Migrating Memories: Romanian Germans in Modern Europe(New Studies in European History)

Romanian Germans, mainly from the Banat and Transylvania, have occupied a place at the very heart of major events in Europe in the twentieth century yet their history is largely unknown. This east-central European minority negotiated their standing in a difficult new European order after 1918, changing from uneasy supporters of Romania, to zealous Nazis, tepid Communists, and conciliatory Europeans. Migrating Memories is the first comprehensive study in English of Romanian Germans and follows their stories as they move across borders and between regimes, revealing a very European experience of migration, minorities, and memories in modern Europe. After 1945, Romanian Germans struggled to make sense of their lives during the Cold War at a time when the community began to fracture and fragment. The Revolutions of 1989 seemed to mark the end of the German community in Romania, but instead Romanian Germans repositioned themselves as transnational European bridge-builders, staking out new claims in a fast-changing world.

Table of Contents:
Introduction: Stories, identities, memories; 1. Making Romanian Germans; 2. Transnational Germans; 3. Fascist divisions in the Romanian German past; 4. The iron memory curtain: Romanian Germans and Communism; 5. European bridge-builders: Romanian Germans after 1989; Epilogue: The perpetual exodus.

About the Author :
James Koranyi is Assistant Professor of Modern European Cultural History in the Department of History at Durham University. He has published widely in three languages on cultural memory in Germany, Romania, and Hungary, on east-central European minorities, and on transnational history.

Review :
'Emphasizing the multipolar and transnational character of the voices that participated in defining what it meant to be German Romanian, this is an excellent rethinking of the modes of belonging and re-imagining that made up that history from the age of the Habsburg Monarchy through the present.' H. Glenn Penny, University of Iowa 'In this fascinating transnational history James Koranyi explores the complex twists and turns of Romanian German identity and memory, always asking who memory-making empowers and what significance claims about the past have for the present and future. An eye-opening insight into how minority groups are shaped by the past.' Roland Clarke, University of Liverpool 'James Koranyi's book is an empathetic, sophisticated and critical history of the Romanian German experience through the turbulent twentieth century. The many layers of the past are fused with contemporary historical and lived experience to reveal a tapestry of identities and understandings. It is a fascinating and stimulating read.' Jonathan Kwan, University of Nottingham '… a welcome addition to the vast body of research on Central and Eastern European nationalities.' Oleksandra Krushynska, German Historical Institute London Bulletin