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In der tausendj\u00e4hrigen Geschichte Ungarns gabs wenige Tage, die so schicksalsschwer und bedeutungsvoll gewesen w\u00e4ren, wie der heutige. Wir wollen keine Phrasen gebrauchen. Worte sind zu farblos, um auszudr\u00fccken, welch\u2019 unendlich wuchtige Ereignisse die Herzen erzittern machen. Wir hoffen, da\u00df eine neue, sonnigere, segenbringende Zeit f\u00fcr uns alle angebrochen ist. Wir wollen dem Gebote dieser Zeit folgend, durch freudige Mitarbeit an der Neugestaltung den gro\u00dfen Ideen, die sich \u00fcber den Tr\u00fcmmern der alten Welt, mit aller Gewalt durchsetzen, zum Siege verhelfen.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cIn the thousand-year history of Hungary there have been few days that would have been as fateful and meaningful as that of today. We do not wish to use empty phrases. Words are too colorless to express those endlessly stunning events that make the heart tremble. We hope that a new, sunnier, beneficent time has opened up for all of us. Following the commandments of this time, and through joyful collaboration on its reshaping, we want to help bring to victory the new ideas, which assert themselves with all their might over the ruins of the old world.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n It was with such lofty language that the Temesv\u00e1rer Zeitung <\/em>\u2014 an influential German-language daily published in Timi\u0219oara\/Temesv\u00e1r, the unofficial capital of the Banat in then-Southern Hungary\u2014greeted the supposed October 31 proclamation of the Republic of Hungary. After weeks of speculation on the future of Hungary and increasingly worried reports of the crumbling of the Austro-Hungarian Army on multiple fronts, the paper, which served as a forum for the city and region\u2019s cosmopolitan B\u00fcrger, cast a hopeful eye to the future, while informing its readers of the exciting developments not only in Budapest, but in Timi\u0219oara\/Temesv\u00e1r itself[1].<\/p>\n\n\n\n [1] See Alexander Krischan, Die deutsche periodische Literatur des Banats: Zeitungen, Zeitschriften, Kalender; 1771 \u2013 1971<\/em> (Munich: Verlag des S\u00fcdostdeutsches Kulturwerkes, 1987), 13\u00ad\u201314; and idem.Die \u201cTemesvarer Zeitung\u201d als Banater Geschichtsquelle<\/em> (Munich: Ver\u00f6ffentlichungen des S\u00fcdostdeutschen Kulturwerks, 1969).<\/p>\n\n\n\n Source: Biblioteca Jude\u0163ean\u0103 Timi\u015f<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n As the Temesvarer Zeitung<\/em> relayed to its readers, following news of the Hungarian Republic, which had been communicated to Timi\u0219oara\/Temesv\u00e1r via telephone (erroneously, as we shall see), a People\u2019s Council of the Banat had been formed out of members of the numerous other councils\u2014of workers, soldiers, and political parties, as well as of the city council\u2014that had come together in the heady days of late October. The People\u2019s Council, led by the officer (and future Hungarian Minister of Defense) Albert Bartha and the Social Democratic lawyer Ott\u00f3 R\u00f3th, quickly proclaimed an autonomous \u201cBanat Republic,\u201d which nonetheless was to remain as an independent region within republican Hungary[2].<\/p>\n\n\n\n [2] See Mariana Hausleitner, Die Donauschwaben 1868 \u2013 1948: ihre Rolle im rum\u00e4nischen und serbischen Banat <\/em>(Stuttgart: Franz Steiner Verlag, 2014), 66\u201367; and Andrea Schmidt-R\u00f6sler,Rum\u00e4nien nach dem Ersten Weltkrieg: Die Grenzziehung in der Dobrudscha und im Banat und die Folgeprobleme <\/em>(Frankfurt am Main: Peter Lang, 1994), 205-6.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Important to note, however, is that the Hungarian Democratic Republic, under the leadership of Count Mih\u00e1hly K\u00e1rolyi, was not actually proclaimed until November 16, 1918. On October 31, K\u00e1rolyi rejected Emperor Karl\u2019s entreaty to form a new provisional government; on November 1, the Compromise of 1867 was declared null and void, and Hungary\u2019s bond with the Habsburg Monarchy broken.<\/p>\n\n\n\n These fine political points, however, do not seem to have been communicated (or at least not to have concerned) either the Temesv\u00e1rer Zeitung<\/em> or political leaders such as R\u00f3th in Timi\u0219oara\/Temesv\u00e1r. Such a miscommunication of a Hungarian \u201crepublic,\u201d\u2014which, as it was telephoned to Timi\u0219oara\/Temesv\u00e1r by representatives of the Hungarian National Council in Budapest, may have been on purpose\u2014could also explain the early declaration of the Banat Republic: R\u00f3th and his allies may have believed that they simply were following Kar\u00f3lyi\u2019s lead from the Hungarian capital.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Lajos Kossuth square (Pia\u021ba Traian) Source: Wikimedia Commons<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n In recounting the events of October 31 in Timi\u0219oara\/Temesv\u00e1r, the Temesv\u00e1rer Zeitung<\/em> focused on the founding of the Soldier\u2019s and Peoples\u2019 Councils. In the constitutive meeting of the \u201cSoldier\u2019s Council,\u201d which took place at 11 o\u2019clock in the officers\u2019 casino, speakers appeared to appeal to both\u2014at times seemingly contradictory\u2014traditional patriotic and new-found national loyalties. One leading Hungarian officer made clear to the assembled officers his expectation that they would continue to fulfill their duty \u201cto the preservation of order and defense of the fatherland.\u201d At the same time, he announced that the Czech, Polish, and Croat officers of the Austro-Hungarian Army who were present \u201ccould without delay leave the city, in order to return to their homeland and offer their services to their own national council.\u201d With this, a military doctor took the floor and, speaking in Czech (the previous speakers were presumably speaking in Hungarian), exhorted Czech officers to remain in Timi\u0219oara \/Temesv\u00e1r for as long as possible, as their services in the local garrison hospital were \u201cindispensable.\u201d Hereupon, returning to stressing nationality, the meeting broke into smaller contingents of Hungarian, \u201cSwabian\u201d (German), Romanian, and Serbian officers.<\/p>\n\n\n\n At this point, the Temesv\u00e1rer Zeitung<\/em>\u2019s portrayal of the Soldier\u2019s Council leads to some confusion. After noting that one officer, Commandant Hordt, along with the officers of the \u201cmilitary command\u201d and local garrison subordinated themselves to the Hungarian National Council, the column describes the officers coming together once again to conclude the meeting by singing the Hungarian national hymn. But did those singing include all the officers of the Soldiers\u2019 Council, or just the Hungarian group? And if this did include all the officers (including those who presented themselves as Romanian, Serbian, or Swabian), then the question arises of how to evaluate their final action, in which the officers removed the \u201crosettes\u201d from their caps, and replaced them with the \u201cnational colors.\u201d Were these the Hungarian national colors, or the respective colors of each national group present? Was this a show of continued patriotism and unity, a sign of division along national lines, or could it even represent movement towards a conservative rejection of the \u201cAster Revolution\u201d playing out in Budapest? Most likely, it seems to indicate that at this specific moment, a combination of these first two loyalties\u2014to one\u2019s national group and \u201cfatherland\u201d\u2014were not seen to be at odds with one another, and more than that, actively encouraged.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Hunyadi street (Str. 16 Decembrie 1989) Source: Wikimedia Commons<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n The Temesv\u00e1rer Zeitung<\/em>\u2019s description of the proclamation of the new \u201cPeople\u2019s Council,\u201d which took place that same day at 12 o\u2019clock on the Prince Eugene Square, again drew attention to the affinities that seemed to cut across affiliations of nationality, class, and religion on October 31. In his speech, reprinted in the paper and held before a public of \u201cmany thousands\u201d of civilians, soldiers, and flag-waving workers, \u201cPeople\u2019s Commissioner\u201d R\u00f3th praised the peaceful efforts of soldiers and workers in bringing about a new political order.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cThe revolution has come,\u201d he declared, \u201cand is already over.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cWe showed the world, we showed our later descendants, that the people of the Banat and of Temesv\u00e1r could fight for the republic and a better future without [shedding] blood.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n Furthermore, he spoke to the multinational and multi-confessional character of the Banat, and underlined his own rootedness in it\u2014particularly as a Social Democrat:<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cI was born and raised here, for fifteen years I\u2019ve been active in public life, and I know no difference between Hungarians, Germans, Serbians or Romanians; I am an international Social Democrat, because I know only people and brothers; I am without confession, because I wanted to let myself be influenced by neither the Christian nor the Jewish religion; I am the man of the people.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n R\u00f3th and many of his compatriots on the People\u2019s Council thus seemed to have envisioned a Hungary reformed along the lines of Oszk\u00e1r J\u00e1szi\u2019s conception, in which regional and national autonomy were to be ensured and general democratization was to transform the state. Until the structure of such a state could be worked out, multinational councils and committees were to ensure the local governance of the Banat.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Yet away from Timi\u0219oara\/Temesv\u00e1r on November 1, the First World War still ground away on multiple fronts. The ceasefire that halted fighting in the south between a Serbian-French expeditionary force and the disintegrating army of Austria-Hungary was only signed in Belgrade on November 13, and the claims of both Serbia and Romania to the Banat largely shaped the region\u2019s future. Yet the political activities and social solidarities displayed in Timi\u0219oara\/Temesv\u00e1r in late October and early November of 1918, tenuous as they may have been, still reveal much the disorienting changes, as well as imperial continuities, that shaped this tumultuous period. On the one hand, the existence of a sense of patriotic loyalty to the \u201cfatherland\u201d and the presence of an active sphere of \u201ccivil society\u201d in Timi\u0219oara\/Temesv\u00e1r can be seen as products of the Habsburg imperial experience. On the other hand, the affirmation of the principle of nationality (especially by imperial officers) and the general public enthusiasm shown for a republican system make evident certain shifts that occurred over the First World War and with its end. As this one article from the\u00a0Temesv\u00e1rer Zeitung<\/em>\u00a0helps to demonstrate, both these imperial survivals and ruptures served to color efforts to reshape the state at the local level at the end of the First World War, in Timi\u0219oara\/Temesv\u00e1r just as across the Habsburg space.<\/p>\n\n\n\n <\/p>\n\n\n\n <\/p>\n\n\n\n <\/p>\n\n\n\n Christopher Wendt, November 1, 2018 In der tausendj\u00e4hrigen Geschichte Ungarns gabs wenige Tage, die so schicksalsschwer und bedeutungsvoll gewesen w\u00e4ren, wie der heutige. Wir wollen keine Phrasen gebrauchen. Worte sind zu farblos, um auszudr\u00fccken, welch\u2019 unendlich wuchtige Ereignisse die Herzen erzittern machen. Wir hoffen, da\u00df eine neue, sonnigere, segenbringende Zeit f\u00fcr uns alle angebrochen ist. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_genesis_hide_title":false,"_genesis_hide_breadcrumbs":false,"_genesis_hide_singular_image":false,"_genesis_hide_footer_widgets":false,"_genesis_custom_body_class":"","_genesis_custom_post_class":"","_genesis_layout":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/1918local.eu\/ro\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/606"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/1918local.eu\/ro\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/1918local.eu\/ro\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/1918local.eu\/ro\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/1918local.eu\/ro\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=606"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/1918local.eu\/ro\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/606\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":609,"href":"https:\/\/1918local.eu\/ro\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/606\/revisions\/609"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/1918local.eu\/ro\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=606"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/1918local.eu\/ro\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=606"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/1918local.eu\/ro\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=606"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"\"](\"https:\/\/1918local.eu\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/11\/unnamed-2_x-1024x672.jpg\")
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