1 ANNEE

´ ETUDES
´
BALKANIQUES

2012
QUARANTE-HUITIEME
´

, INSTITUT
D ÉTUDES BALKANIQUES
&
CENTRE DE THRACOLOGIE

´
ACADEMIE DES SCIENCES DE BULGARIE
Comité de rédaction
Ekaterina NIKOVA (rédacteur en chef)
Liliana SIMEONOVA, Galia VALTCHINOVA, Raia ZAIMOVA,
Alexandre KOSTOV, Dobrinka PARUSHEVA, Rossitsa GRADEVA
Malamir SPASSOV (secrétaire scientifique du Comité de rédaction)

Comité scientifique international

Fikret Adanır (Sabancı University), Ivo Banac (Yale University),
Ulf Brunnbauer (Universität Regensburg), Nathalie Clayer (CNRS, EHESS, Paris),
Nadya Danova (Bulgarian Academy of Sciences), Raymond Detrez (University of
Gent), Francesco Guida (University of Roma Tre), Wolfgang Höpken (Universität
Leipzig), Ivan Ilchev (Sofia University “St. Kliment Ohridski”), Pascalis
Kitromilidis (University of Athens), Ana Lalaj (Albanological Studies Center,
Tirana), Ljubodrag P. Ristic (Institute for Balkan Studies, Serbian Academy of
Sciences and Arts), Elena Siupiur (Institutul de studii sud-est europene, Academia
Română), Vassilka Tãpkova-Zaïmova (Bulgarian Academy of Sciences),
Maria Todorova (University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign).

ÉTUDES BALKANIQUES
• Revue trimestrielle éditée par l’Institut d’Etudes balkaniques &
Centre de Thracologie de l’Académie des sciences de Bulgarie
• Adresse : 45, rue Moskovska, Sofia 1000, BULGARIE
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Mise en page sur ordinateur: Zbezgu

ISSN 0324-1654
© Institut d’Etudes balkaniques & Centre de Thracologie
2012
ÉTUDES ISSN 0324-1654

BALKANIQUES
Sofia • 2012 • XLVIII • 1

ACADÉMIE DES SCIENCES DE BULGARIE

INSTITUT D’ÉTUDES BALKANIQUES & CENTRE DE THRACOLOGIE

SOMMAIRE

Yorgos CHRISTIDIS, The Party of Democratic Action in the Sandžak

(Serbia): Establishment, Evolution and Political Aims, 1991-2010 ...... 3
Marin CONSTANTIN, Ethno-historical Traditions Among Minority
Ethnic Groups in Romania in the 2000s................................................. 26
Biser BANCHEV, How Balkanization replaced Lebanization during
the Break up of Yugoslavia .................................................................... 43
Yura KONSTANTINOVA, The Views of Eleftherios Venizelos on
the Balkan Policy of Greece (1910-1916) .............................................. 53
Theodora TOLEVA, Habsburg Influences in the Albanian Nation
Building Process, 1896 -1908................................................................. 80
Svetlozar ELDAROV, Instrumentalizing Celebration for Political
Purposes in the Unification of the Princedom of Bulgaria with Eastern
Rumelia .................................................................................................. 104
Ivaila POPOVA, The Balkans in the Eyes of Fifteenth-century West-
European Pilgrims .................................................................................. 120
Vladislav IVANOV, Sancta Unio or the Holy League 1332-36/37 as a
Political Factor in the Eastern Mediterranean and the Aegean ............. 142

COMPTES RENDUS

Bobi BOBEV, Enver Hoxha: The First Biography Based on Docu-

ments from the Private Archives of the Dictator and on Accounts of
Those who Knew Him (Blendi Fevziu, Enver Hoxha) .......................... 177
Svetlozar ELDAROV, The Birth of a New State. The Republic of
Macedonia between Yugoslavism and Nationalism (Ангел Димит-
ров, Раждането на една нова държава. Република Македония
между югославизма и национализма) ............................................... 185
NOTICES BIBLIOGRAPHIQUES

Маламир Спасов, Еквилибристики на Аз-а или кой разказва меж-

дувоенния психологически роман на Балканите (Gergana DON-
CHEVA) ................................................................................................. 192
P. M. Kitromilides, Anna Tabaki (eds.), Greek-Bulgarian Relations in
the Age of National Identity Formation (Fotini CHRISTAKOUDI-
KONSTANTINIDOU) .......................................................................... 196
Надя Данова, Рая Заимова, Саня Велкова, Юра Константинова,
Геновева Червенакова, Гърция, България, Европа. Културно-ис-
торически връзки в ново време. Сборник в памет на проф. Марин
Жечев. (Stavroula MAVROGENI, Konstantinos KATSANOS) .......... 199
Michael Mitsopoulos, Theodore Pelagidis, Understanding the Crisis
in Greece: From Boom to Bust (Ekaterina NIKOVA)........................... 204
Nicolas Hayoz, Leszek Jesien and Daniela Koleva (eds.), 20 Years
after the Collapse of Communism. Expectations, Achievements and
Disillusions of 1989 (Ekaterina NIKOVA) ............................................ 207

VIE SCIENTIFIQUE

Roumiana PRESHLENOVA, Ninth Joint Meeting of Bulgarian and

North American Scholars in Eugene, Oregon ........................................ 212
Ekaterina NIKOVA, From Balkan Wars to Balkan Peace and EU In-
tegration .................................................................................................. 215

Call for Papers ........................................................................................ 217

Instructions for Contributors .................................................................. 218
 ÉTUDES BALKANIQUES, XLVIII, 2012, No 1

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/+014+6;'6*0+%)41725+041/#0+#
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INTRODUCTION AND ETHNOGRAPHIC CONTEXTUALIZATION

My research is intended to contribute to the study of the contempo-

rary oral cultures belonging to the ethnic groups in Southeastern Europe,
with an ethnographic emphasis on the minorities of Căldărars (Romany
speaking), Lipovans (Russian-speaking), Rudars (Romanian speaking but
officially associated with the Roma ethnicity), Saxons (German speak-
ing), and Szeklers (Hungarian-speaking), in rural areas from Transylva-
nia, Wallachia, and Dobroudja (Romania)∗.
I generally hypothesize that, in terms of ethnicity, the oral culture is
similarly representative as the material culture, and that all the more the
ethnic groups have a minority status, their folk narratives play an “iden-

∗
Acknowledgments: Această lucrare a fost realizată în cadrul proiectului “Valorifi-
carea identităţilor culturale în procesele globale”, cofinanţat de Uniunea Europeană şi Guver-
nul României din Fondul Social European prin Programul Operaţional Sectorial Dezvoltarea
Resurselor Umane 2007-2013, contractul de finanţare nr. POSDRU/89/1.5/S/59758 / “This
paper is suported by the Sectorial Operational Programme Human Resources Development
(SOP HRD), financed from the European Social Fund and by the Romanian Government
under the contract number SOP HRD/89/1.5/S/59758”; Titlurile şi drepturile de proprietate
intelectuală şi industrială asupra rezultatelor obţinute în cadrul stagiului de cercetare postdoc-
torală aparţin Academiei Române.
 ETHNO-HISTORICAL TRADITIONS AMONG... 27

tity-safeguarding” role entirely comparable with that of artifacts. Within,

as well as beyond their folkloric rootedness, ethno-histories continue to
assert myths of ethnic origins and developments, verbally reflecting from
“bottom-up” official historiographies, or, vice versa, disagreeing with
such historiographies. In the case of four minorities (Lipovan, Rudar,
Saxon, and Szekler), literacy is obviously a major factor in the making
and shaping of a deeper historical knowledge, open to ideological distor-
tions of the native discourse about the past. However, instead of an at-
tempt to detect or restore the “historical truth” in the ethno-history of the
abovementioned groups, the general objective of my research is to de-
scribe and interpret vernacular peculiarities in remembering, emphasizing
and filtering one’s own ethnic tradition, or simply in reflecting upon it.
In the period between May 2010 and July 2011, I pursued a research
of collecting, transcribing, and systematizing a number of 36 life-history
interviews with Căldărar (Kalderash), Lipovan, Rudar, Sachsen (Saxon),
and Szekler informants. Except the small Saxon town of Heltau (in Roma-
nian: Cisnădie, Southern Transylvania), my interlocutors live in distinct
rural communities, including the Căldărar group of the Brateiu village
(Southern Transylvania), the Lipovan group of the Jurilovca village
(Northern Dobroudja), the Rudar group of the Babeni village (Northern
Wallachia), the Saxon group of the Michelsberg village (in Romanian:
Cisnădioara, Southern Transylvania), and the Szekler group village of the
Korond village (in Romanian: Corund, Southeastern Transylvania)1.
1
Of the recent Romanian anthropological literature regarding the abovementioned ethnic
groups, see about the Magyars: S. Şerban, Şt. Dorondel, The Oral History of an Interethnic and
Interconfessional Village. The Migrations Legends, Revue des Études Sud-Est Européennes,
1999-2000, XXXVII, No 1-2 – XXXVIII, No 1-2, p. 191-205; S. Şerban, Zăbala, a Village from
Transylvania. Its Kinship Structures, Etudes et Documents Balkaniques et Méditerranéens, 2000,
No 22, p. 35-49; S. Şerban, Catolici şi ortodocşi în Moldova: aspecte ideologice şi sociale în sate
mixte confessional, Sociologie Românească, 2004, II, No 1, p. 117-140; Sz. Töhötöm, Patroni
vechi, patroni noi: maghiari şi ţigani din perspectiva economiei informale, In: L. Chelcea, O.
Mateescu (eds.), Economia informală în România: pieţe, practici sociale şi transformări ale
statului după 1989. Bucureşti, 2004, p. 315-341; and M. Constantin, Artisanship and Ethnicity in
the 2000s Romania, Canadian American Slavic Studies, 2007, No 45, p. 1-35; about the Ger-
mans: A. Schiltz, Vecinătăţile de femei din Sighişoara. Discurs şi practice, In: Vintilă Mihăilescu
(coord.), Vecini şi Vecinătăţi în Transilvania. Bucureşti, 2003, p. 53-68; and I. Sedler, Istoria
landlerilor din Transilvania. Identitate de grup în oglinda comportamentului vestimentar. Secolul
al X VIII- secolul XX-lea: partea a II-a, Studii şi Comunicări de Etnologie, 2005, XIX, p. 181-
200; about the Lipovans: F. Ipatiov, Ruşii-lipoveni din România. Cluj-Napoca, 2001; I. Capoţi,
28 Marin CONSTANTIN


ETHNO-HISTORIES OF CĂLDĂRARS,
LIPOVANS, RUDARS, SAXONS, AND SZEKLERS

Within their accounts, my informants mention a series of data of

historical relevance that are to be organized into several subfields includ-
ing origin, historical icons and events, traditional social organization,
mythology and folklore, and folk medicine. As will be seen, not all these
categories are equally represented among the ethnic groups concerned,
which, from a comparative viewpoint, is presumably significant for vari-
ability in the oral history of them.
Origin is a theme related (among Lipovans, Saxons, and Szeklers) to
the beginnings of the group and of the village as well. Beyond what my
interlocutors say about the ancientness of their ethnic belongingness, they
are particularly concerned with the moments and circumstances of the bi-
ography of their own village-communities. Lipovan exodus from Russia
(in the conditions of the seventeenth-century political persecution of the
“Old-Belief” Orthodoxy) is approximated (by IL) “about the years of 1636-
1645”, with details on the “late Slavic Christianization” (PZ) and the dra-
matic crossing of the Volga River (ES). The Szeklers evoke the [eighth-to-

O. Cătană, M. Culescu, R. Evanghelie, I. Sădean, Carcaliu – sat de vacanţă, In: Bogdan Iancu
(ed.), Dobrogea. Identităţi şi crize, Colecţia Societatea Reală (5). Bucureşti, 2009, p. 79-93; and
I. Titov, Rolul comunicării în relaţia populaţie majoritară – populaţie minoritară. Studiu de caz:
relaţia dintre români şi ruşii lipoveni din Mahmudia, In: A. Majuru (ed.), Conferinţa naţională
de antropologie urbană, II. Bucureşti, 2009, p. 306-318; about the Kalderash: I. Hasdeu, K.
Marfa, Comerţul cu aluminiu şi degradarea condiţiei femeii la romii căldărari, In: L. Chelcea, O.
Mateescu (eds.), Economia informală în România: pieţe, practici sociale şi transformări ale
statului după 1989. Bucureşti, 2004, p. 289-314; C. Tesar, Non-locuri şi imagini ale comunităţii
“re-create”. Romii din Călăraşi, In: S. Larionescu (ed.), Relaţii de vecinătate în localităţi urbane
din sudul ţării. Bucureşti, p. 181-203: and Y. Erolova, Cultura materială şi identitatea ţiganilor
din Dobrogea, In: Stelu Şerban (ed.), Teme în antropologia socială din Europa de sud-est. Bu-
cureşti, 2010, p. 333-358; about the Rudari: Şt. Dorondel, Ethnicity, State and Access to Natural
Resources in the Southeastern Europe. The Rudari Case, In: Stelu Şerban (ed.), Transborder
identities. The Romanian-speaking population in Bulgaria. Bucureşti, 2007, p. 215-239, and Y.
Erolova, Cultura materială şi identitatea ţiganilor din Dobrogea, In Stelu Şerban (ed.), Teme în
antropologia socială din Europa de sud-est. Bucureşti, 2010, p. 333-358.
My fieldwork among ethnic groups in Romania was supported by the Firebird Founda-
tion for Anthropological Research (within the Supplemental Grant Program for Oral Literature,
for the project Narratives of Ethnomorphosis among the Minority Ethnic Groups in Romania,
January 7, 2010). I express here my deep gratitude to the Firebird Foundation and to my field
interlocutors. The entire responsibility for the process and results of my research belongs to me.
 ETHNO-HISTORICAL TRADITIONS AMONG... 29

ninth centuries] migration of Hungarians “from Asia” to the “Carpathian

areas” (JL, JLor, AP), while, at the same time, the same group is presented
as a “tribe” distinct from the Magyars (JLor). The “first colonization” of
Saxons in Transylvania is dated (by MH) back to the “thirteenth century”,
in the context of “the crusade movement to the Holy Land” (which would
possibly be equated with the motif of Kreuzritter of the ceramic plaques
from Michelsberg). (Similar representations of medieval knights appear in
the Szekler pottery of AP).2
Village (as an ethnic “primeval” establishment) is associated with
the eponymy of founding ancestors or spiritual patrons (Jurban in
Lipovan Jurilovca, cf. ES, IS; Saint Michael in Saxon Michelsberg, cf.
MH). The Szekler Korond is somewhat mythically derived (by JLor)
from the tradition of Stag representations in the folk-arts of pottery and
woodcarving in this Transylvanian village. Village foundations are
drawn, one way or another, from ecclesial contexts: “congregation of six
smaller hamlets around the local Catholic church […] about 700 years
ago” in Korond (JLor), “the [Catholic thirteenth-century] citadel of St.
Michael” in Michelsberg (MH), and “the smaller [Orthodox ancient-rite]
church […] about 1640-1645” (IS).
In ethnic minorities’ narratives, historical icons and events testify
for the group destiny through time, as particularly lived amidst, or to-
gether with, foreign ethno-cultural communities. Expectedly, such his-
toricity is neither homogeneous, nor stereotypical – from one ethno-
linguistic community to another. However, beyond their diversified

2
In another Lipovan village in the Danube Delta, Carcaliu, the native people’s migra-
tion from Russia (because of the same religious conflict) is dated back to “about 1650” (cf. I.
Capoţi, O. Cătană, M. Culescu, R. Evanghelie, I. Sădean, Carcaliu – sat de vacanţă, In: Bog-
dan Iancu (ed.), Dobrogea. Identităţi şi crize, Colecţia Societatea Reală (5). Bucureşti, 2009,
p. 79-93). Oral-history narratives from the Szekler village of Zabola (County of Harghita in
Transylvania) have conserved military and noblemen’s local traditions from the seventeenth
century (Şt. Dorondel, Ethnicity, State and Access to Natural Rources in the Southeastern
Europe. The Rudari Case, In: S. Şerban (ed.), Transborder identities. The Romanian-speaking
population in Bulgaria. Bucureşti, 2007, p. 215-39). In comparison with the Saxons and their
ancient medieval origin in Southern Transylvania, another German group – the Landlers – has
much more recent origins in the same area, as contextualized within the Habsburg Roman-
Catholic colonization in the year 1734 (see I. Sedler, Istoria landlerilor din Transilvania. Iden-
titate de grup în oglinda comportamentului vestimentar. Secolul al XVIII- secolul XX-lea:
partea a II-a, Studii şi Comunicări de Etnologie, 2005, XIX, p. 181-200).
30 Marin CONSTANTIN


forms or contents, ethno-histories are generally to be read as contempo-

rary accounts and interpretations of cultural identities and their tempo-
rally-situated rootedness.
In Korond, the Hun ruler Attila is said to actually have been “the
ancient chief of the Szekler tribe”, at the moment of the arrival in “the
Eastern Carpathians”, as well as during the “Szekler” incursion to Italy,
“up to the Pope”; the same informant (Jlor) describes the attributes of
further Magyar ancestral leaders, including “Árpád, the greatest...
chieftain of the Magyars”, “Szörény, one of those brave [Magyar] men
who crossed the Carpathians”, “Bendegüz, one of the bravest Magyar
chieftains, when the Magyars came over here, and the Near East was
attacked”, etc., all of which as daily names of the Naptár, i.e. a calendar
(edited by the Magyarturánalapítvány [The Magyar-Turanian Founda-
tion]). Likewise, (the Hungarian) King Saint Stefan is presented as hav-
ing “told the Magyars [including the Szekler Korond] that every six
villages should build their church”. In the Korond pottery, the Hungar-
ian ethnogenesis is painted as a “royal hunt” of a mythical stag (Szar-
vas) by the King Saint Ladislau (VP; JL). According to the Szekler
Hymn, another King – Csaba – would lead the Szeklers “to the vic-
tory”, with their pray that God “do not allow for the loss of [Szekler]
Transylvania” (IB).
In their tradition, the Saxons from Michelsberg speak of the Magis-
ter Gozelinus, who, in association with “the Saxon first colonization of
Sibiu [in Transylvania], in the thirteenth century”, was their “first land-
lord, as rewarded by the King of Hungary” (MH). In local historical
terms, “The church [and citadel] of Michelsberg is built by the Order of
Cistercians, a warrior community, with several properties in the Braşov
hinterland, [which, because of political conflicts] was to be banished
from [the Kingdom of] Hungary” (TB). The recent past of Transylvanian
Saxons is still “lived” with the names of German soldiers that lost their
lives during the Great War (as engraved on the walls of the Michelsberg
“Citadel” Church), as well as with memories about the Soviet Russian
occupation of Michelsberg, in 1944-1945 (KF), and about the postwar
deportation of local Germans to Russia (KF; EH).
 ETHNO-HISTORICAL TRADITIONS AMONG... 31

Further information on the WW II deportation experience is pro-

vided by the Roma accounts of the Căldărars, whose “elders” would have
been led, together with a group of German soldiers, to the region of
Transnistria (Western Ukraine). During their Russian “imprisonment”,
the Căldărars coped with “starvation” (EC), “labor camp torments”,
“beating” and “typhoid fever” (AC), and even “execution” (NC, CE,
AC); much of the Roma’s golden and silver adornments were lost with
their 1944-1949 exile from Romania. While the Roma war memories are
recurrently related to General Ion Antonescu (Romania’s leader in 1940-
1944), the Căldărars’ recent history about the socialist Romania points
out the authority of ex-President Nicolae Ceauşescu (1965-1989). In so-
cialism, the Căldărars’ craft (coppersmithing) was not allowed for trading
revenues, because of which they needed to work “in secrecy” (as hidden
in woods) or to move from village to village (NC, CE, AC). As to the
Roma nomadic way of life (with huts transiently set up at the margin of
villages, and with the trade of pigs and horses), it is generically and
probably irreversibly dated “back to the past” (NC, AC).
According to their narratives, the Rudars categorically deny to ethni-
cally belong to the Roma (with whom they are ordinarily associated by Ro-
manian authorities or public opinion), and clearly insist on not to be con-
fused with Roma groups (like the Ursars, etc.); instead, the Rudars argue on
their “relatedness” to Romanians, even based on a hypothetical “Dacian”
ancestry (ID; IL). In their turn, they bear in mind the figure of President
Ceauşescu and the economic regime of Romanian socialism, with particular
emphasis on the local Folk Art cooperative and its productive framework
(including working quotas, salaries and seniority rights, raw material supply
and export of products to countries like Germany, Italy, and Slovenia (LD;
IL). Above all, the Folk Art village production unit would have crucially
contributed to the survival of woodcarving among Rudars (ID). “In the past”
(which in this case is given no chronological or historical precise coordi-
nates), the Rudars situate their nomadic lifestyle and familiarity with “river
shores”, “woods”, and “grazing fields”, as a “natural” localization for their
craftwork and herding; the Rudar ethnicon itself is explained as presump-
tively derived from the Romanian word for “river” (riu)(IL).
32 Marin CONSTANTIN


Among Lipovans, the historical past is recurrently referred to the

Middle-Age emigration of this group from Russia, namely the “time of
patiomka, when rich and poor fought with each other because of religion”
(ES). Because of the veraharenia (Russian religious persecution), the Old-
Belief Lipovans are said to have spread “everywhere in the world”, in
countries like Australia, Canada, and China (IS). Important personalities
like the Russian Patriarch Nikon (1653-1656), the main advocate of the
seventeenth-century reform (in accord with the Greek model) of Ortho-
doxy in Russia, and his opponent Archpriest Avaacum are central within
such retrospection3 of the Lipovans’ ethnical, political, and religious rup-
ture from the Russian society; “the passions” of Archpriest Avaacum
(now sanctified) and those of Nun Bairameea appear here to have been
founding for the birth of the Lipovan ethno-religious identity (IS). Wit-
nessing substantiations for the Lipovan ethnicity and its medieval origina-
tion are the preservation of the local archaic language (when compared to
Russian), as still spoken “like 300 years ago” (PZ), the ritual male physi-
ognomy (long hairs and beards), and (until recently) the group endogamy
(ES, IS). From their recent past, the Lipovans remember the German mili-
tary presence in the Danube Delta area (during the World War II), and
then the coming of Soviet Army, with memories about Stalin’s repression
against the sabotage actions of his own generals; “Stalinist law” is the
euphemism for the Russian occupation of Romania (1944-1958), also in-
cluding the Soviet reorganization of the local fish distribution (IF)4.
3
Except the years indicated for Nikon’s patriarchate (1653-1656), the rest of details re-
garding the Lipovans’ historical past are based on their oral accounts and not on written
sources. Of course, the Lipovan oral accounts can reflect information from within written
documents, which the local villagers may have acquired within institutional frameworks of
modern education. However, I argue that once such information is processed and transmitted
by “word of mouth” within and through traditional forms of community life (in this case: the
Lipovan “Old Belief” Church) – it becomes part of the local ethnic memory and ethno-history.
4
Religion is often reported as a crucial resource for group identity among various mi-
norities in Romania. The Roman-Catholic group of (Hungarian partially-speaking) Csangos
from Eastern Moldavia still preserves folk legends about their village origins, as related either
to the Prince of Moldavia, Stephen the Great (1457-1504), or to Holy Stephen I, King of Hun-
gary between 997-1038 (cf. S. Şerban, Catolicii din Moldova. Identitate civică şi istorie orală,
Sfera Politicii. Revistă de Ştiinţe Politice, 2009, XVII, No 138, p. 52-58). Kirchweih, as a
commemoration of the 1868 rebuilding of the local Roman-Catholic church, has become an
ethnic celebration for the German group of Schwaben, in Banat, Western Romania (cf. L.
Chelcea, P. Lăţea, România profundă în comunism. Dileme identitare, istorie locală şi econo-
mie secundară la Sântana. Bucureşti, 2000). The Rudar woodcarvers from the village of
 ETHNO-HISTORICAL TRADITIONS AMONG... 33

Social organization (as an ethno-historical dimension) is concerned

with traditional institutions of the past as well as community bodies be-
longing to the “recent” or even “living” history of minority groups in
Romania. In some cases (the Saxon and the Căldărar) the ethnic groups
preserve or simply “memorialize” certain consuetudinary assemblies
from their social history, which they contrast to contemporary “individu-
alized” society. In other cases, with the “teamwork” (the Lipovan) or
even “guild-like” (the Szekler) organizational structures, ethnicity is
adapted to modern professional frameworks.
In the Saxon memory5, Nachbarschaft was (until the late 1980s) an
ethnic village organization, on territorial basis, including 60-70 members
(or at times even more), with leadership (Nachbarvater and his council)
and written regulations of public behavior, with “neighbors’” mutual aid in
constructions and during the rites of passage, etc.6 (MH, TB, KF, MD). Six
such Neighborhoods in Michelsberg and four others in Heltau are men-
tioned to have functioned in socialist Romania (AF, TB). As married peo-
ple’s associations, Nachbarschaften were preceded by the reunions of teen-

Dragomireşti (County of Argeş, South of Romanian Carpathians) are reported to explain the
hardships of their work through an etiological legend about the ‘culpability’ of their ancestors
in relation to the Crucifixion of Jesus (Şt. Dorondel, Ethnicity, State and Access to Natural
Resources in the Southeastern Europe. The Rudari Case, In: Stelu Şerban (ed.), Transborder
identities. The Romanian-speaking population in Bulgaria. Bucureşti, 2007, p. 215-239).
5
The Nachbarschaften have been for centuries attested by documents and administra-
tive rules (on the historical information on the topic, see F. Pozsony, Vecinătăţile din Transil-
vania, In: Vintilă Mihăilescu (ed.), Vecini şi Vecinătăţi în Transilvania. Bucureşti, 2003, p.
13-51). When I speak in terms of “Saxon memory” of these traditional forms of social organi-
zation among South-Transylvanian German-speaking groups, I take into account the current
situation of this minority in Romania (with its post-1990 massive emigration to Germany),
which is also reflected in the disappearance of such vicinal associations from the way of life
of the Saxons in Michelsberg and Heltau.
6
In terms of collective residential and confessional units, the Saxon Nachbarschaften
in Southern Transylvania may be (partially) compared with the Mahalle neighborhoods in the
cities of Ottoman Balkans. However, in spite of their ascribed character of ethno-religious
spatialization within the Middle-Age urban landscape, the Mahalle have not always preserved
their ethnic and confessional homogeneity, actually evolving towards situations of cultural
and linguistic diversity and cosmopolitanism. A recent study on the Kuzguncuk neighborhood
in Istanbul points to the “social memory” of the “multicultural harmony” within the local
Mahalle (with its mosque, but also with older synagogues, beside the Armenian and the
Greek churches), which ceased with the Turkification process from the late twentieth century
(A. Mills, Boundaries of the Nation in the Space of the Urban: Landscape and Social Memory
in Istanbul, Cultural Geographies, 2006, No 13, p. 367-394). Important particularities of the
Saxon Nachbarschaften (which are currently “memorialized” as the Balkan Mahalle are) are
their written statutes of public behavior, their administrative bodies, and their patterns of pub-
lic cooperation and mutual help.
34 Marin CONSTANTIN


agers – Brudershaften and Swesterschaften – which, through the ritual of

Confirmation, came to integrate the Sachsen young people into the Lu-
theran Church and the local adult society as a whole (MH). In fact, each
Nachbarschaft was crucial in the public communication between the Evan-
gelical Church and the Saxon village community, with the Lutheran priests
as “neighbors” (AF, MD), and with everyone’s place in the Lutheran
Church and in the Nachbarschaft organization (MH, TB). The ancientness
of Nachbarschaften as a “pattern of the past” is estimated at “hundreds of
years”7 (TB, MH); their ritual correlation with the Ritter (young horsemen,
wearing local folk costumes, during each February Carnival festivities),
which are ethno-historically related to the Cistercian Knights Order (TB),
may be seen as an ethnographic evidence for the medieval origins of the
Saxon South-Transylvanian “Neighborhoods”8.
According to the Căldărars’ accounts, Kris was a sort of “gathering
from the past” (AC), meaning simultaneously a “court”, a “trial”, and an
“agreement” as held and convened “in someone’s courtyard”, “in the
street”, or “in the village hostel” (EC, NC). Such traditional court (con-
sisting of a quorum of 5-12 older members, and also younger partici-
pants) proceeded “to seek for the truth and the guilty” usually in cases of
marriage arrangements, family-life divergences, and divorces (NC, EC,
AC)9. Kris (sometimes also mentioned as the Stabor) practically worked
7
In my ethnographic recordings, the Saxons in Michelsberg and Heltau explicitly
evoke Middle-Age circumstances in which the local Nachbarschaften were asked to play
important roles in the local public life (for instance, during the Tatar and Turkish raids in the
area, as well as in the situations of mass epidemics). I speak of the “ancientness” of Nachbar-
schaften with the meaning of the indefinite (in precise chronological dates) origin of them,
which the vernacular formula of “hundreds of years” suggests.
8
My research is ethnographically-centered, which implies a primary focus on current
evidences from the folk culture of my informants, including the Saxon ones. Ethno-history is
here taken as an ethnographic evidence, and not as an officially-documented historical one.
This does not entail establishing the historicity or non-historicity of my ethnographic data, but
takes into account the ways in which the field interlocutors link their present life, institutions,
and values – to characters, events, and processes from the past. Thus, the ethnographic narra-
tives of today are given an ethno-historical development, which belongs to contemporary
people, and not to the refereed ancestors of them.
9
Kris is basically a customary-law institution among Căldărars as well as among
other Roma/Gypsy groups in Romania (I. Hasdeu, K. Marfa, Comerţul cu aluminiu şi degra-
darea condiţiei femeii la romii căldărari, In: L. Chelcea, O. Mateescu (eds.), Economia infor-
mală în România: pieţe, practici sociale şi transformări ale statului după 1989. Bucureşti,
2004, p. 289-314) and in Bulgaria (among the Kardarash group, under the name of Meshere,
 ETHNO-HISTORICAL TRADITIONS AMONG... 35

as a “consulting” and “conciliatory” reunion in order to set an agreement

of the in-laws and their lineages; the one proven guilty was asked to pay
material compensations, and all the Căldărar community respected the
decisions made there. The Kris aka Stabor meetings took place on the
approval of local municipality and police, as the Căldărars claim they
“respect the Romanian national law” and that would have accepted Ro-
manians as their witnesses during the “trials”; however, Kris was held “at
the village border” just to avoid “too many witnesses” (TC).
Among Lipovans, the fishing was strictly organized into “brigades”
of 12-22 members (SF), depending of the size of boats – lotca and ma-
huna – and led by an ataman. The fishing brigades were usually composed
by Lipovans, given their traditional specialization in such work; Romanian
fishermen were also accepted (CG), but not easy as they are said to be “un-
disciplined”, not so “cold resistant”, and not knowing the Russian language
(IF). In the 1950s Lipovan women were included into the brigades, due to
the need for labor force (IF). Fishing and membership within the brigades
were practically inherited, from ‘father-to-son’ (IF, CG); boats and nets
were similarly transmitted between the generations (ES).
The Szekler ceramists from Korond set up recently (2006) a craft as-
sociation, the Eletfa (“The Life Tree”), of a number of 24 members, all lo-
cal people doing pottery or clay-statues shaping (VG). Eletfa has its presi-
dent (AP), a secretary, membership fees, and periodical meetings; it is
planned to represent the interests of local Szekler craftsmen, and is explic-
itly opposed (in social and economic terms) to the prior to 1989 socialist
craft cooperative from Korond. Since its creation in 2007, the Korond pot-
tery association is constantly organizing a local artisanship fair in collabo-
ration with the local municipality.
Further information regarding the social organization among the
ethnic groups here concerned is less consistent. Exogamy is said to be
only a recent practice among the Saxons in Heltau (TB), the Rudars in

see I. Tomova, “Roma”, In: A. Krasteva (ed.), Communities and Identities in Bulgaria. Longo
Editore Ravenna, 1999, Ravenna, p. 255-274). Among the Căldărars in Brateiu village,
documentary evidences on the Kris institution are only oral, given the persistent illteracy of
this traditional Roma community.
36 Marin CONSTANTIN


Băbeni (ID, DC), and the Lipovans in Jurilovca (ES, IS). In the carving
of some larger wooden troughs, the Rudars from Băbeni used in the past
to organize themselves into a working team called claca (IL). The buli-
basha is described as the traditional leader of the Căldărar community; it
was the bulibasha who – “like a judge” – convened the Kris and made
the concluding decisions within it (EC, AC); although the bulibasha is
remembered to have played an important role in the Căldărar return from
their Russian deportation and in the Căldărar nomadic life (AC), his au-
thority is now weak, all the more he is “no longer able to judge with his
mind” and “to say beautiful and intelligible words” (NC, EC); after all,
each family has nowadays its own bulibasha (NC)10.
The mythology and folklore are subsidiary fields of ethno-
historicity to the extent they contribute to the local understanding of a
given community-shared past. Such “contribution” may include legen-
dary explanations of one’s ethnic origins or developments, descriptions
of traditional rituals, and elements of folk symbolism. One way or an-
other, the legends, the rituals, and the symbols come to be inscribed into
oral “storylines”, which interweave with remote or recent (re)makings of
ethnicity.
In the Szekler traditions the ancient migration of Magyars from
Asia to Europe is represented (in ceramics and in woodcarving) as a
mythical hunt of the stag, a sacred animal among this group “since 3000
years ago” (AP, IB, VP); in the past, the Hungarian name of such

10
The Saxon Nachbarschaften village associations, as well as the Magyar Kalandos
and Neighborhood communities (as reported in Transylvanian localities of Sibiu, Cluj, Bra-
şov, Sighişoara, Archita, etc. – among Saxons; Dej, Cluj, Zalău, Albeşti Jimbor, Hălmeag,
Tonciu, etc. – among Magyars) have been described with their medieval interweaving with
the Church (Lutheran, among Saxons; Roman-Catholic, and Calvinist, among Magyars) and
with the urban guilds; the Saxon and Magyar Neighborhoods kept century-old written
statutes, such as the Saxon Archita Nachbarschaft, with its statute from 1668, and the Magyar
Zalău association, whose statute dated back to 1730 (see F. Pozsony, Vecinătăţile din Transil-
vania, In: Vintilă Mihăilescu (ed.), Vecini şi Vecinătăţi în Transilvania. Bucureşti, 2003, p.
13-51); the authority of bulibasha is maintained among the Roma groups in the village of
Zabola (S. Şerban, Zăbala, a Village from Transylvania. Its Kinship Structures, Etudes et
Documents Balkaniques et Méditerranéens, 2000, No 22, p. 35-49) and in the town of Ro-
man, Moldavia (P. Flenchea, Municipiul Roman: interferenţe etnice şi confesionale – ruşii
lipoveni şi romii, mentalităţi în schimbare, In: A. Majuru (ed.), Conferinţa naţională de an-
tropologie urbană, II. Bucureşti, 2009, p. 319-30).
 ETHNO-HISTORICAL TRADITIONS AMONG... 37

“crowned animal” – Szarvas – would have been invested with ritual “in-
terdictions” (AP); other informants call the stag a “Parent of the Mag-
yars” (JL), and even correlate the name of their village – Korund – to the
rich herds of stags in local surrounding woods (JLor). The stag is epically
associated to the Türül, the fantastic bird “flying in front of the Hun-
garians during their migration under Arpad’s chieftainship”; as such,
the Türül is followed by the stag and the Magyar horsemen (AP,
JLor). Additional ethno-mythological meaning is encountered in the
ornamentation of ceramic and wooden artifacts, with the motifs of Sun
and Moon as emblematically representing, together with the Stag, the
Szekelyfold (‘the Szekler County’)(VP, IB). Of particular relevance,
the Szekler Rovásírás – a runic-like style of writing, consisting of jelek
(archaic “signs”), is claimed to be “as our ancestors wrote”, and is still
used for local administrative purposes (VP, IB, JLor).
Among the Saxons of Michelsberg, the founding cult of Saint Mi-
chael is said to have nourished the local anthroponomical “800 years”
tradition of giving the name Michael to each firstborn son (MH). Also
in Michelsberg, the Legend of round stones (i.e., stones that young mar-
ried people were asked to pick up to the hill of local citadel) would stem
from local defensive needs against the Turkish and Tatar sieges during
the Middle Ages (MH). Within both the Saxon communities of
Michelsbeg and Heltau, the annual feast of Carnival – the Fasching – is
recurrently evoked with its fanfare, folk costumes, party and [public]
meals (MD); actually, it was “specifically Saxon” with its “dancing mu-
sic” and the (exclusive) use of German language (TB).
Some folk imagery can be outlined with respect to the Căldărar
group, in terms of the usage of gold and silver in the body and clothing
ornamentation (necklaces and brooches, coins worn in the hair); the
Căldărars complain today about being deprived of much of their tradi-
tional noble-metal wealth during the deportation to Russia after 1944
(EC, NC, CE, AC). Among the Căldărar clothing items bearing particu-
lar social symbolism, head-kerchiefs are associated with the young girls’
premarital status, as a mark of their engagement (MC, PG). In relation to
their nomadic movements (in the past), also including the trade of horses
38 Marin CONSTANTIN


(NC), the Căldărars continue to pay a great value to the horses they still
hold “with no harness” (AC); the image of a horse head (şerole graz-
testo) as engraved into one of the tin cups made of EC may be seen
within such contextualization. Another folkloric pattern still effective
among Căldărars (as experienced during my ethnography) is clairvoy-
ance (cf. [MC, PG] Saveta).
In the life of Rudars from Băbeni, the ritual of Gurban (as kept on
the days of Saint George and of Ascension) is archetypically related to
the biblical episode of Abraham and Samuel; the lamb sacrifice, which is
said to be “just like in the Bible”, takes place as a great community feast,
with “large fires set to roast the lamb”, with “polenta and wine”, and
“with the sacred willow leaf” – everything within “the purity of a large
grassland or in the ancestral forest” (LD, IL, VL).
In the framework of their Orthodox “ancient rite”, the Lipovans of
Jurilovca have elaborated a complex religious symbolism in association
with folk-weaving artifacts, including, for instance, the padrujnik (the
praying cushion) and the lestorka (collar worn during the church ceremo-
nies). While the padrujnik is decorated with squares and triangles repre-
senting “the Earth’, “the Apostles”, and “the Evangelists”, the lestorka
consists of triangles (“the Evangelists” and “the evangelical learning”)
and berries (“the 33 years that Jesus Christ spent on the Earth” and “the
38 weeks of the Mary’s pregnancy”); the lestorka berries also stand for
“the ladder that connects the Earth to the Heaven”. Among Lipovans,
folk clothing is still in use, as in the case of the women’s wedding cos-
tume including the sarica (cloth with handmade embroidery), the cofta
(“sack coat”-type cloth), the shupca (the skirt), and the chipchik (head
covering) (PZ)11.
11
Folk costumes appear to play a conservative and representative role among the
ethnic groups of German Landlers in Southern Transylvania (I. Sedler, Istoria landlerilor
din Transilvania. Identitate de grup în oglinda comportamentului vestimentar. Secolul al
XVIII- secolul XX-lea: partea a II-a, Studii şi Comunicări de Etnologie, 2005, XIX, p.
181-200), Roma from Northern Dobrodja (Y. Erolova, Cultura materială şi identitatea ţi-
ganilor din Dobrogea, In: S. Şerban (ed.), Teme în antropologia socială din Europa de
sud-est. Bucureşti, 2010, p. 333-358), and Lipovans from the town of Mahmudia, Eastern
Romania (I. Titov, Rolul comunicării în relaţia populaţie majoritară – populaţie minoritară.
Studiu de caz: relaţia dintre români şi ruşii lipoveni din Mahmudia, In: A. Majuru (ed.),
Conferinţa naţională de antropologie urbană, II. Bucureşti, 2009, p. 306-318). The Căldă-
rars from the Căleni village are mentioned to continue their traditional clairvoyance and
 ETHNO-HISTORICAL TRADITIONS AMONG... 39

Ethno-medicine is a subtheme that, along with the mythological

and folkloric accounts, does express the customary “template” of ethnic-
ity – as retrospectively referred to, and authenticated by, local traditions.
Even if the traditional medical knowledge and praxis are only fragmen-
tarily concerned within the current ethnography among the minority eth-
nic groups in Romania, they provide a supplemental meaning of “ethno-
historicity”, that of the existence and prestige of folk therapies and heal-
ers from the past. Besides, the traditional medicine is cross-culturally
relevant as a resource for the ethnic distinctiveness of people belonging
now to the “minority” condition.
Historical memory of grave epidemic circumstances is still vivid
among Saxons (with the evocation of local medieval experiences with the
plague and the cholera, cf. MH) and among Căldărars (with the tribula-
tion of typhoid fever during their 1944-1949 deportation to Russia, cf.
AC). In another context, in the Szekler village of Korond, the tinder
(táplo) craftsmanship processing went together with the usage of tinder
“as a bandage”, during the Great War and the World War II, as “it can
stop bleeding and heal the wounds” (MK). According to a Rudar wood-
carver (ID), willow which he uses in the making of salad plates and
dishes would contain “aspirin” (in fact, salicylic acid). In the Lipovan
village of Jurilovca, a particular repertory of Holy Virgin wooden icons is
called to be bolesnaia, which means “healing icon” (NR).
Also of ethno-medicinal significance is the narrative of JLor
(Korond) about the taltos, “the Hungarian shaman before the clergy”; the
taltos strongly impressed JLor with his “extraordinary science” (for ex-
ample, clairvoyance), as well as with his techniques of “hypnosis” and
“telepathy” – regardless of his “patient’s ethnic identity”! JLor claims to
have directly known one of the last Hungarian shamans (which were to
disappear with the postwar communism in Romania).

“charms” (as concerning the “reading of one’s future” in play cards and even “working
with the Devil” (I. Hasdeu, K. Marfa. Comerţul cu aluminiu şi degradarea condiţiei femeii
la romii căldărari, In: L. Chelcea, O. Mateescu (eds.), Economia informală în România:
pieţe, practici sociale şi transformări ale statului după 1989. Bucureşti, 2004, p. 289-314);
witchcraft practices are also accounted for the Căldărar groups in Dobrodja (Y. Erolova,
Cultura materială şi identitatea ţiganilor din Dobrogea, In: Stelu Şerban (ed.), Teme în
antropologia socială din Europa de sud-est. Bucureşti, 2010, p. 333-358).
40 Marin CONSTANTIN


With similar curative attributes, “an aged man” – “an elder” of the
Rudar community – used to officiate “as a priest” during the Gurban
sacrificial ritual; he does assist ill people there, by taking first “a pot of
wine and a morsel of roasted lamb”, and praying then three times to the
“saints” to come “quietly like the waters and sweetly like the honey”
and “remember the name of the ill” person in order to “give all the
health and strength to him, and the virtue in his bones”. According to
Rudar accounts, “lots of people were healed thanks to such sacrifice of
the lamb” (IL)12.

CONCLUSIONS

Each of the above-discussed minorities is characterized by distinct

ethno-historical archives, which are recorded, preserved, and transmitted
according to ethnographic criteria of local storytelling and cultural mem-
ory. Such ethnic “chronicles” echo typical cultural trajectories in terms of
either their “scenarios”, or their dramatis personae, or both. Nomadic life
and tin-craftsmanship have regularly shaped the Căldărar self-
identification and public perception as well; the Lipovan ethno-cultural
belongingness is deeply associated with the Orthodox-Old Belief and
fishing; woodcarving and the healing sacrifice of gurban make the Ru-
dars’ lifestyle; the Medieval colonization and Nachbarschaften are rec-
ognized marks of the Saxons’ traditional community life; and, among
Szeklers, it is the early medieval military traditions, and folk mythology
that are ethnically representative. To recapitulate all the chapters of such
‘intra-specific’ dramas, and to follow their narrative string per se, here
are the content abstracts of each of them:

12
On the sacrifice of Gurban in terms of ethnic identity and cultural representativeness
among the Rudars in Oltenia, see also K. Kovalcsik, Gurbane as a Representation of Tradi-
tional Identity and Culture in an Oltenian Rudar Community, In: B. Sikimić, P. Hristov, Kur-
ban in the Balkans. Institute for Balkan Studies, Serbian Academy of Sciences and Arts Bel-
grade, 2007, p. 109-138. As a sacrificial ritual, Gurban is generalized among the Rudars and
Roma groups in Dobrodja (Erolova, 2010), as well as in Bulgaria, Turkey (Eastern Thrace),
Macedonia, Serbia, Kossovo, and Albania (B. Sikimić, P. Hristov, Kurban in the Balkans.
Institute for Balkan Studies, Serbian Academy of Sciences and Arts Belgrade, 2007).
 ETHNO-HISTORICAL TRADITIONS AMONG... 41

Căldărars:
– Past nomadic life, past customary-law community organization,
recent-past foreign oppressive ruling, postwar political perse-
cution and deportation, past and current symbolical use of folk
costume;

Lipovans:
– Medieval migration, eponymy of a medieval founding ancestor,
recent-past and present community professional organization,
medieval religious persecution, medieval foreign oppressive
ruling, past and current symbolical use of folk costume , recent-
past and current marital (re)orientation to exogamy, current
folk-medicine beliefs;

Rudars:
– Past nomadic life, recent-past and current marital
(re)orientation to exogamy, current healing sacrificial ritual,
folk-medicine beliefs, practice, and specialists ;

Saxons:
– Medieval colonization, eponymy of a medieval founding ances-
tor and development of a local anthroponomical tradition, me-
dieval ecclesial founding context, medieval military and nobility
ruling, tradition of medieval crusades, postwar political perse-
cution and deportation, recent-past and current marital
(re)orientation to exogamy;

Szeklers:
– Medieval migration, mythology of medieval ethnic origins and
archaic writing-style, medieval ecclesial founding context, me-
dieval military and political ruling, craft techniques based on
medieval founders, tradition of medieval crusades, medieval
and recent-past folk-medicine knowledge, practice, and spe-
cialists.
42 Marin CONSTANTIN

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