Nation As Object - Turda

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The Nation as Object:

Race, Blood, and Biopolitics in Interwar Romania
Marius Turda
Introduction: Biopolitics and National Politics

In 1926, the Romanian social hygienist and eugenicist Iuliu Moldovan
published Biopolitica, a book Maria Bucur described as “a manifesto that
called for a total eugenic state based on biological principles—an entirely
new way of organizing politics in Romania.” 1 By introducing biopolitics
into Romanian public discourse, Moldovan was not just adopting a char-
acteristically versatile modernist term, he was also investing it with a
specific national mission: to direct disparate narratives of historical expe-
rience and cultural traditions toward the idea of improving the racial
qualities of the nation.2 The nation was portrayed as a living organism,
functioning according to biological laws and embodying great physical
qualities, symbols of innate virtues transmitted from generation to gener-
ation. Equally important, the relationship between nation and state was
turned into a specific scientific form of knowledge, one based on biology.
Biopolitics thus operated through investigations of biological processes
regulating the triadic relationship between individual, nation, and state.3
Research for this article was funded by the Marie Curie Fellowship. I would also like to thank
Robert Pyrah, Matt Feldman, and the anonymous referees at Slavic Review for their con-
structive comments and suggestions. I am deeply indebted to Mioara Georgescu and
Dr. Sanda Hondor from Biblioteca Documentară de Istoria Medicinii a Institutului de
Sănătate Publică, Bucharest; Nicolae Leasevici from Institutul de Antropologie Fr. I. Rainer,
Bucharest; and Ioana Patriche and Răzvan Pârâianu for helping me locate articles and
books.
1. Iuliu Moldovan, Biopolitica (Cluj, 1926). See also Maria Bucur, Eugenics and Mod-
ernization in Interwar Romania (Pittsburgh, 2002), 83. Many of Moldovan’s biopolitical ideas
resurfaced in articles and books he published in the 1940s. See, for example, I. Moldovan,
Statul etnic (Sibiu, 1943) and Moldovan, Introducere în etnobiologie şi biopolitică (Sibiu,
1944).
2. The first discussion of biopolitics was attempted in 1911 in the modernist journal
The New Age in reference to policies of public health, reproduction, and social welfare. This
article established a strong connection between these policies and the state, which was
seen as the only institution capable of implementing those policies. See G. W. Harris, “Bio-
Politics,” The New Age 10, no. 9 (28 December 1911): 197. Another trend was to insist on
the fusion between political science and materialist sociology in order to explain the func-
tioning of the state as a biological organism. One such interpretation was first suggested
by Morley Roberts, Bio-Politics: An Essay in the Physiology, Pathology and Politics of the Social and
Somatic Organism (London, 1938). For an early conceptualization of this direction, see Al-
bert Somit, “Biopolitics,” British Journal of Political Science 2, no. 2 (1972): 209 –38; for more
recent developments, see Ira H. Carmen, “Biopolitics: The Newest Synthesis?” Genetica 99,
nos. 2/3 (1997): 173 – 84.
3. It was largely in this sense that Michel Foucault employed the term in the late
1970s, in connection with his theory of governmentality. See Michel Foucault, Naissance de
la biopolitique: Cours au Collège de France (1977–1978) (Paris, 2004); and Maarten Simons,
“Learning as Investment: Notes on Governmentality and Biopolitics,” Educational Philoso-
phy and Theory 38, no. 4 (2006): 523 – 40. An enlarged definition was proposed by Edward
Ross Dickinson, according to whom biopolitics should include “medical practices from re-
gimes of personal hygiene to state organized public health campaigns and institutions;
Slavic Review 66, no. 3 (Fall 2007)
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414 Slavic Review
Ultimately, Moldovan insisted, biopolitics should become national poli-

tics. How was this transformation possible?
During the interwar period, biological concepts became necessary
components of national identity.4 In addition, eugenics, racial anthropol-
ogy, and serology received official endorsement from governments and
political regimes throughout Europe.5 Accompanying this transformation
of the national body into an object of political adoration was the elevation
of biopolitics as the emblematic symbol of modern theories of national
identity; indeed, the fusion between the need for biological identification
and the quest for national rejuvenation contributed to the transformation
of biopolitics into national politics.
Yet in most scholarship dealing with interwar Romania, biopolitics has
not received the attention it deserves. The emphasis is either on literary
and religious constructions of national identity or on cultural politics and
generational conflict.6 According to this interpretation, participants in the
debate about the nation appropriated themes that were created by succes-
sive generations of poets, linguists, and historians.7 There are a few notable
exceptions, including Maria Bucur’s above-mentioned study of the history
of Romanian eugenics, Radu Ioanid’s examination of the politics of the
social welfare programs; racial sciences, from physical anthropology to the various racial
theories; eugenics and the science of heredity; demography, scientific management and
occupational health; and the related disciplines and practices such as psychiatry and psy-
chology.” See Edward Ross Dickinson, “Biopolitics, Fascism, Democracy: Some Reflections
on Our Discourse about ‘Modernity,’” Central European History 37, no. 1 (2004): 3 – 4.
4. Zygmunt Bauman, Modernity and Ambivalence (Ithaca, 1991); Ann Laura Stoler,
Race and the Education of Desire: Foucault’s History of Sexuality and the Colonial Order of Things
(London, 1995); Tzvetan Todorov, Hope and Memory: Lessons from the Twentieth Century
(Princeton, 2004); and Roger Griffin, Modernism and Fascism: The Sense of a Beginning under
Mussolini and Hitler (London, 2007).
5. Margit Szöllösi-Janze, ed., Science in the Third Reich (Oxford, 2001); and Marius
Turda and Paul J. Weindling, eds., “Blood and Homeland”: Eugenics and Racial Nationalism in
Central and Southeast Europe, 1900 –1940 (Budapest, 2006).
6. Much of the recent literature dealing with nationalism in interwar Romania is in-
debted to Benedict Anderson’s influential conceptualization of the nation as a cultural,
imagined artifact. See Benedict Anderson, Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin
and Spread of Nationalism (London, 1986). According to Anderson, the idea of race does
not play an important role in shaping nationalist imagination. For a different view, see
Nancy Leys Stepan, “The Hour of Eugenics”: Race, Gender, and Nation in Latin America (Lon-
don, 1991); Ann Laura Stoler, Carnal Knowledge and Imperial Power: Race and the Intimate in
Colonial Rule (Berkeley, 2002); and Marius Turda, The Idea of National Superiority in Central
Europe, 1880 –1918 (New York, 2005).
7. See Katherine Verdery, “National Ideology and National Character in Interwar Ro-
mania,” and Keith Hitchins, “Orthodoxism: Polemics over Ethnicity and Religion in In-
terwar Romania,” both in Ivo Banac and Katherine Verdery, eds., National Character and
National Ideology in Interwar Eastern Europe (New Haven, 1995), 103 –33 and 135–56;
Katherine Verdery, National Ideology under Socialism: Identity and Cultural Politics in Ceaus-
escu’s Romania (Berkeley, 1991); Sorin Alexandrescu, Paradoxul român (Bucharest, 1998);
Irina Livezeanu, Cultural Politics in Greater Romania: Regionalism, Nation Building and Ethnic
Struggle, 1918 –1930 (Ithaca, 1995); and Irina Livezeanu, “Generational Politics and the
Philosophy of Culture: Lucian Blaga between Tradition and Modernism,” Austrian History
Yearbook 33 (2002): 207–37.
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Race, Blood, and Biopolitics in Interwar Romania 415
Iron Guard, as well as Viorel Achim and Michael Wedekind’s investigations

of Romanian ethnopolitics during the 1930s and 1940s.8
Romanian philosophers and literary critics did, however, make use of
racial typologies and racial arguments in their definitions of the nation,
and it is essential that their presence in the cultural and political debates
of the interwar period be acknowledged.9 Complementing literary defini-
tions of national identity, Romanian eugenicists and anthropologists fo-
cused on physical objects, such as crania and various archaeological arti-
facts. By conducting technical experiments, such as cataloguing and
classifying the blood groups within the population, they hoped to create
what they considered to be scientific knowledge about the nation. In
other words, eugenics and racial anthropology aimed at creating a na-
tional ontology, wherein the nation as object was deemed paramount.
These physical representations of the nation allowed eugenicists and an-
thropologists to engage in allegedly objective incursions into the ethnic
fabric of society, contrasting their interpretations of national identity with
those viewed as more subjective, particularly literary texts.
In this article, I will look at Romanian anthropological and serologi-
cal research during the interwar period and examine how it shaped
biopolitical visions of an idealized Romanian Volksgemeinschaft.10 At the
time, the physical contours of the nation captured the attention of spe-
cialists and lay commentators alike, from skeptical believers in the histor-
ical destiny of the nation to those obsessed with national essence and
specificity. In this context, anthropological and serological research pro-
vided scientific legitimacy to the assumption that there was a racial nu-
cleus within the Romanian nation that the natural and social environment
could not obliterate; this racial nucleus was what anthropology and serol-
ogy identified as “Romanian.”
8. Radu Ioanid, “The Sacralised Politics of the Romanian Iron Guard,” Totalitarian
Movements and Political Religions 5, no. 3 (2004): 419 –53; Viorel Achim, “Romanian-
German Collaboration in Ethnopolitics: The Case of Sabin Manuilă,” in Ingo Haar and
Michael Fahlbusch, eds., German Scholars and Ethnic Cleasing, 1919 –1945 (New York, 2005),
139 –54; and Michael Wedekind, “Wissenschaftsmilieus und Ethnopolitik im Rumänien
der 1930/40er Jahre,” in Jürgen Reulecke, Josef Ehmer, und Ursula Ferdinand, eds., Her-
ausforderung “Bevölkerung”: Festschrift zum 80. Geburtstag Rainer Mackensens (Wiesbaden,
2007).
9. See H. Sanielevici, “De ce rasă e poporul român,” in H. Sanielevici, Noi probleme lit-
erare, politice, sociale (Bucharest, 1927), 127–36; H. Sanielevici, “Rasa, limba şi cultura
băştinaşilor Daciei,” in H. Sanielevici, Literatura şi ştiinţa (Bucharest, 1930), 17– 46; Ion Pil-
lat, Rassengeist und völkische Tradition in der neuen rumänischen Dichtung ( Jena, 1939);
C. Rădulescu-Motru, “Rassa, cultura şi naţionalitatea în filozofia istoriei,” Arhiva pentru şti-
inţă şi reformă socială 4, no. 1 (1922): 18 –34; and Garabet Ibrăileanu, “Caracterul specific
în literatură,” Opere 5 (Bucharest, 1977), 92 –94.
10. Unfortunately, space limitations do not permit me to deal here with Saxon racial
research in Transylvania during the interwar period, Austrian racial research in the Banat
during the 1930s, or Hungarian serology in northern Transylvania after 1940. Hence racial
research in this article is referred to as “Romanian,” as it deals only with Romanian re-
searchers. For the Austrian research in the Banat, see Maria Teschler-Nicola, “‘Volks-
deutsche’ and Racial Anthropology in Interwar Vienna: The ‘Marienfeld Project,’” in
Turda and Weindling, eds., “Blood and Homeland,” 55– 82.
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416 Slavic Review
After World War I, Romania’s territory nearly doubled. It included the

ethnically diverse regions of Transylvania, Bessarabia, and northern
Bukovina, thus prompting the Romanian state to engage in an unparal-
leled process of nationalization and centralization.11 Not surprisingly, ad-
dressing Romania’s ethnic diversity became central to biopolitical pro-
grams elaborated during the interwar period. Both anthropology and
serology devoted considerable attention to the ethnic map of Romania, in
general, and Transylvania, in particular. Not only was this region notori-
ously multiethnic; Romanian nationalists traditionally viewed it as the
cradle of the Romanian nation despite its long inclusion in the Kingdom
of Hungary.12 “Anthropologically, Transylvania represents the center not
the periphery of the Romanian nation,” the Romanian geographer N. Al.
Rădulescu asserted in a memorandum submitted in 1941 to the German
Rasse- und Siedlungshauptamt (RuSHA).13 Indeed, the interwar period saw
the growth of a large body of Romanian racial writings dealing with Tran-
sylvania and its ethnic communities.14
Harnessing biological forms of national belonging to back up the
scientific evidence provided by serology and anthropology was character-
istic of racial politics in interwar Europe. In Romania, however, allegories
of race and blood— especially insofar as they represented an intensifi-
cation of national loyalties—were particularly appealing. In interwar Ro-
mania, it was nationalism rather than scientific commitment that deter-
mined the position one took on the question of racial anthropology and
serology.
11. The institutional and political difficulties experienced by the Romanian state af-
ter 1918 have been the subject of much analysis. In addition to classic works such as Henry
L. Roberts, Rumania: Political Problems of an Agrarian State (New Haven, 1951); Kenneth
Jowitt, ed., Social Change in Romania, 1860 –1940: A Debate on Development in a European Na-
tion (Berkeley, 1978); and Daniel Chirot, ed., The Origins of Backwardness in Eastern Europe
(Berkeley, 1989); see Keith Hitchins, Rumania, 1866 –1947 (Oxford, 1994); John R. Lampe
and Mark Mazower, eds., Ideologies and National Identities: The Case of Twentieth-Century
Southeastern Europe (Budapest, 2004); and John R. Lampe, Balkans into Southeastern Europe:
A Century of War and Transition (Basingstoke, Eng., 2006).
12. The subject generated an extensive scholarship. Such animated interest notwith-
standing, critical evaluations are rare. See Katherine Verdery, Transylvanian Villagers: Three
Centuries of Political, Economic, and Ethnic Change (Berkeley, 1983); László Péter, ed., Histo-
rians and the History of Transylvania (Boulder, Colo., 1992); Keith Hitchins, A Nation
Affirmed: The Romanian National Movement in Transylvania, 1860 –1914 (Bucharest, 1999);
and László Kürti, The Remote Borderland: Transylvania in the Hungarian Imagination (New
York, 2001).
13. N. Al. Rădulescu, “Anthropologische Beweise für das Alter und die Ureinwohn-
erschaft der Rumänen in Siebenbürgen” (1941), Central State Archive Prague, file Reich-
sprotektor in Boehmen und Maehren, No. 114, Office RuSHA, Box 1, p. 12. I would like
to thank Michal Šimůnek for drawing my attention to this document. See also N. Al.
Rădulescu, Antropologie rasială şi antropogeografia (Bucharest, 1941).
14. Although the main focus here is on racial research dealing with Transylvania, it
should not be assumed that other regions (and ethnic groups) were not subject to con-
stant anthropological attention. See, for example, I. Botez, Contribuţii la studiul taliei şi al
indicelui cephalic în Moldova de nord şi Bucovina (Iaşi, 1938), and Olga C. Necrasov, Étude an-
thropologique de la Moldavie et de la Bessarabie septentrionales (Bucharest, 1941).
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New Paradigms in Racial Sciences

During the interwar period, racial terminology was fluid and undermined
by divergent interpretations. Race was both a physical entity— one an-
thropologist described it as the “sum-total of somatological characteris-
tics”—and a cultural artifact, the result of specific historical conditions.15
As there was no consensus about what constituted race; neither did an-
thropologists agree on how many races populated Europe. Attempts to
work through this problem are detectable in the effort to standardize
racial cartography. Here, three models competed for prominence. The
first was proposed by the French naturalist and anthropologist Joseph
Deniker, who identified six primary races: Northern, Eastern, Ibero-
Insular, Western or Cenevole, Littoral or Atlanto-Mediterranean, and
Adriatic or Dinaric; along with four subraces: sub-Northern, Vistulian,
Northwestern, and sub-Adriatic.16 Another model was outlined by the
American racial cartographer William Z. Ripley, who insisted that there
were only three European races: Teutonic, Alpine (Celtic), and Mediter-
ranean.17 The German racial anthropologist Hans F. K. Günther sug-
gested that there were five European races: Nordic, Western, Dinaric,
Eastern, and Baltic.18 All three authors considered the cephalic index to
be a reliable instrument for classification, meaning that cranial capacity
was what differentiated races: some were dolichocephalic (long-headed),
mainly Northern and Ibero-Insular races; others were brachycephalic
(short-headed), like Eastern, Western, and Dinaric races; and some races
were mesocephalic (medium-headed).19 The more a race possessed
dolichocephalic and brachycephalic characteristics, the more it claimed a
superior position within the hierarchy of European races.20
Toward the end of the nineteenth century, however, the utility of cra-
nial research for racial purposes was viewed with increasing suspicion.21
15. J. Deniker, The Races of Man: An Outline of Anthropology and Ethnography (London,
1900), 8. For a discussion of the relationship between the concept of race and physical an-
thropology, see Paul Topinard, “De la notion de race en anthropologie,” Revue d’anthro-
pologie 8, no. 2 (1879): 589 – 660.
16. Deniker, Races of Man, 325–35.
17. William Z. Ripley, The Races of Europe: A Sociological Study (New York, 1899).
18. Hans F. K. Günther, Rassenkunde Europas, 2d ed. (Munich, 1926). See also Amos
Morris-Reich, “Race, Ideas, and Ideals: A Comparison of Franz Boas and Hans F. K. Gün-
ther,” History of European Ideas 32, no. 3 (September 2006): 313 –32.
19. In 1842, the Swedish anatomist Anders Retzius (1796 –1860) first used the ratio
of width to length to distinguish between dolichocephalic and brachycephalic crania, thus
establishing a craniological comparative study of racial groups. For a discussion of differ-
ent anthropological traditions of race, see Anders Retzius, Coup d’oeil sur l’état actuel de l’eth-
nologie au point de vue de la forme du crane osseux (Geneva, 1860).
20. For a description, see Carlos C. Closson, “The Hierarchy of European Races,”
American Journal of Sociology 3, no. 3 (1897): 314 –27. For how ideas of racial classification
were used in different institutional contexts, see Frederik Barth, Andre Gingrich, Robert
Parkin, and Sydel Silverman, One Discipline, Four Ways: British, German, French, and American
Anthropology (Chicago, 2005).
21. See the critique provided by G. M. Morant, “A Preliminary Classification of Eu-
ropean Races Based on Cranial Measurements,” Biometrika 20, nos. 3 – 4 (1928): 301–
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418 Slavic Review
This suspicion was a symptom of the growing dissatisfaction with the con-
cept of race, in general.22 As one form of racial research was slowly falling
into disrepute, new ones were rapidly making progress. Serology was one
of these. The innovative work by physiologists, immunologists, and
pathologists, like Karl Landsteiner—who discovered human blood
groups (A, B, O) around 1900 —and Ludwik Hirszfeld—who confirmed
that the percentage of blood groups in a population varied according to
racial origin—not only helped the emergence of serology as a discipline
preoccupied with deciphering the chemical properties of blood groups
for the benefit of improving medical assistance (such as blood transfu-
sions and the discovery of new vaccines), but also brought the fascination
with blood into the mainstream of anthropological research.23 The idea
of “biochemical races,” as Hirszfeld called them, provided racial anthro-
pologists with a new method for classifying races by more accurate, bio-
chemical means rather than by using highly contested anthropometric
characteristics. Equally important, serology also demonstrated that blood
groups were inherited according to Mendelian laws of heredity, thus con-
ferring upon race a distinguishing attribute impervious to internal or ex-
ternal influences.24 As the Italian haematologist Leone Lattes declared in
his 1923 L’individualità del sangue: “The fact of belonging to a definite
blood group is a fixed character of every human being, and can be altered
neither by the lapse of time nor by intercurrent diseases.” 25 Since cranial
measurements had proved incapable of providing definitive answers to
historical questions about racial identity, national ideologues hoped that
serology could offer the scientific certainty needed to legitimize theories
of biological uniqueness.
75. See also Benoit Massin, “From Vichow to Fischer: Physical Anthropology and ‘Modern
Race Theories’ in Wilhelmine Germany,” in George W. Stocking Jr., ed., Volksgeist as Method
and Ethic: Essays on Boasian Ethnography and the German Anthropological Tradition (Madison,
1996), 79 –154.
22. See Paul J. Weindling, “Central Europe Confronts Racial Hygiene: Friedrich
Hertz, Hugo Iltis and Ignaz Zollschan as Critics of Racial Hygiene,” in Turda and Wein-
dling, eds., “Blood and Homeland,” 263 – 80.
23. For a general discussion of serology and blood groups, see Paul Steffan, Handbuch
der Blutgruppenkunde (Munich, 1931); P. P. Negulescu, Geneza formelor culturii: Priviri critice
asupra factorilor ei determinanţi (Bucharest, 1934); Fritz Schiff and William C. Boyd, Blood
Grouping Technic: A Manual for Clinicians, Serologists, Anthropologists, and Students of Legal and
Military Medicine (New York, 1942); Arthur Ernest Mourant, The ABO Blood Groups: Com-
prehensive Tables and Maps of World Distribution (Oxford, 1958); Kathleen E. Boorman and
Barbara E. Dodd, An Introduction to Blood Group Serology: Theory, Techniques, Practical Appli-
cations, 2d ed. (London, 1961); William H. Schneider, “Chance and Social Setting in the
Application of the Discovery of Blood Groups,” Bulletin of the History of Medicine 57 (1983):
545– 62; and Pauline M. H. Mazumdar, “Blood and Soil: The Serology of the Aryan Racial
State,” Bulletin of the History of Medicine 64 (1990): 187–219.
24. L. Hirschfeld [Hirszfeld] and H. Hirschfeld, “Serological Differences between the
Blood of Different Races,” The Lancet 197, no. 2 (18 October 1919): 675–79. The Romanian
presentation of Hirschfeld’s research appeared in 1922. See C. Velluda, “Dr. L. Hirschfeld
şi Dna Dr. Hirschfeld, Incercări de aplicaţiune a medodelor serologice în problema
raselor,” Clujul medical 3, no. 12 (1922): 367– 68.
25. Leone Lattes, Individuality of the Blood in Biology and in Clinical and Forensic Medi-
cine (1st Italian ed., 1923; London, 1932), 43.
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As symbols of national belonging, race and blood transcended sci-

ence; they operated within a new nationalist register, one unifying the
physiognomy of the nation and its resurrected spirituality.26 Subscribing
to this axiom, anthropological and serological research redefined the
body of the nation according to the scientific standards of the age,
whereby the physical and spiritual qualities of the nation were placed un-
der close inspection by both state agencies and individuals entrusted with
the role of protecting them.
Romanian Racial Anthropology

Romanian anthropologists were rather late in producing a racial narrative
for territories that had been the focus of other competing national an-
thropologies before World War I. It was the French anthropologist
Eugène Pittard who conducted one of the first racial investigations in Ro-
mania.27 In “Recherches anthropologiques sur les Roumains de Transyl-
vanie” (1919) and, especially, in Etude sur l’indice céphalique en Roumanie
(1927) Pittard argued that Romanians from the Old Kingdom were
dolichocephalic, while those from Bukovina and Transylvania were
brachycephalic, thus suggesting that the Romanian nation was composed
of different racial types.28 A similar argument was advanced by the direc-
tor of the Institute of Anatomy in Cluj, the physician and anatomist Vic-
tor Papilian. In a series of articles published in the 1920s, Papilian hoped
to demonstrate the existence of “special cephalometric characteristics”
among the Romanians in Transylvania. He concluded that the cranial
characteristics of Romanians from Transylvania differed from those of
both Romanians in the Old Kingdom and Hungarians in Transylvania.
Compared with the latter groups, the former were “hyperbrachycephalic”
(round or broad-headed) and “mesocephalic”: they belonged to a differ-
ent racial substratum.29
26. For the role “blood” has played in shaping European imagination since the
Middle Ages, see Uli Linke, Blood and Nation: The European Aesthetics of Race (Philadelphia,
1999).
27. See, for example, Eugène Pittard, “Anthropologie de la Roumanie: Nouvelles
recherches sur le Skoptzy,” Bulletin de la Société Roumaine des Sciences 22, nos. 4 –5 (1913):
298 –328; Pittard, Anthropologie de la Roumanie: Les Peuple Sporadiques de la Dobrudja
(Bucharest, 1913); and Pittard, Anthropologie de la Roumanie: Documents somatologiques pour
l’étude des Tsiganes (Bucharest, 1915).
28. Eugène Pittard, “Recherches anthropologiques sur les Roumains de Transyl-
vanie,” Revue anthropologique 29, nos. 3 – 4 (1919): 57–76; and Pittard, together with
Alexandru Donici, Etude sur l’indice céphalique en Roumanie avec un essai de repartition géo-
graphique de ce caractère (Bucharest, 1927). See also Eugène Pittard, Les Peuples des Balkans:
Esquisses anthropologique (Paris, 1916); and Pittard, La Roumanie (Paris, 1917). Pittard exer-
cised a lasting influence on Francisc I. Rainer, the first director of the Institute of Anthro-
pology in Romania. See Francisc Rainer, Enquêtes anthropologiques dans trois villages roumains
des Carpathes (Bucharest, 1937).
29. Victor Papilian, “Studiul indicelui cranian vertical şi transverse-vertical pe crani-
ile de români şi maghiari,” Clujul medical 1, no. 9 (1920): 763 –77; Papilian, “Cercetări
antropologice asupra românilor ardeleni,” Clujul medical 2, no. 11 (1921): 335–39; and Pa-
pilian, “Nouvelles recherches anthropologiques sur la tête des Roumains de Transylvanie,”
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420 Slavic Review
Given the use of the tandem dolichocephalic-brachycephalic in these

anthropological writings dealing with ethnic groups in Transylvania—
particularly the alleged racial divide between Romanians from the Old
Kingdom and those from the newly united provinces, as well as between
Romanians and Hungarians—the conclusions reached by cranial re-
search contravened the general rhetoric of Romanian nationalism, which
insisted on national unity and ethnic homogeneity.
In fact, anthropological theories, like those expressed by Pittard and
Papilian, encouraged researchers to believe in the existence of a specific
Romanian racial type, one that they located in Transylvania. One such sup-
porter was the sociologist and anthropologist Ion Chelcea, who analyzed
the crania collection existing in the Museum of Natural History in Vienna
assembled by the Austrian anthropologist Augustin Weisbach in the second
half of the nineteenth century.30 Methodologically, Chelcea followed the
craniological principles outlined by the German anthropologist Rudolf
Martin in his 1914 Lehrbuch der Anthropologie, especially individual cranial
measurements (length, breadth, diameter, and so on).31 Based on these
principles, Chelcea grouped Romanian crania into six racial types: Roman-
Mediterranean (or Ibero-Mediterranean), Nordic, Kurgan, Dinaric, Da-
cian, and Avar-Turanic. Practically, however, he followed the Romanian
nationalist tradition and thus pointed to the existence of a “Dacian racial
type,” which was to be found especially among the inhabitants of the
Apuseni (Western) Mountains in Transylvania.32
Chelcea’s anthropological reflections suggest that although he was
persuaded by Pittard’s arguments about Romania’s racial diversity—for
he found it perfectly possible to differentiate between Romanian crania
from Transylvania and the rest of Romania—his description of “Dacian”
cranial characteristics bears more than a passing resemblance to Pittard’s
anthropological writings. The graphic illustration of this resemblance not
only indicates a direct influence, it is also a testament to the way in which
racial anthropology turned nationalist in Romania and became increas-
ingly obsessed with racial specificity.
Substantiating Chelcea’s claim about the existence of a distinct Ro-
manian racial type was the idea of racial permanence—an idea that served
as a medium for various cultural constructions of the national past during
the interwar period. For instance, an oft-voiced image underpinning Ro-
manian nationalist tradition was the notion that the territories constituting
Greater Romania had frequently been invaded (from the Romans of
antiquity to the Magyars of the Middle Ages and the Jews of modern
Revue anthropologique 33, nos. 9 –10 (1923): 337– 41. Although Bucur notes that Papilian
used “notions of hereditary determinism in evolution to define the parameters of [his]
own scientific discipline, anthropology,” she does not provide any evidence to support the
claim. See Bucur, Eugenics and Modernization in Interwar Romania, 70.
30. Ion Chelcea, “Tipuri de cranii româneşti din Ardeal (Cercetare antropologică),”
Academia Română: Memoriile Secţiunii Ştiinţifice 10, no. 3 (1934/35): 341– 68.
31. Rudolf Martin, Lehrbuch der Anthropologie in systematischer Darstellung mit besonderer
Berücksichtigung der anthropologischen Methoden ( Jena, 1914).
32. Chelcea, “Tipuri de cranii,” 360 – 62.
02-S4434-MP1 6/22/07 4:20 PM Page 421
times).33 This idea was neither new nor specifically Romanian: the coun-
tries of central and southeast Europe (especially the Balkans) have been re-
peatedly singled out as extremely heterogeneous ethnic regions.34 Yet this
troubled history only confirmed what Romanian nationalists overtly pro-
claimed with respect to the national past: only a race superior in its quali-
ties could have survived centuries of dislocation and foreign domination.
What constituted that race was the subject of heated debates, as commen-
tators could not agree whether it was Roman, Dacian-Roman, Dacian, or
Dacian-Roman-Slavic. For Chelcea, it was the “Dacian racial type” that the
Romanians deemed theirs and that gave them the right to rule over terri-
tories where descendants from that race either now lived or had lived.35
This racial expression of national identity may be seen as challenging
the scientific credentials claimed by anthropology; yet it may also be seen
to be defining a specific process of national metamorphosis. Sorin Antohi
describes this process as “ethnic ontology,” whereby universal categories
are appropriated and transformed by nationalist traditions.36 We may see
the emergence of this “ethnic ontology” in the topical resemblance be-
tween the writings of such different authors as the historian Vasile Pârvan,
the poet Lucian Blaga, and the philosopher Mircea Vulcănescu.37 As these
writers overtly employed the image of a Romanian national essence and
obsessively sought to integrate it into the discussion of national culture in
Romania, it is possible to see the way in which the very concept of race be-
came absorbed into the nationalist rhetoric of inclusion and exclusion,
epitomizing the encounter between individuals representing different
ethnic groups and cultures.
Such a transformation of the national culture in Romania favored the
emergence of an anthropological tradition complementary to yet distinct
from that set out by western European scholars, like Eugène Pittard,
Augustin Weisbach, or Viktor Lebzelter.38 Iordache Făcăoaru, a racial
33. For the classical version of this narrative, see Nicolae Iorga, Histoire des Roumains
et de leur civilisation (Paris, 1920).
34. See, for example, Jovan Cvijić, La Péninsule Balkanique: Géographie humaine (Paris,
1918); and Christian Promitzer, “Vermessene Körper: ‘Rassenkundliche’ Grenzziehungen
im südöstlichen Europa,” in Karl Kaser, Dagmar Gramshammer-Hohl, and Robert Pich-
ler, eds., Europa und die Grenzen im Kopf (Klagenfurt, 2004), 357– 85.
35. N. Densuşianu, Dacia prehistorică (Bucharest, 1913); A. Donici, “Crania Scythica:
Contribution à l’étude anthropologique du crane scythe et essai relatif à l’origine géo-
graphique des scythes,” Academia Română: Memoriile Secţiunii Ştiinţifice 10, no. 3
(1934/1935): 289 –329; and N. Lahovary, “Istoria şi o nouă metoda de determinare a
raselor,” Arhiva pentru ştiinţă şi reformă socială 7, nos. 1–2 (1937): 122 –73.
36. Sorin Antohi, “Romania and the Balkans: From Geocultural Bovarism to Ethnic
Ontology,” Tr@nsit online (Europäische Revue) 21 (2002), available at http://www.iwm
.at/index.php?option!com_content&task!view&id!235&Itemid!411 (last consulted
25 May 2007).
37. See Vasile Pârvan, Dacia: An Outline of the Early Civilizations of the Carpatho-
Danubian Countries (Cambridge, Eng., 1928); Lucian Blaga, “Revolta fondului nostru
nelatin,” in Iordan Chimet, ed., Dreptul la memorie (Cluj, 1993), 3:41– 43; and Mircea
Vulcănescu, Dimensiunea românească a existenţei (Bucharest, 1991).
38. See, for example, the anthropological framework suggested by Viktor Lebzelter,
“La Répartition des Types Raciaux Romano-Méditerranéens en Roumanie,” L’Anthropologie
02-S4434-MP1 6/22/07 4:20 PM Page 422
422 Slavic Review
eugenicist affiliated with the Institute of Hygiene and Social Hygiene in

Cluj and the Institute of Statistics in Bucharest, was one author who con-
tributed significantly to the crystallization of this tradition.39 Făcăoaru em-
braced the study of Romanian racial history with unabashed nationalist
fervor. A new national politics required a committed racial anthropology,
and Făcăoaru openly stated: “In our national politics, anthropology has
the role of clarifying some of the most important issues concerning our
political rights over the territory we possess and over the territories we do
not possess.” 40 In proffering this assumption, Făcăoaru made clear refer-
ence to a new direction in Romanian national politics. Whereas Papilian
and Chelcea expressed a restrained interest in connecting racial anthro-
pology to biopolitics, Făcăoaru openly engaged in constructing a Roman-
ian racial ontology, including all territories where Romanians could be
found.41
That Făcăoaru was devoted to developing a Romanian biopolitical
program becomes evident when one turns to his racial studies.42 When
he declared in 1937 that the final goal of racial anthropology was to
45, nos. 1–2 (1935): 65– 69. Despite his critical attitude toward Lebzelter and others, when
it came to explaining racial variety and composition, Iordache Făcăoaru had to rely on the
racial taxonomies produced by western European anthropologists. He thus accepted six cri-
teria for racial classification: height, the cephalic index, the facial index, the nasal index,
and eye and hair color. Based on these criteria, Făcăoaru then identified four principal
races: Alpine, Dinaric, Mediterranean, and Nordic; and five secondary races living in Ro-
mania: Dalic, East-European, Oriental, West-Asian, and Indian. The study was first pub-
lished as “Criteriile pentru diagnoză rasială,” Buletin eugenic şi biopolitic 6, nos. 10 –11–12
(1935): 341– 68; and later as a brochure in the collection edited by the Institute of Hygiene
and Social Hygiene in Cluj. See I. Făcăoaru, Criteriile pentru diagnoză rasială (Cluj, 1936).
39. Contrary to what Bucur assumes, Făcăoaru did not study in Berlin and did not re-
ceive a PhD in sociology. See Bucur, Eugenics and Modernization in Interwar Romania, 37. In-
terestingly, later in the book she partly corrects this by saying that Făcăoaru “had com-
pleted his Ph.D. in anthropology at the University of Munich in 1929.” Bucur, Eugenics and
Modernization in Interwar Romania, 112. In fact, Făcăoaru received his PhD (cum laude)
from the Faculty of Philosophy at the University of Munich in 1931. He studied pedagogy
with Aloys Fisher, anthropology with Theodor Mollison, and racial hygiene with Fritz Lenz.
See Studenten-Kartei: Făcăoaru Jordache, O-Np-SS 31, Archiv der Ludwig-Universität
München and the Archive of Ministry of Health, Bucharest, Făcăoaru Iordache, Personal
File, No. 10.489. I would like to thank Michael Wedekind for drawing my attention to
Făcăoaru’s student files and to Alexandru Dumitriu in Bucharest for his help in locating
Făcăoaru’s personal files.
40. Iordache Făcăoaru, “Socialantropologia ca ştiinţă pragmatistă,” Buletin eugenic şi
biopolitic 9, nos. 9 –10 (1938): 358.
41. A similar perspective was advocated by Petru Râmneanţu, “Românii dintre
Morava şi Timoc şi continuitatea spaţiului lor etnic cu al românilor din Banat şi din Tim-
ocul bulgar,” Buletin eugenic şi biopolitic 12, nos. 1– 4 (1941): 40 – 62; and E. Petrovici,
“Românii dintre Morava şi Timoc,” Transilvania 72, no. 3 (1941): 201–11. For a discussion
of Romanian irredentism in the 1940s, see Rebecca Ann Haynes, “‘A New Greater Roma-
nia?’ Romanian Claims to the Serbian Banat,” Central Europe 3, no. 2 (2005): 99 –120.
42. See especially the articles Făcăoaru published in Germany during the 1930s, such
as I. Făcăoaru, “Die ‘Ganzheitsanthropologie’ und das Studium des Menschen in
Rumänien,” Zeitschrift für Rassenkunde 6, no. 2 (1937): 248 –50; and Făcăoaru, “Beitrag zum
Studium der wirtschaftlichen und sozialen Bewährung der Rassen,” Zeitschrift für
Rassenkunde 9, no. 1 (1939): 26 –39.
02-S4434-MP1 6/22/07 4:20 PM Page 423
determine the “right to leadership of those who are superior”—namely those

belonging to races deemed superior—he not only insinuated that the Ro-
manians were destined to rule over other ethnic minorities, but that the
racial variation within the Romanian national body justified Romanians
from certain areas ruling over those from other areas as well.43 Făcăoaru
developed this synopsis of “ethnic hierarchy” in one of his most contro-
versial articles, which focuses on three main ideas: racial composition,
racial hierarchy, and Romania’s racial diversity. All three ideas derive from
the interrelationship between race, blood, and spiritual achievements.44
First, in order to determine the racial composition of the main Euro-
pean nations, Făcăoaru claimed to have synthesized the foremost racial
theories of his time, and indeed he used no less than twenty-five racial
terms in his study.45 Next, he surveyed the “biological value” of European
races, specifically the “integral, physical and spiritual, genotypic and phe-
notypic value of an individual or a nation, a race or an ethnic group.” He
divided them biologically into “over-endowed races,” “medium-endowed
races,” and “under-endowed races.” According to this racial profile,
Swedes were at the top of the chart; Romanians were in sixth place, while
Hungarians occupied one of the last places.46 Finally, Făcăoaru focused on
the “biological value of the Romanian population” inhabiting the histori-
cal regions constituting Romania: namely, Bukovina, the Banat, Transyl-
vania, Crişana-Maramureş (the “western provinces”); Moldavia, Bessara-
bia, Transnistria (the “eastern provinces”); and Oltenia, Muntenia, and
Dobrudja (the “southern provinces”). Both rural and urban populations
(male and female) were examined, and Făcăoaru employed four norms to
assess the “bio-racial level” of these samples of the population: economic
efficiency, social mobility, military propensity, and spiritual develop-
ment.47 As expected, the conclusions reflect Făcăoaru’s nationalist com-
mitment. Thus, the “western provinces (Bukovina, Transylvania, and the
Banat) are at the highest biological level; the eastern provinces (Moldavia,
Bessarabia, and Transnistria) occupy an intermediary place, while the
43. I. Făcăoaru, Structura rasială a populaţiei rurale din România (Bucharest, 1940), 16
(emphasis in the original).
44. I. Făcăoaru, “Valoarea biorasială a naţiunilor europene şi a provinciilor româneşti
(O primă încercare de ierarhizare etnică),” Buletin eugenic şi biopolitic 14, nos. 9 –10 (1943):
278 –310.
45. Thus, for example, Bulgarians were composed of the following racial compo-
nents: Mediterranean, 41 percent; Dinaric-Alpine, 24 percent; Alpine, 15 percent;
Paleoasiatic-Mongoloid, 12 percent; and Nordic, 8 percent. Germans were composed of
Nordic, 50 percent; Alpine, 20 percent; Dinaric, 15 percent; East-European, 6 percent;
Oriental, 5 percent; Mediterranean, 2 percent; Lapoid, 1 percent, and Mongoloid, 1 per-
cent. Romanians were composed of Alpine, 29 percent; Mediterranean, 19 percent;
Nordic, 14 percent; East-European, 12 percent; Dinaric, 11 percent; Atlantid, 10 percent;
Oriental, 3 percent; and Dalic, 2 percent. Hungarians were composed of East-European,
35 percent; Dalic, 20 percent; Caucasian-Mongoloid, 20 percent; Alpine, 15 percent,
Nordic, 5 percent, Mongoloid, 4 percent; and Mediterranean, 1 percent. Făcăoaru, “Val-
oarea biorasială,” 280 – 81. The lesser known “Dalic” and “Atlantid” races are subdivisions
of the Nordic race.
46. Făcăoaru, “Valoarea biorasială,” 283.
47. Ibid., 292.
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424 Slavic Review
southern provinces (Oltenia, Muntenia, and Dobrudja) are last.” The rest
of his commentary suggests the same stereotypical and simplistic vision:
superior racial qualities are to be found among urban, educated, and
wealthy social classes.48
How different were Papilian’s, Chelcea’s, and Făcăoaru’s descriptions
of Romanian racial characteristics from other theories of the nation pro-
posed during the interwar period? Undoubtedly, these authors made ex-
cessive use of racial and anthropological terminology, but in fact they
communicated in anthropological concepts what others in Romania were
attempting to express in poetic or philosophical terms.49 Ultimately, what
emerged from these anthropological analyses is an unconditional vener-
ation for Manichean and stereotypical interpretations of the nation. Be-
cause the Romanians were composed of different races, there must also
be a racial engine of superior origin within the nation, and Papilian, Chel-
cea, and Făcăoaru located it among the Romanians of Transylvania.50 This
narrative of national belonging clearly expressed the difficulties that in-
terwar nationalists encountered when attempting to define the “Roman-
ian nation.” 51 But this ambiguity about what constituted the nation
helped these nationalists to disseminate racial ideas, for as Ann Stoler has
noted, “racisms gain their strategic force, not from the fixity of their es-
sentialism, but from the internal malleability assigned to the changing
feature of racial essence.” 52
Romanian Racial Serology

One issue, in particular, troubled those involved in this type of anthropo-
logical research: physical similarity versus racial differences. Serology was
called on to solve this conundrum. Based on the special properties of
blood groups, serologists attempted to identify biological relationships
between individuals of the same and different ethnic groups, in order to
demonstrate the preservation of biological characteristics whose physical
distinctiveness might have been obliterated over time but whose heredi-
tary uniqueness never disappeared.
The Director of the National Institute of Statistics in Bucharest, the
statistician and demographer Sabin Manuilă, and Gheorghe Popovici,
a professor at the Faculty of Medicine in Cluj, were among the first Ro-
manian scientists to publicize the new theories of serology.53 In his 1924
48. Ibid., 306 –7.

49. For a literary and philosophical idea of race, see Lucian Blaga, “Despre rasă ca
stil,” Gândirea 14, no. 2 (1935): 69 –73. See also Marin Simionescu-Râmniceanu, Contribuţii
la o ideologie politică specific românească (Bucharest, 1939).
50. See Iordache Făcăoaru, “Amestecul rasial şi etnic în România,” Buletin eugenic şi
biopolitic 9, nos. 9 –10 (1938): 276 – 87.
51. See Constantin Rădulescu-Motru, “Tipul rasial românesc după indicele cephalic,”
in C. Rădulescu-Motru, Psihologia poporului român (Bucharest, 1999), 150 – 66.
52. Stoler, Carnal Knowledge and Imperial Power, 144.
53. S. Manuilă and G. Popoviciu, “Recherches sur les races roumaine et hongroise en
Roumanie par l’isohémagglutination,” Comptes rendus des séances de la Société de Biologie 90,
02-S4434-MP1 6/22/07 4:20 PM Page 425
article, Manuilă saluted the introduction of a new anthropological tool:

isohemagglutination, namely that the red blood corpuscles of one indi-
vidual mix with the blood serum of another individual from the same spe-
cies but not from a different one.54 He also offered a distilled version of
Hirszfeld’s theory on the “biological index of race” and its permanence
according to the laws of heredity. Subsequently, Manuilă discovered that
the “biological index” of the Romanians was 2.20; by comparison, that of
the Serbs and Bulgarians was 2.29; and of the Greeks 2.25. Manuilă
unified these indexes under a generic name—“Southeast European in-
dex”—arguing that his research proved that, although these nations
might not have originated from the same race, they must have been
closely connected. Not only were Romanians, Serbs, Bulgarians, and
Greeks related, they were also unique in their racial constitution: “There
exists no other people whose index so closely approximates that of the
southeast European peoples,” Manuilă concluded.55
Manuilă’s article gave rise to a considerable discussion about serology
in Romania. Popovici was the first to respond.56 Methodologically,
Popovici was also a follower of the serological methods proposed by Emil
von Dungern and Hirszfeld. Contrary to Manuilă, however, Popovici
aimed at more than just outlining a theoretical framework; he addition-
ally engaged with two contentious topics: the viability of “race” as a sci-
entific concept and the racial origins of the ethnic groups in Greater Ro-
mania, especially in Transylvania. From the outset, Popovici rejected the
methodological importance of “race” in defining national identity. “In the
Balkans,” he noted, “race cannot explain national differences and should
be used for this purpose only as a last resort.” 57 With the advent of serol-
ogy, anthropology was endowed with a new method, described as “more
objective, more precise, and more subtle”; a method that could identify
those “profound and less alterable differences in blood structure that
were previously undetected by research.” 58 Serology therefore served sev-
eral functions. On the one hand, it demonstrated that within the same
“race” there were different “serological races,” thereby unequivocally
rejecting the idea of racial homogeneity. Yet on the other hand, serology
confirmed that blood characteristics were transmitted according to
Mendelian laws of heredity, unconditioned by natural or social envi-
ronment. Corroborating the results obtained by Hirszfeld in Thessaloniki
with those of Oskar Weszeczky and Frigyes Verzár in Hungary, and
Manuilă in Romania, Popovici added his own contribution to the dis-
no. 1 (1924): 542 – 43; and S. Manuilă, “Recherches séro-anthropologiques sur les races en
Roumanie par la méthode de l’isohémagglutination,” Comptes rendus des séances de la Société
de Biologie 90, no. 2 (1924): 1071–73.
54. Sabin Manuilă, “Cercetări biologice cu privire la rasse, prin aplicarea unei
metode nouă,” Convorbiri literare 56 (1924): 694 –98.
55. Ibid., 696.
56. Gheorghe Popovici, “Diferenţe şi asemănări în structura biologică de rasă a
popoarelor României,” Cultura 3 (1924): 224 –34.
57. Ibid., 224.
58. Ibid., 224 –25.
02-S4434-MP1 6/22/07 4:20 PM Page 426
426 Slavic Review
cussion on the “biological index of the Romanians.” 59 He thus analyzed

12,000 individuals from different social backgrounds (such as soldiers, pa-
tients in hospitals, schoolchildren, and villagers), as well as different eth-
nic origins, including Romanians, Hungarians, Germans, Roma, Jews, and
Russians. Based on this research, Popovici reached a conclusion that dif-
fered from Manuilă’s: the “biological index of the Romanians” was 2.01,
situating them “between peoples of the Balkans and those of Russia”; that
of the Hungarians from Transylvania, for instance, was 1.7, “close to that
of their brothers from the Hungarian plain.” 60
With respect to dissimilar racial composition within the same envi-
ronment, both Manuilă and Popovici noted that the racial index varied
according to the geographical distribution of ethnic groups. Popovici,
however, placed this assumption at the center of his argument. The Ro-
manians from the mountainous regions of Transylvania, he claimed, dif-
fered in their blood properties from Romanians in Walachia or Dobrudja:
as a general rule, the more exposed a region was to the migrations of the
Middle Ages, the lower it was in the European group A (and the higher in
group B). This geographical variation within one specific ethnic group
was further tested by concentrating on ethnically mixed subregions in
Transylvania, where Romanian, Hungarian, and German villages were
situated next to each other. According to Popovici, the serological
characteristics of each group reflected their ethnic affiliation, which was
not influenced by the geographical and historical proximity of other eth-
nic groups. Serology could ultimately indicate—Popovici reaffirmed—
whether or not common racial elements found in different ethnic groups
could be explained by their similar origin. Based on this assumption,
Popovici concluded that the plausible explanation for why Romanians
and Hungarians living in the same areas in Transylvania had approxi-
mately similar biological indexes was that they might have had the same
racial ancestor: namely, an “autochthonous race” whose existence pre-
dated the arrival of the Hungarians in the Carpathian basin.61
Contrary to Popovici’s efforts to distance himself from any nationalist
interpretation of serological data, his argumentation did in fact favor Ro-
manian paradigms of historical continuity in Transylvania; as such, it had
a particular resonance for nationalists attracted to biological theories of
belonging. To discourage any nationalist appropriation and increase the
credibility of his research results, Popovici made systematic use of tech-
niques like comparative analysis in the application of serological theories.
In another article, he managed to maintain a scientific façade for his sero-
logical arguments, without reproducing the theories of racial origins
emerging within nationalist circles. Agreeing with Manuilă’s conclusions
(although without embracing his speculation about the “Southeast Euro-
59. Oskar Weszeczky, “Untersuchungen über die gruppenweise Hämagglutination

beim Menschen,” Biochemische Zeitschrift 107 (1920): 159 –71; and F. Verzár and O. Wes-
zeczky, “Rassenbiologische Untersuchungen mittels Isohämagglutininen,” Biochemische
Zeitschrift 16 (1921/1922): 33 –39.
60. Popovici, “Diferenţe şi asemănări,” 226.
61. Ibid., 227–34.
02-S4434-MP1 6/22/07 4:20 PM Page 427
pean index”), Popovici’s final observation was twofold: first, he argued

that “the Romanians from Transylvania present blood groups in the same
proportions as other peoples from the Balkans”; second, he postulated
that the “serological structure” of the Romanians from the Old Kingdom,
Bessarabia, and Bukovina positioned them between the European and the
Asian-African type.62
The impact of Manuilă and Popovici’s serological research on bio-
political theories in Romania was immediate, for both were connected to
Iuliu Moldovan, the director of the Institute of Hygiene and Social
Hygiene in Cluj, who, in turn, was the mentor of the main Romanian
eugenicists and racial anthropologists in the interwar period, including
Făcăoaru and Petru Râmneanţu.63 Racial narratives and typologies of eth-
nic groups in Romania were negotiated and popularized within this circle
of friends and colleagues.64 The biologization of national belonging en-
visaged by eugenicists made it possible for racial anthropology to intersect
with serology. These were the disciplines that endeavored to transform
the Romanian national body in line with a new biopolitical program.
A Rejuvenated National Body

A dominant principle underlay Romanian biopolitics during the interwar
period: the ideal of Greater Romania. The nationalist myth of a territory
occupied by all Romanians (and only by them) involved the fusion of
various overlapping Romantic notions—the unity between language and
territory; the glorification of the Dacian empire; the sanctity of the nation.
Nevertheless, as a formula for national cohesion, the content of an
62. Georges Popoviciu, “Recherches sérologiques sur les races en Roumanie,” Revue
anthropologique 35, nos. 4 –5– 6 (1925): 152 – 64.
63. In the first volume of Buletin eugenic şi biopolitic edited by Moldovan and published
in 1927, the legal physician and lecturer at the Law Academy in Oradea, Mihai Kernbach,
published a short commentary on blood groups in which he evaluated the importance of
serology for anthropology and surveyed new vistas of research opened up by the discovery
of the agglutinating properties of blood. See M. Kernbach, “Grupuri sangvine,” Buletin eu-
genic şi biopolitic 1, no. 3 (1927): 102 – 6. Other researchers interested in serological re-
search were Francisc Rainer, Maria Horia Dumitrescu, Alexandru Manuilă, and Maria
Veştemeanu. See Francisc Rainer, “Există corelaţie între grupele sanguine umane şi cele-
lalte caractere antropologice?” in Omagiu lui Constantin Kiriţescu (Bucharest, 1937),
696 –701; Maria Horia Dumitrescu “Cercetări asupra grupelor sanguine în România,”
România medicală 12, no. 10 (1934): 141– 42, 144; and Alexandru Manuilă and Maria
Veştemeanu, “Constatări cu privire la aplicarea metodei sero-antropologice pe teren,”
Buletin eugenic şi biopolitic 14, nos. 3 – 4 (1943): 121–25.
64. A good example is the collaboration between Făcăoaru and Râmneanţu occa-
sioned by the Seventeenth International Congress of Anthropology held in 1937 in
Bucharest. See P. Râmneantu and I. Făcăoaru, “The Blood Groups and the Pigmentation
of the Iris in the Population from Transylvania”; P. Râmneantu and I. Făcăoaru, “The
Blood Groups and the Facial Index in the Population from Transylvania”; I. Făcăoaru and
P. Râmneanţu, “Das Verhältnis zwischen Rassen und Blutgruppen bei der Siebenbürgis-
chen Bevölkerung”; I. Făcăoaru and P. Râmneanţu, “Der Längen-Breitenindex und die
Blutgruppen bei der Siebenbürgischen Bevölkerung,” all in XVIIe Congrès International
d’Anthropologie et d’Archéologie Préhistorique (Bucharest, 1939), 323 –25, 333 –37, 337–39,
and 339 – 42.
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428 Slavic Review
idealized Greater Romania was continually changing. Indeed, although it

was always a totalizing nationalist ideology, during the interwar period Ro-
manian nationalists could—and did—understand it as an expression of
the doctrine of the homogeneous ethnic state, one predicated upon racial
affiliation.65 From this interpretation follows the ideological importance
of the key arguments advanced by contemporary anthropological and
serological research: the dispute over the racial origins of ethnic minori-
ties and the struggle over the racial core of the Romanian nation (claimed
to be located in the mountains of Transylvania).
Râmneanţu, another eugenicist and racial anthropologist from Tran-
sylvania, was instrumental in the development and application of serolog-
ical research to the study of ethnic minorities in interwar Romania. In
1935, Râmneanţu (together with Petru David) published one of the most
articulated combinations of anthropological theories of race with nation-
alism and serology.66 This article can be divided into two parts: the first
deals with historical narratives, including arguments about the Romanian
continuity in Transylvania and various theories concerning the origins of
the Szeklers; the second comprises a synthesis of serological theories, fol-
lowed by their application to ethnic groups in Transylvania.
For Râmneanţu, Romanian continuity in Transylvania necessitated no
additional confirmation. Accordingly, he moved immediately to a discus-
sion of the origins of the Szeklers, engaging with two theories: the first as-
sumed that the Szeklers were of Hun origin; the second suggested that
they were instead Hungarian colonists. Râmneanţu favored neither the-
ory. Instead, he maintained that only the process of isohemagglutination
could solve the historical conundrum regarding ethnic groups in Transyl-
vania, for “blood is the real, perhaps the unique, source that has remained
untouched by the vicissitudes of time and that will elucidate the Szeklers’
true ethnic origin.” 67
Two serological theories backed up Râmneanţu’s assertion: Hirsz-
feld’s “biochemical race index” and Siegmund Wellisch’s “blood specific
gene index.” Applied to the ethnic groups of southeast Transylvania,
these serological theories were meant to establish the “Romanians’
racial-biological index” and then identify villages that were, according to
Râmneanţu, just “summarily Szeklerized” (namely those villages where
the “Romanians’ racial-biological index” was easily detectable). Yet serol-
ogy was also employed to locate the biological “index” specific to the
65. That this was not something exclusively confined to Romania, but a common fea-
ture of racial nationalism in the Balkans is eloquently demonstrated by the case of Yu-
goslavia. See Rory Yeomans, “Of ‘Yugoslav Barbarians’ and Croatian Gentlemen Scholars:
Nationalist Ideology and Racial Anthropology in Interwar Yugoslavia,” in Turda and Wein-
dling, eds., “Blood and Homeland,” 83 –122.
66. Petru Râmneanţu (in collaboration with Petru David), “Cercetări asupra originii
etnice a populaţiei din sud-estul Transilvaniei pe baza compoziţiei serologice a sângelui,”
Buletin eugenic şi biopolitic 6, no. 1 (1935): 36 –75. See also Pierre Râmneanţu, “Origine éth-
nique des Széklers de Transylvanie,” Revue de Transylvanie 2, no. 1 (1935/1936): 45–59;
and I. Făcăoaru, “Compoziţia rasială la români, săcui şi unguri,” Buletin eugenic şi biopolitic 7,
nos. 4 –5 (1937): 124 – 42.
67. Râmneanţu, “Cercetări asupra originii etnice a populaţiei,” 40.
02-S4434-MP1 6/22/07 4:20 PM Page 429
Szeklers. With respect to the first assumption, Râmneanţu confirmed

Manuilă’s research results and considered that the racial index of Ro-
manians from southeast of Transylvania varied between 2.60 and 1.76,
with the average situated between 2.20 and 2.00, similar to that of
Romanians from other parts of Transylvania and the Old Kingdom of
Romania, though lower than that of Romanians from the Apuseni
Mountains, who were considered the “least racially contaminated.”
When conducting the same serological research in Szekler villages (in
the counties of Ciuc/Csík, Odorhei/Udvarhely, and Trei-Scaune/
Háromszék), however, Râmneanţu discovered that, in general, the racial
index of the Szeklers in that region varied between 3.07 and 1.56. He
hastened to explain that such variance was caused by the mixed ethnic
origin of the groups studied, for—Râmneanţu continued—when con-
centrating on villages inhabited exclusively by Szeklers, the resulting
racial index was 2.11, near the average of the racial index of the Roma-
nians: “This mathematical and biological measurement, the result of an
unprecedented number of analyses, proves beyond a doubt that the eth-
nic origin of those named Szeklers is identical with that of the Romani-
ans.” 68 To prove that his serological research was indisputably confirmed
by facts and comparative analyses, Râmneanţu briefly reflected upon the
racial indexes of the Saxons and the Roma population: he found no dif-
ference between the racial index of the first group and their counter-
parts from Germany; similarly, the racial index of the latter group
confirmed their origins in India.
To discuss the ethnic origins of Romanians, Hungarians, and Szek-
lers in Transylvania based only on the “race index” was mistakenly to
treat a topic of paramount importance with a slightly outdated method-
ology, Râmneanţu argued. As a result, he decided—“in order to be com-
pletely well informed”—to augment his serological results by imple-
menting Wellisch’s “blood specific gene index,” namely by considering
the gene distribution (p, q, and r) corresponding to the three “bio-
chemical races” (A, B, and O). This new serological configuration was
then graphically represented using Oswald Streng’s “race-triangle,”
considered the latest synthesis in racial serology (see figure 1). More-
over, Râmneanţu argued that a similar process of “Szeklerization” oc-
curred to the Saxons of that region, whose “race index” suggested their
authentic ethnic origin. “Because we could not establish a biological in-
dex specific to the Szeklers, as it does not exist,” Râmneanţu concluded
that this ethnic group has the same “ethnic-anthropological origin as the
Romanians.” 69
A similar interpretation was proposed by Popovici, who returned to
these topics in a series of articles published in the late 1930s and revised
some of the serological assumptions he had made in the 1920s (for ex-
ample, he deemed Hirszfeld’s “biological index of race” redundant in the
wake of the new serological research) and accepted that “the blood
68. Ibid., 56.

69. Ibid., 64 – 65.
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430 Slavic Review
Figure 1. “Blood Types by Racial Groups.” From Pierre Râmneanţu, “Origine

éthnique des Széklers de Transylvanie,” Revue de Transylvanie 2, no. 1 (1935/
1936): 56.
properties of the race (isohemagglutination)” confirmed that the Szeklers

were “almost identical with the Romanians living in the same place.” 70
The Hungarians from Transylvania also possessed a high proportion of
the “European value p” (or group A), an occurrence that was explained
by the fact that the Hungarians mixed with Romanians and Germans,
whose high level of p was also documented.71
Unsurprisingly, in his conclusions, Popovici resembled Făcăoaru and
Râmneanţu’s racial nationalism: the Hungarians in Transylvania were
“biologically closer” to Romanians than to Hungarians in Hungary. Yet
Popovici’s nationalist ethos carried him even further. As a gloss on the elu-
sive theme of racial purity and illustrative of the nationalist obsession with
racial essence, Popovici argued: “The Romanians of the mountainous
center of Transylvania as well as the Hungarians and the Szeklers of this
region possess a European racial purity that one only finds in a few
70. G. Popoviciu and I. Birau, “Nouvelles contributions a l’étude des isohémagglu-

tinines en Roumanie,” Revue anthropologique 46, nos. 4 – 6 (1936): 181– 83; and G. Popovi-
ciu, “Comparaison entre les groupes sanguins des Roumains et ceux des autres peuples de
la Roumanie,” Revue anthropologique 46, nos. 4 – 6 (1936): 184 – 89.
71. Popoviciu and Birau, “Nouvelles contributions,” 182 – 83.
02-S4434-MP1 6/22/07 4:20 PM Page 431
mountainous regions of Europe. The proportions of p and q appear here

at the same levels as in the Alpine and Nordic races.” 72
Popovici’s nationalist interpretation of serology was fully revealed in
an article he published in 1938 in Revue de Transylvanie.73 He commenced
his analysis thus: “Lately the problem of the racial origin of nations is of-
ten posed. Romania’s adversaries attempt to prove that the Romanians
possess their frontiers unjustly and that the new provinces are inhabited
by populations that are either non-Romanian or only recently Roman-
ized. This erroneous argument is especially made about Transylvania.” 74
Next Popovici returned to one of his early serological convictions and dis-
carded the importance of race in defining nationality, explaining that the
original “Hungarian race” became virtually extinct during the wars of the
Middle Ages. Indeed, a few enclaves of the “pure” Hungarian race are
spread across the Hungarian plain, but contemporary Hungarians (living
in Budapest as well as in Transylvania) were simply assimilated Romani-
ans, Slavs, and Germans. Nationality, religion, and the language of a par-
ticular group could not explain its racial origin.75 Not surprisingly then,
according to Popovici, “The Hungarians of Romania are—as a rule—
Magyarized Romanians.” 76
In many ways, this nationalization of serology reflected the political at-
mosphere of emerging authoritarian regimes in the late 1930s. Just as the
debates over national symbolism and territorial disintegration occasioned
an exchange of views on the essential traits of the Romanian national
character, discussions about a new racial biopolitics prompted reflections
on Romania’s national future. Similar to fascist Italy and Nazi Germany,
various forms of radical politics that emerged in Romania during the early
1940s endorsed the idea of a totalitarian state, seen to be the epitome of
Romanian ethnic supremacy. And like racial ideologues elsewhere, Ro-
manian eugenicists and racial anthropologists adopted and championed
principles of ethnic reengineering and social segregation.77
72. Popoviciu, “Comparaison entre les groupes sanguins,” 181– 89. See also Georges
Popoviciu, “Les races sanguines en Roumanie,” in XVIIe Congrès International d’Anthropolo-
gie et d’Archéologie Préhistorique, 309 –16.
73. George Popovici, “Le problème des populations de la Roumanie vu a la lumière
des recherches sur les races d’après le sang,” Revue de Transylvanie 4, nos. 1–2 (1938):
14 –27.
74. Ibid., 14.
75. Ibid., 15. Râmneanţu proposed a similar argument: “The application of the sero-
logical investigations in the populations is one of the most important achievements for an-
thropology. In this way, based on the variations among fixed limits of the classical blood
groups, we are able to determine to which nation belongs every population nucleus.
We are convinced that the distribution of the blood groups gives better indication about
the extension of an ‘ethnie,’ than the language, the culture, and the customs.” In Peter
Ramneantzu, “The Classical Blood Groups and the M, N and M, N Properties in the Na-
tions from Transylvania,” in XVIIe Congrès International d’Anthropologie et d’Archéologie Préhis-
torique, 325.
76. Popovici, “Le problème des populations de la Roumanie,” 24. See also Rădulescu,
“Anthropologische Beweise,” 12.
77. According to Maria Bucur, “The relationship between Romanian eugenics and the
policies of the Antonescu regime, especially with regard to its treatment of ‘undesirable’
02-S4434-MP1 6/22/07 4:20 PM Page 432
432 Slavic Review
However, this conspicuous imitation, which proved perfectly suited to

integrating the biopolitical modernism of Romanian fascism within the
European context, should not obfuscate the specific cultural environ-
ment and political circumstances permeating the narratives of national
identity produced during this period. Not only was Romania a country
with a significant number of ethnic minorities (28 to 30 percent of the
population), but its own dream of territorial expansion was short-lived.
(In 1940, Romania lost northern Bukovina, Bessarabia, northern Transyl-
vania, and southern Dobrudja to the Soviet Union, Hungary, and Bul-
garia, respectively). Unsurprisingly, then, Romania’s entry into the war in
the subsequent year was portrayed as a “holy war” against external foes
and hostile historical circumstances: war provided a new context for the
“palingenetic myth” of national renewal; through combat and sacrifice,
Romania could regain not only its territories but, equally important, its
“mystical aura of a superior nation.” 78
Within this new political context, racial anthropology and serology
professed the fervent intention to redesign the history and racial origin
of ethnic minorities living in Romania.79 Such processes of racial
appropriation became popular in 1940s Europe, most tellingly in Nazi
research in central and southeast Europe.80 During the war in Romania,
this transgression of ethnic boundaries was a pressing concern due to
the problem of defining the body of the nation in a period in which po-
litical revisionism reached its pinnacle—not only through scientific
minorities—the Jews and Roma—remains unclear.” Bucur, Eugenics and Modernization in

Interwar Romania, 224. Scholars dealing with the Holocaust in Romania, like Radu Ioanid,
Jean Ancel, Lya Benjamin, and Dennis Deletant, have documented clear connections,
however. See Radu Ioanid, The Holocaust in Romania: The Destruction of Jews and Gypsies under
the Antonescu Regime, 1940 –1944 (Chicago, 2000); Jean Ancel, “The German-Romanian
Relationship and the Final Solution,” Holocaust and Genocide Studies 19, no. 2 (2005):
252 –75; Lya Benjamin, “Bazele doctrinare ale antisemitismului antonescian,” in Viorel
Achim and Constantin Iordachi, eds., România şi Transnistria: Problema Holocaustului: Per-
spective istorice şi comparative (Bucharest, 2004), 237–51; Lya Benjamin, ed., Evreii din Româ-
nia între 1940 –1944, vol. 1: Legislaţia antievreiască (Bucharest, 1993); and Dennis Deletant,
Hitler’s Forgotten Ally: Ion Antonescu and His Regime, Romania 1940 –1944 (Basingstoke, Eng.,
2006). Moreover, archival documents indicate the importance bestowed on Râmneanţu’s
work on the racial origins of the Csangos by the religious leaders of the Csango communi-
ties in Moldova in their attempts to assure General Antonescu of their loyalty to the
Romanian state. See, for example, the informative note sent on 1 April 1943 to Serviciul
Special de Informaţii (SSI), “În jurul problemei originei entice a ceangăilor şi a românilor
catolici din Moldova,” Arhivele Statului Bucureşti, Preşedinţia Consiliului de Miniştri,
f. 63/1942 (I am grateful to Chris Davis for locating this document). The note was occa-
sioned by the publication of Petru M. Pál’s article, “Glasul sângelui,” in Originea, a strong en-
dorsement of Râmneanţu’s racial theories about the Csangos.
78. Nicolae Roşu, Dialectica naţionalismului (Bucharest, 1936), 18.
79. See Arens Meinholf, “Die Moldauer Ungarn (Tschangos) im Rahmen der
rumänisch-ungarisch-deutschen Beziehungen zwischen 1940 and 1944: Eine vornational
strukturierte ethnische Gruppe im Spannungsfeld totalitärer Volkstumspolitik,” in Mari-
ana Hausleitner and Harald Roth, eds., Der Einfluss von Faschismus und Nationalsozialismus
auf Minderheiten in Ostmittel- und Südosteuropa (Munich, 2006), 265–315.
80. See Michael Burleigh, Germany Turns Eastwards: A Study of Ostforschung in the Third
Reich (Cambridge, Eng., 1988).
02-S4434-MP1 6/22/07 4:20 PM Page 433
practices and literary exercises, but in the very substance of national

politics.81 In a report published after his research in Bessarabia in 1942,
Făcăoaru established this point in reference to the “racial structure of
the Romanians” from this region: “Racial researches about our co-
nationals living outside the borders of the country have both scientific
and biopolitical importance.” 82
Exemplifying this wartime evolution of serology, Râmneanţu indi-
cated how the three main blood groups—A, B, and O—were distributed
within each nation.83 In a series of articles published in the 1940s, Râm-
neanţu discussed the “sero-races of Transylvania” following the tradi-
tional, nationalist pattern: the Romanians were the oldest population in
Transylvania, the result of the Roman conquest and Dacian endurance;
the Hungarians came to Europe from Asia in the ninth century and
conquered Transylvania in the eleventh century; the Szeklers were either
descendants of the Huns or related to the Bulgarians (but they were cer-
tainly Magyarized before the Hungarians arrived in the Carpathian
basin); and the Germans (Saxons in the center of Transylvania; Swabians
in the Banat and the Partium) settled gradually between the twelfth
and the eighteenth centuries. The Wellisch index for these groups
was as follows: that of the Romanians was between 1.16 and 1.31; the Hun-
garians between 1.17 and 1.19; the Szeklers between 1.22 and 1.35; finally,
the Germans (both groups) between 1.23 and 1.41.84 Based on these
figures, Râmneanţu concluded: “Serological study is thus an important in-
strument of history and, at the same time, an admirable way to research
anthroposocial phenomena. By knowing the serological properties of dif-
ferent nations, we realize that their individuality is not dependent on ex-
ternal circumstances but on hereditary characteristics.” 85
A further example of how racial research was instrumental in the cre-
ation of the Romanian biopolitical utopia is Râmneanţu’s considerable re-
search on the Catholic communities in Moldova known as the Csangos.
81. This exercise in racial mapping continued after the war, especially in the period
between 1945 and 1947 when some of the territories that Romania lost in 1940, especially
northern Transylvania, were reintegrated into the Romanian state. See Peter Râmneantzu,
The Biological Grounds and the Vitality of the Transilvanian Rumanians (Cluj, 1946).
82. I. Făcăoaru, Contribuţie la studiul compoziţiei morfologice a românilor din Republica
Moldovenească (Bucharest, 1944), 4. See also Iordache Făcăoaru, “Cercetări antropologice
în patru sate din Transnistria” (unpublished paper, 1943) available on icrofilm, Holocaust
Memorial Museum Institute, f. 2242, op. 1, RG-31.004, reel 4 (I would like to thank Radu
Ioanid and Carl Modig for their help in obtaining this manuscript). Făcăoaru and his wife,
Tilly, belonged to a group of Romanian research teams assigned by the Romanian Social
Institute and Central Institute of Statistics to complete the social, economic, cultural, and
racial evaluations of the Romanian population in Transnistria. See Anton Galopenţia,
Românii de la est de Bug, 2 vols. (Bucharest, 2006).
83. Petru Râmneanţu, “Distribuţia grupelor de sânge la populaţia din Transilvania,”
Buletin eugenic şi biopolitic 12, nos. 9 –12 (1941): 137–59; and P. Râmneanţu and V. Luşirea,
“Contribuţii noi la studiul seroetnic al populaţiei din România,” Ardealul medical 2, no. 12
(1942): 503 –11.
84. Râmneanţu, “Distribuţia grupelor de sânge,” 152 –56.
85. Ibid., 158.
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434 Slavic Review
Figure 2. “Racial Biological Indexes.” From P. Râmneanţu, “Grupele de sânge la

Ciangăii din Moldova,” Buletin eugenic şi biopolitic 14, nos. 1–2 (1943): 64.
Two historiographic theories on the origin of the Csangos predominated

in the interwar period, especially within Hungarian historiography: the
Csangos were either a group that became separated from the Magyar
tribes as they headed towards the Pannonian plain, or they were Mag-
yarized Cumans. Râmneanţu contested both theories; he developed a
fully articulated racial interpretation of the Csangos in keeping with
the main tenets of Romanian nationalism (see figure 2).86 Based on the
1941 census (a census that considered race to be a category of identifi-
cation) Râmneanţu asserted that there were only 8,523 Csangos in
Moldova, a group that was characterized by their use of Romanian and
their Catholicism.87 Râmneanţu, however, explicitly discarded the central
argument of Csango self-identification, namely that their Catholicism
86. P. Râmneanţu, “Grupele de sânge la Ciangăii din Moldova,” Buletin eugenic şi
biopolitic 14, nos. 1–2 (1943): 51– 65.
87. Ibid., 52.
02-S4434-MP1 6/22/07 4:20 PM Page 435
conflicted with their being Romanian. “A priori,” he declared, “I rejected

the fact that Csango and Catholic are identical notions.” 88 Accordingly,
Râmneanţu divided the Csangos into four categories: 1) Orthodox Ro-
manians speaking Romanian; 2) Catholic Romanians speaking Roman-
ian; 3) Catholic Romanians speaking Hungarian; and finally, 4) Catholic
Hungarians speaking Hungarian. All four groups, however, had similar
“blood groups and genes.” 89
Râmneanţu’s Romanian ethnic utopia also favored the emergence of
a new biological model of identity: once certain blood groups had been
defined as representing Romanian national identity, the only possible ex-
planation for their occurrence in other ethnic groups was that these
groups were, in fact, “Romanians” who had been exposed to cultural and
linguistic environments different from that of other Romanians. This view
portrayed the Szeklers and the Csangos as “racially Romanian,” since both
groups belong to the same “autochthonous” race described by Popovici;
their contradictory national identification can be explained by centuries
of Magyarization. Serology, Râmneanţu believed, helped rectify historical
conundrums about the ethnic mixing in Transylvania while also drasti-
cally revising fundamental assumptions about the national origin of the
non-Romanians.
The ethnic appropriation of the Csangos reached a critical stage in
1944, when Râmneanţu published Die Abstammung der Tschangos, arguably
the most radical reconstruction of the national past of a minority ethnic
group attempted in modern Romania.90 The first part of the book con-
centrates on historical narratives about the Csangos. Enlisting the works
of religious missionaries, linguists, and historians, Râmneanţu sought to
establish the verisimilitude of his interpretation by constructing as com-
prehensive a description of the Csangos as possible. As evidence, he
brought forward extensive investigations into the geographical distribu-
tion and demographic structure of the Csangos: he amassed historical
records, identified the Csango villages in Moldova, and offered plausible
explanations for their ethnonym. In many respects, Râmneanţu was a
meticulous researcher who accompanied his historical and linguistic ar-
guments with evidence from medieval chronicles, and his speculations
with confirmation from contemporary historiography.91 He was also un-
reservedly nationalistic.
Consider the issue of religion, for instance. No scholar before Râm-
neanţu had questioned the fact that the Csangos were Catholic. Disman-
tling the synonymy between “Catholic” and “Csango”— one of the most
contentious of the claims first put forward in his 1943 article—served as
the introduction to Râmneanţu’s discussion of racial serology. His em-
phasis on Catholicism not being an aspect of the racial identity of the
88. Ibid., 54. This highly nationalistic interpretation of historical sources was also ap-
plied to Catholic Romanians in Moldova, whom Râmneanţu declared to be “Catholicized
Orthodox Romanians.”
89. Râmneanţu, “Grupele de sânge la Ciangăii,” 60 – 63.
90. Petru Râmneanţu, Die Abstammung der Tschangos (Sibiu, 1944).
91. Ibid., 7–29.
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436 Slavic Review
Csangos was invested with national significance, and it is not difficult to

see why: within this unsettling issue, the line traditionally drawn between
autochthonous Orthodoxy and foreign Catholicism was treated as a fun-
damental distinction between racially different nations—just as it was for
other apostles of Orthodoxy in interwar Romania.92
The second part of Râmneanţu’s book concentrates on the impor-
tance of serological research for national affiliation. After first discussing
the “individuality of blood” and summarizing the main arguments about
the hereditary properties of blood, Râmneanţu examined the “ethnic
meaning of blood groups.” The outline provided here repeats the racial
arguments that Râmneanţu had been articulating since the early 1930s. In
direct reference to the Csangos, Râmneanţu did, however, amend the
racial typology introduced in 1943, whereby the Csangos were now nomi-
nally divided into “Romanians by blood” and “Hungarians by blood,” re-
spectively.93 A section on racial morphology that catalogued physical char-
acteristics such as height, hair color, and nasal index completed his
examination. According to Râmneanţu, the ambiguity concerning the
ethnic origin of the Csangos had finally been resolved: racially, they were
Romanians.94
The ethnic engineering proposed in Die Abstammung der Tschangos sur-
passed previous representations of the relationship between the Roman-
ian majority and ethnic minorities in Romania. The racial mythology
Râmneanţu advocated was indeed radical; yet it was well integrated within
a nationalist culture that became prevalent in Romania after 1940: a cul-
ture composed of clusters of biopolitical ideas and practices. Râmneanţu
could thus advance the new program of national regeneration by invok-
ing political (Hungarian revisionism, for example) as well as national ne-
cessities (the “holy war” for the reunification of lost territories).95
“Racial Commandments” and Totalitarian Biopolitics

In order to comprehend the relationship between anthropology, serol-
ogy, and biopolitics, one must investigate racial studies, not only in their
most technical formulations (charts, diagrams, mathematical equations,
and so on), but also in the popularly reiterated images that traversed in-
terwar sociology and history, among other fields of study.96 In many con-
92. Most prominently in the 1938 manifesto “Programul statului etnocratic” pro-
posed by the poet and Orthodox philosopher Nichifor Crainic. See Nichifor Crainic, Orto-
doxie şi etnocraţie. Cu o anexă: Programul statului etnocratic (Bucharest, 1938), 284.
93. Râmneanţu, Die Abstammung der Tschangos, 43 – 48.
94. Csango priests themselves adopted Râmneanţu’s racial narrative (although not
his negation of Csango Catholicism). See Iosif P. Pál, Originea catolicilor din Moldova şi fran-
ciscanii lor, păstorii lor de veacuri (Roman, 1941). Later this view was integrated into the stan-
dard Romanian discourse on the Csangos developed during communism. See Dumitru
Mărtinaş, The Origins of the Csangos (1985; reprint, Iaşi, 1999).
95. Petru Râmneanţu, “Probleme etno-biopolitice ale Transilvaniei,” Transilvania 74,
no. 5 (1943): 325– 48.
96. In 1934, the Romanian philosopher Petre P. Negulescu provided a comprehen-
sive investigation into biological theories of belonging. Preoccupied with deciphering cul-
tural mechanisms that could influence the formation of national identity, Negulescu also
02-S4434-MP1 6/22/07 4:20 PM Page 437
temporary responses to this problem, sociologists and historians often

imagined national metamorphoses centered upon racial content.97
In the closing section of this article, I shall look at some specific racial
arguments that further reveal the intimate links between racial anthro-
pology, serology, and theories of national identity. Racial eugenicists such
as Făcăoaru and Râmneanţu stand not as exceptions but as representa-
tives of a general intellectual and political process that I see as the biolo-
gization of national belonging. This process should be clarified, for it is
important to note that Romanian biopolitics was integrated within the
logic of “ethnic ontology” and paradigmatic modernism so convincingly
described by Antohi and Roger Griffin.98 In its broader sense (to include
racial nationalism and antisemitism), the biologization of national be-
longing was not merely a primitive simplification of racism or a pseudo-
scientific distortion of eugenics; it was a defensive response to forms of
collective and individual fragmentation brought about by the cultural,
political, social, and economic transformations of European modernity
during the interwar period.99
If ideas of national rebirth provided the framework for the biologiza-
tion of national belonging as it developed during the interwar period,
racist fantasies also proved inspirational to those who wished to see Ro-
mania complete its ethnic revolution. Sabin Manuilă outlined his version
of the Romanian racial biopolitics thus: “The goal of our population pol-
icy should be to gather all Romanians in one place and to eliminate from
our body all minorities manifesting centrifugal tendencies.” Manuilă
based this biopolitical program on “racial commandments,” including
pro-natalism; “the programmatic solution to the Jewish question”; “effi-
cient solutions to combat the danger of Gypsy racial influence”; and
finally “practical eugenic measures,” such as sterilization of those consid-
ered dysgenic. Deploring the fact that the country that gave the world the
term biopolitics lacked a proper institution dedicated to racial policy,
Manuilă suggested creating a “Superior Council for the Protection of
Race,” which would address racial issues scientifically and in accord with
the political governance of the new regime.100
reflected on the relationship between racial serology and national essence. He skeptically
concluded that “Not even through the analysis of blood can we—at least not yet— estab-
lish the existence of a ‘national specificity.’” See P. P. Negulescu, Geneza formelor culturii:
Priviri critice asupra factorilor ei determinanţi (Bucharest, 1934), 375.
97. See, for example, Ion Foti, Concepţia eroică a rasei (Bucharest, 1936); and Alexan-
dru Randa, Rasism românesc (Bucharest, 1941).
98. Roger Griffin, “Tunnel Visions and Mysterious Trees: Modernist Projects of Na-
tional and Racial Regeneration, 1880 –1939,” in Turda and Weindling, eds., “Blood and
Homeland,” 417–56; and Antohi, “Romania and the Balkans: From Geocultural Bovarism
to Ethnic Ontology.”
99. Roger Griffin, “The Palingenetic Political Community: Rethinking the Legitima-
tion of Totalitarian Regimes in Interwar Europe,” Totalitarian Movements and Political Reli-
gions 3, no. 3 (2002): 24 – 43.
100. Sabin Manuilă, “Comandamentele rassiale şi politica de populaţie,” Romania
nouă 7, no. 17 (26 October 1940): 3. Many of these ideas were also discussed in Manuilă
“Acţiunea eugenică ca factor de politică de populaţie,” Buletin eugenic şi biopolitic 12, nos.
1– 4 (1941): 1– 4.
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438 Slavic Review
In a series of articles dedicated to totalitarian biopolitics, the sociolo-

gist Traian Herseni also stressed the relationship between eugenics and
racial nationalism. In “Mitul sângelui” (The myth of blood), for instance,
Herseni expressed his adherence to eugenics, glorifying both the Nazi
revolution and the need for racial palingenesis in Romania. “A race,” he
observed, “can be kept in existence, purified, increased, and improved by
hereditary means, hence the possibility and necessity of a racial, eugenic
policy.” Nazi Germany was, in Herseni’s opinion, the perfect racial state,
one whose racial and eugenic policies further amplified the traditional
aura of cultural superiority characterizing the German nation: “With
the help of eugenics, a nation controls its destiny. It can systematically
improve its qualities and reach the highest stages of accomplishment
and human creativity: Hitler’s genius consists of a clear vision of this
possibility.” 101
Having nurtured such ideas, it should come as no surprise that, when
meditating on potential discriminatory measures against minorities in
Romania ( Jews and Roma especially), Herseni’s language became overtly
racist. By 1941, Herseni’s ideas for introducing biopolitical laws in Roma-
nia as the basis for national regeneration, including social segregation
and deportation, were fully developed: “The racial purification of the Ro-
manian nation is a matter of life and death. It cannot be neglected, post-
poned, or half-solved.” The scientific language supplied by eugenics was
thus fused with a racist vocabulary, which in turn echoed Romanian anti-
semitism: “Without doubt the decay of the Romanian nation is to be at-
tributed to inferior racial elements infiltrating our ethnic group; to the
ancient, Dacian-Roman blood being contaminated by Phanariot and
Gypsy blood, and recently by Jewish blood.” 102
New biological elites, Herseni announced, a “Legionary super-nation,”
not social and political institutions, would be the state’s main vehicle for
spreading the gospel of eugenics. This would entail a new national moral-
ity, physical fitness, and the instruction of larger masses of Romanians. Eu-
genics, in both its positive and negative forms, was at the center of Herseni’s
biopolitical program:
Once the evaluation and social selection based on racial qualities has been
achieved, the most difficult action—but also the most efficient through its
qualitative and long-lasting results—must follow: eugenics, which is the
improvement of the race through heredity. We need eugenic laws and eu-
genic practices. Reproduction cannot be left unsupervised. The science of
heredity (genetics) clearly demonstrates that human societies have at
their disposal infallible means for physical and psychological improve-
ment—but for this to happen there can be no random reproduction (and
thus the transmission of hereditary defects); and those possessing quali-
ties cannot be left without offspring. Those dysgenic should be banned
from reproduction; inferior races should be completely separated from
the [Romanian] ethnic group. Sterilization of certain categories of indi-
101. Traian Herseni, “Mitul sângelui,” Cuvântul 17, no. 41 (23 November 1940): 2.
102. Traian Herseni, “Rasă şi destin naţional,” Cuvântul 18, no. 91 (16 January
1941): 1.
02-S4434-MP1 6/22/07 4:20 PM Page 439
viduals should not be considered an affront to human dignity: it is a eulogy

to beauty, morality, and perfection, in general.103
The biologization of national belonging advocated by eugenics and
racial anthropology thus became a form of political identity clearly associ-
ated with the form of fascist national revolution prophesized by the Iron
Guard. Some, like Făcăoaru, argued that: “Regulations of [hereditary] se-
lection and eugenic ideas, in general, are outlined in the testament of our
captain [Corneliu Zelea Codreanu]. We have a duty to fulfill it faithfully.
Otherwise, the nation will be depleted of its best biological roots. The
protection of our most precious possession, our biological patrimony,
should become a state commandment.” 104 On 14 October 1940, Făcăoaru
was appointed director of the Department of Higher Education in the
Ministry of National Education by the Legionary government.105 In this
new position, he devised a biopolitical plan based primarily on controlling
marriage. “Eugenic regulations concerning marriage should at first be
applied exclusively to legionaries,” he declared, as they were those who
understood that “the nation is above the individual.” Then the “eugenic
legislation” will be applied to “the entire nation.” To promote such a
transformation, Făcăoaru suggested establishing Offices for Pre-Nuptial
Consultations, where couples could be examined and receive health
certificates. Initially, such certificates would be compulsory only for le-
gionaries, and optional for the rest of the population. Ultimately, Făcăoaru
declared, the “Legionary state should extend such practices to the army
and other professional categories.” 106
Other authors, like Râmneanţu, outlined the need for a Romanian
“totalitarian demography” based on the examples offered by Germany
and Italy. According to Râmneanţu, the “political and spiritual revolu-
tions” initiated by Nazism and fascism allowed both states to succeed in
“creating a totalitarian attitude” and “restoring spiritual values,” together
103. Ibid., 7. The Legionary idea of the healthy and reproductive nation was fully de-
veloped during communism. See Gail Kligman, The Politics of Duplicity: Controlling Repro-
duction in Ceausescu’s Romania (Berkeley, 1998). Interestingly, both Făcăoaru and Râm-
neanţu lived until the late 1970s and thus witnessed Ceausescu’s policies of natalism and
anti-abortion, to which Râmneanţu, at least, thought he could be of assistance. See Bucur,
Eugenics and Modernization in Interwar Romania, 240; and Maria Bucur, “Mişcarea eugenistă
şi rolurile de gen,” in Maria Bucur and Mihaela Miroiu, eds., Patriarhat şi emancipare în is-
toria gândirii politice româneşti (Iaşi, 2002), 139 – 42.
104. Iordache Făcăoaru, “Normele eugenice în organizaţiile legionare,” Cuvântul 17,
no. 69 (21 December 1940): 1.
105. See Arhivele Naţionale ale României, Ministerul Învăţământului, f. 854/1940.
Bucur is mistaken when she assumes that Făcăoaru “held an important government posi-
tion, controlling the implementation of public health measures.” See Bucur, Eugenics and
Modernization in Interwar Romania, 39. Nor did Făcăoaru become “the ideologue of that re-
gime in matters relating to health, biology, and race purity, using eugenics as the basis for
his arguments and programs of action.” Ibid. Interestingly, Făcăoaru even expressed reti-
cence about accepting the position in the Ministry of National Education, arguing that he
would be more helpful in “science,” where he could not be replaced, than at the ministry
where many could fulfil his duties. Făcăoaru, “Normele eugenice în organizaţiile le-
gionare,” 1.
106. Făcăoaru, “Normele eugenice în organizaţiile legionare,” 2.
02-S4434-MP1 6/22/07 4:20 PM Page 440
440 Slavic Review
with “the faith of the citizens in the future of the nation” and “the insti-
tution of the family.” 107 In the 1940s it thus became possible to see the
fascination with race as a glorification of the national revival that was most
exemplarily carried out by the Legionary movement. As the historian P. P.
Panaitescu declared: “We are not only the sons of the earth, but we belong
to a great race, a race that is perpetuated in us, the Dacian race. The Le-
gionary movement, which has awakened the deepest echoes of our na-
tional being, has also raised ‘Dacian’ blood to a place of honor.” 108 The to-
talitarian biopolitics that Făcăoaru and Râmneanţu located in the eugenic
transformation of the individual and the family was relocated by
Panaitescu in a historical “call” from Romania’s Dacian past, as the nation
was now expected to fully embrace immortal categories of identity.109
The “blood and soil” rhetoric helped formulate a new biopolitical
program, one whose purpose was to prepare the “chosen race” (the Ro-
manians), at the expense of ethnic minorities, for the onset of a racial
utopia: the Romanian ethnic state.110 Ioan V. Gruia, professor of law at the
University of Bucharest and minister of justice, confirmed this in 1940 on
the occasion of the introduction of antisemitic racial laws in Romania:
“We consider Romanian blood as a fundamental element in the founding
of the nation.” 111
In interwar Romania, emphasis was placed upon racial characteristics

and their connection to specific mechanisms of national identification
and classification. They were also associated with all the other processes
intrinsic to discussions about national identity, such as national particu-
larity, historical destiny, ethnic assimilation, and racial supremacy. More-
over, to engage in discussions about national essence and racial character
during the interwar period was to focus on physical descriptions and, con-
sequently, on the nation as a physical entity—as an object— existing in
and through its exchanges with other nations and races.
For this reason, toward the end of the 1930s, Romanian anthropology
and serology more closely resembled a political program than a scientific
agenda. In the dialogue between science and politics, the same motiva-
107. Petru Râmneaţu, “Măsuri de politică demografică şi politica demografică totali-
tară,” Buletin eugenic şi biopolitic 11, nos. 1–2 (1940): 44 – 45. See also George Stroescu, “Se-
lecţia rasială şi politica populaţiei în noul stat legionary,” Buna vestire 4, no. 87 (28 De-
cember 1940): 2.
108. P. P. Panaitescu, “Noi suntem de aici,” Cuvântul 17, no. 38 (20 November
1940): 1.
109. See Al. Manuilă, Originea neamului românesc în interpretarea sa biologică (Bucha-
rest, 1943).
110. See Petru Râmneanţu, “Sânge şi glie,” Buletin eugenic şi biopolitic 14, nos. 11–12
(1943): 370 –92; and Petru Râmneanţu, “Înrudirea de sânge,” Buletin eugenic şi biopolitic 14,
nos. 7– 8 (1943): 220 –37.
111. Ioan V. Gruia, “Expunere de motive la decretul lege nr. 2650/1940 privitor la re-
glementarea situaţiei juridice a evreilor din România,” Monitorul Official 183 (9 August
1940), reproduced in Martiriul evreilor din Romania, 1940 –1944: Documente şi mărturii
(Bucharest, 1991), 14 –21. See also Eugen Dimitrie Petit, Originea etnică (Bucharest, 1941);
and Gheorghe Vornica, “Originea etnică sau de sânge,” Transilvania 72, no. 8 (1941):
589 –91.
02-S4434-MP1 6/22/07 4:20 PM Page 441
tions that universalized racial anthropology also nationalized it; the same
developments that made craniometry, serology, and other anthropomet-
ric experiments fundamental to anthropology also gave rise to their being
championed within the contested field of national identification.
Debates over the nature of national identity in interwar Romania can
never be adequately addressed, if attention concentrates only on literary
arguments about the national essence. To be sure, anthropological and
serological definitions of national belonging do not make other debates
on the nation less important, but they do indicate that the origins of eu-
genic programs of biopolitical rejuvenation, such as those described in
this article, are to be sought not only in “critiques of parliamentary de-
mocracy and liberal politics” (as Maria Bucur has argued) but more im-
portantly in the attempt to achieve a new national body amid alleged do-
mestic spiritual decline (“modernity’s ontological crisis” according to
Roger Griffin) and unfavorable international conditions (territorial losses
and war).112 During the interwar period, cultural histories of the nation
often intersected with racial narratives of national belonging. Indeed, the
need for the rejuvenation of the ethnic community shared by most Ro-
manian intellectuals at the time was based on the “palingenetic myth” of
national renewal, comprising both the idea of spiritual metamorphosis
and its fulfillment in a new ethnic ontology.
112. Bucur, Eugenics and Modernization in Interwar Romania, 222; Griffin, “Tunnel Vi-
sions and Mysterious Trees,” 133.

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02-S4434-MP1 6/22/07 4:20 PM Page 413

The Nation as Object:

Introduction: Biopolitics and National Politics

414 Slavic Review

Ultimately, Moldovan insisted, biopolitics should become national poli-

Race, Blood, and Biopolitics in Interwar Romania 415

Iron Guard, as well as Viorel Achim and Michael Wedekind’s investigations

416 Slavic Review

After World War I, Romania’s territory nearly doubled. It included the

Race, Blood, and Biopolitics in Interwar Romania 417

New Paradigms in Racial Sciences

418 Slavic Review

Race, Blood, and Biopolitics in Interwar Romania 419

As symbols of national belonging, race and blood transcended sci-

Romanian Racial Anthropology

420 Slavic Review

Given the use of the tandem dolichocephalic-brachycephalic in these

Race, Blood, and Biopolitics in Interwar Romania 421

422 Slavic Review

eugenicist affiliated with the Institute of Hygiene and Social Hygiene in

Race, Blood, and Biopolitics in Interwar Romania 423

determine the “right to leadership of those who are superior”—namely those

424 Slavic Review

Romanian Racial Serology

48. Ibid., 306 –7.

Race, Blood, and Biopolitics in Interwar Romania 425

article, Manuilă saluted the introduction of a new anthropological tool:

426 Slavic Review

cussion on the “biological index of the Romanians.” 59 He thus analyzed

59. Oskar Weszeczky, “Untersuchungen über die gruppenweise Hämagglutination

Race, Blood, and Biopolitics in Interwar Romania 427

pean index”), Popovici’s final observation was twofold: first, he argued

A Rejuvenated National Body

428 Slavic Review

idealized Greater Romania was continually changing. Indeed, although it

Race, Blood, and Biopolitics in Interwar Romania 429

Szeklers. With respect to the first assumption, Râmneanţu confirmed

68. Ibid., 56.

430 Slavic Review

Figure 1. “Blood Types by Racial Groups.” From Pierre Râmneanţu, “Origine

properties of the race (isohemagglutination)” confirmed that the Szeklers

70. G. Popoviciu and I. Birau, “Nouvelles contributions a l’étude des isohémagglu-

Race, Blood, and Biopolitics in Interwar Romania 431

mountainous regions of Europe. The proportions of p and q appear here

432 Slavic Review

However, this conspicuous imitation, which proved perfectly suited to

minorities—the Jews and Roma—remains unclear.” Bucur, Eugenics and Modernization in

Race, Blood, and Biopolitics in Interwar Romania 433

practices and literary exercises, but in the very substance of national

434 Slavic Review

Figure 2. “Racial Biological Indexes.” From P. Râmneanţu, “Grupele de sânge la

Two historiographic theories on the origin of the Csangos predominated

Race, Blood, and Biopolitics in Interwar Romania 435

conflicted with their being Romanian. “A priori,” he declared, “I rejected

436 Slavic Review

Csangos was invested with national significance, and it is not difficult to

“Racial Commandments” and Totalitarian Biopolitics

Race, Blood, and Biopolitics in Interwar Romania 437

temporary responses to this problem, sociologists and historians often

438 Slavic Review

In a series of articles dedicated to totalitarian biopolitics, the sociolo-

Race, Blood, and Biopolitics in Interwar Romania 439