Republic of Transylvania

I don't think an independent Transylvania would have satisfied people living in Transylvania. IOTL, the Romanians in Transylvania voted for union with Romania, and the Allies merely recognized that. Instead of antagonzing just the Hungarians, now you have antagonized the Romanians as well. There was simply too much nationalism back then.

Switzerland makes a good ideal, but I don't think there are anything like the cantons in Transylvania. The Swiss had several centuries of common government that built a communal identity and develop strong cooperative institutions. That simply just can't be imposed at will.

I expect lots of civil unrest in Transylvania, and real radicalization of politics in Romania. By forcing Romania to give up Transylvania, France just lost an important member of the Little Entente and its position in Eastern Europe. Politics in Eastern Europe is even more unstable. Most likely, Hitler partitions Transylvania however he sees fit during WWII. It's even possible that either Romania or Hungary try to seize all of Transylvania in an Anschluss style coup de main and become willing allies to Hitler if he gives them permission. Whether Stalin sees fit, after the war, to restore Transylvanian independence, partition the country between Hungary and Romania, or give one nation complete control is unknown.
 
Uh oh, the plot thickens:

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Following defeat in World War I, Austria-Hungary began to disintegrate. The ethnic Romanian majority elected representatives, who then proclaimed Union with Romania on December 1, 1918. The Proclamation of Union of Alba Iulia was adopted by the Deputies of the Romanians from Transylvania, and supported one month later by the vote of the Deputies of the Saxons from Transylvania. In 1920, the Allies confirmed the union in the Treaty of Trianon. Hungary protested against the detach, as over 1,600,000 Hungarian people[12] were living in the area in question, mainly in Székely Land of Eastern Transylvania, and along the newly created border, which was drawn through areas with Hungarian majority.

The Transylvanian Christian bishopric and the comitatus system were organised. By the early 11th century the ethnic Hungarian[citation needed] Székely were established in southeastern Transylvania

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Note the Szekely, who were Hungarian background but did not like to
be called Hungarian. They made up 40% or so of that ethnic group.

Or says the Wikipedia entry on the subject, perhaps of Turkic background.
A very complicated grouping arrangement. Not sure of how many % of
the Romanians were Catholic, but thought it was a majority. This
was erased during communist rule and the vast majority are new
transplants. Web sections cast grave doubt on the issue, and it
may be the ones in the towns were more likely to be for obvious
reasons.

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The only possibility for Romanians to retain or access nobility in Hungarian Transylvania was through conversion to Catholicism. Some Orthodox Romanian nobles converted, becoming integrated into the Hungarian nobility. These circumstances marked the beginning of a conflict between ethnic Hungarian Catholics and ethnic Romanian Orthodox (and ethnic Romanian Greek Catholics also) in the territory of Transylvania which in some regions remains unresolved to this very day.[43]
The only possibility for Romanians to retain or access nobility in Hungarian Transylvania was through conversion to Catholicism. Some Orthodox Romanian nobles converted, becoming integrated into the Hungarian nobility. These circumstances marked the beginning of a conflict between ethnic Hungarian Catholics and ethnic Romanian Orthodox (and ethnic Romanian Greek Catholics also) in the territory of Transylvania which in some regions remains unresolved to this very day.[43]

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Because Transylvania was now beyond the reach of Catholic religious authority, Protestant preaching such as Lutheranism and Calvinism were able to flourish in the region. In 1568 the Edict of Turda proclaimed four religious expressions in Transylvania - Latin Rite or Eastern Rite Catholicism, Lutheranism, Calvinism and Unitarianism (Unitarian Church of Transylvania), while Eastern Orthodoxy, which was the confession of almost the entire ethnic Romanian part of the population, was proclaimed as "tolerated" (tolerata).

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Transylvania became one of the few European States where Roman Catholics, Calvinists, Lutherans and Unitarians lived in peace, although Orthodox Romanians continued to be denied equal recognition.

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Although Romanians formed the majority of Transylvania's population (59%), they had not been awarded legal status as a nation. In 1892 the leaders of the Romanians of Transylvania sent a Memorandum to the Austro-Hungarian Emperor-King Franz Joseph, asking for equal ethnic rights

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Note the last entry. It seems that it may be a bare majority were not orthodox, with
Romanian ethnic contribution, but this was in part alike to Protestant conversion in
Southern Ireland, switched back when the political climate changed.

And like Alsace Loraine, where the former proponents of French retrocession, namely
Catholic Priests, quickly became in post 1919 the strongest proponents of return to
German rule when the French immediately dropped subsidies for Priests, which had
been lost in France circa 1880's! I do say that many are still hard on the state as
it exists in Romania today and claim to want to become part of Romania, but those
days are gone as in so many counties, the territory has been absorbed successfully.
 
it exists in Romania today and claim to want to become part of Romania, but those
days are gone as in so many counties, the territory has been absorbed successfully.

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claim to want to become part of Hungary, it should have read.
 
I don't think that Catholicism is the solution when a Romanian converted to Catholicism he converted to Greek-Catholicism, conversion to Roman-Catholicism were very few in number, and Greek Catholics were at the forefront of the nationalist movement in Transylvania.
All in all people here a overestimating the importance of religion here.
 
Languages, religion

Spanish, yes, Spanish might be a useful lingua franca as Romanian
is so close to that international language, yet far enough away to
be a face saving compromise to Hungarian and German financial
and landed powerhouses.

Spanish is close to Romanian indeed, just like Italian (French and Portuguese are more difficult to learn, although you may argue about exact linguistics). Most Romanians watching a whole bunch of telenovels in spanish can pick up quite a bit, never mind the 1 million+ working in Spain who usually become more or less fluent in a couple of months. I mean, I've never been to a single spanish class and have watched no telenovels but I can easily understand, say 70% of a wikipedia article.

So you're right about that, but I see no way for Spanish to become significant in Transylvania in any ATL; the language has no history whatsoever in the region, and Spain was by no means a great power with a dominant international language at the time. English, French or German would probably have been considered way ahead Spanish. More likely however, Romanian would have became a lingua franca, with Hungarian and German as co-official languages.

I have met a few Romanian ethnic
Transylvanians, and they all dislike the regular Romanians.

There ARE regional identities in Romania, just like in any other country, but their importance must not be overstated. Stereotypes that exist-ex. Transylvanians sometimes think of those beyond the Carpathians as less-cultured- are more or less limited in social impact to jokes and occasional local-patriotic football-chants. But Romanians, as a nation, are very much unified, culturally, linguistically and in identity, more so than a great number of large European states. You don't have mutually unintelligible dialects, for instance, like in Italy or Germany, regional language varieties are as different from each other as White American English and African-American Vernacular.

So you would never say 'Romanian ethnic Transylvanian', but ethnic Romanian FROM Transylvania- just like you would say Englishman from Yorkshire.

Note the Szekely, who were Hungarian background but did not like to
be called Hungarian. They made up 40% or so of that ethnic group.

Or says the Wikipedia entry on the subject, perhaps of Turkic background.
A very complicated grouping arrangement.

Originally, the Szekelys were sort of a privileged social group; they did not have to pay taxes but had military obligations. The term later evolved to become a Hungarian sub-ethic designation. However Szekelys DO consider themselves Hungarian, their history, culture & identity is entierly integrated with the Hungarian nation, and were Szekelys asked to choose between whether they consider themselves primarily Szekelys or Hungarians the vast majority would choose the latter, although also accepting the sub-ethnic identity as well. Their origin is disputed, they might descend from originally non-Hungarian speaking peoples, but that is ancient history. Today, the Hungarian nation- just like the Romanian- is very homogenous, internal differences and nouances only make sense to insiders.

Remember
that nearly all Hungarians, most all Romanians, and many Germans
were Catholics, but regular Romanians were Turkish permeated
(worst of all the corrupt practices) Eastern Orthodox.

Not sure of how many % of
the Romanians were Catholic, but thought it was a majority. This
was erased during communist rule and the vast majority are new
transplants.
As far as I know- wiki & internet articles- about 40% of Transylvanian Romanians were Greek Catholic after WW1, which meant about a fifth of the total population of Transylvania (other source- 50% and ~ a third, either way a large proportion). Yet Greek Catholicism was Catholic only in its acceptance of Rome's supremacy; its liturgical rite was Byzantine, which made it easy for the communists to merge it into the Orthodox Church. The point is that Hungarian Catholics and Romanian Greek Catholics were much more divided by their ethnicity than they were united by their religion.
 
Most interesting...

In my HMS Heligoland TL research I looked at this and decided that Szekely Land might hope for autonomy, but that Transylvania as a whole was lost to Hungary after Bela Kun. Even so subtle a schemer as I make Hungary's Gombos is unable to give Hungary its Carpathian frontier back without a war with Romania - and there are more important foes in Germany and Russia. An independent Transylvania would need Romanians who feel that Bucaresti is useless and decided a government of their own in Cluj or Alba Julia is better. As well as the aircraft industry in Brasov, the Transylvanians would have extensive mineral resources - too many for Romania to surrender them without a fight.
 
In my HMS Heligoland TL research I looked at this and decided -snip_ As well as the aircraft industry in Brasov, the Transylvanians would have extensive mineral resources - too many for Romania to surrender them without a fight.


You do know that the famed rocketer, Oberth, was born and educated just down the road from Brasov, in what was Hermanstadt but is now Sibiu? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hermann_Oberth

He is number three, just behind Goddard and Tsiolkovsky. But he was
in his early twenties when moving away, about 1920. Only about 100
younger Germans now left in Sibiu, where there were ten thousand.
The mayor is older, but is ethnic German. Had a great party in the
wine cellar, but one of the same did not like Americans much. This
was 2001. Wonder what happened to him? But I digress.
 
regular Romanians were Turkish permeated
(worst of all the corrupt practices) Eastern Orthodox.

I am a "mere" regular Romanian and I take deep personal offence at this kind of SHIT. If it continues I WILL report it to the admin. You can't just go insulting people like that. Have a little decency! Have some manners! Have some courtesy!

This has nothing to do with the subject. I love the subject, though personally I would think an Austro-Hungarian Empire that survives and turns well for the minorities scenario would be more entertaining. Something along the lines of Aurel Popovici's idea of the United States of Greater Austria (an idea that the Archduke Franz Ferdinand actually intended to implement, only he never got to become Emperor being assassinated and all...)

And the queen of Romania, Queen
Victoria's Grandaughter, the bimbo that she was

Queen Mary was and is our mother. She was not what you disgracefully called her. She did have some extramarital affairs. So what? She was not a nun. She was a very intelligent, kind and cultured woman and probably the only royal so beloved that the memory of that affection stayed with many Romanians throughout the communist years.

If you said something like this about our mother can I repay the favour by saying the same about yours? I believe I could but I'm too well mannered to go there.

Transylvanians sometimes think of those beyond the Carpathians as less-cultured-

Really? :) Well, stereotypes are too often assumed true... ;)

Are you a Romanian ethnically or a Magyar? Just out of curiosity...

You know here in the Moldavian side of the country we stereotype Transylvanians as ultra-nationalistic and slightly arrogant. Of course none of it is true (at least from my experience). As for Wallachians (but not Oltenians) we think they are morally weak and would eagerly sell their sould ofr a profit (but on the other hand are good businesspeople), alongside the usual "Mitica" stereotype which I'm not sure can be explained in English -- of course it's also probably untrue.
And of ourselves we believe that we are well more cultured than other Romanians (pointing to the many Moldavians in Romanian culture), more moral & religious (and it's probably true we're more religious), more inclined towards the arts and humanities but also lazy (the two seeming to be linked). Also less likely to get angry, more "calm".
The stereotype about Oltenians I will not utter here as it needs to be destroyed because it's unfair. But we do think them also religious only more "blindly" than us, if that makes any sense... probably related to the unuttered stereotype.

Of course it's all bullshit.

As for your independent Transylvania I think you need a POD where the Habsburgs don't get 100% control of it. It used to be independent under Ottoman suzerainty, after all. But after it's become a Habsburg land it will eventually be a part of Hungary. And right before WWI Hungary was set on a policy of Hungarisation thus you have the Romanians and Germans wanting anything else, even much poorer Romania if that's a way out.

Of course maybe in the long run for Transylvania it would have been better to have remained in the AH Emprie, but only if the policy towards minorities had changed. Aurel Popovici's plan included Transylvania (with Banat and Bukovina) and Szeklerland seperately.
 
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Sorry about that, Rum Mendeniyeti. In this forum we are trying to put
together, cobble if you will, a plausible arrangement of what could
have happened. I do say that my words could have been put in an other
way.

Corruption was, however, especially ingrained at the farther reaches of
non Muslim Ottoman empire, which is one of the reasons why they
fell one after another in the 19 and early 20th century. That, and
the unfortunate post 1989 situation made me see the worst of it. From
the lips of the daughter of the old foreign trade minister came the little
confidential situation that cheating especially rich foreigners became
not only the past time, but a contest of whom could rake the most in
one year. No joke. A billionaire even parted the country with a quote
I will not repeat of the situation. I knew and know the daughter
pretty well.

I got to know one fellow, an Australian of Serbian background, got
angry at a UK with whom he was staying at his hostel. This fellow
then started up his own hostel. But you needed muscle back then,
especially with a hostile hosteleer expat breathing down yoru back
(it was about a woman). So he frequented a gym famous for the
mafia types and became friends of them. No joke.

Another fellow I bumped into was at the futures exchange. Practically
a boiler room op, it was formed by the then President (or is it Prime
Minister, it has been years). This guy was a bright man, name
undisclosed, became a friend and told plenty.

So, if Lonely Planet prints, as they did, the ticket conductors double
punch receipts so you are in violation (rich foreigner), it is only one
step above policemen in West Africa setting back their watches
to nab "curfew breakers". Many good people all throughout the
country, but that was the situation. So you had depressed people
standing by the roads (when Serbia closed its freeways to rich
Europeans in their fancy sports cars during the war) waiting for
a fancy car so to jump out and get the lawsuit fee, living or dead.

The ticket conductor situation was in Constanta, yet I had a
similar situation in Sibiu.

Which shows a division, one that was below the surface mainly, but
there nevertheless and could have been used to separate the region
and made it into a working state, hypothetically. It would have taken
a Lee Kuan Yew type person probably, and immigration from all over
Europe as mass trade beyond that over mountain passes had long
since not been very viable. As was the thread. Nation states, US, UK,
Romania, Tuva , are all like saugages insofar as we do not normally
ask what they are made of exactly. But for this forum, it become
neccessary. Should I resort to the latin ingredient names?
 
The rich foreigners in their sports cars were on their way to Greece.

Queen Marie was an unusual person, and I do not envy the Royals
situation much at all. Her reputation was a bit more saucy than
Catherine the Great, and she never had her head at risk like that
monarch, though.


Otherwise, I'll back off. Not too many monarchists in and around
Romania nowadays, though.
 
You can have anything you want if willing to pay the price!

Spanish is close to Romanian indeed,
So you're right about that, but I see no way for Spanish to become significant in Transylvania in any ATL; the language has no history whatsoever in the region, and Spain was by no means a great power with a dominant international language at the time. English, French or German would probably have been considered way ahead Spanish. More likely however, Romanian would have became a lingua franca, with Hungarian and German as co-official languages..

While it is true Romanian would be easier intially, I respectfully disagree
to the advisability of the same. Nation building requires compromises,
and one language is best when there has been dissention, so the
two issues have been amalgamated (in this hypothetical scenario).
We are working with a late POD in most cases here, demanding some
heavy out of the box thinking.

There are precedents, like Singapore. Next to no one spoke Chinese
at home or at work. Sure, dialects of Chinese, but almost all were
southern dialects which are as far away from each other as English is
from French (I used to speak Mandrin, btw, and very little other).
That is for a local, of course. Chinese schools were discouraged,
as they were in too many cases dens of communism. Lee knew
this at very close quarters and orchestrated both situations. Call it
real politic if it helps. Then come about 1984 or so a complete change
for Mandarin Chinese. Communism was no longer an issue.

In fact, the only Mandarin at home/work were probably with a few
refugees post 1949.

1950's President Lee could not even write in Chinese or read, which is of
course much more standard. He read in roman characters and wrote
with the same. Now Mandrin is the dual language. Just like that, so
it can be done.

Namibia decided to choose English as the standard language. Only
one percent of the people spoke it at home, almost all white. Various
African languages, German, and of course the lingua franca Afrikaans
were discussed, but as a world language and a dark horse candidate,
English was decided upon. Mining industry, which is holding the country
together, was part of it, though. Compromise and the situation.

There may be more stroke of a pen types of incidents. Hebrew comes
close, but just about every Jewish religious leader had considerable
understanding of that in 1947, and so did the core settlements.

Any more? I thought of making Spanish mandatory for all phone
conversations, unless private at tax or business at higher tax, would
work. Remember, in those days all was by a switchboard
operator, and party lines were the norm. With in a few years much
would change, and the local ethnic Romanian, no matter what
religion or view, would feel priviledged and far more comfortable
initially. Yet it would foster competition within groups towards a
favorable end. And, no, I am not of Spanish, Latin, or Hispanic
background. British Isles and a little Dutch, actually.
 
Are you a Romanian ethnically or a Magyar? Just out of curiosity...
You know here in the Moldavian side of the country we stereotype Transylvanians as ultra-nationalistic and slightly arrogant. Of course none of it is true (at least from my experience).

Actually I'm half-half, my Dad's Hungarian, so I kind of feel I'm part of both communities.

On the stereotypes, I also found that most of them are just rubbish; still there might be a some differences between attitudes particular to certain regions. I don't know if Transylvanians are more nationalistic, since I haven't lived for longer periods in other parts of Romania, so I can't really compare.
Personally, I was pleasantly surprised whenever I have been to Bucharest or Iasi about the attitude of people- at first, I was expecting that they're going to have prejudices because I have a Hungarian name, but, in fact, they've found it sort of exotic and I've never felt uncomfortable at all.

There certainly is a strong ethnic consciousness here; for instance in my hometown- Targu-Mures- about 55% are Romanian and 45% or so are Hungarian- so at every mayor-election you get 55% for the Romanian candidate and 45% for the Hungarian one, because very few people consider voting for someone of a different ethnicity then themselves, regardless competence- which is kind of silly, but there you go. On the other hand you have Sibiu, where the mayor is indeed German, as someone here pointed out, while Germans make up only an insignificant percentage of the city. So it's not really about general ethnic nationalism just about a history of Romanian-Hungarian rivalry, which has yet to fade away. Still the majority of both ethnic communities are perfectly ok with each other in everyday life, as they should be.
 
By the way, I forgot about this point on local languages.

Romanian uses very few Slavic words. But the word for yes is Da, Russian/Slavic. Why? Probably as a token compromise, it has been suggested by scholars, one that was kept.

Bulgarian was over a milennia ago a dead zone. Three groups survived the Avars or some invader. The original Thracians, there for many thousands of years, the Bulgars, and the Slavs. The Thracians were nearly gone, and were absorbed with out much input. The Slavs got the language. And the Bulgars named the tribe. Bulgaria the country and the Slavic language compromise lasts to our present day TL. Wonder who was the strongest, middle, and weakest at the end of the conflict, folks? It seems pretty obvious.

So I recall the story was in a history book.

Then there is the story of the Scotish Picts disappearance. According to a history documentary, the record is murky, but an Irish interloper took over, and the exiled brother heirs grew up in Ireland, their mother's land. When they returned, the subverted the place to copy where they grew up. True, the language probably was fairly close, but still.
 
By the way, I forgot about this point on local languages.

Romanian uses very few Slavic words. But the word for yes is Da, Russian/Slavic. Why? Probably as a token compromise, it has been suggested by scholars, one that was kept.
Actually, Romanian uses a very significant amount of Slavic words, up to 30%. Even in written speech, 10% is from Slavic origin. You could probably say that Romanian has been very strongly influenced by Slavic, so not such a good example.
 
Did a google and you are correct. Somewhere around 14% of the words.
I would be interested in if they are the most commonly used ones or not,
besides da and some others. Almost all of the most commonly used
English words (top 100) are Germanic, as an example. Picking such
a common word as Yes for an import is not usual in the world
without some sort of situation and story behind it.

Some more Slavic Romanian words:

iubire = love
lebeda = swan
draga = sweetheart


Up to 20% of the vocabulary is of Slavic origin, including words such as: a iubi=to love; glas=voice; nevoie=need; prieten=friend; However, many Slavic words are archaisms and it is estimated that only 10% of the words in modern Romanian are Slavic.
There are some Slavonic influences, both on the phonetic level and on the lexical level—for example Romanian took the Slavonic da for yes.
 
The plot thickens.

Some say that that Yes (Da) is not Slavic after all:

Romanian, like all Romance languages, has its own distinct features, owing principally to its particular local influences. This includes a significant influx of Slavic borrowings. One word of apparently Slavic origin in Romanian is da = yes. It seems impossible that any populace would choose to borrow such a basic word from another language. But the history of human speech does, in fact, attest examples of such counter-intuitive developments.2

In this particular case, however, I will argue that a possible Latin origin for Romanian da has been overlooked. With a Romance etymology for such a basic word established, a Slavic source may be unnecessary.

2 The Slavic Assumption for da = yes

It is understandable that a Slavic origin of Romanian da = yes should have been assumed and then never questioned (Cihac 1879, 89; Ciorănescu 2003, 276). Afterall, the words enjoy a perfect oneness of phonology and semantics. Further evidence for the assumption has been the observation that da appears relatively late in the Romanian literary record,3 suggesting not just a borrowing, but a recent one at that.


3 Latin Affirmations and their Romance Coun- terparts

Classical Latin did not have only one lexical item for ‘yes’. Instead, speakers of Latin tended to employ a rich combination of words and expressions. Among these were sic, ita, vero, as well as merely repeating a phrase in full (Buck & Hale 1903, 137).4 In Late Latin, it appears that the word sic reached a level of predominance (Pucci & Harrington 1997, 11),5 setting the stage for the current usage of Spanish, Portuguese, Italian, and French.6 Latin sic did survive into Romanian with arguably an even greater prevalence, becoming the basic conjunction şi, ‘and’ (Ciorănescu 2003, 713).

4 Latin ita > Romanian da?

Because of their similarity in form and meaning, an etymological derivation of Romanian da from Latin ita would seem an intriguing possibility. The evolution of ita into da could have followed two routes.

4.1 ita > *ida > da

Though not represented in the orthography, Late Latin seems to have undergone a general voicing of intervocalic consonants, though the Romance languages outside the Iberian Peninsula subsequently experienced a significant degree of regression from this voicing (Cravens 1996, 65-66). As such, an intermediate form ∗ida likely existed at least in pronunciation. While Romanian experienced an almost total devoicing, sporadic preservation of voicing is attested.7 This would, however, leave the question of why Romanian would atypically preserve the voicing in this particular word.


My original point is that populations have in the past been willing to
change their spoken language for one reason or another, usually under
a type of threat if short term. Longer term, such as 50% to 60% of Korean words being Sino-Korean seem from gradual introduction.

To change quickly in some form is compromise or being compromised,
I would think.
 
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