodni resultati 1924: Vol 1. Tab. 7.
22)
See a memorandum in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, cited by Pirraku 1978: 357.
23)
See article “Ostale manjine” in the official publication Jubilarni zbornik 1929: 734–741, as
well as Pržić 1922, 1934.
by protesting against expropriations of Albanian smallholders and against

infringements on their civil rights committed by the police and the gendar-
merie and then advocated Albanian schools. A few months into 1924 the
possibility for representing Albanian interests on the political scene ended
when the Xhemijet party structures were de facto destroyed (Bandžović 1991,
Memić 1996).
In the field of political representation, hence, one can discern a sequence of
events and processes which is recognizable in the cultural sphere as well. The
immediate postwar years were marked by a considerable optimism with the
Belgrade elites who struck deals with the Muslim and Albanian elites, which
was dominated by latifundia owners and the Muslim clergy. The underlying
cultural idea for this optimism was the notion of “lost sons.” A large part of
the Albanians, as well as the Muslims from Bosnia and Sandžak were consid-
ered as actual Serbs, who could be turned eventually into real Serbs again, by
becoming de-Orientalized. Representing their own political interests, how-
ever, was not part of the scheme, as was not the case with Albanian language
schools. Virtually all Albanian language schools were closed down by the
Serbian authorities after the reoccupation of Kosovo in 1918 (Kostovicova
2002). Only religious schools in mosques teaching in Arab and Turkish were
tolerated, a tactic comparable to the Romanian authorities in the new prov-
inces favoring Hebrew or Yiddish instead of Hungarian, German, or Russian.
The aim was in both cases to divert the pupils from their “wrong” national
affiliation, forcing them to learn curricula which the Bucharest and Belgrade
elites considered as outdated and uncivilized as the teaching languages them-
selves, and keeping their cultural knowledge thereby on the lowest possible
level in order to assimilate them more easily. This plan failed miserably. The
Muftis and Imams from Bosnia, considered nationally reliable, came only
reluctantly to Kosovo and their work delivered no desired effects. And it was
especially the Great Medrese in Skopje, founded in 1924 as both a gymnasium
and a seminary, which proved the hotbed of Albanian nationalism. While the
Albanian pupils were avoiding the public and Serbian teaching schools they
were flocking instead to the tolerated religious and illegal private schools,
where they might acquire a non-standardized and precarious knowledge, but
this proved to be enough to prepare them for nationalistic careers at the Great
Medrese and/or toward communist sympathies at the universities of Belgrade,
Zagreb, Sarajevo, and Skopje (Memić 1984: 57–141). When the Serbian
authorities realized the failure of this plan in the mid-1930s, several plans were
brought forward, which ranged from handing over the schools in Kosovo to
the Serbian Orthodox Church (Hadri 1962: 153ff.) to removing the Albanians
altogether from Kosovo (Čubrilović 1937/1997, Peršin 1937/2006). A second
and more intense wave of colonization was part and parcel of a package of
measures aimed at worsening the living conditions for Albanians in Kosovo,
creating thereby an atmosphere encouraging migration to Turkey.
Citizenship and Property Rights: The Colonization of Kosovo and

Southern Dobrudja
The planners of both colonization projects during the interwar period fol-
lowed the imperative of “strengthening the titular nation”.24 In this perspec-
tive, the Albanians in Kosovo and the Bulgarians, Turks, and Tatars in Southern
Dobrudja were generally considered foreigners or culturally inferior immi-
grants. In order to increase the numerical and economic leverage of Romanians
and Serbs or southern Slavs in the given region, national agrarian reforms were
carried out so as to burden the supposed foreigners and to outnumber them
by an intense ethnic colonization. Thus, legislators made use of legal con-
structs and practices in blatant violation of the respective national constitu-
tions. Ethnic colonization, the claim for cultural superiority, a distinct legal
and administrative regime for the peripheral provinces, combined with an
excessive centralization of political and economic power in the core region—
these are the main elements of Michael Hechter’s concept of “internal coloni-
alism” (Hechter 1999), which provides for a perfectly fitting frame for Serbia’s
and Romania’s colonization of Kosovo and Southern Dobrudja. Thus, policy
elements of “internal colonialism” are in no way an Eastern European specifi-
city. To name but another one: the attempt to stabilize the number and posi-
tion of the German population in Imperial Germany’s easternmost provinces
against the growing Polish populace since the 1880s. The German colonization
was used by both Romanian and Serbian authors as a reference for their own
colonization projects, especially since the end of the 1930s, when their initial
phases were reconsidered. On the one hand as a legitimation for their plans,
24)
Although Kosovo was annexed by Serbia during the Balkan Wars of 1912–13, the outbreak
of World War I shortly thereafter meant that the large-scale planned settlement of Serbian/Slavic
populations into the region did not actually take place until the early 1920s. In Southern
Dobrudja, which became part of Romania in the Second Balkan War, systematic colonization
began in 1925.
but on the other hand as a model not to be followed, since it failed due to its
excessive legalism.25
With respect to land-tenure legislation, Romanian legislators decided that
the Ottoman titles of mulk and miri were still valid even after 35 years of
Bulgarian rule in Southern Dobrudja from 1878 to 1913 (de Lapradelle,
Schmidt-Rösler 1994: 131–154). In the Ottoman Empire, mulk referred to
ownership of a piece of land, whereas miri meant the tenancy of land whose
nominal owner was the Sultan or the state. In a 1924 law to reorganize the
province, Romanian lawmakers fell back on this tenuous legal construct assert-
ing the persistence of Ottoman legal titles from before 1913. Thus, under the
pretext of adapting to a superior, liberal European property title, the Romanian
state was able to exercise claims to a third of miri land—the price, as it were,
for granting complete ownership on the remaining two-thirds of each plot of
land (Art. 110, 117).26 Creating state land reserves which could then be allo-
cated to colonists was only one of the measures provided by the new law,
however. Thus, Bulgarians who had not accepted or had not been granted
Romanian citizenship after 1914 were not permitted to sell their land on the
free market. Instead, in exchange for minimal compensation, the land was put
under state receivership and generally given to colonists for tenant farming.
Miri land that was not subject to the aforementioned transformation, could
also not be sold (Art. 115). Immovable property which had previously
belonged to the Bulgarian state, as well as to churches or schools, was expro-
priated without compensation. As a matter of principle, all land ownership
required verification of the ownership title by an ad hoc commission (Art.
113). If applicants were unable to furnish the required proof, or unable to do
so within a set time frame, the land became the property of the Romanian
state, with no compensation paid (Art. 114, 116). The requirement of proving
the legality of all landownership titles meant that the burden of proof in ques-
tions of ownership was essentially reversed. The citizens of Southern Dobrudja
were therefore treated differently, since property in the rest of Romania was
under the legal protection of the state, being considered legal till proven
otherwise. Moreover, rounding up the numerous forms of evidence was an
25)
See Čubrilović 1937/1997. For the Romanian case see a memorandum from Sabin Manuilă
from 1941, in which he designed a detailed plan for a forced population exchange after the
twenty years of piecemeal colonization had not solved the problem (Bolovan, Bolovan 1996).
26)
Lege pentru modificarea unor dispoziţiuni din “Legea pentru organizarea Dobrogei-Nouă
din 22 aprilie 1924,” in Codul General al României, Colecţia Hamangiu, vol. 13–14, Legi noui de
unificare 1922–1926, (Bucharest: n. d., 763–768).
onerous burden to the population in terms of time and money, resulting in the
mass emigration of Turks and Tatars, among others. Unlike the case of Kosovo,
however, the colonization of Southern Dobrudja was not primarily aimed
against Muslims, but against Bulgarians “guilty” of irredentism. By 1938, two
years before Southern Dobrudja was awarded to Bulgaria by the Treaty of
Craiova, the aim of Romanian elites—to have a Romanian population major-
ity in Southern Dobrudja—had not been attained. The share of Romanians
had risen impressively in the wake of colonization, from 2.36% in 1912 to
29.14% in 1938, and the share of Turks and Tatars had dropped dramatically
from 48.56% to 26.04%, while the share of Bulgarians had gone down only
moderately, from 43.75% to 40.52%. In the end, Romania was unable to
permanently settle as many Romanians in Southern Dobrudja as the number
of Muslims who had emigrated, so that Bulgarians came to represent a relative
majority in the province (Brătescu 1938, vol. 1, 763ff.).
The colonization of Kosovo was to be carried out with land owned by the
state, by communities and by villages (Obradović 1981, Jovanović 2002: 208–
223, Roux 1992: 191–203, Malcolm 1998: 265–288). De facto, however, the
whole of Kosovo was treated as a potential settlement area, because once land
was newly settled it did not have to be returned to its previous owners, even if
the latter could prove their legal claim to it. This was especially true for land
considered idle due to its previous owners having fled or having been deemed
insurgents (kaçaks). The same was true for land that was declared to be latifun-
dia. Albanians were affected disproportionately in most of these categories.
The state land available in Kosovo after 1912 was primarily the former prop-
erty of religious endowments (vaqf ), whose revenues were the financial basis
of Muslim religious and cultural life. The supposedly idle land had previously
been used as pasture or was the property of Albanian families who had been
displaced during the Balkan Wars and World War I and who were now con-
sidered insurgents against the new government. The greater part of latifundia
expropriated by 1912–18 had ultimately belonged to Albanians or Muslim
Slavs. The majority of supposed latifundia owners had less than 50 hectares of
land which they could call their own. After expropriation it was reduced to
5–15 hectares. The practice was then radicalized in the 1930s when a second
wave of expropriations took place, particularly in border areas and in areas
with large Albanian populations. The minimum amount of land Albanians
were entitled to was thereby reduced to 0.4 hectares per person.
Lawmakers offered a range of incentives to encourage as many Slavophones
as possible to move to Kosovo, such as, no transfer fees, provision of cattle
and tools, assistance in building homes, tax exemption, cheap credit, etc.
The impressive array of privileges and allowances demanded a considerable

financial effort by the state. The available figures show that, while the coloni-
zation of Kosovo was indeed given priority, the project’s economic failure was
most pronounced in this region. Since the focus of Belgrade’s attention was on
getting the greatest possible number of Serbs and Slavs to settle in Kosovo, it
was hardly possible to vet the suitability or intention of colonists to settle there
permanently and engage in farming. Many accepted the perks and rented out
the land they received to expropriated Albanians. Additionally the place of
settlement was not chosen according to economic criteria, but was often based
on ethno-national considerations. In sum, this led to a situation where—to
take a negative example—a person with no knowledge of farming was put into
the house of an insurgent in a village populated by an Albanian majority and
took advantage of the privileges he was entitled to, but was ultimately unable
to establish himself economically and socially and therefore rented or sold the
land illegally and moved to a nearby city or left Kosovo entirely. Yet even more
well-meaning and competent new farmers eventually came to the realization
that Kosovo was less than ideal. It was poorly developed in terms of infrastruc-
ture, parts of it were malaria infested, and it had neither the best nor even a
sufficient number of individuals to administer treatment or provide medical
care. Education and cultural offerings also left much to be desired. The exact
rate of colonists returning from Kosovo is unknown, yet all contemporary
sources reporting on it tend to do so in alarming tones.
If the aims of these projects are compared with the costs, both can be con-
sidered failures. Neither in Kosovo nor in Southern Dobrudja did the settle-
ment of Serbs/Slavs or Romanians result in a stable population majority of the
titular nation, nor did it boost the economic upswing that was hoped for in
these regions. In addition, overall agrarian reforms did not lead to the agrarian
modernization necessary for a broad economic takeoff.
Measures to “Protect Romanian Labor”
In the narrow sense measures to “protect Romanian labor” referred to a law

passed in 1934 which was intended to raise the share of ethnic Romanians in
the overall workforce, blue-collar and white-collar, particularly in industry and
trade.27 In a broader sense, it also referred to the initiatives of individuals,
27)
“Lege pentru utilizarea personalului românesc în intreprinderi din 16 Iuliu 1934,” in Codul
General, 22 (1934), 510–513. See as well Iancu 2000: 236–243.
political groups, and professional organizations—especially in a wide range of

independent professions—which sought to discriminate against ethnic and
religious minorities in these fields. Jews throughout the whole of Romania, but
also Hungarians and Germans in Transylvania and Bukovina, were the target.
The bill was introduced in parliament in July of 1934 in a matter of days
and was passed by Romanian lawmakers without controversy, an indication
that the thrust of the bill was undisputed. In companies with more than 20
employees, regardless of the line of business, 80% of the workforce at all levels
and at least 50% of executive positions had to be filled by Romanian personnel
(Art. 1). In order to verify if these provisions were being met, companies had
to produce a yearly list of employees categorized into “foreign” and “Romanian”
and send it to the Department of Labor and Commerce, which in certain
instances was authorized to impose fines or other punitive measures (Art. 7
and 8). Furthermore, these companies were now supposed to keep their books
and company files and carry on their correspondence exclusively in Romanian
(Art. 4). None of the articles defined what the term “Romanian” meant. In
response to inquiries by minority politicians and Romanian members of par-
liament, government speakers explained that the term was to be understood in
the constitutional sense. In other words, it referred to all Romanian citizens
regardless of their ethnic background.28 Petitions by minority representatives
to include this specification in the wording of the law were rejected, however,
as were those concerning a loosening of the language provisions. The necessity
of expanding the measure to include Romania’s ethnic minorities was empha-
sized in the debate not only by the usual nationalists in the opposition, but by
representatives of the ruling National Liberal Party as well.29 This strengthened
ethnic minorities in their belief that the law’s subtext was to drive minorities
out of the economy as well, an implication which the ambiguous term “for-
eign” merely served to paper over (Neugeboren 1934/35).
By the start of 1935, the legal subtext suspected by minorities was being
spelled out ever more clearly by numerous members of parliament, even by
members of the ruling National Liberal Party. It was the government of
Gheorghe Tătărescu which finally presented an implementation rule in March
28)
For official views on the law, see the remarks of Undersecretary of the Ministry of Labor
(Roman 1935/36: 41–44).
29)
On the discussions in both houses of the Romanian parliament see Monitorul Oficial,
Desbaterile Adunării Naţionale a Senatorilor (DS), no. 7, June 28, 1934, 220ff.; Monitorul Oficial,
Dezbaterile Adunării Naţionale a Deputaţilor (DAD), no. 12, July 2, 1934, 854; no. 13, July 3,
1934, 991.
that clarified the matter in no uncertain terms. The Minister of Labor was
repeatedly asked in parliament30 what the government planned on doing to
increase the share of the “Romanian element” in the business sector, especially
in heavy industry and armaments, but also in power plants and the textile
industry. The term “Romanian” was used—sometimes implicitly, but usually
explicitly—in the ethnic sense. The ethno-national overtone of these inquiries
was also made clear by a reference to the state contracts awarded to certain
companies despite a majority of ethnic non-Romanians being employed there.
The Minister of Labor vowed that the implementation rules of the “Law for
the Protection of the Romanian Element in Enterprises,” as it was called, were
appropriate for protecting not only national industries, but also the Romanian
(ethno)nation (see Ion Nistor in MO, DAD, no. 23, January 28, 1935, 534f ).
The regulation31 setting forth how the lists of employees should look called for
a division of personnel into three categories: ethnic Romanian citizens,
Romanian citizens of other ethnic origins, and foreigners. This, of course, did
not result in the immediate exclusion of ethnic minorities from large parts of
the workforce. However, it did represent the first step in that direction.
The legislative measures for the “protection of Romanian labor” passed by
the Tătărescu government have to be viewed against the broader nationalist
mobilization from 1933 to 1937. In political parties there were initiatives to
establish a system of proportional representation for ethnic groups, according
to which ethnic minorities at institutes of higher learning, in industry and
trade, and in independent professions would only be accepted in relation to
their share in the country’s total population. There was also an intensification
of these tendencies in society at large, particularly in professional organiza-
tions, to actively discriminate against ethnic and religious minorities under
the banner of “redressing historical wrongs.” The career of National Liberal
politician Istrate Micescu may serve to illustrate the dynamics of social and
state measures for the “protection of Romanian labor.” As a leading member
of the Association of Christian Lawyers (Asociaţia Avocaţilor Creştini),32
30)
See Aurel Neguş, Al. Alimănişteanu, Atta Constantinescu and D. Cârlan in MO, DAD, no.
22, January 23, 1935, 524; MO, DAD, no. 23, January 28, 1935, 534f.; MO, DAD, no. 30, June
2, 1935, 715f.; MO, DAD, no. 43, February 22, 1935, 1158f.; MO, DAD, no. 48, March
2, 1935, 1298; MO, DAD, no. 30, February 6, 1935, 715f.; MO, DAD, no. 43, February 22,
1935, 1158f.
31)
Tabelul personalului folosit în întreprinderile industriale şi civile în general, supuse Legii
pentru folosirea personalului românesc în întreprinderi. See as well Iancu 2000: 239.
32)
The Association of Christian Lawyers was founded in early 1935 in the Ilfov district
of Bucharest, and demanded that minorities should only be accepted as new members of bar
he spearheaded an anti-minority and, in particular, anti-Semitic campaign

towards the end of 1935 in the Bar Association of the Ilfov district in Bucha-
rest, in the wake of which he was elected to the position of chairman of the
association. Through the use of physical force, his followers prevented all
Jewish lawyers, and a large part of those who would have voted for his
opponent, from entering the election meeting. One of the newly elected
chairman’s first official acts was to prevent new lawyers from joining the asso-
ciation if they belonged to ethnic or religious minorities (Iancu 2000: 248,
Ancel 2001: 57). This essentially amounted to their disbarment, since
membership in the Bar Association was an indispensable requirement to
taking on legal cases. At the annual meeting of the Union of Romanian
Lawyers in May of 1936, not only was the exclusion of minorities and
dissenters from discussions and votes repeated, but also its policy position
was brought to a head, demanding the total Romanianization of the legal
profession.
On May 19 of the same year, a congress of academic professional associa-
tions took place whose resolution proposal documents show how the concept
of proportional representation for ethnic groups was spreading in many
quarters of society, albeit at the price of officially establishing legal citizenship
of an inferior order for minorities. The first four items of the motion for a
resolution were: (1) applying the principle of Romanianization to the intel-
lectual professions, (2) the Romanianization of capital (in particular the capi-
tal of high finance and big business), (3) reviewing all land allocations with
regard both to foreigners who settled in Romania after the armistice and the
peace agreement and those who became Romanians by virtue of the peace
treaties, (4) and reviewing all diplomas and qualifications which served as
the basis for practicing a profession in Romania and were acquired after the
peace agreement. As early as the spring of 1935, the Association of High
School Teachers had demanded that only ethnic Romanian teaching candi-
dates be admitted to state examinations. It likewise called for the abolishment
of native language classes in state schools and the dissolution of the denomi-
national minority school system, transferring these students to state schools.
associations in proportion to their share in the total population. The rapid spread of the idea
of proportional representation for ethnic minorities must be viewed alongside the demands
of law students and assistant solicitors to lower the necessary qualifications for bar associations.
The bar associations had successfully resisted, so that the Association of Christian Laywers chose
a path favorable to all ethnic Romanians, young and old, in the judiciary. See Armand Călinescu
1990: 248; Filderman 1999: 160ff.
The Association of District Secretaries demanded a general hiring freeze

on “foreigners” in administration due to their potential access to state
secrets.33
Conclusion
Methodologically I have drawn, in a small degree, on the concept of entangled

history and, abundantly, on comparativism. Relating the Romanian and
Serbian discursive nation-building process more specifically to the Western
Powers’ representation of the Orient and of the Balkans was decisive for iden-
tifying the common feature of the two nation codes, which is an Orientalized
representation of Jews and Muslims as principal Others.
The “Jewish” and “(Albanian) Muslim” stereotypes established in the
Romanian and Serbian nation codes have served to this day as an argument to
justify ethno-national policies.34 In both cases, the all but obsessive preoccupa-
tion with the “Jewish” or “Albanian Muslim Question” led to anachronistic
priorities on the political agenda, to costly “autochthonization projects,” and
to exclusionary measures aimed at these sizable minorities, all of which in turn
contributed in no small degree to the crises and largely failed attempts to
establish (parliamentary) democracy and elements of civil society in Serbia/
Yugoslavia and Romania. Aside from the above-mentioned financial costs of
the autochthonization projects analyzed here, we should not lose sight of the
“costs” which were borne by the societies of Romania and Serbia/Yugoslavia in
terms of the rule of law and their anti-democratic character. The massive and
illegitimate infringement on the property rights of citizens had the effect of
undermining their confidence in the egalitarian and meritocratic basis of a
market society. By the same token, it was the very failure of these projects that
enabled technocrats and radical nationalists to attack the interwar parliamen-
tary system, which they construed as being much too weak and ineffectual to
push through large-scale national projects.
33)
See Nation und Staat 10, no. 9 (1936/37): 601. The following professions sent delegates:
lawyers, chemists, pharmacists, doctors and veterinary surgeons, teachers, technicians, engineers,
bookkeepers, architects, artists, agronomists, and forest wardens.
34)
For an extension of the time frame, including the period after World War II up to the 1990s,
in which the influence of the nation code on conceptions of Southeast European citizenship is
analyzed, see Müller 2002.
I have brought forward the seemingly general necessity for nation-building

processes of positive and negative principal Others. It is not completely appar-
ent, however, which minority was to be picked as the allegedly both inferior
and dangerous “Other” in the nation code. First, there are the well-known
territorial conflicts with the respective neighboring countries to be taken into
account over Transylvania, Bessarabia, and Dobrudja in the Romanian case
and over Vojvodina, and Macedonia in the Serbian case. However, while these
ensuing conflicts over minority populations where considered and tackled by
the Romanian and Serbian elites as perfectly normal and, in the context of
nations and national minorities, understandable problems, it was different
with the Jews and the Muslims. Second, there is a marked absence of large
scale and longue dureé anti-Semitism in Serbia and anti-Muslim sentiments in
Romania. First of all, it is the size of the minority that matters, but for being
significant in the nation code a minority needs to allegedly incorporate some
moral and civilizational construed traits which endangered the Romanian and
Serbian nation-building process. Moreover, as the southern Dobrudja case
study showed, one Orientalistic Other seems to be enough, since there were
hardly any anti-Muslim arguments in the colonization process of southern
Dobrudja. To the contrary, the Muslims were represented rather as loyal
Romanian citizens in contrast to irredentist Bulgarians, and as simple land
tillers in contrast to the wealthy and influential Jews.35 On the other hand, the
absence of politically relevant anti-Semitism in Serbia was used as an argu-
ment for its allegedly non-discriminatory policy towards minorities in general.
Prior to the Balkan Wars some authors were even evoking Kosovo as a loss for
the Serbian nation only comparable to Jerusalem for the Jews, and in the
1990s Serbia was construed as the eternal victim in history, again comparable
only to the Jews (Popović 1997: 153).
The normative point of reference for my arguments is a civil society in
which the cultural and religious differences between individuals and popula-
tions are considered legitimate. Whenever differences are not only deemed a
constant, but the “Other” is ontologized as inferior as well, multiethnic states
have little prospect of developing a civil society. This especially applies to
places where the narratives of national identity (nation codes) show a marked
tendency towards the desire to redress “historical injustices,” whether of a
35)
This argument was particularly strong in the discourse of regionalist groups in Dobrudja which
contrasted the merits of Muslims and Bulgarians with the danger of Jews for Romania when
advocating for full citizenship rights for the Dobrudjans. See Pariano 1905, Grigorescu 1910.
territorial nature such as in the Serbian or of an economic nature, as in the

Romanian case, and where this tendency can be focused on a particular
ethnoreligious group.
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Dietmar Muller Orientalism and Nation

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East Central Europe 36 (2009) 63–99 brill.

Orientalism and Nation: Jews and Muslims as

© Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, 2009 DOI 10.1163/187633009X411485

an historically grown and changing notion of national identity (Gosewinkel

Jews and Muslims as Anomalies in Southeastern Europe in the Age of

Comparing Jews in the Romanian nation code with Muslims/Albanians in the

As indicated above in this study, nation is considered as a speciﬁc modern

their nation-building processes. It seems to be a general pattern that the pros-

would have endangered an eventual incorporation of the Slavic Muslim popu-

The assumption that Kosovo’s population was in large part crypto-Serb,

Managing Diversity in the Interwar Period

The attitudes and practices resulting from the non-emancipation of Romanian

homogenization that prevailed, that is, the seemingly inherent tendency of

Legal Provisions, Cultural Discourses and Political Practice Concerning

The parliamentary discussions leading to the wording of the Constitution of

proto-bourgeois) positions. Replacing ethnic Romanians in positions they

equal with a prohibition to represent political interests in a distinct organiza-

ready to promote schools in Yiddish or Hebrew instead of Hungarian.13 But

A second line of discourse shall be followed in the work of Dimitrie Gusti

(Ionescu 1937/1993: 232f.). Including minorities and political Westernizers

Bessarabia, and Dobrudja, appear as a problem which needs systematic

Representing (Albanian) Muslim Political Interests and Cultural Rights

minority compared with “ordinary” minority groups, like the Hungarians or

by protesting against expropriations of Albanian smallholders and against

Citizenship and Property Rights: The Colonization of Kosovo and

The impressive array of privileges and allowances demanded a considerable

Measures to “Protect Romanian Labor”

In the narrow sense measures to “protect Romanian labor” referred to a law

political groups, and professional organizations—especially in a wide range of

he spearheaded an anti-minority and, in particular, anti-Semitic campaign

The Association of District Secretaries demanded a general hiring freeze

Methodologically I have drawn, in a small degree, on the concept of entangled

I have brought forward the seemingly general necessity for nation-building

territorial nature such as in the Serbian or of an economic nature, as in the

Ancel, Jean. Contribuţii la istoria României. Problema evreiască 1933–1944. [Contributions to

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