conservative palin genesis romania

Totalitarian Movements and Political Religions,Vol. 9, No. 4, 437453, December 2008

ISSN 1469-0764 Print/ISSN 1743-9647 Online/08/040437-17 2008 Taylor & Francis DOI: 10.1080/14690760802436068

Conservative Palingenesis and Cultural Modernism in Early Twentieth-century Romania1

MARIUS TURDA

Oxford Brookes UniversityTaylor and FrancisFTMP_A_343774.sgm10.1080/14690760802436068Totalitarian Movements and Political Religions1469-0764 (print)/1743-9647 (online)Original Article2008Taylor & Francis94000000December [email protected]

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

This article discusses cultural modernist ideas of national renewal developed inRomania during the first decade of the twentieth century. I argue that it is usefulto look at these critiques of the cultural homogeneity and political emancipationbrought about by liberal modernity in order to understand the intellectualsources of the programme of national regeneration which Romanian fascistsmade central to their revolutionary project during the interwar period. This inturn illuminates the key role played by these ideologues in the development of apeculiarly Romanian form of political religion in the 1930s.

The concept of conservative palingenesis proposed here differs from the so-called Conservative Revolution advocated by Ernst Jnger (18951993) andOswald Spengler (18801936), amongst others.2 The adepts of the ConservativeRevolution in Germany detested both the Weimar Republic and the conservativetraditions of the Wilhelmine period; they were anti-parliamentary and anti-monarchists, and hoped to fuse nationalism with an anti-Marxist variant of social-ism.3 On the contrary, the Romanian authors discussed in this paper consideredthe conservative traditions of the past as embodying the source of rejuvenationfor the Romanian nation. To be sure, they were also against socialism, and wereoften anti-Semites, a feature which although present was often absent from theagenda of the Conservative Revolution. Neither is conservative palingenesissynonymous with the set of cultural traditions identified by Jeffrey Herf as reac-tionary modernism, namely, the reconciliation between the anti-modernist,

Correspondence address: Department of History, School of Arts and Humanities, Oxford BrookesUniversity, Gipsy Lane, Headington, Oxford, OX3 OBP, UK. Email: [email protected]

438 M. Turda

romantic, and irrationalist ideas present in German nationalism and the mostobvious manifestations of means/ends rationality, that is, modern technology.4

Because Romania was a predominantly agrarian country and home of one ofEuropes most traditional peasant societies, Romanian cultural modernists of theearly twentieth century did not aim at creating a technologically advanced nationbut advocated instead an organic community, completely integrated within itsown natural space.

This insistence on organic values, peasant racial purity and the antinomybetween rural (ethnically Romanian) and urban (foreign, Jewish) Romania wascombined with the rejection of the heritage of the Enlightenment thought, acombination which, as Mark Antliff suggests, responded to a widespreadsearch for spiritual values and organic institutions capable of counteractingwhat was considered the corrosive effects of rationalism (and capitalism) on thebody politic.5

One useful theoretical approach to conceptualising such an ideological force isRoger Griffins definition of fascism as palingenetic ultra-nationalism,6 andmore recently, his discussion of social modernism. Griffin, like other historiansof fascism, considers the period between 1890 and 1918 as the Grnderzeit ofideas which later emerged as Fascist, Nazi, or Legionary. It is not only becausethese ideas emerged as a distinct way of understanding contemporary processesof social transformation and political impasses, but also because it is in this periodthat there was a subtle transfer of knowledge between such diverse scientificfields as literature, history, medicine, anthropology, sociology and philosophy, allof whose boundaries became porous to other disciplines and to non-academicspheres of society.7 It was also then that the cultural foundations of an alternativemodernity8 were established, and not only in countries such as Germany, Italy orFrance but also in Romania.

The study of the culturalintellectual origins of fascist ideology has thereforehighlighted its dynamic appropriation and syncretic combination of ideas wide-spread in fin-de-sicle European culture. George Mosse, Zeev Sternhell, WalterAdamson, Claudio Fogu and Emilio Gentile to name but a few who have contrib-uted to this debate have convincingly demonstrated that the new politics offascism extracted much of its energy from the multifaceted fabric of a modernistcultural rebellion that had denounced the moralistic and optimistic view of socialmodernisation associated with the consolidation of (liberal-capitalist) bourgeoisculture in the second half of the nineteenth century.9 This search for a differentmodernity can be traced to a variety of sources, from the quest of the Frenchpolitical theorist Georges Sorel (18471922) for a regenerative myth, to the culturalpessimism of Friedrich Nietzsche (18441900), or to the racial diagnosis of contem-porary decadence offered by Houston Stewart Chamberlain (18551927).10

My paper examines the impact of Chamberlains racial philosophy on threeRomanian intellectuals: Constantin R[abreve] dulescu-Motru (18681957), Alexandru C.Cuza (18571947) and Aurel C. Popovici (18631917). Directly, Chamberlain influ-enced the development of modern Romanian anti-Semitism, nationalism andracism; indirectly, he shaped the emergence of autochthonous theories of cultureconstituting the source of the Legionary national revolution during the 1930s.11 Itwas no accident that these Romanian intellectuals were among the most avidproponents of ideas of racial rejuvenation during this period, and were (especiallyA. C. Popovici and A. C. Cuza) likely to use a nationalist terminology informed byracial 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 widelydisseminated in that cultural milieu. Secondly, they emerged as public figures andcontroversial authors at a time when Romanian culture was in flux, aboundingwith controversies about the current state and imminent future of the nation.12

Moreover, each of these intellectuals is representative of the development ofparticular currents of ideas within the project of conservative palingenesis, whichcollectively established the foundations for more radical theories of nationalbelonging, including legionarism, tr[abreve] irism and gndirism, to develop in Romaniaafter the First World War.

The Jew and the Teuton: Chamberlains Ideas of Racial Conflict

Before a discussion of Chamberlains influence on Romanian culture at thebeginning of the twentieth century is offered, it is necessary to outline the maintenets of his philosophy of race as it was presented in his seminal 1899 DieGrundlagen des neunzehnten Jahrhunderts (The Foundations of the NineteenthCentury).13 The major elements of nineteenth-century racial thinking convergedin Chamberlains philosophy of race: Aryan supremacy, Social Darwinism andthe recently developed doctrines of eugenics and anthropo-sociology. To thesetheories Chamberlain added anti-Semitism and German nationalism.

Much of Chamberlains obsession with racial degeneration and ethnic mixingresulted from a particular nationalist environment characteristic of theHabsburg Monarchy at the turn of the twentieth century. Between 1889 and1908, Chamberlain lived in Vienna, and it was at this time that he wrote DieGrundlagen.14 In many ways, the three fundamental principles propounded inDie Grundlagen were also a reflection of the particular ethnic composition of theHabsburg Monarchy, namely that (a) mankind was divided into distinct raceswhich 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 ofhistory, and the key to understanding cultural, political, and social developmentand (c) the history of the West was a constant struggle between Aryans(Teutons) and Jews.15 At the confluence of these principles, Chamberlain placedhis concept of race. Like other authors, Chamberlain exploited the bi-polarity ofrace: it was simultaneously biological and cultural, so that he was capable onoccasion of articulating an intuitive, almost spiritual, definition of race. Hedeclared, for instance: Nothing is so convincing as the consciousness of thepossession of Race. The man who belongs to a distinct, pure race, never losesthe sense of it, and further, Race lifts a man above himself: it endows him withextraordinary I might almost say supernatural powers.16

However, Chamberlains concept of race was also extensively influenced byCharles Darwins theory of natural selection, despite misconstruing Darwinsarguments in the process. By way of illustration, in many parts of his book,Chamberlain rejected the idea that natural selection favoured only the fittest. Hetherefore hoped to overcome the existing contradiction in his own theory of race,which claimed that the innate qualities of certain races assured their racial superi-ority, while at the same time insisting that external conditions proved decisive inthe process of racial selection.

A corollary to the importance of race in shaping the cultural history ofmankind was the necessity of refuting the importance of racial purity anargument which anguished many racial theorists at the time. Chamberlain

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employed a different technique: he argued that the mixing of races could haveboth negative and positive consequences. This was even a necessary process,since it contributed to the augmentation of superior racial qualities. Darwinslaws on the obliteration of racial characters by perpetual crossbreeding undercontrolled conditions asserted that a race originated as a result of the specificcombination of geographical and historical conditions, which in turn ennobledracial essence through inbreeding and artificial selection. Chamberlain high-lighted the concepts of crossing and breeding as the two most importantfactors in determining the character of race. Yet uncontrolled racial mixing especially between races of different origin would jeopardise the qualities ofthe superior race. It was this insistence on racial degeneration that inspired manyof Chamberlains followers in Romania.

Consequently, Chamberlain established five principles meant to keep racialqualities from degenerating, or in Chamberlains stylistic phrasing, the prostitu-tion 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 orchestratedinbreeding (the second principle), and artificial selection (the third principle).However, racial crossing (the fourth principle) would not be fortuitous, andChamberlain advocated the necessity of strictly limiting these crossings both inrespect of choice and time (the fifth principle).17 Only the race successfullycombining these five principles was destined for survival and historical achieve-ment. In modern times Chamberlain thought the Teutons (die Germanen) weresuch a race.

On the one hand, Chamberlains racial philosophy praised the cultural andhistorical achievements of the Teutons; on the other, it excoriated the contributionof Semitic races, especially the Jews. Thus, the Teutons embodied the best Aryanracial qualities and were destined to redeem western culture from its present stateof destitution (itself caused by the Jews). By portraying the negative anddestructive effects the Jews had on western civilization, and by weaving Jewishinferiority into a system that seemingly embraced all of human history, Chamber-lain harnessed common anti-Jewish prejudices of the late nineteenth-century withpseudo-scientific and philosophical foundation. At the same time he connectedmodern anti-Semitism to its religious roots: the Judeo-Christian conflict.

While other anti-Semites at this time, most prominently Wilhelm Marr (18191904), 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 innatecharacteristics of any race. Instead they were the result of the mixing of races withdifferent virtues. A felicitous apportionment of racial qualities would lead to thedevelopment 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 disas-trous effects for both the Jews and the nation into which they integrated.

Chamberlains anti-Semitism therefore functioned on two levels. The firstpointed to the physical characteristics of the Jews, culminating in what Chamber-lain considered the degeneration of the Jewish race. The second outlined thenegative mentality of the Jews, their cultural and moral inferiority, and their lackof religious sensibility. Chamberlain also emphasised the theological aspect ofthis theory, arguing that the Jews never possessed religious consciousness. Indenying the Jews their propensity for cultural diversity, Chamberlain exposed


what he claimed to be their absolute mental poverty, confirming the popularassumption on their racial degeneration.18

Die Grundlagen was an instant success; it ran through eight editions and soldover 60,000 copies. A popular edition appeared in 1906; by 1914 the book had soldover 100,000 copies. The book was first translated into English in 1911, andenjoyed intellectual acclaim in Europe and the United States. Unsurprisingly, itwas also amply reviewed in Romania. Before discussing the direct impact ofChamberlains ideas on Romanian anti-Semitism, it would be useful to note oneinteresting attempt to construct a philosophy of the nation based not on spiritualand cultural, but on epistemological, scientistic foundations.

Racial Philosophy and Nationalist Epistemology

The Romanian philosopher Constantin R[abreve] dulescu-Motru belongs to a generationof Romanian nationalists who gave Chamberlains theories a specific epistemo-logical function, one which Motru then tried to apply to Romanian debates on thenation. To be sure, Romanian interpretations of Chamberlain were anything butunanimous. Some authors, like A. C. Cuza and A. C. Popovici, considered histheory of the racial soul of the nation essential to understanding the specificity ofthe Romanian modernisation, especially the peasantry, while others, like Motru,saw it as an obstacle to the development of a new theory of nationalism based onobjective analysis and criticism.

In 1900, Motru published an extensive review of Die Grundlagen in Noua revist[abreve]romn[abreve] pentru politic[abreve] , literatur[abreve] , [scedil] tiin[tcedil] [abreve] [scedil] i art[abreve] (The New Romanian Journal forPolitics, Science and Art).19 In acknowledging the broad impact of Chamberlainsideas, Motru was less persuaded that the book was based on the solid scientificfoundations claimed by its author. From the outset, he remarked that Chamber-lains book belonged to the category of philosophical writings about race abound-ing in sophisms and speculations rather than constituting a philosophicalsystem of race. Accordingly, Motru decided to introduce Chamberlains racialideas as thoroughly and objectively possible the only way, Motru believed,philosophy should be understood.

Chamberlains subjectivism when dealing with social and psychologicalaspects of race was not the only aspect that alarmed Motru. He was alsoconcerned with Chamberlains lack of comparative-historical methodology. Asupporter of new theories of racial spirituality, especially Vlkerpsychologie afield which at the end of the nineteenth century received a new application in thework of Wilhelm Wundt (18321920) Motrus assessment of Chamberlainsracial ideas was more than a conventional review; rather it was an attempt atcultural eclecticism, based on the assumption that the world can be known byhuman reason without lacunae.20 Indeed what Motru hoped to obtain fromChamberlain was a scientific theory of race, one based on a philosophical andempirical basis. But Houston Stewart Chamberlain, Motru lamented, is theenemy of the scientific method in philosophy. For him finding the truth does notentail analysis and meticulous researches; the truth presents to the mindintuitively; 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 topicbearing 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 racefulfil its cultural destiny. Fused with this argument was his idea of heroes andgeniuses, deemed to be the historical products of a nations racial superiority. Itfollowed that only within an auspicious racial environment could individualspossessing extraordinary qualities achieve personal and collective fulfilment. Theindividual lives for a second; the race is infinite, declared Motru, subscribing toChamberlains 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 asthe nation remained true to its racial nature it represented a bastion against racialdegeneration. But closely connected to the importance of the nation in shapingthe 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 thebiological expression of social organisation, the only structure reflecting thefundamental truth of race.

The other topic addressed by Motru was Chamberlains concept of Christianity.Chamberlain presented Christianity as a moral revolt against decadence anddegeneration, with modern Germans as the heralds of the new world order thesaviours of Europe and the creators of the modern mind, on account of luminariessuch as the theologian Martin Luther (14831546) and the philosopher ImmanuelKant (17241804). Die Germanen, extolled by Chamberlain, included numerousmodern European nations, from Italians to Bulgarians. One group, in particular,was excluded: the Jews. Motru assumed that it was this profound anti-Semitismthat assured Chamberlain his public success. In conclusion, Motru reciprocatedChamberlains assumption about the Manichean conflict between the Jews andtheir host national cultures, a clash of values which he saw unfolding in Romaniaas well.24

Motru synthesised many of the themes later to dominate the discussion onRomanian national characteriology during the interwar period: ethnic identity,racial anti-Semitism, national essence and national state.25 Motru was no anti-Semite, yet his nationalist epistemology reflected a new tendency amongstRomanian nationalists, one which Griffin has described as a palingeneticclimate, oriented towards biopolitical visions of national renewal.26 Onlythrough a cultural metamorphosis would the nation be able to overcome itsanomic condition, whose outcome was closure, either in the total destruction ofthe communitas and the old order from which it had seceded, or its transforma-tion into a viable new culture lived out under a new sacred canopy.27 Motrusintention to place his nation under a new sacred canopy aptly describes hiscultural modernist predisposition for an organic nationalism that would offer atotal cosmology to modern Romanians: Only nations capable of their ownculture are able to assure their social order and have the right to emancipationand self-rule.28 These two elements, culture and political emancipation, becameintegrated with one another, for national unity based upon religious and racialfoundations would, it was hoped, renew the national community.

Motru, like other European intellectuals at the time, became a fervent supporterof the fusion of scientific research of race with nationalism, a formula he wouldlater develop in his later writings.29 His ideas of palingenesis neatly harmonisedwith other modernist critiques within Romanian political culture claiming that theRomanian nation needed a new nationalist spirituality. Underlying argumentsabout spiritual rebirth was a further assumption that saw the Romanian nation asa phenomenon of nature, formed through natural processes. It was, thus, logical


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, withtheir traditional way of life and culture. This triggered an intense processof revival reappraisal and indeed exaggeration of native, hence specifi-cally Romanian traditions, values, and, generally speaking, Romanianways of life. The village and the peasant became symbols of honesty,sanity and primeval purity, the strongholds of national life. Christianityitself became a Romanian virtue.30

To Motru the peasant was the ethnic Romanian. Consequently, it was urbanmodernity and its inherent cultural degeneration that were at the antipode of theidealised community exemplified by the Romanian peasant.31 Motru drewinspiration from the poet Mihai Eminescu (185089), the first Romanian author todeem Romanianness an ontological condition, a unique way of looking at theworld.32 For Eminescu, the peasantry, living outside historical time wasthe only ethnic category that could combine historicity and collective spirituality,the only source of national regeneration. According to Griffin, It is this search fora new spirituality, a new nomos, and a new community that provides a commonmodernist matrix33 to such apparently contradictory ideas as rural utopianismand historical conflict, or religious and racial regeneration, both geared towardsovercoming the existing anomic situation of the Romanians. In the Old Kingdomof Romania one ethnic group, in particular, came to symbolise both the oppres-sion of the peasantry and the features associated with decadent, urban moder-nity: the Jews.

Jewish Identity and Romanian National Specificity

In late nineteenth century Romania the situation of the Jews was particularlycomplex.34 Although Romanian liberalism had grown in strength between 1866(when the first constitution was adopted) and 1877 (when national independencewas declared), it was still inherently weak and divided. It also faced active oppo-sition from a new generation of Romanian nationalists who grew dissatisfied withthe legacy of the 1848 revolution. Anti-Semitism was one disconcerting feature ofthis new generation.

During the 1848 revolution, and especially after the creation of the firstmodern Romanian state in 1859, the issue of Jewish emancipation ignitedfrequent political debates. Related to this political process was the emergence ofRomanian anti-Semitism, a body of ideas which was as much cultural as it wassocial and economic. During the nineteenth century, diverse Romanian writers,such as Ion Heliade-R[abreve] dulescu (180272), Vasile Alecsandri (181990) andBogdan Petriceicu-Ha[scedil] deu (18381907), added new symbolic significance to, andelaborated, an already well-ingrained stereotype that described the Jews asexploiters of the Romanians.35 Eminescu, for instance, in his political articlespublished during the 1870s and 1880s, described Romanian autochthonousvalues 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 Romaniareceived sustained international coverage. The Great Powers conditioned the

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recognition of Romanias independence by insisting that the Article 7 of the 1866Constitution which stipulated that citizenship could be granted only to individ-uals belonging to the Orthodox religion be changed. Consequently, the Roma-nian Parliament modified the article but legislated that the naturalisation of Jewswould only be considered on an individual basis.36 One central argument domi-nated the anti-Semitic agenda of this period: it was suggested that the Jews refusedto assimilate into Romanian society, and that they preferred ghettoisationinstead.37 Around 1900, this thesis was replaced by the opposite idea: the integra-tion of Jews into Romanian society needed to be prevented because it threatenedthe Romanian national character. Under these circumstances, the debate aboutpolitical rights for the Jews received a new impetus.

In 1900, under the caption The Jewish Question: European Public Opinion andthe Jewish Question in Romania, Motru initiated in Noua revist[abreve] romn[abreve] aninternational discussion about Jewish political emancipation. He explained hisintention thus: True Romanian patriots struggle to find a solution [to the Jewishquestion] which reflects the countrys interests and is humanitarian towards theforeign race. The question was simple: Would you advise the Romanians togrant the Jews equal political and civic rights?38 Emile Zola, Cesare Lombroso,Max Nordau, T. G. Masaryk, Karl Lueger, G. Clemenceau and H. S. Chamberlainwere amongst those foreign experts who honoured the invitation.39 To completethe questionnaire, Motro also asked for contributions from leading Romanianpoliticians, including Theodor Rosetti, Constantin Boerescu, Take Ionescu,Gheorghe Panu, Vasile Lascar and P. P. Carp. Romanian politicians were unani-mous in their opinion that at the time a solution to the Jewish question wasimpossible, 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 Romaniannation, Chamberlain commenced his observations by comparing the Romaniansto other nations that survived the Ottoman occupation. He further observed that,contrary to these nations, the Romanians were animated by political instinct. Thiswas an important feature, for as Chamberlain further insisted Without thisinstinct a nation cannot be formed; and without a nation civilisation and culturecould not develop.42 After extolling the efforts to establish a Romanian statebetween 1856 and 1866, Chamberlain then criticised the interference of the GreatPowers in Romanian domestic affairs, especially the insistence during the Congressof Berlin that Romania should grant citizenship to her Jewish population. UsingEngland as an example, Chamberlain argued that it was only in 1723 that Jews wereallowed to buy property there that is, only after centuries of nation-building andafter rural property in the country was fully consolidated. Between 1290 and 1657,he added, Jews were excluded from England. Should Romania want to followEnglands glorious example, Chamberlain pondered, she should immediatelyexpel all Jews and accept them again after three or four centuries when the nationis 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 fundamentalfeature, one which Chamberlain termed national character, and whichcharacterised a particular race, different from others.44 The Romanians mustassimilate 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, nationalrace. Nevertheless, Jews were especially discouraged from mixing with theRomanians, for Chamberlain considered such a mixing both harmful and illu-sory.45 This was harmful as it led to the degeneration of the Romanian nation.Considering the great number of Jews living in Romania, encouraging intermar-riages between Romanians and Jews would seriously ruin the dream of a greatRomanian state, and any possibility to select a new powerful national race.According to him, properly organic political links between race and nation couldonly be constructed via a state that maintained and strengthened Romanian racialtraits in carefully planned political engineering analogous to that orchestrated byother Western European states, England in particular.

On the other hand, racial assimilation of the Jews was illusory as they did notwant to blend with other people, declaring isolation as the fundamental law andlife principle of Judaism.46 Without the political exclusion of the Jews, the pros-pects for Romania were dismal, Chamberlain maintained. However, this exclusionwas not to be the result of political violence but was to be carried out under thelegal protection of modern constitutionalism. To reinforce this point, Chamberlainadmonished the Romanians for acting in a primitive way, unable to control theirmedieval behaviour. He further insisted on abolishing anti-Semitic persecutions,but without offering the Jews the possibility of political emancipation: Down withthe persecutions against the Jews! Down with the absurd medieval prejudices!Down with social derision and personal animosity! Offer the Jews the legal protec-tion you offer to all foreigners! But do not give them political and property rights.47

Political emancipation of the Jews was a possibility Romanian contemporarieswere not willing to contemplate. Combined with the emergence of Romanianideas of national regeneration, the topic of Jewish political rights encompassed awide range of anti-Semitic attitudes. Characteristically, most of the argumentscame not from analytical evaluations of the role played by the Jews in the culturallife of the country but from biology and evolutionary psychology, where thesubject of Jewish degeneration was passionately debated.48

Reminiscing about the questionnaire in the 1940s, Motru commented sadly thatthe discussion he initiated did not clarify the Jewish question: Now, after fortyyears, 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 scien-tific background in this topic. And finally, I still did not know, after receiving theanswers, more than I knew before, namely whether the Jews are dangerous to theRomanian state or not.49 Indeed it was Chamberlain who articulated more explic-itly an explanation to the dilemma faced by the Romanian state: not assimilatingthe Jews would attract the opprobrium of the European powers; assimilatingthem would irremediably damage the more healthy Romanian national body.One Romanian intellectual, in particular, transformed this ontological dilemmainto 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 Jewishdegeneration, and the biological vision of the race as a dynamic component ofnationalism, was the political economist Alexandru C. Cuza.51 Cuza claimed thathis anti-Semitism was based on scientific dogmas, namely his own understand-ing 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 developedby Eminescu, as it was with Chamberlains theories of race and degeneration.52

Already, in his 1893 Meseria[scedil] ul romn (The Romanian Craftsman) Cuza depictedthe Jews in racial terms, describing them a bastard and degenerate nation.53

Assuming that repetition of the same themes would eventually reach the antici-pated result, he became a committed polemicist and a populist politician. His firstpublic alliance was with the historian A. D. Xenopol (18471920), with whom in1897 he formed Liga romn[abreve] mpotriva alcoolismului (The Anti-AlcoholicRomanian League). As the monopoly of alcohol was largely controlled by Jewishmerchants, the activity of the League mirrored Cuzas conviction that Jewsexploited Romanian peasants.54 To be sure, Cuza combined his cult of theRomanian peasant with an aggressive meticulousness, hence the torrent of specu-lations about the glorious Romanian race, and his mania for Biblical explanations.55

However, despite its scientific pretensions, Cuzas theories did not conquerRomanian public opinion quickly or without opposition. Motru, for instance,consistently exposed Cuzas aggressiveness as contravening Romanians attemptto modernise and create a European civilisation. Our country, Motru charged,has adopted the organisation of other European countries, thus assuming allsacrifices required by civilisation. We cannot have at the same time a politics ofconsolidation of the state and an anti-Semitic politics; we must choose. For Motruit was evident which path Romania should follow: This is why, a good patriotcannot approve of the anti-Semitic movement.56

Yet these critical voices did not deter Cuza. His convictions were more a matterof faith than the result of speculative achievements. His racist language was tobecome notorious, but Cuza knew that by himself he was not meant to attract toomany followers. His association with the historian Nicolae Iorga (18711941)strengthened Cuzas commitment to racial nationalism and anti-Semitism, oneeventually receiving a political form in 1922 when the two established Ligaapar[abreve] rii na[tcedil] ional cre[scedil] tine (The League of National-Christian Defence).

Cuza introduced many themes in Romanian political discourse that would beappropriated by anti-Semitic groups during the interwar period. The mostimportant of these was the notion of a fundamental conflict between Jews andRomanians that Cuza adopted from Chamberlain. In 1908, Cuza publishedNa[tcedil] ionalitatea n art[abreve] (Nationalism in Art), a book abounding in racist reflectionson Jewish racial inferiority and the danger of racial mixing.57 For Cuza, theJews 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 intheir veins could create a Romanian national culture.58 The participation of Jews strangers, belonging to another race, having different laws and other culturalprinciples, incapable of assimilation could therefore only be detrimental to theRomanians. Jews were dangerous not only because they were aliens, butbecause they belonged to an inferior race, illustrated by their cultural andbiological sterility.59 Threatened by Jewish expansionism, the Romanian nationwas subjected to a sustained process of degeneration, for as Cuza suggested,Jewish preponderance in any society and any profession is a cause of illness inany case the symptom of national weakness and degeneration.60 Finally, Cuzasanti-Semitic diatribe located antagonistic modern professions such as the politi-cian, the journalist, or the scientist deemed to be Jewish per excellence and thepastoral occupations of the Romanian peasant.61

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Following Chamberlains five racial laws, Cuza established four fundamentalrules 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 thedevelopment of one nationality; c) Artists, scholars, and political men shouldrepresent 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 thenation was an ontological reality.63 Yet it was also a biological entity. Paraphras-ing Chamberlain, Cuza claimed that race was the result of a carefully chosen,limited mixture which reached its absolute unity after centuries of mixingbetween the same, related elements, in the same conditions social and natural on the same territory, protected from foreign intervention.64 Ultimately, Roma-nians should, according to Cuza, depart from the Semitic spirit, and energeticallyaffirm their specific Aryan characteristics.65

Cuzas explosive style, with its fusion of distilled political economy and biolog-ical metaphors, was perfect for this particular form of racial anti-Semitism.However, Cuza was not alone in suggesting that the historical destiny of thenation had come to a crisis due to the Jewish invasion. Indeed, he shared manyof his generations nationalist obsessions, amongst them the danger of losingRomanian culture, art, literature and the press to an invading entity they identi-fied as Jewish. Liberal democracy, in particular, was seen to encourage theproliferation of this foreign spirit, ultimately facilitating the integration andassimilation of Jews into Romanian society.66

Cuza played a major role in connecting conservative palingenesis to culturalmodernist nationalism and anti-Semitism and, as member of Parliament, hedisseminated 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 inthe national rejuvenation of Romania.

Anti-Enlightenment Cultural Modernism

The conviction that urban and modern democracy constituted a biologicaldanger for Romanian political and racial survival was one that its adherents wereable to convey to a broad public in a number of venues after 1900. The politicaltheorist Aurel C. Popovici popularised his cultural modernist critique of theEnlightenment in several journals published in Bucharest at the beginning of thetwentieth century, including Romnia Jun[abreve] (Young Romania) and S[abreve] m[abreve] n[abreve] torul(The Sower), both of which he edited from 1899 to 1900, and from 1908 to 1909respectively. Such references to the regenerative power of the youth and to thenational leaders sowing new values among the new generations are typicalexamples of a European-wide phenomenon, which used the countryside as asource of myth and renewal.67

In 1910, this principle received its complete arrangement in a volume entitledNa[tcedil] ionalism [scedil] i democra[tcedil] ie O critic[abreve] a civiliza[tcedil] iunii moderne (Nationalism or Democ-racy: A Critique of Modern Civilisation).68 According to Popovici, democracyand cosmopolitanism had their origin in the post-1789 attempt to create a newworld, dissolving the tradition and dispersing the past. He fiercely regarded bothcharacteristics to be poisoning attempts at cultural union between Romanians

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from both sides of the Carpathians. Theoretically, Popovici combined Eminescusideas of organic Romanian society with Cuzas anti-Semitism and Chamberlainsracial Darwinism in order to advance his cultural critique of modernity. His wasunmistakably an example of what Griffin termed a palingenetic reaction to theanarchy and cultural decay allegedly resulting from the radical transformation oftraditional institutions, social structures, and belief systems under the impact ofWestern modernization.69

Eminescus ideas of conservative palingenesis enabled Popovici to conceive ofnational politics in terms of preservation of tradition.70 Moreover, followingEdmund Burke, he argued that, on the one hand, the French revolution destroyedthe cultural traditions and the organic linkages among people those relationsthat represented the real sense of duty and responsibility through which individ-uals created and maintained their community. On the other hand, the FrenchRevolution introduced fanaticism within the freedom of expression, which madethe masses uncontrollable. At the same time, Popovici employed arguments putforward by Ferdinand Tnniess Gemeinschaft und Gesellschaft (1887), exaltingcommunity as the fundamentally organic form of social life. This is because it wasbased upon tradition and natural links among its members, while also rejectingmodern society that was regarded as composed of individuals joined together bysuperficial relationships.71

Popovici also advocated cultural purification and territorial expansion.72 Whatwas needed, he argued, was accomplishing the racial homogeneity of the nationalcommunity. Such ideas were considered reactionary, and Popovici claimed thathe campaigned for completely reactionary ideas, because reaction represents theeternal condition of a national culture: the historic wisdom of the peoples againstthe desires of a few individuals.73 For him, these individuals were the liberalgeneration of the 1848 Revolution. In Popovicis opinion, they indoctrinated awhole generation of Romanians from the Old Kingdom, with their dangerous anddemocratic 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 theRomanian nationalist poet Mihai Eminescu. For Popovici:

They were reactionaries, because their entire moral revolted when theyrealised the disaster that menaced the nation and its culture, when otherstried to stop its normal evolution. They were reactionaries because theyreacted against cosmopolitan, cultural equalisation, and against theintentions to dissolve national entities, the only factors of universal civili-sation. Any national reaction is but the voice of eternal wisdom of thepeople against the bad-guided civilisation.75

In Modernism and Fascism Griffin has highlighted the futural dynamic of suchreaction, its thrust towards building a new form of rooted community under theconditions of modernity. It was this form of palingenetic reaction that came to beadopted in early twentieth century Romania by those who, like Popovici, resortedto regenerative myths in order to create a new form of nationalism based onspiritual and racial unity. Following Chamberlain, Popovici further argued thatthe stability and continuity of the nation were dependent upon the transmissionof racial characteristics. Only in this way could the idea of national culture be


motivated. Furthermore, Popovici adopted Chamberlains assumption about thesupremacy of North Germanic races, to serve his own theory of the nation,according to which the Romanian peasant, although part of the Latin race, alsohad some German blood in its veins. Popovici thus claimed that Romanianswere part of the superior Nordic European race. I realised long ago, heconfessed, that, in fact, many Romanians have at least one, if not more, of theexternal characteristics of the Nordic European race that have been identified inmodern anthropology.76

Popovicis conservative and racial theories emerged in a context of creativecultural disputes and dilemmas about the content of Romanian political culture.Within this controversy over modern civilisation several oppositional terms, suchas national specificity vs cosmopolitan civilisation, as well as natural vs artificialdevelopment, emerged.77 Cuza neatly summarised this conflict: The preservation ofnationality as a factor necessary to human culture; this is the principle of the nationalistdoctrine; in opposition to cosmopolitan humanitarianism.78

Yet, Popovicis cultural modernism was intrinsically connected to a reading ofthe nation and culture centring on the notion that the peasant was the main bearerand transmitter of Romanian culture. Ultimately, both Cuza and Popoviciconcurred that the regeneration of the political community could be attainedthrough an infusion of premodern traditions, saved from the corroding effects ofliberal modernity. One implication of this view was that any cultural transforma-tion of society could be judged only according to the criterion of whether theybenefited or corrupted the Romanian peasantry. Not surprisingly, the mixing ofsuch heterogeneous systems of values inevitably generated tension and newdebates.79 To this end, the arguments put forward by these authors performed asignificant role in shaping the Romanian political imagery of the early twentiethcentury, as illustrated by the importance given to these modernist critiques ofEuropean 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 the1930s, affirmed with increasing clarity that the new nationalism was bothbiological and spiritual, and that Romania was to turn now to her spiritualredemption having already discovered her biological roots. In short Crainicproposed 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 specificallyanthropological. Man is both body and soul, but he does not come intothe world with the body of just another animal and than later adds spiritin order to differentiate him artificially from his animal body. From hisbirth man is both body and spirit, and together they make the samebeing. This is both an anthropologic and an ethnic being. The idea ofregeneration, as it is conceived of by the new ethnic nationalism, concernsman in its integral, harmonious form, both morally and physically.81

In his 1936 Dialectica na[tcedil] ionalismului (The Dialectic of Nationalism) NicolaeRo[scedil] u, one of the most prolific ideologues of the Legionary Movement, argued

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the national revolution began with Mihai Eminescus conservative critique ofRomanian modernity in the mid-nineteenth century; it, then, continued with thepolitical dream of the First World War generation, and found its political expres-sion in the creation of Greater Romania (1918); finally, the revolution was aboutthe reach its climax in the programmes of national rebirth advocated by inthe 1920s and 1930s. The national revolution presupposed that all political andintellectual 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 newdiscourse 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 dependedon a wide range of elements, including a characteristic racial geography and aspecific national topography. Both assumed that a new Romania would eventu-ally be forged. Yet the fusion of conservative palingenesis and cultural modernismwas by no means exclusively rooted in the past. A glorious Romanian past wasimportant in validating claims to unity and sacrifice, but it was not enough tocompose lyrical odes about the achievements of past ruling princes. Consequently,all authors discussed here sought to show that the new national revolution theyprophesised was a worthy successor to its illustrious predecessors.

To be sure, no ideology or political movement could be simply traced to oneindividual or a single idea. Accordingly, to assume that Romanian culturalmodernist theories of the nation can be wholly imputed to Chamberlain is asmistaken as to assume that National Socialism can be exclusively derived fromhis idea of Teutonic superiority. Chamberlain was just one granted, a centralone of many external sources Romanian intellectuals used to justify their theo-ries of the nation. However, as this paper indicates, if historians of interwarfascism in Romania wish to pursue new venues of conceptualisation, they mustvery closely attend to currents of thought gaining momentum around 1900.Mapping these ideas might help us better realise how new visions of collectivepalingenesis, which vilified the Jews and exalted the peasantry and traditionalrural life, not only survived in the biopolitical modernist discourses of the inter-war years, but also served as their very foundations. In particular, taking intoaccount the diverse currents of anthropological and racial speculation charac-terising early twentieth century Romania, at a time of increasing pessimism aboutthe impact of modernity, will determine one to see the powerful forces of politicalreligion unleashed by the Legion of the Archangel Michael not in terms of anatavistic revolt against modernity, or a politicised, and curiously anachronistic,form of Orthodox Christianity. Rather, its overtly cultic form of politics was theexpression of a quest for an alternative nomos, a new form of social and politicalmodernity adapted to the unique conditions of twentieth-century Romania that if realised would have created its own form of totalitarian state capable ofenlisting widely diffused currents of anti-liberalism, whether religious, culturalor scientistic.

Notes

1. I want to thank R[abreve] zvan Prianu for his unfailing help in collecting the primary sources neededfor this article. I also want to express my gratitude to Roger Griffin for his useful commentariesand 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 Weltanschauun-gen (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 ofTotalitarian 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: PrincetonUniversity Press, 1994); Zeev Sternhell, Neither Right nor Left: Fascist Ideology in France, trans. DavidMaisel (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1986); Walter Adamson, Avant-GardeFlorence: From Modernism to Fascism (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1993); ClaudioFogu, 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 byMark Antliff (note 5) and Roger Griffin (note 7).

11. Zigu Ornea, Cultur[abreve] [scedil] i civiliza[tcedil] ie n curentele de idei de orientare tradi[tcedil] ionalist , in Zigu Ornea,Studii [scedil] i cercet[abreve] ri (Bucharest: Eminescu, 1972), pp.1343; and Dumitru Micu, Gndirea [scedil] i gndirismul(Bucharest: Minerva, 1975).

12. See Katherine Verdery, National Ideology and National Character in Interwar Romania, in IvoBanac and Katherine Verdery, eds, National Character and National Ideology in Interwar EasternEurope (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1995), pp.10333; Irina Livezeanu, GenerationalPolitics and the Philosophy of Culture: Lucian Blaga between Tradition and Modernism, AustrianHistory Yearbook 33 (2002), pp.20737. For a similar discussion in a different geographical contextsee 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 SeineTheologie (Erlangen: Palm & Enke, 1937; Alfred Rosenberg, Houston Stewart Chamberlain alsVerknder und Begrnder einder Deutscher Zukunft (Munich: H. Bruckmann, 1927); Hugo Meyer,Houston Stewart Chamberlain als Vlkischer Denker (Munich: H. Bruckmann, 1939). For a critical eval-uation 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: FromVlkisch 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. byJohn Lees, 2 vols (London: John Lane, 1911). Hereafter references will be made to the Englishedition.

15. See Martin Woodroffe, Racial Theories of History and Politics: The Example of Houston StewartChamberlain, in Paul Kennedy and Anthony Nicholls, eds, Nationalist and Racialist Movements inBritain 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. R[abreve] dulescu-Motru, Filosofia lui Houston Stewart Chamberlain asupra raselor, Noua revist[abreve]

romn[abreve] pentru politic[abreve] , literatur[abreve] , [scedil] tiin[tcedil] [abreve] [scedil] i art[abreve] 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. AsMichael D. Biddiss indicated, [f]ollowing yet again in the steps of Gobineau, [Chamberlain] made

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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.

22. Motru (note 19), pp.1667.23. Ibid., p.168.24. Ibid., pp.1734.25. Radu Ioanid, The Sacralised Politics of the Romanian Iron Guard, Totalitarian Movements and

Political Religions 5/3 (2004), pp.41953.26. Griffin (note 7), p.195.27. Ibid., p.19 (emphasis in the original).28. C. R[abreve] dulescu-Motru, Nationalism arhaic [scedil] i civiliza iune, Noua revista romn[abreve] , 2/16 (1900), p.122.29. 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 Cris-tian Preda, Contribu[tcedil] ii la istoria intelectual[abreve] a politicii romne[scedil] ti (Bucharest: Nemira, 2003),pp.161225.

30. Zeev Barbu, Psycho-Historical and Sociological Perspectives on the Iron Guard, the FascistMovement of Romania, in Stein Ugelvik Larsen, Bernt Hagtvet, Jan Petter Myklebust (eds), WhoWhere the Fascists: Social Roots of European Fascism (New York: Columbia University Press, 1980),p.381.

31. For the general European discussion see J. Edward Chamberlain and Sander L. Gilman, Degener-ation: 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).

32. M. Eminescu, Scrieri politice (Craiova: Editura Scrisul Romnesc, 1931), p.38.33. Griffin (note 7), p.203.34. 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).35. Andrei Oi[scedil] teanu, Imaginea evreului n cultura romn[abreve] (Bucharest: Humanitas, 2004). See also

R[abreve] zvan Prianu, Semitism as a Metaphor for Modernity, Studia Ebraica 5 (2006), pp.2368.36. For a discussion of the European context see Abigail Green, Rethinking Sir Moses Montefiore:

Religion, Nationhood and International Philanthropy in the Nineteenth Century, AmericanHistorical Review 110/3 (2005), pp.63958.

37. Johann Kaspar Bluntschli, Der stat Rumnien und das Rechtsverhltniss der Juden in Rumnien (Berlin:Verlag von W. und S. Loewenthal, 1879).

38. C. R[abreve] dulescu-Motru, Scrisoare adresat[abreve] pentru ancheta interna ional[abreve] : Cestiunea israelit[abreve] , Nouarevist[abreve] romn[abreve] pentru politic[abreve] , literatur[abreve] , [scedil] tiin[tcedil] [abreve] [scedil] i art[abreve] 2/16 (1900), p.127.

39. The answers varied from Nordaus enthusiastic support for emancipation to Luegers sombreadvice that he would never encourage the Romanians to emancipate the Jews.

40. C. R[abreve] dulescu-Motru, Amnarea oric[abreve] rei solu iuni n cestiunea israelit[abreve] , Noua revist[abreve] romn[abreve]pentru politic[abreve] , literatur[abreve] , [scedil] tiin[tcedil] [abreve] [scedil] i art[abreve] 2/21 (1900), p.324.

41. H. St. Chamberlain, Cestiunea israelit[abreve] . Opinia public[abreve] europeana [scedil] i cestiunea israelit[abreve] nRomnia, Noua revist[abreve] romn[abreve] pentru politic[abreve] , literatur[abreve] , [scedil] tiin[tcedil] [abreve] [scedil] i art[abreve] 2/19 (1900), pp. 2418.

42. Ibid., p. 242.43. Ibid., p. 243.44. Ibid., p. 246.45. Contrary to later racists, Chamberlain did not consider the Roma as a racial poison claiming that

they belonged to the Aryan race.46. Chamberlain (note 41), p.246.47. Ibid., p. 247.48. See Todd Presner, Muscular Judaism: The Jewish Body and the Politics of Regeneration (London:

Routledge, 2007).49. C. R[abreve] dulescu-Motru, Revizuiri [scedil] i ad[abreve] ug[abreve] ri, ed. by Rodica Bichi[scedil] , Gabriela Dumitrescu (Bucure[scedil] ti:

Ed. Floarea Darurilor, 1996), p.70.50. 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 Geoculturalbovarism to ethnic ontology, Tr@nsit 21 (2001) available at http://www.iwm.at (last accessed 7February 2008).

51. Pamfil [Scedil] eicaru, Un junimist antisemit: A. C. Cuza (Madrid: Ed. Carpa[tcedil] ii, 1956).52. Marius Turda, Fantasies of Degeneration: Some Remarks on Racial Antisemitism in Interwar

Romania, Studia Heraica 3 (2003), pp.33648.53. A. C. Cuza, Meseria[scedil] ul romn (Ia[scedil] i: Tipografia na[tcedil] ional[abreve] , 1893).

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54. A. C. Cuza, Ce-i alcoolismul? (Ia[scedil] i: Tipografia na[tcedil] ional[abreve] , 1897); and A. C. Cuza, Lupta mpotrivaalcoolismului n Romnia (Ia[scedil] i: Tipografia na[tcedil] ional[abreve] , 1897).

55. See the activity of the journal S[abreve] m[abreve] n[abreve] torul established in 1900.56. C. R[abreve] dulescu-Motru, Ct cost[abreve] pe ar[abreve] politica antisemit[abreve] , Noua revist[abreve] romn[abreve] pentru politic[abreve] ,

literatur[abreve] , [scedil] tiin[tcedil] [abreve] [scedil] i art[abreve] 2/18 (1900), p.205.57. Alexandru C. Cuza, Na[tcedil] ionalitatea n art[abreve] . 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, Na[tcedil] ionalitatea n art[abreve] , 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 R[abreve] zvan Prianu, Culturalist Nationalism and

Anti-Semitism in Fin-de-Sicle Romania, in Marius Turda and Paul Weindling (eds), Blood andHomeland: Eugenics and Racial Nationalism in Central and Southeast Europe, 19001940 (Budapest:Central European University Press, 2007), pp.35373; and Ritchie Robertson, The Jewish Questionin 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 toNazi imagery in Antliff (note 5), p.27.

68. A. C. Popovici, Na[tcedil] ionalism sau democra[tcedil] ie. O critic[abreve] a civiliza[tcedil] iunii 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 lAutriche-Hongrie (Etat, Socit, Culture) (Paris: PUF, 1989), pp.3142.

71. For a discussion of this aspect see Ioan Statomir, Preliminarii la o analiz[abreve] a curentului reactionar- de la Eminescu la Nicolae Iorga, Polis 5/2 (1998), pp.2347; and Ioan Statomir and Lauren[tcedil] iuVlad, (eds.), A fi conservator (Bucure[scedil] ti: Meridiane, 2002).

72. Popovici was one of the few Romanians in AustriaHungary to achieve international fame asauthor of Die Vereinigten Staaten von Gross-sterreich. Politische Studien zur Lsung der nationalenFragen 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[abreve] sl[abreve] uanu. Octavian

T[abreve] sl[abreve] uanu, Dou[abreve] culturi. Cultura domnilor [scedil] i cultura [tcedil] [abreve] ranilor, Luceaf[abreve] rul 7/4 (1908), pp.5964;and A. C. Popovici, Demagogie criminal[abreve] , 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 na[tcedil] ionali[scedil] tii: Arti-

cole din anii 19081911, ed. by R[abreve] zvan Prianu (Ia[scedil] i: Do-Minor, 2006). As in other societies inCentral and Southeast Europe, such paired concepts fully described narratives of national rejuve-nation. Andrzej Walicki, The Slavophile Controversy: History of a Conservative Utopia in Nineteenth-Century 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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