Migrating Memories
Romanian Germans in Modern Europe

Charts the transnational story of Romanian Germans in modern Europe – their migration, their position as a minority, and their memories.

James Koranyi (Author)

9781316517772, Cambridge University Press

Hardback, published 16 December 2021

340 pages
23.5 x 15.9 x 2.3 cm, 0.623 kg

'James Koranyi's book is an empathetic, sophisticated and critical history of the Romanian German experience through the turbulent twentieth century. The many layers of the past are fused with contemporary historical and lived experience to reveal a tapestry of identities and understandings. It is a fascinating and stimulating read.' Jonathan Kwan, University of Nottingham

Romanian Germans, mainly from the Banat and Transylvania, have occupied a place at the very heart of major events in Europe in the twentieth century yet their history is largely unknown. This east-central European minority negotiated their standing in a difficult new European order after 1918, changing from uneasy supporters of Romania, to zealous Nazis, tepid Communists, and conciliatory Europeans. Migrating Memories is the first comprehensive study in English of Romanian Germans and follows their stories as they move across borders and between regimes, revealing a very European experience of migration, minorities, and memories in modern Europe. After 1945, Romanian Germans struggled to make sense of their lives during the Cold War at a time when the community began to fracture and fragment. The Revolutions of 1989 seemed to mark the end of the German community in Romania, but instead Romanian Germans repositioned themselves as transnational European bridge-builders, staking out new claims in a fast-changing world.

Introduction: Stories, identities, memories
1. Making Romanian Germans
2. Transnational Germans
3. Fascist divisions in the Romanian German past
4. The iron memory curtain: Romanian Germans and Communism
5. European bridge-builders: Romanian Germans after 1989
Epilogue: The perpetual exodus.

Subject Areas: Social & cultural history [HBTB], 20th century history: c 1900 to c 2000 [HBLW], European history [HBJD]