Transylvanianism

Ethnic map of Romania according to the 2011 Romanian census. Transylvania is predominantly inhabited by Romanians and Hungarians.

Transylvanianism (Romanian: transilvanism, Hungarian: transzilvanizmus) is a political and cultural movement manifested within both the Hungarian and the majority Romanian communities, which underlines the importance of historical acknowledgement and peaceful multi-ethnic existence in Transylvania.

History[]

The Transylvanianist movement surrounded Károly Kós, who established a programme for Transylvanian Hungarians on the basis of their lack of adaptability in the aftermath of the Treaty of Trianon of 1920. The famous architect, upon his urgent arrival in Transylvania from Budapest in 1918, asserted that Transylvania was a specific entity and home to the three Transylvanian ethnic communities that have been living together for centuries.^{[citation needed]}

Károly Kós wrote in 1921 that "we can permanently wipe the tears on our cheeks, for a gate has now closed forever". He was, at that time, already aware that Hungarian revisionism had no essence and that national mourning was pathetic and nonsensical. "But I know: we must begin the hard work again". He, instead of mourning, fought intensively and proposed a more peaceful and European solution: collaboration, coexistence and conservation of a cultural and national identity in a way in which people would not slander each other. "We need to work if we desire to live – we desire to live, thus we will work!", he said with an optimism rarely present in the Hungarian press of the 20s. Further, Kós affirmed that "there is no reason for us to be sorrowful, to aggravate and intensify hatred or any differences but rather work, towards a new identity, towards 'new bastions', the ones which Transylvanianism conveys".^{[citation needed]}

Literature[]

Transylvanianism appeared in literature at the initiative of Count János Kemény who invited, in 1926, 28 of the most prominent Hungarian literary figures from Romania, to his castle in Brâncovenești, figures who had accepted the Hungarian fate. At his castle a cultural association named Helikon was then founded, whose meetings were attended by Lajos Áprily, , Jenő Dsida, , Károly Kós, , József Nyírő, Sándor Reményik, , Áron Tamási, , Albert Wass and many others.^[1]