pascu review vultur site

8/20/2019 Pascu Review Vultur Site

http://slidepdf.com/reader/full/pascu-review-vultur-site 1/7

Title: “Smaranda Vultur, Francezi în Banat, bănățeni în Franța. Memorie şi identitate [The

French in Banat. People of Banat in France. Memory and Identity]. Timişoara: Marineasa, 2012”

Author: Ana Pascu How to cite this article: Pascu, Ana. 2013. Smaranda Vultur, Francezi în Banat, bănățeni în Franța. Memorie şi

identitate [The French in Banat. People of Banat in France. Memory and Identity]. Timişoara: Marineasa, 2012”.

Martor 18: 180‐185.

Published by: Editura MARTOR (MARTOR Publishing House), Muzeul Ță ranului Român (The

Museum of the Romanian Peasant)

URL: http://martor.muzeultaranuluiroman.ro/archive/revista‐martor‐nr‐18‐din‐2013/

Martor (The Museum of the Romanian Peasant Anthropology Review) is a peer‐reviewed academic journal

established in 1996, with a focus on cultural and visual anthropology, ethnology, museum studies and the dialogue

among these disciplines. Martor review is published by the Museum of the Romanian Peasant. Its aim is to

provide, as widely as possible, a rich content at the highest academic and editorial standards for scientific,

educational and (in)formational goals. Any use aside from these purposes and without mentioning the source of

the article(s) is prohibited and will be considered an infringement of copyright.

Martor (Revue d’Anthropologie du Musée du Paysan Roumain) est un journal académique en système peer‐review

fondé en 1996, qui se concentre sur l’anthropologie visuelle et culturelle, l’ethnologie, la muséologie et sur le

dialogue entre ces disciplines. La revue Martor est publiée par le Musée du Paysan Roumain. Son aspiration est de

généraliser l’accès vers un riche contenu au plus haut niveau du point de vue académique et éditorial pour des

objectifs scientifiques, éducatifs et informationnels. Toute utilisation au‐delà de ces buts et sans mentionner la

source des articles est interdite et sera considérée une violation des droits de l’auteur.

Martor is indexed by EBSCO and CEEOL.

http://martor.muzeultaranuluiroman.ro/archive/revista-martor-nr-18-din-2013/














t is almost 20 years since Smaranda Vultur,professor at the Faculty of Letters, History and Theology of the West University of

Timişoara, has been researching - using pre-dominantly the methods of oral history - theissues of interculturalism, the identity dilem-mas and the ambiguities of the memory of dif-ferent ethnic communities from Banat,focusing primarily on Swabians of Germanorigin and Jews1. Smaranda Vultur’s in-depthresearch extends on the horizontal spatial axis,in various towns, even going beyond the bor-ders of the Romanian Banat, but also on the

vertical temporal axis, covering a century of local multicultural history.

Smaranda Vultur and the team of re-searchers and students she coordinates are in-terested mainly in the specific cultural modelof Banat, but also in the dynamics of the rela-tionships between memory and identity. Thus,

they are considering the study of memorialpractices as means of reinventing the tradi-tions of local ethnic communities and their re-

lationship with the other cultural practices(folkloric, literary, historiographic, political)of the respective communities. At the sametime, she tries to capture the social dynamics,the mentalities and behaviours associated tomemorial practices, the way in which they enact identity. And this is because the variousgroups’ competition for memory implies reg-ularly revisiting and recreating the symbolismof the past.

Smaranda Vultur studies the sinuosities of the memory of the generations at the begin-ning of the century, but she does not shrink from researching the Communist period, thedeportations to Bărăgan or the former USSR,the 1989 Revolution of Timişoara, the collec-tivization, the memory of urban life in Banat,the theme of old age or death, relationships,and more recently, the memory of the warrefugees from Bessarabia and Bucovina, who,

thanks to the quirks of history, ended up allthe way in Banat.2

But what is indeed bothersome is the neglect-ful aspect of of the citation style. There are ar-ticles that lack a list of references (those of Alvarez-Pereyere and Florentina Ţone), whilein others the references are confused or do not

appear in the final list4.

Translated by Ion Matei Costinescu

BiBliOgRAPHY

Cotoi, Călin. 2011. Primordialism cultural şi geopoliticăromânească (Cultural Primordialism and Romanian Geopolitics).Bucureşti: Editura Mica Valahie.

Gusti, Dimitrie. 1998(1920). Comunism, socialism, anarhism,sindicalism şi bolşevism (Communism, Socialism, Anarchism, Syn-dicalism, and Bolshevism). Bucureşti: Ed. Ştiinţifică.

Jackson, G.D. 1974. “Peasant Political Movements in Eastern Eu-

rope.” In Rural Protest: Peasant Movement and Social Change, ed.Henry L. Landsberger, 259-316. London&Basingstoke: Macmil-lan.

Larionescu, Maria, ed. 1996. Şcoala Sociologică de la Bucureşti(The Bucharest Sociological School). Bucureşti: Ed. Metropol.

Mihăilescu, Vintilă. 1998. “The Monographic School of Dimitrie

Gusti. How is a <<Sociology of the Nation>> Possible?” Ethnolo- gia Balkanica, 2:47-57.

Rizescu, V. 2000. “Romania as a <<Periphery>>: Social Changeand Intellectual Evolution” In Romania and Europe. Moderniza-tion as Temptation, Modernization as Threat , ed. BogdanMurgescu, 29-41. Bucureşti: Edition Körber Stiftung.

Rostás, Zoltan. 2000. Monografia ca utopie. Interviuri cu HenriH.Stahl (Monography as Utopia. Interviews with Henri Stahl)Bucureşti: Paideea.

Rostás, Zoltan. 2001. O istorie orală a Şcolii Sociologice de laBucureşti (An Oral History of the Bucharest Sociological School).Bucureşti: Printech.

Ştefănucă, Petre. 1991. Opere (Collected Works). Chişinău: Ştiinţa.

Reviews

180

4) I D@> %P?>@/8, C?@@ A>-@P? R?+>8 8-/ [D8 $8/@?]> /@ ? QA>@

T !...O, @ @8@@> ? 8 @ <?@-

1990 @> A>-

@P? >8.A>@ ? <8@-/ @

?@ @>?@ <>-?8@? @ @>-

88/ <>. I @? >@/8, ?@@> A@

/ ? ?@ >@ 8 8?@ >-

>/?. '>@@8,@> > > <8?

@ ? .

1) F> @? <@ , ?8 > @

88 >? %> 8@>, G>-

B@ <><?@>8 8> (G>? B@ @> ?@>?)

(E@> #:B/>?@, 2000);

> ?8@ă. E> B@, > T

(? >. &J? B@, ?@> @) (#8>:IT,

2002).

Smaanda V#l"#, Fance%i &n Bana", b(n()eni &n Fan)a.Memoie 'i iden"i"a"e [The Fench in Bana". People ofBana" in Fance. Memo$ and Iden"i"$]. Timi'oaa:Mainea!a, 2012.

Re9#eed b< A(a Pa1c



Reviews

181

2) % %> 8@>,L K ?@.> >8> K/<@ ?/8 B@ (1910 -1930)(B/>*@: !>,1999); I?@> @>+@+, ?-

@> <?@@+. D-<>@> K B+>+.1951 M 1956(&T>: A>/>,1997); OE@/@@ T/8/@> K B@:/8 / &-@/, 1949 M 1956O D> D>/, C-?@@ I>/ (?.),+>+ T <@>.#>/?8 /8/-@> >/8@> K$ (1949 M1956), E@> #8>,IT, 2005, 210 M 230;OR<+>@+T> >

K $ <?@/-?@+: />,><>@+>, 8>P I?@> >/@+ K E-><: /@ ?@,?>?, @ (!E>< C88:B/>T@, 2001).

Why is Banat so interesting for the study of memory and identity? Banat is a multieth-nic, multi-religious and intercultural region,whose current aspect has its roots in the 18thcentury: after having defeated the Turks and

being under the protection of the Austrian em-peror, it was subject to a gradual colonization,with colonizers of different ethnicities andfrom different countries, up to a number of 20ethnicities (Romanian, Serbian, German, Hun-garian, Jewish, Romani, Slovakian, Croatian,Bulgarian, Ukrainian, Polish, Italian, Turkish,Tatar, Czech, Greek, Armenian, French, Russ-ian and Arabic) and eight religious denomina-tions (Orthodox, Roman-Catholic,

Greek-Catholic, Lutheran, Calvinist, Judaic,Neo-Protestant, Islamic). The colonization oc-curred due to economic reasons (Banat was abarely inhabited, swampy region), but, at thesame time, all ethnicities had an equal status,and the economic situation improved. Appar-ently, the policy of religious tolerance, the liter-acy program in all languages and capitalizationof the work ideal led to a specific lifestyle andcreated the myth of Banat as an interethnicparadise in the collective imagination of eachethnic group.

An interesting consequence of this specificmodel of Banat was that any interethnic perse-cutions in moments of historical tension werenot usually of a violent nature. Nevertheless,the historic events that affected 19th century Europe (firstly, the two wars and secondly, the

violent institution of Communism in Romaniaand Yugoslavia, where the second largest partof the historic Banat is) did impact the com-

munities of Banat: in 1945, a segment of theGerman community was deported in theUSSR, and, until after 1990, Hungarians, Ger-mans and Jews migrated massively, in succes-sive waves.

The tension accumulated in the almost 50years of Communism, grafted on the model of Banat, characterized by social and culturalemancipation, led, perhaps not haphazardly, tothe 1989 Revolution of Timişoara, the capital

of the Romanian Banat, having as consequencethe fall of the Romanian Communist regime.

The most surprising outcome of the his-tory of Banat was the creation of a distinctive,regional, trans-national and trans-religious, in-tercultural identity based on: tolerance, multi-lingualism, together with the rejection of

extremism and an accentuated marking of identity.

If many inhabitants of today’s RomanianBanat are deliberately re-enforcing, ad nau-seam, their regional identity, another form of this identity is discovered and revealed by Smaranda Vultur in one of her latest works,Francezi în Banat, bănăţeni în Franţa. Memorieşi identitate. In this volume, the author recon-structs history and follows the process of iden-

tity construction of a lesser known ethnicgroup: the French of Alsatian and Lorrainianorigin that colonized Banat at the end of the18th century.

For a better incorporation of the studiedphenomenon, Smaranda Vultur experiments -in her collective and individual works – a vari-ety of description and analysis methods. Docu-ments, informers’ portraits, genealogies cometo complete the rough information of the tran-scription of the life stories and the author’scompetent comments, in an attempt to trans-pose complex, tri-dimensional life phenomena,successive or simultaneous in time and space,disparate or convergent, in the limited andtwo-dimensional space of the book where factscannot be presented other than successively.

The same work methods, refined by exten-sive practice, were also applied in the study dedicated to the French inhabitants of Banat,published by Marineasa in Timişoara in 2012.

The book draws attention right from thetitle, which proves, after a reading, to be notonly suggestive, but also highly accurate: thedestinies and the symbolic imagination of twoethnic communities (the descendants of theAlsatian and Lorrainian colonizers – generi-cally called French – from Banat and the in-habitants of Banat of French origin living inFrance) are examined in parallel, throughsimilarities and convergences.

As a research method, Smaranda Vulturconcentrates on a community from the Ro-



manian Banat, of unquestionable Alsatian andLorrainian origin, namely, the village of Tom-natic and researches in parallel the community of people who have settled in the village of LaRoque-sur-Pernes from Vaucluse, in southernFrance; next, she completes the testimonies of the survivors with information from historicworks, manuscripts, statistics and archives,family and aide-mémoire documents of thecommunity, all gathered from her own re-search or taken from competent historians,bringing to light valuable works that have beenforgotten and succeeding in reproducing thesinuous thread of the history of a community whose identity was hardly known, not just by

Romanians, but also by its own members.In the first chapter, Between memory and

history , Smaranda Vultur reproduces, with theaid of information collected from competenthistorians, a possible history of the refugeesfrom Banat who were welcomed to Franceafter 1948.

According to some statistics, the numberof Lorrainians and Alsatians present in Banatin 1940 was of 521.000 out of a total of

1.740.000 inhabitants. Between 1944 and 1945,Romanian or Yugoslavian citizens from Banat,considered of German origin (Swabians) at de-parture, but many of whom were of Alsatianor Lorrainian origin, arrived in today’s Austriaas war refugees. In 1950, 199.600 people hadarrived in Austria and Germany. Around10.000 refugees from the Romanian Banat(and not only) settled in France. The remain-ing refugees stayed in Austria or went to Ger-many, the U.S.A. and Australia. Only 30

families from Banat settled in La Roque-sur-Pernes, in Vaucluse, 26 kilometres from Avi-gnon, starting a new life and making a futurefor themselves.

Between 1999 and 2010 Smaranda Vulturcame back again and again to La-Roque-sur-Pernes to retie the threads of the two destinies,following particularly the relationship be-tween memory and identity, more precisely,the fashion in which memory discourses par-

ticipate in the construction of the identity of the French people of Banat. According to Eric

Hobsbawn, this is a dynamic, forgotten, par-tially reinvented identity, hasting throughfrom time to time, as waters of a desert river.Although they have forgotten their languageever since the beginning of the 20th century (though there are still some people who re-membered, as a last vestige of a forgotten iden-tity, Our Father in French), the French originstill bursts out now and then, becoming an in-strument of political manipulation.

Smaranda Vultur identifies the momentswhen, under the pressure of history, theFrench identity and the will to differentiateoneself from the Swabians of German originstorm in; for instance, at the Paris Peace Con-

ference (1919-1920) when the division of Banat between Romania, Yugoslavia and Hun-gary was decided. That was when the delegatesof the French people of Banat requested the es-tablishment of a Lorrainian canton underFrench protection or an independent state of Banat or, if not, that Banat be annexed to Ro-mania, a state with a renowned Francophiletradition. During the Second World War,when the German Ethnic Group was forcefully

enrolling the Transylvanian Saxons and Swabi-ans from Romania (German ethnic groups, al-though not entirely) in the German army, theFrench, supported by a political elite of FrenchSwabians and of Romanians too, reacted anddefended their right to refuse enrolment dueto their French origin.

The approach of those who helped settlethe people of Banat in France was double:since the French did not take kindly to Ger-mans, they had to be convinced to welcome

them, especially in the rough post-war years,because, although they were of French origin,the refugees spoke German. The creation of afavourable environment was attempted via sci-entific works and the mass-media, the originbeing perceived as the essential nucleus of identity. Pierre Guillot’s doctoral thesis of 1953speaks about the return of the French to theirhomeland, that is, of the descendants of thosewho colonized Banat in the 18th century. The

parallel between the two colonization historiesbecomes a pattern of his doctoral thesis:

Reviews

182



Reviews

183

“….The Alsatians and the Lorrainians emi-grated two centuries ago in order to colonizeBanat and now they have returned to France.”(Guillot, 1952-1953:2). The people of Banatwere represented as colonizers by vocation andit is this image – related to the universal mythof the civilizing hero – that accompanied theFrench Swabians to France. Upon their arrival,a part of them were saluted as saviours of adying village, La-Roque-sur-Pernes, which in-deed they managed to revive. Under the signof this identity, as colonizers, the histories of the two communities, that of the French colo-nizers and their descendants from Banat re-turned to France, meet.

It is remarkable that the myth of the goodcolonizer is supported by the Swabians them-selves who do not forget to mention about thecolonization of Banat even when they are talk-ing about their lives, just like Smaranda Vulturnoticed in other interviews, in another volume(Vultur 2000). Therefore, the depiction of atriptych to represent the return to their home-land in 1960 in Vaucluse, work elaborated sym-metrically with that of painter Ştefan Jäger

representing the colonization of Banat in the18th century, is proof that the people of Banatfrom Vaucluse have assumed and perpetuatedthe French identity of their colonizing ances-tors.

Under the pressure of history, the identity of Banat appeared between the French and theGerman identities, serving probably as an in-terface and a life buoy. Upon their settlementin France, this identity facilitated their integra-tion, protecting them from negative labelling.Nowadays, it appears in commercials and helpsthe perpetuation of the memory of the com-munity.

When asked by the author, the descendantsliving in La Roque-sur-Pernes said they wereFrench since they had accepted to live in thiscountry. So, they are oscillating between an or-ganicist conception of identity, tributary totheir origins, and a dynamic conception, tribu-tary to the idea of a contract with the nation.

The question Smaranda Vultur poses, afterhaving examined in detail the history of the

Swabians of French origin from Banat, is stillconnected to the collective identity, but also tothe game of personal commitment: by decla-ring themselves to be French, have the old in-habitants of Banat become the French of Banator have they always been that?

In order to answer this question, the au-thor makes a case study in four extensive chap-ters, analyzing the discourses and thememorial practices of the two communities,focusing on the way in which they propose anduse references and models to attribute an iden-tity. The analysis is sustained in a modernmanner, taking into account the researcher’ssubjective involvement in her field. The analy-

sis is done with transparent sources and thesubchapters entitled “Documentary”, togetherwith the annexed documents, texts written by the author and transcriptions of interviewstaken in France, complete, justify and prove theauthor’s theoretical assumptions, generating, atthe same time new sources of reflection for thereaders.

Smaranda Vultur extends her analysis tothe various levels at which the battle for the

recognition of the French origin of a part of these people, whether Germanized or Ma-gyarized by the politics of the Austro-Hungari-an Empire, occurred: first, at the level of theelite who organized the French Swabians andsearched for sustaining documents andrecords, emphasizing even the transformationof the original French names into Germanones, which led to the acceptance of these fami-lies of French origin from Banat in France,tactfully handling the identity discourses; sec-ondly, at an individual level, of those who livedthe traumas of their displacement to France;thirdly, at the level of the community, wherethe Heimat has become a memorial practice,the annual meeting of the former members of a community ensuring the perpetuation of thecollective memory, together with the mono-graphs of the villages and the works on genea-logy.

The second chapter, The Nationality and/or

the ethnic origin. Or from affirming the differ-ence to the mythological projections of identity ,



presents Etienne (Stefan) Frecôt and EmilBotiş, the political figures who, trying todemonstrate the French origin of a part of theGermanized population of Banat, skilfully handled the French identity to convince even

the members of this community, who had al-most forgotten their origin, to assume it.

Most information about Etienne Frecôt istaken from one of Emil Botiş’s works, a Ro-manian researcher and a fervent defender of the rights of these French Lorrainians to havetheir own identity; therefore, the available in-formation on Frecôt might have been partially subjective and manipulated. Emil Botiş talks

very appreciatively about Stefan Frecôt, stress-

ing the latter’s constant concern for the recog-nition of the French identity, for the clear-cutdelimitation from the German Swabians basedon genealogical and name proof, despite thereplacement of the French mother tongue withGerman because of a process of forced Ger-manization (according to Frecôt). The man-ner in which Stefan Frecôt presents the Frenchidentity in Tomnatic, convincing the membersof the community to assume it, is interesting,to say the least. His fight for the French iden-

tity was not without an immediate interest, asit would rescue the French Swabians fromforced enrolment in the German army and de-portation to Russia, reserved to Germanethnics. Nevertheless, Emil Botiş views it notas opportunism, but as an effort not to missthe chance to affirm the French identity, anidentity never completely forgotten.

Emil Botiş’s opinion was supported by asimilar discourse of Jean (Hans) Lamesfeld, a

native of Maşloc, of Lorrainian origin (fromThionville), who organized a Committee of the French of Banat in Vienna and, withRobert Scuman’s help, took the natives of Banat to France. In his discourse on identity he uses the image of the colonizers returningto their homeland. But Jean (Hans) Damas,one of the participants actively and directly in-

volved in the claim of the French identity, ad-mits, in an interview given to SmarandaVultur, that there was indeed a dose of oppor-tunism in the efforts to recognize the French

identity, as the stake was the salvation of inno-cent people from the oppressions of war: “Weintervened then in order to move to France,but not because of political reasons; we havenever indulged in politics. Only for personal

reasons, that is, to escape deportation and thenexpropriation, you know… there was anadvantage” (p. 139).

Emil Botiş’s efforts were also materialized,amongst other things, in setting the criteria ac-cording to which someone can assume oneidentity or another; these criteria led to theshaping of an identity model that served asguideline in the behaviour of Swabians in theirprocess of assumption / reaffirmation of a

French identity. This also required a reorgan-ization of personal memory, part of the famil-ial memory, a means of access to the groupmemory.

In the following chapter, Conflict or theconsensus of identity discourses: German or French? , in the community of Tomnatic (thebiggest Romanian community of Swabians of French origin), the author discovers, beyondthe personal history, beyond an interesting os-cillation between the German identity - sup-

ported by language and the members of thefamilies settled in Germany - and the Frenchone - established by genealogical documentsand records - a process of coalescence, a cir-cuit between the oral memory and the writtensources, between individual and collective,modelling the memory discourses. The ency-clopaedic document of the blacksmith and themonographs written by the inhabitants are astimulus of the locals’ memory, whose dis-

course it models. However, they can be usedonly to a certain extent to prove both theFrench and the German identities. The samehappens with the names, Germanized in time,which also become an object in the negotia-tion of identity.

The interest of the inhabitants of Tomnaticfor their own identity is materialized in me-morial practices: after 1990, they organized asmall local museum, printed a local paper andmade a book of the deceased; there are suchmuseum-rooms in many houses. They and

Reviews

184



Reviews

185

other inhabitants of Banat, settled in otherparts of the world, turn to memorial practicesto perpetuate the collective memory: mono-graphs and memory books, especially Heimat-fest, the celebrations of the native village, a

memory and identity connector for those scat-tered around the world, a means of periodicalrevival of community solidarity. The Heimat asa memorial practice for both French and Ger-man Swabians is discussed in the fourth chap-ter, The Heimat – memory and identity connector .

After a thorough analysis of the types of discourses and identity practices used by thepeople of Banat, in order to provide a contrast,

the last chapter, The Banat of La Roque-sur-Pernes, investigates the memories the Swabianssettled in the French village have of Banat.Smaranda Vultur interviews six survivors,three from the Yugoslavian Banat and threefrom the Romanian Banat, born between 1923and 1935. The chapter discusses their settle-ment in La Roque and the suffering of startinglife over. The historical data are replaced by thelively faces of Swabians, fortunately complet-ing the theoretical exposé.

The book offers an exemplary model of analysis of an ethnic community’s process of

assuming an identity under the pressure of his-tory, but one must avoid the generalization of conclusions, as the community of Swabiansfrom La-Roque-sur-Pernes represents only asmall percentage of the 10.000 Swabian

refugees from France. The study of other com-munities of Swabians from Banat (who werenot part of the current study) might have re-

vealed other aspects of the process of assum-ing an identity, other memorial practices anddiscourses. All we can hope for is that the sub-

ject of the French Swabians will be resumed by the author in another study, in a grand gestureof recovering an almost unknown part of thememory of Banat.

BiBliOgRAPHY

Guillot, Pierre. 1952 – 1953. Les Français du Banat , Ph.D. Thesis,Université de Paris, Institut d’Études Politiques.

Vultur, Smaranda. 2000. Lumi în destine. Memoria generaţiilor deînceput de secol din Banat , Bucureşti: Nemira.

Halbwachs, Maurice. 1925. Les cadres sociaux de la mémoire. Paris:Librairie Alcan.

Translation by Alina-Olimpia Miron

H#15)0< a(d A(5!0))&)</ Sec#a& I11e: P)&#5#c1 a(dPe0f)0'a(ce #( S)5!"Ea15e0( E0)e -e15 ed#5)01R)=#5a D#')9a a(d Ld'#&a C)$)ca0., 9)&/ 74, #11e +,Ma0c! 7>+6, +86 /

Re9#eed b< S5e& Șe0ba(

he volume is dedicated to the performa-tive and ritualistic dimensions of theidentity processes in the post-Soviet

and post-Yugoslavian space and focuses on thethree republics of former Yugoslavia: Bosniaand Herzegovina, Macedonia / FYROM, Mon-

tenegro, together with Moldova, a former re-public of the Soviet Union. The materials are

part of an international research project „onthe processes of the construction of the na-tional identity in South-Eastern Europeancountries after 1945” (p. 10). Rozita Dimovaand Ludmila Cojocaru, the editors of the vol-ume, inform from the very first pages of the

introductory article - Contested Nation-Build-ing within the International “Order of

pascu review vultur site

Documents