Totalitarian Movements and Political Religions,

Vol. 9, No. 4, 437453, December 2008

Conservative Palingenesis and Cultural Modernism in

Early Twentieth-century Romania1

MARIUS TURDA
Oxford Brookes University
MariusTurda
Totalitarian
1469-0764
Original
Taylor
9402008
mturda@brookes.ac.uk
00000December
&
Article
Francis
(print)/1743-9647
Movements
2008 and Political
(online)Religions
10.1080/14690760802436068
FTMP_A_343774.sgm
and
Francis

ABSTRACT The scholarship on fascism has routinely explored the relationship between
anti-Enlightenment critiques of liberal modernity and democracy and the emergence of
concepts of cultural, political and biological regeneration before the First World War. This
is powerfully illustrated by Roger Griffins recent book on modernity and fascism. This
article applies Griffins conceptual framework to ideas of conservative palingenesis and
cultural modernist critiques of modernity developed in early-twentieth century-Romania
by a handful of Romanian authors, in an attempt to understand the intellectual sources of
the programme of national regeneration which Romanian fascists positioned at the centre
of their revolutionary project during the interwar period

This article discusses cultural modernist ideas of national renewal developed in

Romania during the first decade of the twentieth century. I argue that it is useful
to look at these critiques of the cultural homogeneity and political emancipation
brought about by liberal modernity in order to understand the intellectual
sources of the programme of national regeneration which Romanian fascists
made central to their revolutionary project during the interwar period. This in
turn illuminates the key role played by these ideologues in the development of a
peculiarly Romanian form of political religion in the 1930s.
The concept of conservative palingenesis proposed here differs from the socalled Conservative Revolution advocated by Ernst Jnger (18951993) and
Oswald Spengler (18801936), amongst others.2 The adepts of the Conservative
Revolution in Germany detested both the Weimar Republic and the conservative
traditions of the Wilhelmine period; they were anti-parliamentary and antimonarchists, and hoped to fuse nationalism with an anti-Marxist variant of socialism.3 On the contrary, the Romanian authors discussed in this paper considered
the conservative traditions of the past as embodying the source of rejuvenation
for the Romanian nation. To be sure, they were also against socialism, and were
often anti-Semites, a feature which although present was often absent from the
agenda of the Conservative Revolution. Neither is conservative palingenesis
synonymous with the set of cultural traditions identified by Jeffrey Herf as reactionary modernism, namely, the reconciliation between the anti-modernist,
Correspondence address: Department of History, School of Arts and Humanities, Oxford Brookes
University, Gipsy Lane, Headington, Oxford, OX3 OBP, UK. Email: mturda@brookes.ac.uk
ISSN 1469-0764 Print/ISSN 1743-9647 Online/08/040437-17 2008 Taylor & Francis
DOI: 10.1080/14690760802436068

438

M. Turda

romantic, and irrationalist ideas present in German nationalism and the most
obvious manifestations of means/ends rationality, that is, modern technology.4
Because Romania was a predominantly agrarian country and home of one of
Europes most traditional peasant societies, Romanian cultural modernists of the
early twentieth century did not aim at creating a technologically advanced nation
but advocated instead an organic community, completely integrated within its
own natural space.
This insistence on organic values, peasant racial purity and the antinomy
between rural (ethnically Romanian) and urban (foreign, Jewish) Romania was
combined with the rejection of the heritage of the Enlightenment thought, a
combination which, as Mark Antliff suggests, responded to a widespread
search for spiritual values and organic institutions capable of counteracting
what was considered the corrosive effects of rationalism (and capitalism) on the
body politic.5
One useful theoretical approach to conceptualising such an ideological force is
Roger Griffins definition of fascism as palingenetic ultra-nationalism,6 and
more recently, his discussion of social modernism. Griffin, like other historians
of fascism, considers the period between 1890 and 1918 as the Grnderzeit of
ideas which later emerged as Fascist, Nazi, or Legionary. It is not only because
these ideas emerged as a distinct way of understanding contemporary processes
of social transformation and political impasses, but also because it is in this period
that there was a subtle transfer of knowledge between such diverse scientific
fields as literature, history, medicine, anthropology, sociology and philosophy, all
of whose boundaries became porous to other disciplines and to non-academic
spheres of society.7 It was also then that the cultural foundations of an alternative
modernity8 were established, and not only in countries such as Germany, Italy or
France but also in Romania.
The study of the culturalintellectual origins of fascist ideology has therefore
highlighted its dynamic appropriation and syncretic combination of ideas widespread in fin-de-sicle European culture. George Mosse, Zeev Sternhell, Walter
Adamson, Claudio Fogu and Emilio Gentile to name but a few who have contributed to this debate have convincingly demonstrated that the new politics of
fascism extracted much of its energy from the multifaceted fabric of a modernist
cultural rebellion that had denounced the moralistic and optimistic view of social
modernisation associated with the consolidation of (liberal-capitalist) bourgeois
culture in the second half of the nineteenth century.9 This search for a different
modernity can be traced to a variety of sources, from the quest of the French
political theorist Georges Sorel (18471922) for a regenerative myth, to the cultural
pessimism of Friedrich Nietzsche (18441900), or to the racial diagnosis of contemporary decadence offered by Houston Stewart Chamberlain (18551927).10
My paper examines the impact of Chamberlains racial philosophy on three
Romanian intellectuals: Constantin Radulescu-Motru (18681957), Alexandru C.
Cuza (18571947) and Aurel C. Popovici (18631917). Directly, Chamberlain influenced the development of modern Romanian anti-Semitism, nationalism and
racism; indirectly, he shaped the emergence of autochthonous theories of culture
constituting the source of the Legionary national revolution during the 1930s.11 It
was no accident that these Romanian intellectuals were among the most avid
proponents of ideas of racial rejuvenation during this period, and were (especially
A. C. Popovici and A. C. Cuza) likely to use a nationalist terminology informed by
racial symbolism. Firstly, all of them visited and studied at universities in Central
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Europe, especially in Vienna, at a period when Chamberlains ideas were widely
disseminated in that cultural milieu. Secondly, they emerged as public figures and
controversial authors at a time when Romanian culture was in flux, abounding
with controversies about the current state and imminent future of the nation.12
Moreover, each of these intellectuals is representative of the development of
particular currents of ideas within the project of conservative palingenesis, which
collectively established the foundations for more radical theories of national
belonging, including legionarism, trairism and gndirism, to develop in Romania
after the First World War.
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The Jew and the Teuton: Chamberlains Ideas of Racial Conflict

Before a discussion of Chamberlains influence on Romanian culture at the
beginning of the twentieth century is offered, it is necessary to outline the main
tenets of his philosophy of race as it was presented in his seminal 1899 Die
Grundlagen des neunzehnten Jahrhunderts (The Foundations of the Nineteenth
Century).13 The major elements of nineteenth-century racial thinking converged
in Chamberlains philosophy of race: Aryan supremacy, Social Darwinism and
the recently developed doctrines of eugenics and anthropo-sociology. To these
theories Chamberlain added anti-Semitism and German nationalism.
Much of Chamberlains obsession with racial degeneration and ethnic mixing
resulted from a particular nationalist environment characteristic of the
Habsburg Monarchy at the turn of the twentieth century. Between 1889 and
1908, Chamberlain lived in Vienna, and it was at this time that he wrote Die
Grundlagen.14 In many ways, the three fundamental principles propounded in
Die Grundlagen were also a reflection of the particular ethnic composition of the
Habsburg Monarchy, namely that (a) mankind was divided into distinct races
which differed in their physical structure and mental as well as moral capacities,
(b) the struggle and interaction of these races was the main propelling force of
history, and the key to understanding cultural, political, and social development
and (c) the history of the West was a constant struggle between Aryans
(Teutons) and Jews.15 At the confluence of these principles, Chamberlain placed
his concept of race. Like other authors, Chamberlain exploited the bi-polarity of
race: it was simultaneously biological and cultural, so that he was capable on
occasion of articulating an intuitive, almost spiritual, definition of race. He
declared, for instance: Nothing is so convincing as the consciousness of the
possession of Race. The man who belongs to a distinct, pure race, never loses
the sense of it, and further, Race lifts a man above himself: it endows him with
extraordinary I might almost say supernatural powers.16
However, Chamberlains concept of race was also extensively influenced by
Charles Darwins theory of natural selection, despite misconstruing Darwins
arguments in the process. By way of illustration, in many parts of his book,
Chamberlain rejected the idea that natural selection favoured only the fittest. He
therefore hoped to overcome the existing contradiction in his own theory of race,
which claimed that the innate qualities of certain races assured their racial superiority, while at the same time insisting that external conditions proved decisive in
the process of racial selection.
A corollary to the importance of race in shaping the cultural history of
mankind was the necessity of refuting the importance of racial purity an
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M. Turda

employed a different technique: he argued that the mixing of races could have
both negative and positive consequences. This was even a necessary process,
since it contributed to the augmentation of superior racial qualities. Darwins
laws on the obliteration of racial characters by perpetual crossbreeding under
controlled conditions asserted that a race originated as a result of the specific
combination of geographical and historical conditions, which in turn ennobled
racial essence through inbreeding and artificial selection. Chamberlain highlighted the concepts of crossing and breeding as the two most important
factors in determining the character of race. Yet uncontrolled racial mixing
especially between races of different origin would jeopardise the qualities of
the superior race. It was this insistence on racial degeneration that inspired many
of Chamberlains followers in Romania.
Consequently, Chamberlain established five principles meant to keep racial
qualities from degenerating, or in Chamberlains stylistic phrasing, the prostitution of the noble in the arms of the ignoble. The superior quality of the material
(the first principle) in a race could only be assured by a carefully orchestrated
inbreeding (the second principle), and artificial selection (the third principle).
However, racial crossing (the fourth principle) would not be fortuitous, and
Chamberlain advocated the necessity of strictly limiting these crossings both in
respect of choice and time (the fifth principle).17 Only the race successfully
combining these five principles was destined for survival and historical achievement. In modern times Chamberlain thought the Teutons (die Germanen) were
such a race.
On the one hand, Chamberlains racial philosophy praised the cultural and
historical achievements of the Teutons; on the other, it excoriated the contribution
of Semitic races, especially the Jews. Thus, the Teutons embodied the best Aryan
racial qualities and were destined to redeem western culture from its present state
of destitution (itself caused by the Jews). By portraying the negative and
destructive effects the Jews had on western civilization, and by weaving Jewish
inferiority into a system that seemingly embraced all of human history, Chamberlain harnessed common anti-Jewish prejudices of the late nineteenth-century with
pseudo-scientific and philosophical foundation. At the same time he connected
modern anti-Semitism to its religious roots: the Judeo-Christian conflict.
While other anti-Semites at this time, most prominently Wilhelm Marr (1819
1904), relied on the dichotomy between inferior Jews and superior Aryans,
Chamberlain developed a more sophisticated, if equally intolerant, approach.
According to Chamberlain, positive and negative qualities were not the innate
characteristics of any race. Instead they were the result of the mixing of races with
different virtues. A felicitous apportionment of racial qualities would lead to the
development of cultural achievements, as was the case with the Germanic peoples.
The reverse phenomenon happened to the Jews who, Chamberlain suggested,
suffered from racial miscegenation, thus causing their assimilation to have disastrous effects for both the Jews and the nation into which they integrated.
Chamberlains anti-Semitism therefore functioned on two levels. The first
pointed to the physical characteristics of the Jews, culminating in what Chamberlain considered the degeneration of the Jewish race. The second outlined the
negative mentality of the Jews, their cultural and moral inferiority, and their lack
of religious sensibility. Chamberlain also emphasised the theological aspect of
this theory, arguing that the Jews never possessed religious consciousness. In
denying the Jews their propensity for cultural diversity, Chamberlain exposed

Conservative Palingenesis and Cultural Modernism 441

what he claimed to be their absolute mental poverty, confirming the popular
assumption on their racial degeneration.18
Die Grundlagen was an instant success; it ran through eight editions and sold
over 60,000 copies. A popular edition appeared in 1906; by 1914 the book had sold
over 100,000 copies. The book was first translated into English in 1911, and
enjoyed intellectual acclaim in Europe and the United States. Unsurprisingly, it
was also amply reviewed in Romania. Before discussing the direct impact of
Chamberlains ideas on Romanian anti-Semitism, it would be useful to note one
interesting attempt to construct a philosophy of the nation based not on spiritual
and cultural, but on epistemological, scientistic foundations.
Racial Philosophy and Nationalist Epistemology
The Romanian philosopher Constantin Radulescu-Motru belongs to a generation
of Romanian nationalists who gave Chamberlains theories a specific epistemological function, one which Motru then tried to apply to Romanian debates on the
nation. To be sure, Romanian interpretations of Chamberlain were anything but
unanimous. Some authors, like A. C. Cuza and A. C. Popovici, considered his
theory of the racial soul of the nation essential to understanding the specificity of
the Romanian modernisation, especially the peasantry, while others, like Motru,
saw it as an obstacle to the development of a new theory of nationalism based on
objective analysis and criticism.
In 1900, Motru published an extensive review of Die Grundlagen in Noua revist a
romn a pentru politic a, literatur a, stiin ta si arta (The New Romanian Journal for
Politics, Science and Art).19 In acknowledging the broad impact of Chamberlains
ideas, Motru was less persuaded that the book was based on the solid scientific
foundations claimed by its author. From the outset, he remarked that Chamberlains book belonged to the category of philosophical writings about race abounding in sophisms and speculations rather than constituting a philosophical
system of race. Accordingly, Motru decided to introduce Chamberlains racial
ideas as thoroughly and objectively possible the only way, Motru believed,
philosophy should be understood.
Chamberlains subjectivism when dealing with social and psychological
aspects of race was not the only aspect that alarmed Motru. He was also
concerned with Chamberlains lack of comparative-historical methodology. A
supporter of new theories of racial spirituality, especially Vlkerpsychologie a
field which at the end of the nineteenth century received a new application in the
work of Wilhelm Wundt (18321920) Motrus assessment of Chamberlains
racial ideas was more than a conventional review; rather it was an attempt at
cultural eclecticism, based on the assumption that the world can be known by
human reason without lacunae.20 Indeed what Motru hoped to obtain from
Chamberlain was a scientific theory of race, one based on a philosophical and
empirical basis. But Houston Stewart Chamberlain, Motru lamented, is the
enemy of the scientific method in philosophy. For him finding the truth does not
entail analysis and meticulous researches; the truth presents to the mind
intuitively; it could be told before being proven.21
Nevertheless, Motru systematically analysed Chamberlains racial laws,
considering the emphasis placed by Chamberlain on the rhetoric of struggle,
survival and extinction.22 This section prefigured Motrus discussion of a topic
bearing particular relevance to the Romanian context: the relationship between
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nation and race. According to Chamberlain, only in the national state could a race
fulfil its cultural destiny. Fused with this argument was his idea of heroes and
geniuses, deemed to be the historical products of a nations racial superiority. It
followed that only within an auspicious racial environment could individuals
possessing extraordinary qualities achieve personal and collective fulfilment. The
individual lives for a second; the race is infinite, declared Motru, subscribing to
Chamberlains theory on the pre-eminence of race and nation over the individual.23
For Chamberlain, the nation was the guardian of the racial soul. For as long as
the nation remained true to its racial nature it represented a bastion against racial
degeneration. But closely connected to the importance of the nation in shaping
the racial character was the role of the state. For both Chamberlain and Motru,
the nation-state was not only the inevitable product of history; it was also the
biological expression of social organisation, the only structure reflecting the
fundamental truth of race.
The other topic addressed by Motru was Chamberlains concept of Christianity.
Chamberlain presented Christianity as a moral revolt against decadence and
degeneration, with modern Germans as the heralds of the new world order the
saviours of Europe and the creators of the modern mind, on account of luminaries
such as the theologian Martin Luther (14831546) and the philosopher Immanuel
Kant (17241804). Die Germanen, extolled by Chamberlain, included numerous
modern European nations, from Italians to Bulgarians. One group, in particular,
was excluded: the Jews. Motru assumed that it was this profound anti-Semitism
that assured Chamberlain his public success. In conclusion, Motru reciprocated
Chamberlains assumption about the Manichean conflict between the Jews and
their host national cultures, a clash of values which he saw unfolding in Romania
as well.24
Motru synthesised many of the themes later to dominate the discussion on
Romanian national characteriology during the interwar period: ethnic identity,
racial anti-Semitism, national essence and national state.25 Motru was no antiSemite, yet his nationalist epistemology reflected a new tendency amongst
Romanian nationalists, one which Griffin has described as a palingenetic
climate, oriented towards biopolitical visions of national renewal.26 Only
through a cultural metamorphosis would the nation be able to overcome its
anomic condition, whose outcome was closure, either in the total destruction of
the communitas and the old order from which it had seceded, or its transformation into a viable new culture lived out under a new sacred canopy.27 Motrus
intention to place his nation under a new sacred canopy aptly describes his
cultural modernist predisposition for an organic nationalism that would offer a
total cosmology to modern Romanians: Only nations capable of their own
culture are able to assure their social order and have the right to emancipation
and self-rule.28 These two elements, culture and political emancipation, became
integrated with one another, for national unity based upon religious and racial
foundations would, it was hoped, renew the national community.
Motru, like other European intellectuals at the time, became a fervent supporter
of the fusion of scientific research of race with nationalism, a formula he would
later develop in his later writings.29 His ideas of palingenesis neatly harmonised
with other modernist critiques within Romanian political culture claiming that the
Romanian nation needed a new nationalist spirituality. Underlying arguments
about spiritual rebirth was a further assumption that saw the Romanian nation as
a phenomenon of nature, formed through natural processes. It was, thus, logical

Conservative Palingenesis and Cultural Modernism 443

to consider the peasant the repository of the nation. As Zeev Barbu has remarked,
at the beginning of the twentieth century:
Many Romanian intellectuals began to identify with the people, with
their traditional way of life and culture. This triggered an intense process
of revival reappraisal and indeed exaggeration of native, hence specifically Romanian traditions, values, and, generally speaking, Romanian
ways of life. The village and the peasant became symbols of honesty,
sanity and primeval purity, the strongholds of national life. Christianity
itself became a Romanian virtue.30
To Motru the peasant was the ethnic Romanian. Consequently, it was urban
modernity and its inherent cultural degeneration that were at the antipode of the
idealised community exemplified by the Romanian peasant.31 Motru drew
inspiration from the poet Mihai Eminescu (185089), the first Romanian author to
deem Romanianness an ontological condition, a unique way of looking at the
world.32 For Eminescu, the peasantry, living outside historical time was
the only ethnic category that could combine historicity and collective spirituality,
the only source of national regeneration. According to Griffin, It is this search for
a new spirituality, a new nomos, and a new community that provides a common
modernist matrix33 to such apparently contradictory ideas as rural utopianism
and historical conflict, or religious and racial regeneration, both geared towards
overcoming the existing anomic situation of the Romanians. In the Old Kingdom
of Romania one ethnic group, in particular, came to symbolise both the oppression of the peasantry and the features associated with decadent, urban modernity: the Jews.
Jewish Identity and Romanian National Specificity
In late nineteenth century Romania the situation of the Jews was particularly
complex.34 Although Romanian liberalism had grown in strength between 1866
(when the first constitution was adopted) and 1877 (when national independence
was declared), it was still inherently weak and divided. It also faced active opposition from a new generation of Romanian nationalists who grew dissatisfied with
the legacy of the 1848 revolution. Anti-Semitism was one disconcerting feature of
this new generation.
During the 1848 revolution, and especially after the creation of the first
modern Romanian state in 1859, the issue of Jewish emancipation ignited
frequent political debates. Related to this political process was the emergence of
Romanian anti-Semitism, a body of ideas which was as much cultural as it was
social and economic. During the nineteenth century, diverse Romanian writers,
such as Ion Heliade-Radulescu (180272), Vasile Alecsandri (181990) and
Bogdan Petriceicu-Hasdeu (18381907), added new symbolic significance to, and
elaborated, an already well-ingrained stereotype that described the Jews as
exploiters of the Romanians.35 Eminescu, for instance, in his political articles
published during the 1870s and 1880s, described Romanian autochthonous
values in opposition to a de-nationalised, ruling elite (a super-imposed faction)
which he assumed to be Jewish or of Greek extraction.
It was during the 1878 Congress of Berlin that Jewish naturalisation in Romania
received sustained international coverage. The Great Powers conditioned the
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recognition of Romanias independence by insisting that the Article 7 of the 1866

Constitution which stipulated that citizenship could be granted only to individuals belonging to the Orthodox religion be changed. Consequently, the Romanian Parliament modified the article but legislated that the naturalisation of Jews
would only be considered on an individual basis.36 One central argument dominated the anti-Semitic agenda of this period: it was suggested that the Jews refused
to assimilate into Romanian society, and that they preferred ghettoisation
instead.37 Around 1900, this thesis was replaced by the opposite idea: the integration of Jews into Romanian society needed to be prevented because it threatened
the Romanian national character. Under these circumstances, the debate about
political rights for the Jews received a new impetus.
In 1900, under the caption The Jewish Question: European Public Opinion and
the Jewish Question in Romania, Motru initiated in Noua revist a romn a an
international discussion about Jewish political emancipation. He explained his
intention thus: True Romanian patriots struggle to find a solution [to the Jewish
question] which reflects the countrys interests and is humanitarian towards the
foreign race. The question was simple: Would you advise the Romanians to
grant the Jews equal political and civic rights?38 Emile Zola, Cesare Lombroso,
Max Nordau, T. G. Masaryk, Karl Lueger, G. Clemenceau and H. S. Chamberlain
were amongst those foreign experts who honoured the invitation.39 To complete
the questionnaire, Motro also asked for contributions from leading Romanian
politicians, including Theodor Rosetti, Constantin Boerescu, Take Ionescu,
Gheorghe Panu, Vasile Lascar and P. P. Carp. Romanian politicians were unanimous in their opinion that at the time a solution to the Jewish question was
impossible, and that it may need to wait for at least two decades to be solved.40
Chamberlains commentary on this occasion deserves to be discussed at length.41
Manifesting his sincere admiration and warm love for the vigorous Romanian
nation, Chamberlain commenced his observations by comparing the Romanians
to other nations that survived the Ottoman occupation. He further observed that,
contrary to these nations, the Romanians were animated by political instinct. This
was an important feature, for as Chamberlain further insisted Without this
instinct a nation cannot be formed; and without a nation civilisation and culture
could not develop.42 After extolling the efforts to establish a Romanian state
between 1856 and 1866, Chamberlain then criticised the interference of the Great
Powers in Romanian domestic affairs, especially the insistence during the Congress
of Berlin that Romania should grant citizenship to her Jewish population. Using
England as an example, Chamberlain argued that it was only in 1723 that Jews were
allowed to buy property there that is, only after centuries of nation-building and
after rural property in the country was fully consolidated. Between 1290 and 1657,
he added, Jews were excluded from England. Should Romania want to follow
Englands glorious example, Chamberlain pondered, she should immediately
expel all Jews and accept them again after three or four centuries when the nation
is strong internationally, and her sense of property is consolidated internally.43
Additionally, the number of Jews in Romania was higher than in England:
Chamberlain approximated them to be 25 times more numerous in Romania.
Accordingly, strategies of political exclusion were urgently required. Moreover,
and again in contrast to England, the Romanian nation lacked a fundamental
feature, one which Chamberlain termed national character, and which
characterised a particular race, different from others.44 The Romanians must
assimilate other ethnic groups, especially those groups belonging to the same
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racial family, Chamberlain claimed, if they were to create a unitary, national
race. Nevertheless, Jews were especially discouraged from mixing with the
Romanians, for Chamberlain considered such a mixing both harmful and illusory.45 This was harmful as it led to the degeneration of the Romanian nation.
Considering the great number of Jews living in Romania, encouraging intermarriages between Romanians and Jews would seriously ruin the dream of a great
Romanian state, and any possibility to select a new powerful national race.
According to him, properly organic political links between race and nation could
only be constructed via a state that maintained and strengthened Romanian racial
traits in carefully planned political engineering analogous to that orchestrated by
other Western European states, England in particular.
On the other hand, racial assimilation of the Jews was illusory as they did not
want to blend with other people, declaring isolation as the fundamental law and
life principle of Judaism.46 Without the political exclusion of the Jews, the prospects for Romania were dismal, Chamberlain maintained. However, this exclusion
was not to be the result of political violence but was to be carried out under the
legal protection of modern constitutionalism. To reinforce this point, Chamberlain
admonished the Romanians for acting in a primitive way, unable to control their
medieval behaviour. He further insisted on abolishing anti-Semitic persecutions,
but without offering the Jews the possibility of political emancipation: Down with
the persecutions against the Jews! Down with the absurd medieval prejudices!
Down with social derision and personal animosity! Offer the Jews the legal protection you offer to all foreigners! But do not give them political and property rights.47
Political emancipation of the Jews was a possibility Romanian contemporaries
were not willing to contemplate. Combined with the emergence of Romanian
ideas of national regeneration, the topic of Jewish political rights encompassed a
wide range of anti-Semitic attitudes. Characteristically, most of the arguments
came not from analytical evaluations of the role played by the Jews in the cultural
life of the country but from biology and evolutionary psychology, where the
subject of Jewish degeneration was passionately debated.48
Reminiscing about the questionnaire in the 1940s, Motru commented sadly that
the discussion he initiated did not clarify the Jewish question: Now, after forty
years, I know why. Those I had asked to contribute were, with the exception of H.
S. Chamberlain, renowned politicians and publicists but without a special scientific background in this topic. And finally, I still did not know, after receiving the
answers, more than I knew before, namely whether the Jews are dangerous to the
Romanian state or not.49 Indeed it was Chamberlain who articulated more explicitly an explanation to the dilemma faced by the Romanian state: not assimilating
the Jews would attract the opprobrium of the European powers; assimilating
them would irremediably damage the more healthy Romanian national body.
One Romanian intellectual, in particular, transformed this ontological dilemma
into the backbone of interwar Romanias national revolution: Alexandru C. Cuza.
Anti-Semitism and Romanian Ethnic Ontology50
In Romania, the most ardent and prolific propagandist behind the idea of Jewish
degeneration, and the biological vision of the race as a dynamic component of
nationalism, was the political economist Alexandru C. Cuza.51 Cuza claimed that
his anti-Semitism was based on scientific dogmas, namely his own understanding of Romanian social conditions. His self-proclamation as defender of the

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nation was as much infused with the tradition of organic nationalism developed
by Eminescu, as it was with Chamberlains theories of race and degeneration.52
Already, in his 1893 Meseriasul romn (The Romanian Craftsman) Cuza depicted
the Jews in racial terms, describing them a bastard and degenerate nation.53
Assuming that repetition of the same themes would eventually reach the anticipated result, he became a committed polemicist and a populist politician. His first
public alliance was with the historian A. D. Xenopol (18471920), with whom in
1897 he formed Liga romna mpotriva alcoolismului (The Anti-Alcoholic
Romanian League). As the monopoly of alcohol was largely controlled by Jewish
merchants, the activity of the League mirrored Cuzas conviction that Jews
exploited Romanian peasants.54 To be sure, Cuza combined his cult of the
Romanian peasant with an aggressive meticulousness, hence the torrent of speculations about the glorious Romanian race, and his mania for Biblical explanations.55
However, despite its scientific pretensions, Cuzas theories did not conquer
Romanian public opinion quickly or without opposition. Motru, for instance,
consistently exposed Cuzas aggressiveness as contravening Romanians attempt
to modernise and create a European civilisation. Our country, Motru charged,
has adopted the organisation of other European countries, thus assuming all
sacrifices required by civilisation. We cannot have at the same time a politics of
consolidation of the state and an anti-Semitic politics; we must choose. For Motru
it was evident which path Romania should follow: This is why, a good patriot
cannot approve of the anti-Semitic movement.56
Yet these critical voices did not deter Cuza. His convictions were more a matter
of faith than the result of speculative achievements. His racist language was to
become notorious, but Cuza knew that by himself he was not meant to attract too
many followers. His association with the historian Nicolae Iorga (18711941)
strengthened Cuzas commitment to racial nationalism and anti-Semitism, one
eventually receiving a political form in 1922 when the two established Liga
apararii national cre stine (The League of National-Christian Defence).
Cuza introduced many themes in Romanian political discourse that would be
appropriated by anti-Semitic groups during the interwar period. The most
important of these was the notion of a fundamental conflict between Jews and
Romanians that Cuza adopted from Chamberlain. In 1908, Cuza published
Na tionalitatea n art a (Nationalism in Art), a book abounding in racist reflections
on Jewish racial inferiority and the danger of racial mixing.57 For Cuza, the
Jews represented a foreign body, a source of the countrys economic difficulties,
and a threat to organic Romanian culture. Opposing the degeneration of the Jews,
Cuza exalted a vigorous Romanian race. Only those having the same blood in
their veins could create a Romanian national culture.58 The participation of Jews
strangers, belonging to another race, having different laws and other cultural
principles, incapable of assimilation could therefore only be detrimental to the
Romanians. Jews were dangerous not only because they were aliens, but
because they belonged to an inferior race, illustrated by their cultural and
biological sterility.59 Threatened by Jewish expansionism, the Romanian nation
was subjected to a sustained process of degeneration, for as Cuza suggested,
Jewish preponderance in any society and any profession is a cause of illness in
any case the symptom of national weakness and degeneration.60 Finally, Cuzas
anti-Semitic diatribe located antagonistic modern professions such as the politician, the journalist, or the scientist deemed to be Jewish per excellence and the
pastoral occupations of the Romanian peasant.61
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Following Chamberlains five racial laws, Cuza established four fundamental
rules of culture, whose role was to ensure the survival of the Romanian nation: a)
Each nation should conserve its nationality; b) Each territory should serve the
development of one nationality; c) Artists, scholars, and political men should
represent their nationality; and d) The school must cultivate nationality.62
Undoubtedly, the Romanian nation was the cornerstone of Cuzas racial typology.
As the Orthodox ideologue Nichifor Crainic (18821972) observed, for Cuza the
nation was an ontological reality.63 Yet it was also a biological entity. Paraphrasing Chamberlain, Cuza claimed that race was the result of a carefully chosen,
limited mixture which reached its absolute unity after centuries of mixing
between the same, related elements, in the same conditions social and natural
on the same territory, protected from foreign intervention.64 Ultimately, Romanians should, according to Cuza, depart from the Semitic spirit, and energetically
affirm their specific Aryan characteristics.65
Cuzas explosive style, with its fusion of distilled political economy and biological metaphors, was perfect for this particular form of racial anti-Semitism.
However, Cuza was not alone in suggesting that the historical destiny of the
nation had come to a crisis due to the Jewish invasion. Indeed, he shared many
of his generations nationalist obsessions, amongst them the danger of losing
Romanian culture, art, literature and the press to an invading entity they identified as Jewish. Liberal democracy, in particular, was seen to encourage the
proliferation of this foreign spirit, ultimately facilitating the integration and
assimilation of Jews into Romanian society.66
Cuza played a major role in connecting conservative palingenesis to cultural
modernist nationalism and anti-Semitism and, as member of Parliament, he
disseminated his nationalist, illiberal and racial ideology in elite political circles.
But whereas Cuza became a militant supporter of various rightist political parties,
others, like the next author discussed here, assumed the role of theoreticians who,
without indulging in party politics, regarded their theories as equally engaged in
the national rejuvenation of Romania.
Anti-Enlightenment Cultural Modernism
The conviction that urban and modern democracy constituted a biological
danger for Romanian political and racial survival was one that its adherents were
able to convey to a broad public in a number of venues after 1900. The political
theorist Aurel C. Popovici popularised his cultural modernist critique of the
Enlightenment in several journals published in Bucharest at the beginning of the
twentieth century, including Romnia Jun a (Young Romania) and S am an atorul
(The Sower), both of which he edited from 1899 to 1900, and from 1908 to 1909
respectively. Such references to the regenerative power of the youth and to the
national leaders sowing new values among the new generations are typical
examples of a European-wide phenomenon, which used the countryside as a
source of myth and renewal.67
In 1910, this principle received its complete arrangement in a volume entitled
Na tionalism si democra tie O critic a a civiliza tiunii moderne (Nationalism or Democracy: A Critique of Modern Civilisation).68 According to Popovici, democracy
and cosmopolitanism had their origin in the post-1789 attempt to create a new
world, dissolving the tradition and dispersing the past. He fiercely regarded both
characteristics to be poisoning attempts at cultural union between Romanians
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M. Turda

from both sides of the Carpathians. Theoretically, Popovici combined Eminescus

ideas of organic Romanian society with Cuzas anti-Semitism and Chamberlains
racial Darwinism in order to advance his cultural critique of modernity. His was
unmistakably an example of what Griffin termed a palingenetic reaction to the
anarchy and cultural decay allegedly resulting from the radical transformation of
traditional institutions, social structures, and belief systems under the impact of
Western modernization.69
Eminescus ideas of conservative palingenesis enabled Popovici to conceive of
national politics in terms of preservation of tradition.70 Moreover, following
Edmund Burke, he argued that, on the one hand, the French revolution destroyed
the cultural traditions and the organic linkages among people those relations
that represented the real sense of duty and responsibility through which individuals created and maintained their community. On the other hand, the French
Revolution introduced fanaticism within the freedom of expression, which made
the masses uncontrollable. At the same time, Popovici employed arguments put
forward by Ferdinand Tnniess Gemeinschaft und Gesellschaft (1887), exalting
community as the fundamentally organic form of social life. This is because it was
based upon tradition and natural links among its members, while also rejecting
modern society that was regarded as composed of individuals joined together by
superficial relationships.71
Popovici also advocated cultural purification and territorial expansion.72 What
was needed, he argued, was accomplishing the racial homogeneity of the national
community. Such ideas were considered reactionary, and Popovici claimed that
he campaigned for completely reactionary ideas, because reaction represents the
eternal condition of a national culture: the historic wisdom of the peoples against
the desires of a few individuals.73 For him, these individuals were the liberal
generation of the 1848 Revolution. In Popovicis opinion, they indoctrinated a
whole generation of Romanians from the Old Kingdom, with their dangerous and
democratic ideas.74
At the antipode of liberal intellectuals stood those authors who like Popovici
were animated by reactionary political conceptions, like Joseph de Maistre,
Bismark, Cavour, Edmund Burke, Houston S. Chamberlain, Wilhelm II and the
Romanian nationalist poet Mihai Eminescu. For Popovici:
They were reactionaries, because their entire moral revolted when they
realised the disaster that menaced the nation and its culture, when others
tried to stop its normal evolution. They were reactionaries because they
reacted against cosmopolitan, cultural equalisation, and against the
intentions to dissolve national entities, the only factors of universal civilisation. Any national reaction is but the voice of eternal wisdom of the
people against the bad-guided civilisation.75
In Modernism and Fascism Griffin has highlighted the futural dynamic of such
reaction, its thrust towards building a new form of rooted community under the
conditions of modernity. It was this form of palingenetic reaction that came to be
adopted in early twentieth century Romania by those who, like Popovici, resorted
to regenerative myths in order to create a new form of nationalism based on
spiritual and racial unity. Following Chamberlain, Popovici further argued that
the stability and continuity of the nation were dependent upon the transmission
of racial characteristics. Only in this way could the idea of national culture be

Conservative Palingenesis and Cultural Modernism 449

motivated. Furthermore, Popovici adopted Chamberlains assumption about the
supremacy of North Germanic races, to serve his own theory of the nation,
according to which the Romanian peasant, although part of the Latin race, also
had some German blood in its veins. Popovici thus claimed that Romanians
were part of the superior Nordic European race. I realised long ago, he
confessed, that, in fact, many Romanians have at least one, if not more, of the
external characteristics of the Nordic European race that have been identified in
modern anthropology.76
Popovicis conservative and racial theories emerged in a context of creative
cultural disputes and dilemmas about the content of Romanian political culture.
Within this controversy over modern civilisation several oppositional terms, such
as national specificity vs cosmopolitan civilisation, as well as natural vs artificial
development, emerged.77 Cuza neatly summarised this conflict: The preservation of
nationality as a factor necessary to human culture; this is the principle of the nationalist
doctrine; in opposition to cosmopolitan humanitarianism.78
Yet, Popovicis cultural modernism was intrinsically connected to a reading of
the nation and culture centring on the notion that the peasant was the main bearer
and transmitter of Romanian culture. Ultimately, both Cuza and Popovici
concurred that the regeneration of the political community could be attained
through an infusion of premodern traditions, saved from the corroding effects of
liberal modernity. One implication of this view was that any cultural transformation of society could be judged only according to the criterion of whether they
benefited or corrupted the Romanian peasantry. Not surprisingly, the mixing of
such heterogeneous systems of values inevitably generated tension and new
debates.79 To this end, the arguments put forward by these authors performed a
significant role in shaping the Romanian political imagery of the early twentieth
century, as illustrated by the importance given to these modernist critiques of
European modernity by the next generation of Romanian nationalists.80
Conclusions: The Dawn of Palingenetic Nationalism in Romania
It was Nichifor Crainic who, in his discussion of Romanian ethnicity during the
1930s, affirmed with increasing clarity that the new nationalism was both
biological and spiritual, and that Romania was to turn now to her spiritual
redemption having already discovered her biological roots. In short Crainic
proposed a complete anthropological revolution:
The problem of regeneration should be addressed in terms of ethnicity
[although] this is discarded and denied by internationalist doctrines.
[Ethnicity] is not just a general biological concept, but one specifically
anthropological. Man is both body and soul, but he does not come into
the world with the body of just another animal and than later adds spirit
in order to differentiate him artificially from his animal body. From his
birth man is both body and spirit, and together they make the same
being. This is both an anthropologic and an ethnic being. The idea of
regeneration, as it is conceived of by the new ethnic nationalism, concerns
man in its integral, harmonious form, both morally and physically.81
In his 1936 Dialectica na tionalismului (The Dialectic of Nationalism) Nicolae
Ro su, one of the most prolific ideologues of the Legionary Movement, argued
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M. Turda

the national revolution began with Mihai Eminescus conservative critique of

Romanian modernity in the mid-nineteenth century; it, then, continued with the
political dream of the First World War generation, and found its political expression in the creation of Greater Romania (1918); finally, the revolution was about
the reach its climax in the programmes of national rebirth advocated by in
the 1920s and 1930s. The national revolution presupposed that all political and
intellectual forces should work towards the Nation and serve the same ideal:
Romanias national rebirth.
Motru, Cuza, Popovici and many others during this period adopted a new
discourse on race which lent the nation the quality of a natural, biological entity.
The racial quality of the nation and the ways it shaped the community depended
on a wide range of elements, including a characteristic racial geography and a
specific national topography. Both assumed that a new Romania would eventually be forged. Yet the fusion of conservative palingenesis and cultural modernism
was by no means exclusively rooted in the past. A glorious Romanian past was
important in validating claims to unity and sacrifice, but it was not enough to
compose lyrical odes about the achievements of past ruling princes. Consequently,
all authors discussed here sought to show that the new national revolution they
prophesised was a worthy successor to its illustrious predecessors.
To be sure, no ideology or political movement could be simply traced to one
individual or a single idea. Accordingly, to assume that Romanian cultural
modernist theories of the nation can be wholly imputed to Chamberlain is as
mistaken as to assume that National Socialism can be exclusively derived from
his idea of Teutonic superiority. Chamberlain was just one granted, a central
one of many external sources Romanian intellectuals used to justify their theories of the nation. However, as this paper indicates, if historians of interwar
fascism in Romania wish to pursue new venues of conceptualisation, they must
very closely attend to currents of thought gaining momentum around 1900.
Mapping these ideas might help us better realise how new visions of collective
palingenesis, which vilified the Jews and exalted the peasantry and traditional
rural life, not only survived in the biopolitical modernist discourses of the interwar years, but also served as their very foundations. In particular, taking into
account the diverse currents of anthropological and racial speculation characterising early twentieth century Romania, at a time of increasing pessimism about
the impact of modernity, will determine one to see the powerful forces of political
religion unleashed by the Legion of the Archangel Michael not in terms of an
atavistic revolt against modernity, or a politicised, and curiously anachronistic,
form of Orthodox Christianity. Rather, its overtly cultic form of politics was the
expression of a quest for an alternative nomos, a new form of social and political
modernity adapted to the unique conditions of twentieth-century Romania that
if realised would have created its own form of totalitarian state capable of
enlisting widely diffused currents of anti-liberalism, whether religious, cultural
or scientistic.
Notes
1. I want to thank Razvan Prianu for his unfailing help in collecting the primary sources needed
for this article. I also want to express my gratitude to Roger Griffin for his useful commentaries
and criticisms. The views expressed here, however, are mine alone.
2. See for example Roger Woods, The Conservative Revolution in the Weimar Republic (New York:
Palgrave Macmillan, 1997).
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3. Armin Mohler, Die Konservative Revolution in Deutschland, 19181932: Grundiss ihrer Weltanschauungen (Stuttgart: Friedrich Vorwerk verlag, 1950). The book was repeatedly re-edited.
4. Jeffrey Herf, Reactionary Modernism. Technology, Culture, and Politics in Weimar and the Third Reich
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1984), p.1.
5. Mark Antliff, Avant-Garde Fascism: The Mobilization of Myth, Art and Culture in France, 19091939
(Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2007), p.19.
6. The definition was developed in Roger Griffin, The Nature of Fascism (London: Routledge, 1994).
See also Roger Griffin, The Palingenetic Political Community: Rethinking the Legitimation of
Totalitarian Regimes in Interwar Europe, Totalitarian Movements and Political Religions 3/3 (2002),
pp.2443.
7. Roger Griffin, Modernism and Fascism: The Sense of a Beginning under Mussolini and Hitler (London:
Palgrave, 2007).
8. Ibid., p.31.
9. George Mosse, The Fascist Revolution: Toward a General Theory of Fascism (New York: Howard
Fertig, 1999); Zeev Sternhell, with Mario Sznajder and Maia Asheri, The Birth of Fascist Ideology:
from Cultural Rebellion to Political Revolution, translated by David Maisel (Princeton, NJ: Princeton
University Press, 1994); Zeev Sternhell, Neither Right nor Left: Fascist Ideology in France, trans. David
Maisel (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1986); Walter Adamson, Avant-Garde
Florence: From Modernism to Fascism (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1993); Claudio
Fogu, The Historic Imaginary. Politics of History in Fascist Italy (Toronto: University of Toronto Press,
2003); and Emilio Gentile, The Sacralization of Politics in Fascist Italy, translated by Keith Botsford
(Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1996) and The Struggle for Modernity: Nationalism,
Futurism, and Fascism (London: Praeger, 2003).
10. Sorel and Nietzsche, as sources of political and cultural fascism, are magisterially discussed by
Mark Antliff (note 5) and Roger Griffin (note 7).
11. Zigu Ornea, Cultura si civilizatie n curentele de idei de orientare traditionalista, in Zigu Ornea,
Studii si cercet ari (Bucharest: Eminescu, 1972), pp.1343; and Dumitru Micu, Gndirea si gndirismul
(Bucharest: Minerva, 1975).
12. See Katherine Verdery, National Ideology and National Character in Interwar Romania, in Ivo
Banac and Katherine Verdery, eds, National Character and National Ideology in Interwar Eastern
Europe (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1995), pp.10333; Irina Livezeanu, Generational
Politics and the Philosophy of Culture: Lucian Blaga between Tradition and Modernism, Austrian
History Yearbook 33 (2002), pp.20737. For a similar discussion in a different geographical context
see Jerzy Jedlicki, A Suburb of Europe: Nineteenth-Century Polish Approaches to Western Civilization
(Budapest: Central European University, 1999).
13. See Anna Chamberlain, Meine Erinnerungen an Houston Stewart Chamberlain (Munich: C. H.
Becksche Verlagsbuchhandlung, 1923); Wilhelm Vollrath, Houston Stewart Chamberlain und Seine
Theologie (Erlangen: Palm & Enke, 1937; Alfred Rosenberg, Houston Stewart Chamberlain als
Verknder und Begrnder einder Deutscher Zukunft (Munich: H. Bruckmann, 1927); Hugo Meyer,
Houston Stewart Chamberlain als Vlkischer Denker (Munich: H. Bruckmann, 1939). For a critical evaluation see Geoffrey G. Field, Evangelist of Race: The Germanic Vision of Houston Stewart Chamberlain
(New York: Columbia University Press, 1981); and Roderick Stackelberg, Idealism Debased: From
Vlkisch Ideology to National Socialism (Kent, OH: Kent State University Press, 1981).
14. Houston Stewart Chamberlain, Die Grundlagen des neunzehnten Jahrhunderts, 2 vols (Munich,
1899). See also Houston Stewart Chamberlain, The Foundations of the Nineteenth Century, trans. by
John Lees, 2 vols (London: John Lane, 1911). Hereafter references will be made to the English
edition.
15. See Martin Woodroffe, Racial Theories of History and Politics: The Example of Houston Stewart
Chamberlain, in Paul Kennedy and Anthony Nicholls, eds, Nationalist and Racialist Movements in
Britain and Germany before 1914 (London: Macmillan, 1981), pp.14353.
16. Chamberlain, (note 14), p.269.
17. Ibid., p.288.
18. Ibid., pp.29396.
19. C. Radulescu-Motru, Filosofia lui Houston Stewart Chamberlain asupra raselor, Noua revist a
romn a pentru politic a, literatur a, stiinta si art a 2/17 (1900), pp.16574.
20. This is what Tzvetan Todorov described as scienticism. See Tzvetan Todorov, Totalitarianism:
Between Religion and Science, Totalitarian Movements and Political Religions 2/1 (2001), p.30.
21. Motru (note 19), p.165. What Motru seemed to have neglected was Chamberlains warning note
that his book was not written for professional historians but for the educated general reader. As
Michael D. Biddiss indicated, [f]ollowing yet again in the steps of Gobineau, [Chamberlain] made
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452

22.
23.
24.
25.
26.
27.
28.
29.

M. Turda

no apologies for adopting dilettantism as a historical method. See Michael D. Biddiss,

Houston Stewart Chamberlain: prophet of Teutonism, History Today 19/1 (1969), p.12.
Motru (note 19), pp.1667.
Ibid., p.168.
Ibid., pp.1734.
Radu Ioanid, The Sacralised Politics of the Romanian Iron Guard, Totalitarian Movements and
Political Religions 5/3 (2004), pp.41953.
Griffin (note 7), p.195.
Ibid., p.19 (emphasis in the original).
C. Radulescu-Motru, Nationalism arhaic si civilizatiune, Noua revista romn a, 2/16 (1900), p.122.
Motrus other writings dealing with these issues are Romnismul (1936) and Etnicul romnesc
(1942). For a pertinent discussion see Cristian Preda, Constantin Radulescu-Motru, in Cristian Preda, Contributii la istoria intelectual a a politicii romne sti (Bucharest: Nemira, 2003),
pp.161225.
Zeev Barbu, Psycho-Historical and Sociological Perspectives on the Iron Guard, the Fascist
Movement of Romania, in Stein Ugelvik Larsen, Bernt Hagtvet, Jan Petter Myklebust (eds), Who
Where the Fascists: Social Roots of European Fascism (New York: Columbia University Press, 1980),
p.381.
For the general European discussion see J. Edward Chamberlain and Sander L. Gilman, Degeneration: The Dark Side of Progress (New York: Columbia University Press, 1985); and Daniel Pick,
Faces of Degeneration: A European Disorder c. 18481918 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,
1989).
M. Eminescu, Scrieri politice (Craiova: Editura Scrisul Romnesc, 1931), p.38.
Griffin (note 7), p.203.
For a good discussion see Carol Iancu, Les juifs en Roumanie, 18661919: De lemancipation la
marginalisation (Aix-en-Provence: ditions de lUniversit de Provence, 1978).
Andrei Oisteanu, Imaginea evreului n cultura romn a (Bucharest: Humanitas, 2004). See also
Razvan Prianu, Semitism as a Metaphor for Modernity, Studia Ebraica 5 (2006), pp.2368.
For a discussion of the European context see Abigail Green, Rethinking Sir Moses Montefiore:
Religion, Nationhood and International Philanthropy in the Nineteenth Century, American
Historical Review 110/3 (2005), pp.63958.
Johann Kaspar Bluntschli, Der stat Rumnien und das Rechtsverhltniss der Juden in Rumnien (Berlin:
Verlag von W. und S. Loewenthal, 1879).
C. Radulescu-Motru, Scrisoare adresata pentru ancheta internationala: Cestiunea israelita, Noua
revist a romn a pentru politic a, literatur a, stiinta si art a 2/16 (1900), p.127.
The answers varied from Nordaus enthusiastic support for emancipation to Luegers sombre
advice that he would never encourage the Romanians to emancipate the Jews.
C. Radulescu-Motru, Amnarea oricarei solutiuni n cestiunea israelita, Noua revist a romn a
pentru politic a, literatur a, stiinta si art a 2/21 (1900), p.324.
H. St. Chamberlain, Cestiunea israelita. Opinia publica europeana si cestiunea israelita n
Romnia, Noua revist a romn a pentru politic a, literatur a, stiinta si art a 2/19 (1900), pp. 2418.
Ibid., p. 242.
Ibid., p. 243.
Ibid., p. 246.
Contrary to later racists, Chamberlain did not consider the Roma as a racial poison claiming that
they belonged to the Aryan race.
Chamberlain (note 41), p.246.
Ibid., p. 247.
See Todd Presner, Muscular Judaism: The Jewish Body and the Politics of Regeneration (London:
Routledge, 2007).
C. Radulescu-Motru, Revizuiri si ad aug ari, ed. by Rodica Bichis, Gabriela Dumitrescu (Bucuresti:
Ed. Floarea Darurilor, 1996), p.70.
Sorin Antohi has produced the only coherent interpretation of the variety of ideas grouped under
Romanian ethnic ontology to date. See his Romania and the Balkans: From Geocultural
bovarism to ethnic ontology, Tr@nsit 21 (2001) available at http://www.iwm.at (last accessed 7
February 2008).
Pamfil Seicaru, Un junimist antisemit: A. C. Cuza (Madrid: Ed. Carpatii, 1956).
Marius Turda, Fantasies of Degeneration: Some Remarks on Racial Antisemitism in Interwar
Romania, Studia Heraica 3 (2003), pp.33648.
A. C. Cuza, Meseria sul romn (Iasi: Tipografia nationala, 1893).
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31.

32.
33.
34.
35.

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36.

37.
38.

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39.
40.

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46.
47.
48.
49.
50.

51.
52.
53.

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42.
43.
44.
45.

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54. A. C. Cuza, Ce-i alcoolismul? (Iasi: Tipografia nationala, 1897); and A. C. Cuza, Lupta mpotriva
alcoolismului n Romnia (Iasi: Tipografia nationala, 1897).
55. See the activity of the journal S am an atorul established in 1900.
56. C. Radulescu-Motru, Ct costa pe tara politica antisemita, Noua revist a romn a pentru politic a,
literatur a, stiinta si art a 2/18 (1900), p.205.
57. Alexandru C. Cuza, Nationalitatea n art a. Principii, fapte, concluzii (Bucharest: Minerva, 1908).
58. Ibid., p.10.
59. Ibid., pp.335.
60. Ibid., p.70 (emphasis in the original).
61. Ibid., pp. 14652.
62. Ibid., p.108; and pp. 23842.
63. Nichifor Crainic, Nationalitatea n arta, Gndirea 14/3 (1935), pp.11316.
64. Cuza (note 56), p.143.
65. Ibid, p.217.
66. For an excellent discussion of these themes, see Razvan Prianu, Culturalist Nationalism and
Anti-Semitism in Fin-de-Sicle Romania, in Marius Turda and Paul Weindling (eds), Blood and
Homeland: Eugenics and Racial Nationalism in Central and Southeast Europe, 19001940 (Budapest:
Central European University Press, 2007), pp.35373; and Ritchie Robertson, The Jewish Question
in German Literature, 17491939: Emancipation and Its Discontents (Oxford: Oxford University Press,
1999).
67. See the discussion of Oskar Martin-Amorbachs painting The Sower (1937) and its relationship to
Nazi imagery in Antliff (note 5), p.27.
68. A. C. Popovici, Nationalism sau democratie. O critic a a civilizatiunii moderne (Bucharest: Minerva,
1910).
69. Griffin (note 7), p.54.
70. This dimension is convincingly analysed in Virgil Nemoianu, Un Noconservateur Jeffersonien
dans la Vienne de Fin de Sicle, in Mikls Molnar and Andre Reszler (eds), Le Gnie de lAutricheHongrie (Etat, Socit, Culture) (Paris: PUF, 1989), pp.3142.
71. For a discussion of this aspect see Ioan Statomir, Preliminarii la o analiz a a curentului reactionar
- de la Eminescu la Nicolae Iorga, Polis 5/2 (1998), pp.2347; and Ioan Statomir and Lauren tiu
Vlad, (eds.), A fi conservator (Bucuresti: Meridiane, 2002).
72. Popovici was one of the few Romanians in AustriaHungary to achieve international fame as
author of Die Vereinigten Staaten von Gross-sterreich. Politische Studien zur Lsung der nationalen
Fragen und staatsrechtlichen Krisen in sterreich-Ungarn (Leipzig: Verlag von B. Elischer, 1906).
73. Popovici (note 68) p. 8 (emphasis in the original).
74. Ibid., p.6.
75. Ibid., p.18.
76. Ibid., p.419. For a discussion of these ideas see Marius Turda, The Idea of National Superiority in
Central Europe, 18801918 (New York: Edwin Mellen Press, 2005).
77. See the debate between A. C. Popovici and the literary critic Octavian T aslauanu. Octavian
Taslauanu, Doua culturi. Cultura domnilor si cultura taranilor, Luceaf arul 7/4 (1908), pp.5964;
and A. C. Popovici, Demagogie criminala, Convorbiri literare 42/3 (1908), pp.296307.
78. Cuza (note 57), p.110.
79. For a very good introduction to these debates see Aurel C. Popovici, Polemici cu nationali stii: Articole din anii 19081911, ed. by Razvan Prianu (Iasi: Do-Minor, 2006). As in other societies in
Central and Southeast Europe, such paired concepts fully described narratives of national rejuvenation. Andrzej Walicki, The Slavophile Controversy: History of a Conservative Utopia in NineteenthCentury Russian Thought (Oxford: Clarendon, 1975).
80. Popovicis influence on the legionary ideologues was discussed by Octav Sulutiu, Un mare uitat:
A. C. Popovici, Axa 2/21 (1933), pp.45.
81. Nichifor Crainic, George Cosbuc, Poetul rasei noastre, in N. Crainic, Puncte cardinale in haos
(Bucharest: Albatros, 1998), pp.12021 (first edition 1936).
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