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THE MATHEMATIZATION OF THE HUMAN BEING: ANTHROPOLOGY AND ETHNO-
POLITICS IN ROMANIA DURING THE LATE 1930s AND EARLY 1940s

Author(s): Michael Wedekind
Source: New Zealand Slavonic Journal , 2010, Vol. 44 (2010), pp. 27-67
Published by: Australia and New Zealand Slavists’ Association
Stable URL: https://www.jstor.org/stable/41759355
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New Zealand Slavonic Journal, vol. 44 (2010)
Michael Wedekind
(University of Vienna)
THE MATHEMATIZATION OF THE HUMAN BEING:

ANTHROPOLOGY AND ETHNO-POLITICS IN ROMANIA
DURING THE LATE 1930s AND EARLY 1940s
1. How to become a Romanian?
" Comment peut-on être Roumain ?" provocatively asked Romanian-

born philosopher Emil Mihai Cioran (1911-1995) in 1956 from his
Parisian exile, thus summing up the dilemmas of group identities on the
European periphery, and the problematic self-positioning within the
ambivalent simultaneity of admiration of and doubts about the West.
Cioran, formerly a convinced Fascist, lonesome at the desk of his humble
garret in Rue de l'Odèon in the Quartier Latin, many years after having left
Romania in the aftermath of the failed 1941 coup d'état by the Iron Guard,
specifically referred to the question of 'national self-discovery' and
identity - a central topos of the political and intellectual discourse in
interwar Romania.
After the First World War and the creation of Greater Romania, the
Balkan state found itself in a completely changed political, socio-economic
and cultural context. It allowed for a vast variety of development options,
which in the most diverse branches of society set free a dynamic and
sometimes euphoric ambition to innovate, plan and engineer the country's
future. The consolidation and shaping of the new Romanian nation-state -
significantly enlarged and highly heterogeneous - required the
modernization, reform and unification of regionally divergent economic,
legal and social systems. The initial discourse about the absence of
modernization in the heavily agrarian country continued a debate which the
traditionalist Titu Maiorescu (1840-1917) had initiated in the 1860s.
During the interwar period, this debate was mainly driven by an
increasingly radical tension between objectives oriented at Western socio-
economic and government efficiency standards on the one hand, and the
fear of social and mental turmoil, the individual's massification and
dislocation in industrial society, the loss of cultural identity, traditional
values and certainties on the other.

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28 MICHAEL WEDEKIND
Among the intellectual and political

supposedly 'homogeneous' Western E
building process was linked to the idea
highly mixed population. After 1918,
territory and population, the proportio
population rose to almost thirty perce
states' pressure of revisionism and stil
denationalization policies carried out in
territories, the leaders of the unstable p
finally deteriorated into authoritarianis
in favour of central state uniformity
homogenization, directed with part
revisionist-oriented ethnic minorities.
Representatives of the humanities and the social, health and medical

sciences were significantly involved in the process of 'national self-
identifying', of empirically 'measuring', inventorying and describing the
nation, of 'engineering' its identity, and envisioning and espousing the new
state. Through the development of guiding principles and the provision of
data bases and implementation plans, they took effect on strategies of
reforming, modernizing and homogenizing post-war Romania. According
to their application-oriented understanding of science, outstanding and
well-networked representatives of the aforesaid disciplines firmly pursued
the transformation of society.
Interwar sociologist and an early representative of eugenics Dimitrie

Gusti (1880-1 955), 2 for example, considered his interdisciplinary
1 By 1930, the population had grown to 18 million. These included 7.9% Hungarians,
4.1% Germans, 3.2% Ukrainians and 2.3% Russians, as well as 1.5% Gypsies and
4% Jews; see Institutul Central de Statistica, ed. Recensãmântul general al populafiei
României din 29 decembrie 1930. Vol. II: Neam, limbã materna, religie. Ed. Sabin
Manuilã. Bucharest: Monitorul oficial, 1938. XXIV.
See Fãcãoaru, Iordache. "Eugénique et biopolitique - Hérédité - Sélection sociale."
XVIIe Congrès international d'anthropologie et d'archéologie préhistorique / Vif
Assemblée générale de l'Institut International d'Anthropologie, Bucarest, 1-8
septembre 1937. Bucharest: Socec, 1939. 718-99, 786. On Dimitrie Gusti, see
Buruianã, Claudia, and Dan Dungaciu. "Gusti, Dimitrie." Dicfionar de sociologie
ruralã. Ed. Ilie Bàdescu and Ozana Cucu-Oancea. Bucharest: Editura Mica Valahie,
2005. 217-21; on his monografìa sociologicã on Romanian villages, see Filipescu,
Iancu. "Monografia sociologica." Dicfionar de sociologie ruralã. 317-28. See also
the special issue of Martor. Revue d'anthropologie du Musée du Paysan Roumain /
The Museum of the Romanian Peasant Anthropology Review 3 (1998), on "L'école

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ANTHROPOLOGY AND ETHNO-POLITICS IN ROMANIA 29
sociological and strongly biological population studies of the Romania

village - allegedly the country's dominant 'social entity' - as 'science of
the nation' (çtiinfa nafiunii). In his concept of sociologia militans 3 h
advocated a practical orientation towards an active social intervention
whereas Gusti's disciple Henri H. Stahl (1901-1991), 4 an ethnographer an
sociologist, defined them instead as inginerie sodala . The sociologis
Anton Golopenfia (1909-1951) also followed an activist understanding of
science: he believed social sciences had a duty to accompany and influenc
the bureaucratic-administrative decision-making process by applying da
and expertise; the framework and direction of sociological researc
strategies, he stated, should be informed by the domestic and foreign
policy's goals.5
Comparable claims were made by representatives of the Romanian

eugenics, which were mainly centred in the multiethnic Transylvanian cit
of Cluj. Eugenicists believed their discipline called for contributing
fundamentally to uniformity and 'homogenization' of the population. Lik
the physician Iuliu Moldovan (1882-1966), who demanded a stat
completely based on eugenic principals and, in 1938, proposed to convert
all Philosophical Faculties into Schools of 'Ethnology and Biopolitics,'6 a
younger generation of Cluj eugenicists also advocated a 'biopolitical-
normative role' for anthropology in society and in asserting nationa
interests.7 In the opinion of the leading Cluj eugenicist Iuliu Hatieganu
(1885-1959), the physician, as an expert in bio- and social sciences, had t
be the state's main social actor8 - not least in light of a targeted quantitativ
and qualitative population increase, especially in ethnically mixed regions,
in order to 'biologically withstand the pressure of other nations'. Other
sociologique de Bucarest après cinquante ans / The Sociological School of Buchares

after Fifty Years."
3 Gusti, Dimitrie. Sociologia militans. Introducere in sociologia politica. Bucharest:
Institutul Social Román, 1934.
On Henri H. Stahl, see Çiçeçtean, Gheorghe. "Stahl, Henri H." DicUionar d
sociologie ruralã. 533-44.
Golopenjia, Anton. "Contribuía çtiinjelor sociale la conducerea politicii externe."
Sociologie româneascã 2 (1936): 1 93-6, 193.
6 See Moldovan, Iuliu. "Spre o facúltate de etnologie çi biopoliticã." Buletin eugenie
biopolitic 9.3-4 (1938): 67.
7 See Fãcãoaru, Iordache. "Amestecul rasial §i etnie în România." Buletin eugenie §i
biopolitic 9.9-10 (1938): 276-87, 276; Fãcãoaru, Iordache. "Problemele sociologie
biologice." Indrumãri pentru monografiile sociologice. Ed. Dimitrie Gusti an
Traian Herseni. Bucharest: Editura Institutului Social Román, 1940. 81-90, 81.
Hajieganu, Iuliu. "Rolul social al medicului ìn opera de consolidare a statulu
national." Transilvania 54 (1925): 587-91, 588.

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30 MICHAEL WEDEKIND
Romanian eugenicists, most of whom

sociological village studies, also thought
to be rooted in the peasantry as 'the nat
The eugenicists' call for 'protecting the
to socio-biologically and racially motiva
of Jews and mentally ill people.
Geographers such as Simion Mehed

(1902-1974) or the sociologist Golopenf
to biological interpretations of populat
Alexander Supan (1847-1920), Rudolf
Haushofer (1869-1946) regarded the
exposed to external 'demographic pr
geopolitics as applied geography. Even
ethnographer Romulus Vuia (1887-1963
of their discipline from notions of ethn
a systematic study of the peasantry-roo
testimony of ethnic individuality. As su
against the levelling influences of the in
but also to be instrumentalized in the cont
How did the interventionist orientat

elites of sociologists, bio-scientists and o
kind of strategies were developed in ord
What impact did they have on politi
particularly on the right- winged (Fasc
socio-biological categories characterized
right-winged ideological theorists.12 In
9 Conea, Ion. "Geopolitica. O çtiinjã nouä

Golopentia and M. Popa-Veres. Craiova: Ram
10 See Vuia, Romulus. "Histoire et état a
folkloriques en Roumanie." XVI f Congr
d'archéologie préhistorique / Vif Assembl
d'Anthropologie, Bucarest, 1-8 septembre 1
1212.
This was true for Alexandru Constantin Cuza (1857-1944) from the ultra-nationalist
and anti-Semitic League of National Christian Defence ( Liga Apãrãrii Nafional-
Creçtine ), Octavian Goga (1881-1938), leader of the National Agrarian Party
( Partidul National Agrar), and Corneliu Zelea Codreanu (1899-1938), the main
exponent of the Fascist camp.
12 Among them were Bucharest physician Nicolae Constantin Paulescu (1869-1931),
the National-Legionnaires' education Minister and Cernäuji sociologist Traian
Brãileanu (1882-1947), the head of the Fascist press and later Salzburg historian

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ANTHROPOLOGY AND ETHNO-POLITICS IN ROMANIA 3 1
of the cultural and political life contributed to the diffusion of eugenic

thought; among them were names resounding throughout the educated
bourgeoisie.13 It has further to be investigated which role the previously-
mentioned scholars took over in the context of Romanian minority policy
during the interwar period, when, as recent research has shown, "forced
Romanianization [... became] the central task of public authorities."14
Which function did 'cognitive pools' of scholarly elites have in the course
of ethnic and spatial 'reorganisation' during the Second World War? To
which extent were they involved in developing and providing knowledge
for ethno-political domination as well as guiding principles, designs and
concepts for population transfers, resettlement projects, spatial
reorganization, occupation policy or genocide - measures which the
Romanian leadership already started to implement during the war, much to
the chagrin of their German allies?
So far historiography has paid little attention to these topics.15

Beyond prosopographical and often adulatory writings, there are hardly any
critical monographs shedding light on the history of the disciplines
interested in population policy. Significant attention has been paid only to
Romanian social sciences16 which, strongly influenced by Dimitrie Gusti' s
Bucharest school of sociology, were closely connected with the
Universities of Bucharest, Cluj, Ia§i and Cernãuji (Chernivtsi).
Alexandru Randa (1906-1975), the physician, writer and journalist Nicolae Roçu
(*1903), and the Macedo-Romanian poet and journalist Ion Foti (1887-1946).
13 E.g., the geographer Simion Mehedinji, the biologist Emil Racovijã (1868-1947), the
philosopher Constantin Rãdulescu-Motru (1868-1957), the art historian Alexandru
Tzigara-SamurcaD (1872-1952), the physician and politician Alexandru Vaida-
Voievod (1872-1950) and the sociologist Dimitrie Gusti; see Bucur, Maria. Eugenics
and Modernization in Interwar Romania. Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press,
2002. 33.
Hausleitner, Mariana. "Auf dem Weg zur 'Ethnokratie' - Rumänien in den Jahren
des Zweiten Weltkrieges." Kooperation und Verbrechen: Formen der
' Kollaboration ' im östlichen Europa 1939-1945. Ed. Christoph Dieckmann.
Göttingen: Wallstein, 2003. 78-1 12, 1 1 1.
This aspect has been highlighted also by Turda, Marius. "Fantasies of degeneration:
Some remarks on racial anti-Semitism in interwar Romania." Studia hebraica 3
(2003): 336-48, 337-8 and 340-1. Although briefly considering some of these
scholarly elites, even Solonari, Vladimir. Purifying the Nation. Population Exchange
and Ethnic Cleansing in Nazi-Allied Romania. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University
Press, 2010, does not address deeply the crucial issue of developing and providing
expert knowledge for political use and the relationship between scholarly
communities and politicians.
On this regard, see the monographic study by Dungaciu, Dan. Elita interbelicã :
Sociologia româneascã în context european. Bucharest: Editura Mica Valahie, 201 1.

132.174.252.114 on Sat, 22 May 2021 13:55:46 UTC
32 MICHAEL WEDEKIND
Furthermore, research on Romania's pa

War, and on Romanian occupation polic
unsatisfying. Before and after 1989,
procrastination and omission, distortio
various political interests which, after
sought to rehabilitate offenders and min
and the number of victims.17
This article examines aspects of the

investigates those scientific circles and
amalgamation, assimilation and politica
destruction of ethnic and social groups t
group-identities, or otherwise sought to
by submitting designs for ethno-political
2. Doom in the Laboratory
In the early 1930s, the Institute fo

( Institutul de Igienä §i Igienã Sodala) at
serial genetic examinations of about 17
ethnic groups in Transylvania. The se
data about the ethnic position of the Sz
supposedly Turkic descent which, servi
settled in eastern Transylvania during t
the Kingdom's eastern borders. In the
500,000 Szeklers constituted more than
districts of Ciuc, Odorhei and Trei Scau
of the neighbouring district of Mureç.18
This massive presence of Hungari

Romania contrasted with Bucharest's et
the region.19 Romanian ethno-politi
17 See, e.g., Hausleitner, Mariana. "War Antone

Diskussion über den Nationalismus in Rumänien." Jahrbuch für
Antisemitismusforschung 8 (1999): 312-28; Hausleitner, Ethnokratie : 78-81.
In 1930, the percentage of Hungarians was 82.7% in the district of Ciuc, 91.6% in
Odorhei, 80.4% in Trei Scaune and 42.6% in the Mureç district; see Institutul Central
de Statistica, Recensãmântul 1930 : 130, 316 and 476.
19 See Livezeanu, Irina. Culturã §i nationalism în România Mare 1918-1930.
Bucharest: Humanitas, 1995. 168 (English edition: Cultural Politics in Greater

132.174.252.114 on Sat, 22 May 2021 13:55:46 UTC
distinguishing between Szeklers, regarded as 'assimilable', from the rest

the Hungarian minority. The Romanian denationalisation policy in
Szekler districts was mainly sustained by school and church. In contrast,
the Hungarian settlement areas of western Romania, a more aggressiv
political line was adopted: in 1935, the director of the Romanian Centr
Statistical Institute (Institutul Central de Statistica), Sabin Manuilã (18
1964), suggested cross-border population exchanges and new Roman
settlements in order to ensure the 'extermination' ( extirparea )
Hungarians in a one hundred kilometre strip of land across Roman
western border.20
The scientific foundation of Bucharest's assimilation strategies in th

Szekler districts came from geo- and cultural scientists like Sabin Oprea
a Cluj professor of Geography, Gheorghe Popa Lisseanu (1866-1945) and
Nicolae Iorga (1871-1940), both historians, and Cluj art historian
Coriolanus Petranu (1893-1945). They developed a design of ethn
identity which, embedded in the Romanian continuity theory, turned t
Szeklers into Magyarised Romanians. For Popa Lisseanu, Szeklers w
simply a Hungarian ethnic construct that had been exploited for Magy
domination over Transylvania before 1918, and to justify Hungar
revisionist efforts after the First World War. Opreanu, instead, pointed
variety of historical assimilation processes; he adduced folklore, p
names, and a supposed ethno-psychological proximity between Szekler
and Romanians as evidence. Petranu, referring to the dominant Romani
influence in Szekler folk art, finally summed up: " Chez certain
populations, comme les Sicules, les Ciangai, les Craçoveni, ou [recte: on
le droit de parler non seulement d'une influence roumaine mais bien d
fonds roumain de leur art le plus ancien [... :] la cause en étant le f
mélange de sang roumain"11
These theories were flanked by the Cluj Institute of Hygiene, whic

provided concepts for ethno-political strategies and interventions as well
for legitimizing Romanian political leadership in the Szekler districts.
was founded in 1919, mainly by Iuliu Moldovan who only four ye
Romania: Regionalism, Nation Building and Ethnic Struggle 1918-1930. Itha

Cornell University Press, 1995).
See Achim, Viorel. "The Romanian Population Exchange Project Elaborated
Sabin Manuilã in October 1941." Annali dell'Istituto storico italo-germanico
Trento 28 (2001): 593-617, 595.
21 Petranu, Coriolan. "Influence de l'art populaire des Roumains sur les autres peu
de Roumanie et sur les peuples voisins." Revue de Transylvanie 2-3 (1935/36): 2
321,320.

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34 MICHAEL WEDEKIND
before had got his Ph.D. degree in Gener

of Vienna. He was Romania's first pro
publica) and one of the country's chief e
vital contributions offered by ASTRA, a
association from Transylvania, in 1926 a
Eugenics (Secfia de Biopoliticã §i Eugenie
On its behalf, as early as 1924, Sabin M

Moldovan, as well as Gheorghe Popovi
of Pediatrics (1935-1946) and at the sa
1939), undertook serial racial tests amon
and members of other Transylvanian
Popoviciu followed a method of serologi
allow racial determination of a given p
reactions of the human blood.
A prerequisite for this method was the evidence of the heritability of

blood groups provided in 1910 by Emil von Düngern (1867-1961) and
Polish physician Ludwik Hirszfeld (1884-1954). Nine years earlier, the
Austrian Karl Landsteiner (1868-1943) had largely succeeded in
identifying human blood groups. Later, Hirszfeld and his wife Hanna
(1884-1964) had defined the percentage relationship of blood groups
within a given population as biological (biochemical) race index. Sero-
anthropological racial diagnostics, a product of new scientific knowledge in
genetics, was to detect and consolidate a causal nexus between races and
blood groups. They enjoyed international fortune and became widely
accepted after the First World War.23 As a result, scientific paradigms
22 See Manuilä, Sabin, and Gheorghe Popoviciu. "Recherches sur les races roumaine et
hongroise en Roumanie par l'isohémagglutination." Comptes rendus hebdomadaires
des séances et mémoires de la Société de Biologie et des ses filiales 90 (1924): 542-
3; Tóth, Zoltán. Az 'Astra' románosító tevékenysége a Székelyfoldôn. Kolozsvár [i.e.
Cluj]: Minerva 1942. - Like Manuilã, Popoviciu was born in the Banat region,
attended secondary school in Budapest and studied medical science in Braçov; and
like Manuilã, he became a member of the student association 'Petru Maior' and
participated in the Romanian's People gathering in Alba Iulia in 1918. Even in later
years, Popoviciu published on racial serology, e.g., in 1936 and 1937 in the Revue
anthropologique, in 1937 in the Revista de Pediatrie §i Puericulturã and in 1938 in
the Revue de Transylvanie.
On the international context, see Schneider, William H. Quality and Quantity : the
Quest for Biological Regeneration in Twentieth-Century France. 2nd ed. Cambridge -
New York: Cambridge University Press, 2002. 208-29; Schneider, William H.
"Blood group research in Great Britain, France and the United States between the
World Wars." American Journal of Physical Anthropology 98 .4 (1995): 87-1 14;

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turned from conventional morphological metric anthropology to an interes

in genetics. The serological diagnostic procedure, rooted in the biologist
ideas typical of the era, aimed to find a 'more scientific' and precis
definition of 'races' - beyond classic anthropometrical research tha
involved measuring and classifying body characteristics.
Hirszfeld's biochemical race indices for Romanians and Hungarians

of Transylvania were first determined by the Cluj Institute for Hygiene,
which by the mid- 1930s had a staff of more than seventy. Manuil
conducted additional blood group research on 1,521 Romanians from
Banat, MaramureD and Transylvania, as well as on 2,847 members o
ethnic minorities: Germans, Hungarians, Bulgarians, and Slovaks from
Banat, as well as Transylvanian Saxons, Ukrainians and Jews from
Maramureç.24 In the second half of the 1930s, Victor Papilian (1888-1956),
a Cluj professor of Pathological Anatomy and renowned anthropologist,
together with his assistant Constantin C. Velluda (1893-1978), undertook
serological and anthropometric research on the supposed descendants of th
original Dacian inhabitants, the Mofi people - a Romanian population of
roughly 60,000 in the Transylvanian Apuseni Mountains, whose
supposedly Celtic origins were believed to have been superimposed by
Dacian and Roman elements.25 In 1927 and 1928, in the course of field
research led by Dimitrie Gusti's Romanian Social Institute (Institutul
Schneider, William H. "The rise and fall of sero-anthropology." Actes du XXXe

Congrès international d'histoire de la médecine, Düsseldorf, 31 August-5 September
1986. Ed. Hans Schadewaldt and Karl-Heinz Leven. Düsseldorf:
Organisationskomitee des XXX. Internationalen Kongresses für Gesch
Medizin, 1986. 719-27; Spörri, Myriam. "'Reines Blut', 'gemischte
Blutgruppen und Rassen zwischen 1900 und 1933." Transfusionen. Blut-B
Bio-Politik in der Neuzeit. Ed. Anja Lauper. Berlin - Zurich: Diaphanes,
25; Mazumdar, Pauline M. H. "Blood and soil: The serology of the Ar
state." Bulletin of the History of Medicine 64.2 (1990): 187-219.
24 See Manuilä, Sabin. "Recherches séro-anthropologiques sur les races en
par la méthode de l'isohémagglutination." Comptes rendus hebdoma
séances et mémoires de la Société de Biologie et des ses filiales 90 (1924):
See Papilian, Victor, and Constantin C. Velluda. "Cercetàri asupra grupelo
la Moji." Analele Academiei Romàne. Memoriile Secfiunii §tiinfifice Ser
(1938-1939): 209-19; Papilian, Victor, and Constantin C. Velluda. "Ce
antropologice asupra Motilor dintre Ariele." Analele Academiei Romàne.
Secfiunii §tiin¡ifice Series III. 15 (1939-1940): 531-639. - For the estimate
of Mo □ i people, see Florescu, Florea. Die Mofen in Siebenbürgen. Ein B
rumänischen Völkerkunde. Ph.D. thesis, Friedrich- Wilhelm-Universität Be
21; according to Papilian/Velluda, Cercetàri , the number of 'racially unmi
was 26,700.

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36 MICHAEL WEDEKIND
Social Román),26 teams under the di

Anatomy Francise Iosif Rainer (187
anthropological research in Romania
surveys in Moldavia.27 Addition
anthropologist Olga C. Necrasov (19
Gheorghe Botez (1 892-1 953)28 at the
Palaeontology, undertook serological an
Romanians and Ukrainians in northern
contact area, as well as on 1,350 ind
analogue studies, combined with da
population biology and nationality-spe
Gusti-founded Romanian Social Institu
Román din Basarabia), located in Chiçin
its 1934 village monographs. By the
serological racial diagnostics, usually
studies and research in demographic
Romania.31
26 On the Romanian Social Institute, see Larionescu, Maria. "Institutul Social

Román." Dictionar de sociologie ruralã. 248-52.
27 See Rainer, Francise Iosif. Enquêtes anthropologiques dans trois villages roumains
des Carpathes. Bucharest: Monitorul oficial §i Imprimeriile statului, Imprimeria
centralã, 1937; Rainer, Francise Iosif. Drâguç, un sat din Jara Oltului (Fãgãra§):
cadrul biologie, tipul antropologie. Bucharest: Institutul de Çtiinfe Sociale - Institutul
de Cercetäri Sociale al României, 1945.
28 Among other studies, Botez carried out biometrie surveys in Moldavia and
Bukovina; see Botez, loan. Contribufiuni la studiul taliei §i al indicelui cefalic in
Moldova de Nord si Bucovina. Iasi: Institutul de Arte Grafice Brawo, 1938.
29 See Necrasov, Olga C. "Contribute la studiul grupelor sanguine în Nordul Moldovei
§i al Basarabiei." Memoriile Secfiunii çtiinfifice a Academiei Romàne Series III. 12,
Mem. 7 (1937): 152-7; Necrasov, Olga C. "Note sur la fréquence des groupes
sanguins dans la Bessarabie centrale." Annales scientifiques de l'Université de Iassy
24 (1938); Necrasov, Olga C. "Les groupes sanguins et la pigmentation de l'iris et
des cheveux chez les Bessarabiens du Nord." XVI f Congrès international
d'anthropologie et d'archéologie préhistorique / Vif Assemblée générale de
l'Institut International d'Anthropologie, Bucarest, 1-8 septembre 1937. Bucharest:
Socec, 1939. 3 17-23; Necrasov, Olga C. Étude anthropologique de la Moldavie et de
la Bessarabie septentrionales. Bucharest: Moniteur officiel et Imprimeries de l'État,
Imprimerie Nationale, 1 94 1 .
30 On the Romanian Social Institute of Bessarabia, see Basciani, Alberto. La difficile
unione: la Bessarabia e la Grande Romania 1918-1940. 2nd ed. Rome: Aracne
Editrice, 2007. 306-10.
31 See Popoviciu, Gheorghe. "Les races sanguines en Roumanie." XVIIe Congrès
international d'anthropologie et d'archéologie préhistorique / Vif Assemblée
générale de l'Institut International d'Anthropologie, Bucarest, 1-8 septembre 1937.

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Serological racial diagnostics had the aura of scientific innovation

and owed much of their rapid and intensive application in Eastern Middle
and Southeast Europe to the regions' disputed post-war borders and
unsolved nationality questions.32 As the race biologist Ion Gheorghe Banu
(1 889-1 957)33 pointed out in the mid 1930s, the success of serological
monitoring, rather than to primarily natural scientific research contexts,
was mostly due to anthropological and, specifically, sero-anthropological
interests of the country's historians engaged in studies on Romanian
national continuities. Put in more general terms, it can be stated tha
physical anthropology in Southeast Europe was mainly boosted by
nationalistic goals.
However, the determination of blood group distribution, considered

to be a hereditary race characteristic of a given population, proved an
erroneous and ambiguous method of race classification, since significant
serological differences emerged between closely related groups. Proponents
of sero-anthropology nevertheless continued to develop serology-based
methods for racial analysis. As a matter of fact, the above-mentioned racia
studies on the Szeklers carried out in the early 1930s, followed another,
albeit equally insecure, method of serological race diagnosis. They relied
on what was defined as serologic gene index - a concept which,
particularly in view of isolating a specific 'Jewish blood factor', had been
proposed in 1928 by the nationalist-oriented Austrian mathematician and
statistician Siegmund Wellisch (1864-1938). The frequency of the three
serological genes A, B and 0 within a given population, expressed as index
Bucharest: Socec, 1939. 309-16, 309. - This area of research has recently drawn
major historiographie interest; see, e.g., Turda, Marius. "From craniology to
serology: racial anthropology in interwar Hungary and Romania." Journal of the
History of the Behavioral Sciences 43.4 (2007): 361-77; Turda, Marius. "The nation
as object: race, blood and biopolitics in interwar Romania." Slavic Review 66.3
(2007): 413-41; Turda, Marius. "Entangled traditions of race: physical anthropology
in Hungary and Romania, 1900-1940." Focaal. Journal of Global and Historical
Anthropology 58 (2010): 32-46. For an early study on these topics, see Malán,
Mihály. "Erdélyi magyarok és románok az embertan tiikrében." Magyarok és
románok. Ed. József Deér and László Gáldi. Budapest: Athenaeum, 1943. 599-667.
On eugenics and nationalism in Southeast Europe in general, see Turda, Marius, and
Paul J. Weindling, ed. Blood and Homeland: Eugenics and Racial Nationalism in
Central and Southeast Europe, 1900-1940. Budapest - New York: Central European
University Press, 2007.
32 See Schneider, Quality : 222-3.
On Gheorghe (George) Banu, see Stanciu, Lucian. "Banu, George." DicUionar de

132.174.252.114 on Sat, 22 May 2021 13:55:46 UTC
38 MICHAEL WEDEKIND
figures, was deemed capable of provid

area of origin and hence on their 'European' or 'Asian' racial
characteristics (p - or ¿7-index).
The Szekler studies were conducted by Petre Râmneanju (1902-

1981), a Banat-born disciple of Moldovan at Cluj University. Assistant at
the Institute for Hygiene ever since 1931, he took over the Institute's
assistantship for Population Policy and Statistics in 1933. His research
interests focused on anthropology, eugenics, racial science and
demographic issues. He sought to measure the genetic potential of
Transylvania's ethnic groups, or in other words, to define 'Romaniansm.'
Mostly based on bio- and anthropometric as well as statistical methods, his
studies were constantly guided by a practical interest in social and ethnic
engineering. This was also true for his research on nutritional status and
population decline in Banat, as well as for his studies on the ethnic mix in
Transylvania, which was considered a threat to racial purity, public health
and the nation's international position. Like most of his Romanian
counterparts, Râmneanfu was strongly influenced by representatives of
German eugenics, although due to differing socio-economic conditions,
Romanian eugenicists did not immediately seek to adopt Western models.
US-eugenics - with which Râmneanfu like many other Romanian
geneticists encountered thanks to US-stays granted by the Rockefeller
Foundation (e.g., at the Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore) - had but a
secondary impact, mostly because of their divergent political orientation.
Râmneanfu collected Szekler population data in the course of

sociological field research projects on Romanian villages in the 1930s. He
determined the blood group of 10,600 Szeklers and - for the purpose of
comparison - of 7,975 Hungarians, Transylvanian Saxons, Romanians and
Romanian Mofi. The results, which seemed to be corroborated by
comparative anthropometric studies conducted by Iordache Fãcãoaru
(*1897) as well as by a subsequent survey on the correlation between the
'serologic gene index' and iris pigmentation,34 led Râmneanfu to the
34 See Rámneanju, Petre, and Iordache Fãcãoaru. "The blood groups and the
pigmentation of the iris in the population from Transylvania." XVI f Congrès
international d'anthropologie et d'archéologie préhistorique / Vif Assemblée
générale de l'Institut International d'Anthropologie, Bucarest, 1-8 septembre 1937.
Bucharest: Socec 1939. 323-5. - In the Buletin eugenic §i biopolitic , Iordache
Fãcãoaru published a series of articles on results of racial-biometric research on
Romanians, Szeklers and Hungarians, including studies on skull shapes and
morphological facial indices (in 1935), on nasal indices (in 1936) and on horizontal
head circumferences (in 1937); see in particular Fãcãoaru, Iordache. "Compozifia

132.174.252.114 on Sat, 22 May 2021 13:55:46 UTC
expected conclusion: " Les Séklers [...] ont dans l'ensemble la même origine
ethno-anthropologique que les Roumains. Il n ' existe pas de similitude entr
les proportions des groupes sanguins des Séklers et celles des Hongrois ,
Bulgares et Finnois. [...] les Séklers sont en fait des Roumains 'siculisé
[...]. L'origine ethnique roumaine des Séklers présente une importanc
capitale au point de vue démographique ".35
The Romanian blood group studies were summed-up by Gheorghe

Popoviciu who stated that the country's population as a whole did not sho
any ethnic divergence, but merely regional racial differences. They becam
evident in a weakening of the serological index of 'European racia
features' on the periphery, a region typically characterized by migrations
and ethnic mix.36 In the light of blood group research, even the
Transylvanian Hungarians appeared racially more akin to the adjacen
Romanians than to the Magyars of the Great Hungarian Plain: "Le
Hongrois de Roumanie sont en règle générale des Roumains
magyar isés."31 Popoviciu provided nothing less than a scientific basis for
denationalizing ethnic minorities in Romania.
Râmneanû used the same procedure of comparative blood group

studies in October 1942. Meanwhile, neighbouring northern Transylvania,
with a population of more than one million Romanians, had been ceded to
rasialà la romàni, sãcui §i unguri." Buletin eugenic §i biopolitic 8.4-5 (1937): 124 -
42.
Râmneantu, Pierre [sic]. "Origine ethnique des Séklers de Transylvanie." Revue de
Transylvanie 2.1 (1935): 45-59, 59, 53 and 57. See also Râmneanju, Petre. "The
classical blood groups and the M, N and MN properties in the nations from
Transylvania." XVI f Congrès international d'anthropologie et d'archéologie
préhistorique / Vif Assemblée générale de l'Institut International d'Anthropologie,
Bucarest, 1-8 septembre 1937. Bucharest: Socec, 1939. 325-32; Râmneantu, Petre.
"La méthode biotypologique dans l'étude du village." Archives pour la science et la
réforme sociales 16 (1943): 172-7; Râmneanfu, Petre, and Petre David. "Cercetàri
asupra origini i etnice a populajiei din sud-estul Transilvaniei pe baza compozijiei
serologice a sângelui." Buletin eugenic §i biopolitic 6.1-3 (1935): 36-66;
Râmneantu, Petre, and Iordache Fäcäoaru. "The blood groups and the facial index in
the population from Transylvania." XVI T Congrès international d'anthropologie et
d'archéologie préhistorique / Vif Assemblée générale de l'Institut International
d'Anthropologie, Bucarest, 1-8 septembre 1937. Bucharest: Socec, 1939. 333-7.
36 Popoviciu, Races sanguines : 311 and 316.
Popovici [u], Gheorghe. "Le problème des populations de la Roumanie vu à la
lumière des recherches sur les races d'après le sang." Revue de Transylvanie 1-2
(1938): 14-27, 22 and 24; see also Popoviciu, Gheorghe. "Nouvelles contributions à
l'étude des isohémagglutinines en Roumanie." Revue anthropologique 46 (1936):
181-3, 182.

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40 MICHAEL WEDEKIND
Hungary as a result of the Second Vienna

1940. His analysis now concentrated on H
and religious minority settling scattered
Moldavia and Bukovina, where they had
Ages. Particularly in the late 1930s, the C
Romanianization. Not least under the imp
ethno-political concepts for the Danube a
individuals from six Moldavian Csángó villages was, once again,
determined by a manifest relationship between racial-biological research
and interest in socio-ethnic engineering: As a matter of fact, when Hungary
annexed northern Transylvania and the Szekler territory, Budapest
demanded that Romanians, which in 1940 had passed under Magyar rule,
be exchanged with Moldavian Csángós from Romania.40 Râmneanfu's race
diagnosis, however, provided a serologic identity between Hungarian
Csángós and the Orthodox Romanian population majority. In addition, they
seemed to prove once more the validity of Romanian assimilation theory,
38 See Râmneanju, Petre. "Grupele de sânge la Ciangãi din Moldova." Buletin eugenie
§i biopolitie 1-2 (1943); Râmneanfu, Petre. Die Abstammung der Tschangos. Sibiu:
Centrili de studii §i cercetàri privitoare la Transilvania, 1944. - The blood group
research was carried out in the villages of Luizi-Cãlugãra, Oituz, Lespezi, Fundu
Räcäciuni, Bãrgãoani and Arini.
39 See Korponay, András. Húszmillió masy art!. Budapest: EPOL, 1941.
40 See Arens, Meinolf, and Daniel Bein. "Die Moldauer Ungarn (Tschangos) im
Rahmen der rumänisch-ungarisch-deutschen Beziehungen zwischen 1940 und 1944:
Eine vornational strukturierte ethnische Gruppe im Spannungsfeld totalitärer
Volkstumspolitik." Der Einfluss von Faschismus und Nationalsozialismus auf
Minderheiten in Ostmittel - und Südosteuropa. Ed. Mariana Hausleitner and Harald
Roth. Munich: IKGS Verlag, 2006. 265-315. - However, from the northern parts of
South Bukovina, some 13,500 Csángós were transferred between 1941 and June
1942; they were relocated on formerly Serbian homesteads in the Hungarian-annexed
Bačka region. After the Second World War, they were predominantly transferred in
the Hungarian counties of Tolna and Baranya, where they replaced exiled Germans.
On the relocation of Csángós from southern Bucovina, see Merk, Zsuzsa. "A
bukovinai székelyek Bácskába telepítése az egyházi források tiikrében (1941-1944)."
Dunáninnen - Tiszáninnen: a Duna-Tisza kôzén élõ népesoportok hagyományait
számbavevõ Nemzetközi Néprajzi Tudományos Konferencia elõadásai Baja, 1993.
Julius 8.-9. Ed. Jánoš Bárth. Kecskemét: Katona József Múzeum, 1995. 57-66. - On
the role of the Csángós in Romanian and Hungarian ethnopolitical calculations, see
Davis, R. Chris. "Nationalizing the Moldavian Csangos: Clericalism and Ethnic
Mobilization in World War II Romania and Hungary." Re-Contextualising East
Central European History : Nation, Culture and Minority Groups. Ed. by Robert
Pyrah and Marius Turda. London: Legenda - Modern Humanities Research
Association and Maney Publishing, 2010. 74-88.

132.174.252.114 on Sat, 22 May 2021 13:55:46 UTC
according to which even the Csángós could be considered Magyarised

Romanians.
In a way, the laboratory of Cluj University became the place

where - sanctioned by science - 'assimilable' ethnic minorities, like
Szeklers and Csángós, simply 'disappeared'. At the same time, however, it
was the place where the rule-legitimizing thesis of Romanian ethno-genesis
and settlement continuity found its 'confirmation' by racial science.
Serological diagnosis encouraged by Cluj historian Silviu Dragomir (1 888-
1962), 41 carried out in typical collection sites in the district of Hunedoara
(the presumed core area of the connection of Dacian original inhabitants
with the Roman occupiers and colonists), led Râmneanju to conclude "that
the autochtone population of Transylvania, which had to support all the
barbar [sic] invasions, was one with very rich european [sic] properties"42
and therefore could impossibly be of Hungarian origin. For the eugenicist
Râmneanfu43, the scientific basis of his method was out of question, as was
the relevance of the gained data records for Romanian population policy.
The interpretation of the research results by the Romanian scholarly elite
led to developing and attributing new ethnic identities and, finally, to
conceptualizing ethno-political strategies.
41 Dragomir, who first had been a Liberal, then a National-Christian, in 1938 was
among the founders of the Front for National Rebirth ( Frontul Renalen i Nationale),
the only authorized political grouping during the dictatorship of King Carol II. From
1938 to 1940, he was in head of the General Commission for Minorities
(Comisariatul General pentru Minorità ¡i) at the Presidium of the Council of
Ministers. He had worked intensively on the ethnic conditions of mostly
Transylvania and Banat as well as on Romanian trans-border communities.
42 Râmneanû, Classical blood groups : 327.
Immediately after the Second World War, against the background of territorial
reorganization of Southeast Europe, Râmneanfu took up again his population studies
on Transylvania - unchanged with respect to methods and intents. In Socialist
Romania he succeeded to continue his career unhindered. Although temporarily
named, in 1949/50, on lists of 'Suspects and enemies of the working class' of the
Communist Party's Regional Committee of Timiçoara, there was apparently no
resistance, even in former years, to Rámneanfu taking over the chair of Hygiene and
Preventive Medicine at the Medical Faculty of the University of Timiçoara and, in
1946, the Institute of Hygiene and Public Health 'Dr. Victor Babeç' ( Institutul de
Igienä §i Sãnãtate Publica 'Dr. Victor Babeç ').

132.174.252.114 on Sat, 22 May 2021 13:55:46 UTC
42 MICHAEL WEDEKIND
3. Hierarchizations
In the context of political decision-making, anti-Gypsy measures in

Romania were first discussed at the meeting of the Council of Ministers on
7 February 1941. In the course of this conference on comprehensive ethno-
political interventions, the Romanian Head of State, General Ion Antonescu
(1882-1946), proposed a forced transfer of Bucharest Gypsies to the
Bãrãgan plain. The project, however, was postponed44 and executed only in
early June 1942, almost one year after Romania had entered the war and
conquered Transnistria. What initially was planned as a limited relocation,
now became a large-scale, nationwide intervention, according to previously
established selection criteria and data updates by the Romanian police and
gendarmerie of 25 May 1942. Of the 208,700 Gypsies who had been
identified in the census in the spring of 1941 on the former territory of
Romania, around 26,000 people (equivalent to 12.5%) were forcibly
deported to Transnistria by the General Inspectorate of the Gendarmerie, on
the orders of Ion Antonescu. In Transnistria, most were quartered in
previously cleared Ukrainian villages. In detail, between 1 June and 15
August 1942, 11,441 nomadic Gypsies were deported. Between 12 and 20
September, they were followed by 13,176 unskilled, unemployed,
imprisoned, 'dangerous and undesirable' sedentary Gypsies, sometimes
rounded up even beyond predetermined selection criteria. Other Gypsies
who had escaped the previous forced relocations or were considered
'undesirable' were subsequently departed until December 1943. In
Transnistria, which had been left to Romania and placed under civil
administration according to an agreement dated 30 August 1941 between
the Romanian General Staff and the German Army High Command, the
deportees were to meet unspeakable suffering. Some 11,000 Gypsies,
abandoned, died from the effects of consciously induced malnutrition,
disease and cold 45
44 See Ciucä, Marcel-Dumitru et al., ed. Stenogramele §edin(elor Consiliului de

Ministri: Guvernarea Ion Antonescu. Vol 2 (ianuarie-martie 1941). Bucharest:
Arhivele Nationale aleRomâniei, 1998. 181.
On the deportations of the Gypsies, see Achim, Viorel. "Jiganii din România în
timpul celui de-al doilea räzboi mondial." Revista istoricã 8.1-2 (1997): 53-9;
Achim, Viorel. figanii în istoria României. Bucharest: Editura Enciclopédica, 1998.
133-52 (English edition: The Roma in Romanian History. Budapest: Central
European University Press, 2004); Ioanid, Radu. The Holocaust in Romania: The
Destruction of Jews and Gypsies under the Antonescu Regime (1940-1944).
Chicago: Ivan R. Dee, 2000; Achim, Viorel. "Die Deportation der Roma nach
Transnistrien." Rumänien und der Holocaust. Zu den Massenverbrechen in

132.174.252.114 on Sat, 22 May 2021 13:55:46 UTC
Some of Romania's first scientific contributions to the discourse on

Gypsy dissimilation and exclusion were provided in 1925 by Iuliu
Moldovan's publication on 'national hygiene' ( igiena nafiunii ).46 Much
like the Bucharest anatomist, anthropologist and eugenics advocate
Francisc Iosif Rainer,47 Moldovan criticized aspects of eugenic and social
selection had been ignored in drafting and implementing Romania's anti-
minoritarian land reform, initiated four years before. A unique opportunity
for efficiently planning and exploiting biological resources for the nation's
biologic renewal had been missed. In the future, appropriate interventions
should be based on previous data collection and small-scale mapping of the
quantity and physical, intellectual and moral quality of the 'national body'.
Transnistrien 1941-1944. Ed. Mariana Hausleitner et al. Berlin: Metropol, 2001.

101-11; Mihok, Brigitte. "Die Verfolgung der Roma. Ein verdrängtes Kapitel der
rumänischen Geschichte." Rumänien und der Holocaust. Zu den Massenverbrechen
in Transnistrien 1941-1944. Ed. Mariana Hausleitner et al. Berlin: Metropol, 2001.
25-32. Nastasä, Lucian, and Andrea Varga, ed. Minorità fi etnoculturale. Mãrturii
documentare: Jiganii din România (1919-1944). Cluj: Centrul de Resurse pentru
Diversitate Etnoculturalã, 2001; Achim, Viorel. "The Antonescu government's
policy towards the Gypsies." The Holocaust in Romania. History and Contemporary
Significance. Ed. Mihail E. Ionescu and Liviu Rotman. Bucharest: Institute for
Political Studies of Defence and Military History, 2003. 55-60; Remmel, Franz.
Nackte Füße auf steinigen Straßen: Zur Leidensgeschichte der rumänischen Roma.
Bra§ov: Aldus, 2003; Troncota, Cristian. Glorie §i tragedii: momente din istoria
Serviciilor de Informaci §i Controinformafii romàne pe Frontul de Est 1941-1944.
Bucharest: Editura Nemira, 2003. passim; Achim, Viorel. "Atitudinea
contemporanilor fajã de deportarea Jiganilor ìn Transnistria." România §i
Transnistria : problema holocaustului. Perspective istorice §i comparative. Ed.
Viorel Achim and Constantin Iordachi. Bucharest: Curtea Veche, 2004. 201-33;
Achim, Viorel, ed. Documente privind deportarea ¡i gañil or ìn Transnistria /
Documents concerning the Deportation of Gypsies to Transnistria. 2 voll. Bucharest:
Editura Enciclopedicã, 2004; PetcuJ, Petre. "Samudaripenul (Holocaustul) rromilor
în România." Studia hebraica 4 (2004): 225-9; Hausleitner, Mariana Deutsche und
Juden in Bessarabien 1814-1941. Zur Minderheitenpolitik Rußlands und
Großrumäniens. Munich: IKGS Verlag, 2005; Solonari, Vladimir. "Etnicheskaia
chistka ili bor'ba s prestupnosťiu? Deportatsiia rumynskikh tsygan v Transnistriiu v
1942 g." Golokost i suchasnisť 1.3 (2008): 65-87; Benz, Wolfgang, and Brigitte
Mihok, ed. Holocaust an der Peripherie. Judenpolitik und Judenmord in Rumänien
und Transnistrien (1940-1944). Berlin: Metropol 2009. For criticism on some
relativist scores in the studies by Viorel Achim, see Haupt, Gemot. Antiziganismus
und Sozialarbeit : Elemente einer wissenschaftlichen Grundlegung, gezeigt an
Beispielen aus Europa mit dem Schwerpunkt Rumänien. Berlin: Frank & Timme,
2006. 157-8.
46 Moldovan, Iuliu. Ieiena natiunii. Clui: Institutul de Igienä si Ieienä Socialã, 1925.
47 See Bucur, Eugenics : 33.

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44 MICHAEL WEDEKIND
Grounded on the basic idea of rationali

member of the National Peasant Par
demanded that the redistribution of la
transfers be based on biological crite
multitude of 'genetic inferiors' be exclud
Especially since the second half o

sociologists had posed a 'Gypsy-prob
theory. Exaggerated and dramatised in
described as pressing and crucial fo
Romanian people, viewed above all from
fertility rate. For example, Cluj eugeni
student of Moldovan, made a name f
Romanian 'anti-Gypsyism.' He question
which for the first time ever had surve
He estimated the number of 262,501, c
Romania's total population, too low and
by including previously unregistered G
folklorist Ion Chelcea (1902-1991), w
mixed people, calculated the Gypsy p
approximately 525, 000.48
Iordache Fãcãoaru, born in 1897 in so

philosophy at the University of Buch
school-teaching. In 1929, however, he en
where he attended courses in anthr
genetics and eugenics - the latter w
graduated in 1931 with a study on "S
Psychological Foundations,"49 under th
(1874-1952) and the educationalist
analysis was based partially on anthropo
mentally handicapped. In 1932, he
assistantship for Anthropology and E
Hygiene and Social Hygiene. In the foll
biometrical research in the course of m
villages, led by Dimitrie Gusti and th
48 Chelcea, Ion. Jiganii din România. Monog

Central de Statistica, 1944. 84. On Ion Chelc
Dictionar de sociologie ruralã. 89-91 .
49 Fãcãoaru, Iordache. Soziale Auslese: ihr
Grundlagen. Cluj: Huber, 1933.

132.174.252.114 on Sat, 22 May 2021 13:55:46 UTC
which had a keen interest in bio-politics. During these studies,

demographical figures and even data on social and forensic anthropology
were collected from different ethnic minorities. In 1940, the Fascist-
oriented Fãcãoaru, a member of the Iron Guard and a strong supporter of
Nazi racial legislation, joined the Central Statistical Institute in Bucharest.50
A little later, he was appointed to the Ministry of National Education. As
Director General for Higher Education he became responsible for
reviewing all appointments made at universities and other colleges over the
past ten years.5
Fãcãoaru assumed a correlation between 'racial' and mental-psychic

differences, between race membership and social capability, between 'race'
and 'class', and hence between genetic material and social behaviour. This
had also been a central research concern of the Cluj Institute for Hygiene
and Social Hygiene.52 Turning away from Enlightenment and democratic
concepts of equality, Fãcãoaru believed race science had to not only survey
the biological potentials of a population and establish a "classification of
human races and a hierarchy of their biological value,"53 but determine a
politically operable taxonomy of the human racial value. Oriented at the
goal of achieving 'racial purity' and resolving the minority problem in both
social and political terms, Fãcãoaru developed taxonomies of 'biological
inferiority', racial inequality and social marginality, meant to serve as
instruments of ethno-politics. His methods of race diagnosis were largely
those of Theodor Mollison and Egon Freiherr von Eickstedt (1892-1965).
In the 1930s, Fãcãoaru undertook anthropometric studies (including
50 Bucur, Eugenics : 39, points out: "In 1940, under the short-lived legionary regime, he
[I. Fãcãoaru] held an important government position, controlling the implementation
of public health measures. He became, in a sense, the ideologue of that regime in
matters relating to health, biology and race purity, using eugenics as the basis for his
arguments and programs in action."
51 "Nachrichten: Rumänien." Zeitschrift für Rassenkunde und die gesamte Forschung
am Menschen 12 (1941): 135.
See Fãcãoaru, Iordache. "Die 'Ganzheitsanthropologie' und das Studium des
Menschen in Rumänien." Zeitschrift für Rassenkunde und die gesamte Forschung am
Menschen 6 (1937), 248-50; Fãcãoaru, Iordache. Instrucfiuni pentru examinarea
inteligenci dupã metoda Binet-Simon-Bobertag. Bucharest: Tipografía
Penitenciarului Vãcãreçti, 1932; Fãcãoaru, Iordache. Elemente de antropologie:
somatometrie, somatoscopie, cefalometrie. Cluj: Tipografía Transilvania, n.d.
[1934?].
Fãcãoaru, Iordache. "Problemele sociologici biologice." Indrumäri pentru
monografiile sociologice. Ed. Dimitrie Gusti and Traian Herseni. Bucharest: Editura
Institutului Social Román, 1940. 81-90, 84: " Scopul raseologiei îl vedem în
clasifìcarea formelor umane $i in ierarhizarea valorii lor biologice ."

132.174.252.114 on Sat, 22 May 2021 13:55:46 UTC
46 MICHAEL WEDEKIND
measurements of cranial capacity, body s

Romanian Gypsies and surveyed their
research, the latter ranged about fifteen
Romanian peasants and thus, on average
disabled.54 The muscular strength of Gy
than that of Aryans.55
However, Fäcäoaru's research result

findings of sero-anthropological race dia
instead a close serological proximity of s
ethnic groups.56 His investigations reache
Gypsy studies carried out by the German
Berlin Racial Hygiene Research Centre ( Rassenhygienische
Forschungsstelle ), established in 1936 at the Health Department of the
Reich ( Reichsgesundheitsamt ). Even the Berlin Gypsy studies, which were
also interested in forensic anthropology and sought a correlation between
race and antisocial behaviour, failed to define races on biological
characteristics.57
In addition, Gusti's sociological monographs on Romanian villages

had proved the assimilation of the Gypsies and their integration into the
economic system of the country's agricultural society; his studies had also
shown that social relations in rural areas were widely free of ethnic
conflict, even if traditional stereotypes, dating back to the period of the
Gypsy serfdom58, definitely persisted. Considered highly contentious and
anachronistic in the light of 'modern racial biology', the very integration of
54 Fãcãoaru, Iordache. Antropologia în stat ca çtiinfã çi ca obiect de ínvãfãmânt. Cluj:

Tipografia 'Universalã', 1938. 37.
Papilian, Victor, and Constantin C. Velluda. "L'historique de l'anthropologie en
Roumanie." XVI f Congrès international d'anthropologie et d'archéologie
préhistorique / Vif Assemblée générale de l'Institut International d'Anthropologie,
Bucarest, 1-8 septembre 1937. Bucharest: Socec, 1939. 103-22, 110.
56 Popovici[u], Problème : 21. Blood group tests on Serbs and Gypsies carried out in
western Serbia produced analogue results; see Promitzer, Christian. "The body of the
Other: 'Racial science' and ethnic minorities in the Balkans." Jahrbücher für
Geschichte und Kultur Südosteuropas 5 (2003): 27-40, 36. - Serological surveys on
Transylvanian Saxons showed a blood group distribution analogue to that of
Germany.
57 See Zimmermann, Michael. Rassenutopie und Genozid : Die nationalsozialistische
'Lösung der Zigeunerfrage' . Hamburg: Christians, 1996. 132.
Particularly noteworthy in this concern is the publication of records of the Moldovifa
monastery in Moldavia by Wickenhauser, Franz Adolf. Die Urkunden des Klosters
Moldowiza. Vienna: Druck von Jacob & Holzhausen, 1862.

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Gypsies into Romanian society provoked Fäcäoaru's counter-concept of

biological hierarchization of minorities.59 As Ion Chelcea did some tim
later,60 Fãcãoaru complained the lack of any restrictive legislation again
the Gypsies and the provision of welfare benefits; he criticized the so
acceptance of alleged Gypsy promiscuity, of allowing Gypsies to acqui
property, attend classes and gain access to society's resources.61 Althoug
he welcomed the racially motivated anti-Gypsy selection policies of th
Nazi regime and presumed, just like Robert Ritter, that assimilated Gyps
were a. biological hazard potential, he ruled out analogous intervention
against 'non-European ballast minorities' (minoritãfi balast : Gypsies, Je
Tatars, Gagauz people and Turks, but also Russians and Ukrainians), bo
because of practical difficulties of implementation and foreseea
economic losses.
However, the biological taxonomy was soon combined with a

sociological one. It was introduced in the Romanian anti-Gypsy discourse
of the 1930s and early 1940s mainly by the sociologist and folklorist Ion
Chelcea who, in 1929, had conducted research on the rudari, a specific
group of Gypsies of his Muntenian home county of Muscel.62 After having
studied for a doctorate under the ethnographer Romulus Vuia at Cluj
University, where he got his Ph.D. in 1939, he had been a member of the
Romanian Social Research Institute ( Institutul de Cercetãri Sociale). As
such he took part in village monographic enquiries in Central Transylvania
( Jara Oltului), led by the sociologist and anthropologist Traian Herseni
(1907-1980), a Fascist and eugenics advocate with intense interest in
racial-biology.63 Chelcea conducted field studies on various tribes of
Gypsies in 63 villages, surveying population size and geographical
distribution.64 Before taking over the chair of Folklore studies at Iaçi
59 I. Fäcäoaru, Antropologia'. 36.

60 Chelcea, Jiganiv. 19-21.
I. Fäcäoaru, Amestecul: 283.
See Chelcea, Ion. Rudarii. Contribuai la o 'enigmã ' etnograficã. Bucharest: Editura
Casa Çcoalelor, 1943 (German edition: Ein ethnographisches 'Rätsel': die
Stangenmacher. Bucharest: Institutul de Arte Grafice, 1932); Chelcea, Ion. "Les
Rudari de Muscel: contribution à l'étude des Tziganes." Archives pour la science et
la réforme sociales 16 (1943): 81-130.
63 On Traian Herseni, see Dumitrescu, Dumitru. "Herseni, Traian." Dicfionar de
64 See Chelcea, Ion. "Plan pentru cercetarea Tiganilor çi în special a Rudarilor sau
Bâeçilor. Indicatimi teoretice çi de metodä." fndrumãri pentru monografiile
sociologice. Ed. Dimitrie Gusti and Traian Herseni. Bucharest: Institutul de Çtiinje
Sociale al României, 1940. 397-405. See also Chelcea, Ion. "Colonia figanilor."
Societatea de mâine 10.3 (1933) and 10.4 (1933).

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48 MICHAEL WEDEKIND
University in March 1943, he had directe

Research of the Central Statistical Institute in Bucharest since 1940. In
1944, the Institute published Chelcea's big ethnographic study on "The
Gypsies of Romania", which is still sometimes considered a theoretical and
empirical reference work today.
Chelcea distinguished between sedentary Gypsy groups on the one

hand and allegedly 'underdeveloped' nomadic tribes on the other. He thus
replaced the traditional distinction of Gypsies, which was based on
professions or, formerly (and in close correlation with that criterion), on
their status as serfs subordinated to feudal lords. Combining this new
criterion of distinction with a gradation of linguistic assimilation and a
correlating scale of socio-economic integration,65 Chelcea finally
distinguished three groups of Gypsies. In accordance with presumptive
somatic and ethnic dispositions, he differentiated between non-assimilable
nomadics (< corturari ) and two largely sedentary, but differently assimilated
groups ( rudari and figani de sat), which occupied diverse economic niches.
Chelcea's 'taxonomy of lifestyle', enriched by images of racial and cultural
diversity, was to legitimize restrictive population policy interventions; it
explicitly demanded measures of discrimination, criminalisation and
exclusion, and coupled the ideas of 'social ballast' and 'damage of public
health', not least, to assure social acceptance.
According to Chelcea, only the largely integrated rudari were to be

excluded from restrictive intervention and had only partially to be
eliminated from "our ethnic community:"66 most could be increasingly
assimilated and subordinated to political and socio-economic leadership. In
contrast, the rest of the sedentary Gypsy groups, due to their biologically
and socially damaging influence, should "be set in a remote part of the
country, sent to Transnistria, sterilized if necessary."67 Their deportations
were to be executed with priority as otherwise the proceeding assimilation
would bring about the risk of detrimental blood mixture, as had alreadv
been pointed out by Cluj medical scientist Gheorghe Popoviciu in 1922. 8
In view of their non-integrability and the threat they were thought to pose
for the 'biological capital' of the Romanian population, even an
65 See Chelcea, Ion. Neam §i farà: pagini de etnografie §i folclor. Bucharest: Atelierele
'Imprimeria', 1940. 80; Chelcea, Jiganii : 39.
66 Chelcea, Jiganii : 46 and 99-100.
67 Chelcea, Jiganii'. 101.
Popoviciu, Gheorghe. Diferente §i asemãnãri în structura biologicã de rasã a
popoarelor României. Cluj: Cultura, 1922. 226.

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overwhelming number of nomadic Gypsies should completely be isolat

from society and deported to Transnistria or beyond the Buh riv
However, unlike in the German Reich, the elimination of the Romani
Gypsies should not be executed completely and immediately, but gradua
according to the degree of their social integration. Chelcea recommen
that "Bucharest should be among the cities that first were to be freed f
the Gypsies."69 District capitals and rural conglomerations were to follo
according to their share of Gypsies.
In 1941, Simion Mehedinfi, holder of the chair of Geography

Human Geography and Ethnography at Bucharest University until
retirement, also called for eliminating the 'Gypsy ulcer' by expulsing
Gypsies.70 Mehedinfi, a former education minister, was one of interw
Romania's most eminent personalities of cultural life, a founder of mod
geography, supporter of eugenic social control and admirer of Fas
leader Corneliu Zelea Codreanu (1899-1938). Even more emphatic
than Mehedinti, however, in the same year, Iordache Fàcâoaru's broth
Gheorghe, himself a eugenicist, demanded the exclusion and sterilizatio
the Gypsies, as had Sabin Manuilã and Traian Herseni:
The nomadic and semi-nomadic Gypsies have to be interned in

forced labour camps. There they are to be [...] sterilized. In order
to have their maintenance costs covered, they have to be used for
forced labour. After one generation we will have rid ourselves of
them. Their place will be taken by nationally minded elements
capable of orderly and creative work. The sedentary [Gypsies]
will be sterilized on the spot [...]. In this way, the peripheries of
towns and villages will no longer be an eyesore and reservoirs of
infection for all kind of social diseases, but an ethnic bulwark for
the benefit, rather than to the detriment of the nation.71
The persecution of the Gypsies, started just a few months later by th

military dictatorship of Ion Antonescu, corresponded almost exactly t
these eugenicists' proposals.
69 Chelcea, Tiganii : 101.

70 Mehedinji, Simion. "Ethnos." Ethnos. Revistä de grai, studiu $i create române
1.1 (1941): 3.
Fãcãoaru, Gheorghe. Câteva date ín jurul familiei §i statului biopolitic. Bucharest:
Editura Institutului Central de Statistica, n.d. [1941]. 17-8.

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50 MICHAEL WEDEKIND
However, until the beginning of the 1

diplomatic and ideological relations betw
the anti-Gypsy discourse, unlike anti-S
rather marginal phenomenon. It was
Romanian academic milieu of eugenicists
considerable resonance either in the pres
the country's right-wing political spe
practically unknown in Romania's politic
Even the General Commission for Minori
Minoritãfi ) at the Presidium of the Coun
the Gypsies.72 The Fascist Legion of th
Arhanghelului Mihail) only took up the a
short period when it shared power.73 How
produced racially-motivated anti-Gypsy
persecutions did not begin before the An
be located within the overall context of the German and Romanian
extermination of the Jews. They followed their model, even though the
framework of race ideology was less explicit, as the relevant decrees of
Antonescu and the correspondence of the responsible authorities and
organs reveal. In the case of Romanian Gypsy persecution, the influence of
race theorists such as Ion Chelcea and Iordache Fäcäoaru remained mostly
limited to propaganda, although the selection criteria and the will to
destruction, at least partly, were based on elements of race ideology. With
the deportations of Jews and Gypsies, Transnistria became to Romania
much what the General Government was to the Third Reich: the place for
executing racial policy.75
72 See Remmel, Nackte Füße : 9.

See International Commission on the Holocaust in Romania, ed. Final Report of the
International Commission on the Holocaust in Romania [led by Elie Wiesel],
presented to [the] Romanian President Ion Iliescu, Bucharest, 11th November 2004.
265-8. - Demands for an ethnic cleansing of Jews, Phanariote Greeks and Gypsies
were expressed by Constantin Papanace (1904-1984) and the Fascist-oriented
professor of Canon Law at the Theological Academy 'Andreianä' in Sibiu, Liviu
Stan (1910-1973), who also called for banning mixed ethnic marriages as well as for
gradually ghettoizing the Gypsies; see Ioanid, Radu. "The sacralised politics of the
Romanian Iron Guard." Totalitarian Movements and Political Religions 5.3 (2004):
419-53, 428; Stan, Liviu. "Rasism fa|ã de zigani-" Cuvântul. Ziar al miçcãrii
legionáře New Series, 53 (18 January 1941): 1 and 9.
See Bucur, Eugenics : 147.
On Romanian occupation policy in Transnistria, see Völkl, Ekkehard. "Das
rumänische Besatzungsgebiet 'Transnistria' (1941-1944)." Rumänien im
Brennpunkt. Sprache und Politik, Identität und Ideologie im Wandel. Ed. Krista
Zach. Munich: Südostdeutsches Kulturwerk, 1998. 67-82.

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ANTHROPOLOGY AND ETHNO-POLITICS IN ROMANIA 5 1
4. Taxonomies of Degeneration
In the late 1930s, Romanian psychiatrist Petru Tipãrescu conducted

research on 2,448 patients detained in the Bucharest Institute for Mental,
Nervous and Endocrine Diseases ( Institutul de Boli Mentale , Nervoase §i
Endocrinologice din Bucureçti ).76 His investigation aimed at the
comparative statistical quantification and percentage distribution of
psychoses and neuroses among Romanians and Jews from Wallachia and
Dobrudja.77 According to Tipãrescu, the incidence rate per 10,000
population was 3.49% for Romanians, but 29.9% for Jews, compared to
3.85% for the average of the overall population. Among the Jews, the rate
of various forms of exogenous (organic) and endogenous psychoses was
four to thirteen times higher than among Romanians. As to endogenous
psychoses, which were supposed to be hereditary, syndromes of
schizophrenia, affective psychosis and schizoaffective disorder were nine
to twenty times higher among Jews than among Romanians. In general,
degenerative phenomena were seven times more frequent in Jews than in
Romanians.78
To Tipãrescu, these results proved a biological divergence between

the studied groups, and ultimately the racial degeneration of the Jews,
which he primarily attributed to hereditary causes, but also to intoxication
(including alcoholism), infections and congenital brain lesions. Strongly
application-oriented, the author pleaded not only for the political
implementation of racial hygiene in order to favour his own ethnic in-
group, conceived as superior, but also for negative eugenic measures
against the Jews. Although pointing to the inefficiency of the public health
system and inadequate financial resources as barriers to such arrangements,
Tipãrescu, summing up, demanded radical measures of race protection.
His discourse of exclusion referred to Nicolae Constantin Paulescu,

one of the most influential maîtres à penser and propagandists of
Romanian nationalism and anti-Semitism of the interwar period. Paulescu
was a renowned professor of Physiology at the Bucharest Medical Faculty
and the first to discoverer insulin. Since 1922, together with the economist
Alexandru Constantin Cuza (1857-1944), then dean of the IaDi Law
76 See Tipãrescu, Petru. Rasã §i degenerare, cu un studiu statistic asupra jidanilor.

Bucharest: Tipografia 'Bucovina' Ilie E. Toroutiu, 1941.
77 In the following I draw on Turda, Fantasies.
Tipãrescu, Rasã : 53 and 56-7.

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52 MICHAEL WEDEKIND
Faculty, he edited the right-winged an

"National Defence" ( Apãrarea Na(ion
founded the League of National Chri
Fascist Legion of the Archangel Micha
seceded four years later. In various wr
"The Degeneration of the Jewish Race"
also by Tipãrescu, Paulescu sought to p
inferiority. His radical anti-Semitism, w
was fed by Christian-Orthodox philoso
ideas.80 Already in 1913 Paulescu had a
uninvited [Jewish] guests who, sudd
themselves in our country - or better
who at the same time are thieves and assassins? Can we exterminate them
like one kills bugs, for example? It would be the easiest and most
convenient means to quickly get rid of them - a means that would even be
legitimate if we follow the laws of the Talmud."81
However, Paulescu rejected this idea in favour of re-educating the

'Jewish race'. His concept gained ground in the political life only in the
1930s, partially following the model of National Socialism.82 The
traditional Romanian anti-Semitism, primarily based on socio-economic
and religious beliefs and widely accepted among Nineteenth-Century
intellectuals, now assumed a stronger racial and biologic component.
Numerous ideological theoreticians and opinion leaders of the Iron Guard
committed themselves to a biologistic discourse of anti-Semitism in order
to justify crude measures against the roughly 760,000 Romanian Jews,
79 On its anti-Semitic programme, see Cuza, Alexandru Constantin. "Das jüdische

Problem in Rumänien und die Doktrin der Wölkisch-christlichen Verteidigung'." Die
Weltfront. Stimmen zur Judenfrage. Erste Folge. Ed. Hans Krebs and Eugen Freiherr
von Engelhardt. Berlin - Leipzig: Nibelungen- Verlag, 1935. 55-9.
80 On Paulescu' s anti-Semitism, see Volovici, Leon. Ideologia nafionalistã $i
'problema evreiascã Eseu despre formele antisemitismului intelectual ín România
anilor '30. Bucharest: Humanitas, 1995. 48-50; Totok, William. tťNicolae Constantin
Paulescu - schifa biografícã." Revista 22. Sãptãmânal independent de analizã
politicã §i actualitate culturalã 709 (7-13 October 2003) and 710 (14-20 October
2003) <http://www.revista22.ro>; Veiga, Francisco. Istoria Gãrzii de Fier (1919-
1941): mistica ultranafionalismului. 2nd ed. Bucharest: Humanitas, 1995. 179. - On
the racial component in Romanian anti-Semitism, see Butani, Lucian T. Rasism
románese. Componenta rasialã a discursului antisemit din România pânã la al
doilea ràzboi mondial. Cluj: Editura Fundarei pentru Studii Europene, 2010.
81 Paulescu, Nicolae Constantin. Fiziologie filozoficà: Spitalul, Coranul, Talmudul,
Cahalul, Franc-Masoneria. Bucharest, 1913. 11.
82 See Volovici, Ideologia: 50.

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occasionally including the claim for physical elimination.83 These ideas

were also adopted by the age cohort of young Romanian intellectuals of the
1930s, for which Mircea Eliade (1907-1986), Constantin Noica (1909-
1987) and Emil Cioran may stand as representatives.84 They received
decisive impulses from the charismatic author Nae (proper: Nicolae C.
Ionescu (1890-1940), a Bucharest professor of Philosophy and increasingly
radical anti-Semite and influential ideologue of the political right. Many of
these young intellectuals followed their mentor and his anti-democratic
orientation, his 'dissociation from the West', his understanding of
mysticism, of the irrational in scientific insight and, of the role of
Orthodoxy in politics.
From 1937/38, racial anti-Semitism became official state policy in

Romania. Since Ion Gigurtu's (1886-1959) short time in power, in the
summer of 1940, Jews were heavily discriminated against and their legal
position defined through categories of racial biology. The ever harsher
methods of defamation, marginalization, disenfranchisement, plundering
and persecution of the late 1930s can be regarded as preliminary measures
for their subsequent destruction under the dictatorship of Marshal
Antonescu. His regime created the overall framework for the commanded
'deworming of the Romanian people' ( deparazitarea neamului románese ),
which was defined as 'field cleansing' (curãfirea terenului ) and carried
out - like in Bulgaria - in ethnically highly mixed and controversial
areas.85 The regime generated a climate of aggression, in which the violent
potential of inflamed anti-Semitism often unleashed without restraint; i
created conditions enabling to carry out the mass murder of the Jews by
police forces and military units which largely operated unimpeded -
conditions which made a bureaucratically organized execution apparatus
superfluous. As the final report of the International Commission on the
Holocaust in Romania points out, this development was supported, or at
83 See Ioanid, Sacralised Politics : 427-8; Ioanid, Radu. "The Romanian press:
Preparing the ground for the Holocaust and reporting on its implementation." Why
Didn't the Press Shout? American and International Journalism during the
Holocaust. Ed. Robert Moses Shapiro. New York: Yeshiva University Press, 2003.
391-408.
84 Among them were the sociologists Traian Herseni and Traian Brãileanu, the
Orthodox clergy and professor Alexandru Räzmerijä, the economist, journalist and
Fascist deputy Constantin Papanace and the lawyer, economist and writer Mihail
('Misu') Polihroniade (1906-1939).
See Ioanid, Radu. Evreii sub regimul Antonescu. Bucharest: Hasefer, 1998. 399.

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54 MICHAEL WEDEKIND
least tolerated, by the majority of the po

of the country.86
5. Homogenizations
In the late 1930s and early 1940s, S

famous Romanian statistician and demog
Iuliu Moldovan's Cluj school of populatio
in the country's ethnic politics.87 Under
Central Statistical Institute turned into the
population policy and into a significant
of comprehensive territorial rearrang
Southeast Europe, Manuilã gained essen
government's ethno-political decision-m
various occasions, he had presented his g
closed society' and emphasized the neces
neighbouring countries through the res
Under the impact of the dismantling of
Manuilã further sharpened his ideas. He s
to political circles - plans which enter
decision-makers from about mid-1940
86 See International Commission on the Holocaus

87 On Manuilä as a statistician, see Trebi
organizatorul statistic» çtiintifice în România."
Studii privind societatea româneascã între sec
loan Bolovan. Cluj: Centrul de Studii Transi
1995. 7-25. See also the concise biography
Handbuch der völkischen Wissenschaften. Ed
Munich: Saur, 2008. 397-402.
88 See Manuilä, Sabin. "Evolufia demograficä
Transilvania." Revista pentru çtiinfa §i ref
Romanian population Exchange : 595. See
Romanian Academy of Sciences "Structura et
din recensãmântul general al populajiei din 19
Adrian Alexandru Dumitru.] "Unele aspecte
Sabin Manuilä." Sociologie româneascã 7.1-2
proponent of the concept of 'ethnic homogene
and pro-Nazi writer, politician, poet and pro
(1889-1972), author of "Orthodoxy and Eth
published in 1938.
89 See, e.g., the press statement of the Roman
(1891-1950), dated 30 June 1940 (Achim, Rom
and Ion Antonescu's speeches before the Cou

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dissolution of the post-war order, many of the political and scholarly e

did no longer legitimize Romania's territorial status quo through
(meanwhile inefficient) reference to international treaties; instead, th
Romanian national territory was now considered the historically develop
and 'natural law' -based, settlement space of the Romanian people
thesis, which increasingly implicated measures of ethnic cleansing and
brought Romanian trans-border minorities more and more into view o
political calculation.
With Manuilã taking over the Central Statistical Institute, a

personality with expert knowledge in demography, medical science an
sociology took office at Bucharest's 28 Splaiul Unirii. Manuilã was born
on 19 February 1894 in Sâmbãteni, in the then Hungarian Banat, a
attended high school first in Arad, afterwards in the Transy lvanian city
Bra§ov. In 1913, he started Budapest Medical School which he finished
1919, after receiving a battlefield injury when serving the Austr
Hungarian Army.90 He then switched to the Institute for Hygiene and
Social Hygiene at Cluj University, where he became an assistant of Iuli
Moldovan and dedicated himself to epidemiological and racial studies as
well as to the development of the public health service. After the previ
Cluj blood group research, a 1925/26 visit to the School of Hygiene an
Public Health at Baltimore's Johns Hopkins University, granted by th
Rockefeller Foundation, drew his attention again and more intensely t
issues of biometrics, biostatistics and demography. After his return in 19
he worked as a lecturer at the Institute of Moldovan and became a General
Inspector of Public Health in Transylvania. From 1927 to 1930, he headed
the Department of Statistics at the Ministry of Labour, Health and Social
Security (Ministerul Mundi , Sãnãtâfii §i Ocrotirïlor Sociale ) of which
Moldovan was in head as sub-Secretary of State. Until 1940, Manuilã was
also a Department manager at the Bucharest Institute for Hygiene and
Public Health ( Institutul de Igienã §i Sãnãtate Publica ), led by Ion
Gheorghe Banu, a eugenics advocate and Bucharest professor of Medicine
and Race Biology, editor of the Revista de igienã sodala , and temporarily a
Romanian Health minister. Having participated, since 1929, in the
October 1941 (Braham, Randolph L. Romanian Nationalists and the Holocaust: The
Political Exploitation of Unfounded Rescue Accounts. New York: Columbia
University Press, 1998. 16 and 21).
Archives of Semmelweis University, Budapest: Egyetemi quaestura 1918, No. 159;
and Szigorlati könyv 1914-1918, No. l.c.38, I.e. 70. and I.e. 102. - I am grateful to
Dr. Lívia Vasas, General Director of the Central Library of Semmelweis University,
Budapest, for kindly providing information.

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56 MICHAEL WEDEKIND
sociological research programme of Dim

head of the Department of Demography,
Romanian Social Institute in 1935. Alr
taken teaching at various colleges in Buc
year of its foundation, Manuilã was Secre
Romanian Statistical Society ( Societatea
Manuilã made his way to the top of t

during the years when the National Peasa
participated in government (1928-1933). B
1934, he had been in head first of the 19
( Comisia pentru Recensãmântul Populaf
predecessor institution in the Ministry
follow, the Statistical Institute placed a m
minorities inside the country, especially
well as on Romanian trans-border minorities. On both issues Manuilã
composed, or instigated, numerous demographic and cartographic
contributions for various government departments. During the war, the
Institute provided expertise on the number and socio-economic condition of
Gypsies and Jews. Ever since Romania was forced, in 1940, to cede
northern Bukovina and Bessarabia to the USSR, northern Transylvania to
Hungary and southern Dobrudja to Bulgaria, the Institute worked on
91 Manuilã taught at the School of Statistics (Çcoala de Statistica) and at the School of
Welfare 'Princess Ileana' (Çcoala Superioarã de Asistenfã Socialã 'Principesa
Ileana'), until 1935 led by his wife Veturia Manuilã (born Leucujia), who also was
interested in eugenics. She had been a scholarship holder of the Rockefeller
Foundation and got her Ph.D. from the Johns Hopkins University. As an entourage
member of Marshal Ion Antonescu, she later had a certain political influence on the
dictator.
92 In the course of the Romanian census of 1930, Manuilã had first been in head of the
Ministry of the Interior's Office for Demographics, Health Statistics and Health Care
( Oficiul Demografìe, de Statisticã Sanitarã §i de Ocrotire ), founded in 1932, and
since 1933 of its successor office, the Institute of Demography and Census ( Institutul
de Demografìe §i Recensãmânt). It was through its 1934 fusion with the Ministry of
the Interior's Central Statistical Office that the Romanian Central State Institute of
Statistics ( Institutul Central de Statisticã a Statului) was founded. In the following
years, its internal organization and ministerial supervision changed rapidly. Had it
first been under the Ministry of Labour and Health and, since 1936, under the
Ministry of the Interior, from 1938 to 1941 (some interruptions aside) it passed under
the Ministry of National Economy and finally under the Presidium of the Council of
Ministers.

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cataloguing the country's population losses and assets, and on layi

groundwork for reclaiming the relinquished territories.93
In this context, which resulted in the loss of nearly a third

Romania's territory and population, Manuilã and his concept of an 'eth
homogenization' gained growing influence on governmental decisions
population policy. Manuilã was involved in outlining the negotiati
positions with Hungary and Bulgaria and, along with other collaborator
the Statistical Institute, was a member of several negotiating committees
Vienna, at the end of August 1940, the Bucharest delegation had to acce
the Hungarian territorial claims and the refusal of a Romanian-propos
trans-border population transfer. However, the assignment of souther
Dobrudja to Bulgaria through the Craiova Treaty of 9 July 1940 w
combined with a mutual Romano-Bulgarian population exchange, whic
led to the relocation of about 61,000 Bulgarians from the Romanian B
Sea districts of Tulcea and Constanta, and of about 100,000 Romani
from southern Dobrudja, including Aromanians and Megleno-Romanian
who had been settled in the Black Sea province only in the 1920s with t
goal of its ethnic reshaping.94
The October 1938 resettlement of Turks and Tartars from southern

Dobrudja to Anatolia, along with the 1940 relocation of Germans from
southern Bukovina (96,000 people), Bessarabia (93,000) and Dobrudja
(14,000) promoted ethnic homogenization. After Romania entered the war
against the Soviet Union in 1941, Manuilä's concept of homogenization
gained guiding influence on an even larger scale: On 15 October 1941 - a
day before the costly taking of Odessa by Romanian troops and a few
weeks after the start of wide-ranging expulsions of Jews from Romanian
93 Also geographers, historians and ethnographers, such as Gheorghe loan Brãtianu

(1898-1952), Ion Conea, Silviu Dragomir, Florea Florescu (*1911), Anton
Golopenjia, loan Lupa? (1 880-1967), Çtefan Manciulea (1894-1985), Simeon
Mehedinji, Tiberiu Morariu (1905-1982), Ion Nistor (1876-1962), Sabin Opreanu,
Laurian Someçan (1901-1986) and George Valsan (1885-1935), sought to provide
proof for the 'Romanianity' of the ceded territories. During the war, some of them
advocated Romanian expansion and annexation policv.
94 See Basciani, Alberto. Un conflitto balcanico. La contesa fra Bulgaria e Romania in
Dobrugia del Sud (1918-1940). Cosenza: Periferia, 2001. 96-108; Basciani, Alberto.
"Il trattato di Craiova del 7 settembre 1940 e gli scambi di popolazione tra la
Romania e la Bulgaria (1940-1943)." Umsiedlung und Vertreibung in Europa /
Spostamenti forzati di popolazioni in Europa 1939-1955. Ed. Michael Wedekind and
Davide Rodogno. Innsbruck - Vienna - Bolzano: Studien Verlag (= Geschichte und
Region / Storia e regione 18.2/2009). 155-76.

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58 MICHAEL WEDEKIND
re-conquered northern Bukovina and

memorandum on population policy to
(1882-1 946), 95 in which he outlined sce
Romania of Tomorrow' through 'ethnic h
deportation of Jews and Gypsies and pl
million persons belonging to non-Ro
complex population exchanges with n
referred to a previous conversation with
in occupied Transnistria, during which
ethno-political ideas and plans for large-
had already done before on 5 September
Ministers. Following ethnic and strategi
page memorandum, which contemplated o
Romania, outlined an almost complete
boundaries. In addition, by taking adv
configuration of power, he pleaded for c
minorities living on the thus extended R
1,350,000 Hungarians, 991,000 Ruthen
Czechs and Slovaks, 179,000 Bulgarian
transferred to the neighbouring states. T
and Turkish minority would be reserved to
the same time, however, Manuilã planne
1.6 million Romanians from the Sovie
Yugoslavia (477,000), Macedonia (200,0
(45,000) as well as from former Polan
announced a separate expertise con
deportation of Gypsies and Jews (the la
risk rather than a racial and biologica
95 See Central Historical National Archives (

Bucharest: "Sabin Manuilã" Record Group: Do
Memorandum for Marshal Ion Antonescu,
Dragomir/Dumitru, Unele aspecte : 44-51). S
Exchange.
The memorandum contained neither reference to the inclusion of Aromanians in the
proposed population policy measures nor claims to the Serbian Banat and the Timok
area, which had, however, been presented to the German and Italian governments as
well as to the German ambassador in Bucharest, Manfred von Killinger (1886-1944),
through Romanian memoranda (dating 23 April and 11 June 1941); see Haynes,
Rebecca Ann. "'A New Greater Romania?' Romanian Claims to the Serbian Banat in
1941." Central Europe 3.2 (2005): 99-120, 119. Unlike Ion Antonescu's
memorandum, dated 11 June 1941, the memorandum of the Romanian Foreign
Minister Mihai Antonescu, dated 23 April 1941, did not explicitly claim the Timok
area, although it was pointed out that the entire Balkan region between Thessaloniki

132.174.252.114 on Sat, 22 May 2021 13:55:46 UTC
according to which six million people in Southeast Europe were to b

resettled, implied complex population and territory exchanges as well as
annexations and compensations even among the neighbouring states
themselves.
Ethnic Reorganization of the Carpathian, Lower Danube and Black Sea Area
(as proposed by Sabin Manuilä, October 1941)97
area Jofsubject
J evacuation , . P°Puâtjon area 0f resettlement
, . to relocations
Western Romania 181,921 Romanians Northern Transylvania and
(Western borderland re- Békéscsaba region
gions of Maramureç, Cri-
çana, Bihor and Banat,
including the cities of Satu
Mare, Carei, Salonta and
Oradea)
{to be ceded to Hungary)
Gyula (Hungary, Romanians Békéscsaba region

County of Békés)
Békéscsaba region Hungarians Western Romania (western

(Hungary), including the borderland regions of Ma-
Romanian settlement areas ramure □, Cri Dana, Bihor
around Kétegyháza and and Banat, including the
Elek cities of Satu Mare, Carei,
{to be ceded to Romania )
Romanian Banat 42,472 Serbs Serbia

(districts of Arad, Timiç, 10,012 Bulgarians Bulgaria
Cara? and Severin)
and Timok is R
Ministry Archi
"Germania",
României, ed. Românii de la Sud de Dunãre. Bucharest: Arhivele Nationale ale
României, 1997. 309-11.
97 Added data (in brackets) are based on Florescu, Florea. "Românii din Bulgaria."
Buletinul Societàri Regale de Geografie 61 (1942): 125-43; S Dahan, AviHgdoGr.
Burning Ice. The Ghettos of Transnistria. New York: Columbia University Press,
1996. 151 (rounded figures of the 1926 Soviet census); Golopenjia, Sanda, ed.
Ultima carte. Text integral al declarajiilor ín ancheta ale lui Anton Golopenfia aflate
în Arhivele Sferviciului] R[omân de] I [nf ormaci] . Bucharest: Editura Enciclopedicà,
2001.9.

132.174.252.114 on Sat, 22 May 2021 13:55:46 UTC
60 MICHAEL WEDEKIND
area of evacuation , . P°Pulatfon

subject , . to relocations J
Serbian Banat 67,897 Romanians Romanian Banat, Cri Dana,
{to be ceded to Hungary) northern Transylvania and
parts of the former Roma-
nian district of Caliacra
Serbian Banat and Bačka 502,415 Serbs Timočka krajina (Serbia)

(to be ceded to Hungary)
Timočka krajina (S
(Romanian settlement area (Szekler settlement area)
South of the Danube,
between the Morava and
Timok rivers)
Districts o
and Pleven (Bulgaria) parts of the former Roma-
(Romanian settlement areas nian district of Caliacra
South of the Danube)
Parts of the former Bulgarians Timočka krajina (Serbia)

Romanian district of Ca- and districts of Vidin, Vra-
liacra (Southern Dobrudja, ca and Pleven (Bulgaria)
ceded to Bulgaria in 1940)
and strip of area between
Silistra and Tutrakan
South of the Danube (Bul-
garia)
(to be ceded to Romania)
Wallachia
Northern Transylvania Serbian Banat and Bačka,

western Romania (western
borderland regions of Ma-
ramureç, Cri§ana, Bihor
and Banat, including the
1.35 mil. Hungarians cities of Satu Mare, Car
Salonta and Oradea);
and a north-western borderland
strip of the district of Ti-
Szeklers mi§-Torontal (to be ceded
to Hungary ; 600,000 Hun-
garians);
northern parts of the
eastern Carpathians, Carpa-

132.174.252.114 on Sat, 22 May 2021 13:55:46 UTC
area of evacuation , . P°Puâtjon area 0f resettlement

subject , . to relocations
Eastern Carpathians Ruthenians,

(Carpathian Ruthenia) Ukrainians Transnistria
(to be ceded to Hungary)
Borderland areas of Russians, Transnistna and

southern Ukraine (to be 991,265 Ukrainians occupied Ukrainian territo-
ceded to Romania ), Buko- ries East of the Buh river
vina and Bessarabia
Bessarabia
Transnistna (290,000) Romanians Romania

(between the Dniester and
Buh rivers)
Occupied Ukrainian ter- (120,000) Romanians Romania

ritories East of the Buh
river ("Reich Commissa-
riat of Ukraine")
This R
ethno-
autho
compr
Transn
'Reich
The re
from Bukovina and Bessarabia.
Like Manuilã, the sociologist Anton Golopenjia also considered

"courageous population movements" as a solution to existing potentials of
conflict and a basis for building the "bulwark Europe."99 It is known that
even Marshal Ion Antonescu recommended a complete relocation of the
Ukrainians from Romanian territory. Since several German authorities
opposed these projects, regarded as a threat to Ukrainian collaboration,
Romanian Foreign Minister Mihai Antonescu (1904-1946) successfully
attempted on 27 November 1941 to obtain Hitler's approval.100 By that
time, the State Undersecretary for Romanianization, Settlement and
98 See Solonari, Vladimir. "An Important New Document on the Romanian Policy of
Ethnic Cleansing during World War II." Holocaust and Genocide Studies 21.2
(2007): 268-97; Solonari. Purifying.
99 Golopenfia, Anton. Die Bevölkerung der im Jahre 1940 abgetretenen rumänischen
Gebiete. Bucharest: Dacia, 1941. 19.
100 See Ioanid, Evreii : 322-3.

132.174.252.114 on Sat, 22 May 2021 13:55:46 UTC
62 MICHAEL WEDEKIND
National Inventory ( Subsecretariatul de

Inventarului National) had already survey
land to be assigned to Romanian settlers f
peasants which were to be expelled.101 T
afterwards came under the Central St
former Jewish and Bessarabian Germans' r
part was to become resettlement area
Manuilä's previous demand to Marshal An
of Ministers already in July and Nov
Bucharest Central Statistical Institute wi
conquered territories and, respectively
population beyond the Dniester and Bu
preceded, in April 1941, by a census in
meanwhile excellent technical and moder
carried out a census of Jews and Jewish p
registration of the Jews by Manuilä's de
August 1942 arrived on the desk of M
collaboration with SS-Lieutenant {Ober
(1913-1982?), Eichmann's emissary in Buc
In August 1941, the census was con

Bukovina and Bessarabia; between Dece
was followed by a population survey in Tr
the German occupation authorities, analogous works could be
accomplished, from late August 1942 to August 1943, in the districts of
southern Ukraine between the Buh river and the Donets Basin, whose
Romanian population originated from several emigration waves between
1750 and 1830.
The population coverage in the East was largely carried out by

scholars of the Central Statistical Institute, who had emerged from the
sociological school of Dimitrie Gusti: Sabin Manuilã conducted the census
in northern Bukovina and Bessarabia, together with the medical oncologist
and deputy director of the Central Statistical Institute, Dumitru ('Mitu') C.
101 See Hausleitner, Auf dem Weg: 98-9.

102 See Çtefan Popescu: Declarare - Institutul Central de Statistica - Echipa de
identificare a românilor de dincolo de Bug - Mihail Levente, 6 Januaiy 1953, in: S.
Golopentia, Ultima carte: 625-30, 627.
103 See Burgdörfer, Friedrich. "Die rumänische Volkszählung 1941." Allgemeines
Statistisches Archiv 30 ( 1941/42): 302-22.
104 See Ioanid, Evreii: 380-1.
105 See Ioanid, Evreii: 264.

132.174.252.114 on Sat, 22 May 2021 13:55:46 UTC
Georgescu (1904-1974), who had previously participated in Gusti's

sociological studies on Romanian villages and who temporarily was a
Secretary of the Department of Demography, Anthropology and Eugenics
of the Romanian Social Institute. In the area of the former Autonomous
Socialist Soviet Republic of Moldavia and in the other territories between
the Dniester and the Buh, the survey was led by the ethnographer and
sociologist Henri H. Stahl, another disciple of Gusti, whereas Anton
Golopenfia, a long-time collaborator with Gusti, was responsible for the
occupied districts East of the Buh.
The social-democratic oriented Golopenfia was born in 1909 in the

West-Romanian district of Cara§. After finishing studies at the Bucharest
Law School and the Faculty of Philosophy, since 1933 he completed his
studies in Berlin, Hamburg and Leipzig, where he got his Ph.D. in 1936
under the philosopher Arnold Gehlen (1904-1976) and the sociologist
Hans Freyer (1887-1969). He had early and close contact with Gusti, who
also suggested the topic of his thesis on "The Information of the
Government and the Traditional Sociology."106 At the beginning of the
1930s, Golopenfia participated in field research with the Romanian Social
Institute. He became a secretary to Gusti in 1932/33 when the latter held
the position as Minister of Education; from 1936 to 1939 he was an
assistant at Gusti's Department at Bucharest University and, at the same
time, Director of the Romanian Social Institute. His interests not only
focused on statistical, demographic, population-historical, sociological and
geopolitical issues, but also on problems of ethnic minorities. As early as
1936, Golopentia had demanded intensified sociological research on
minority affairs as well as for a 'scientific defence' against the revisionism
of neighbouring states. He entered the service of the Central Statistical
Institute in April 1940 where he became head of the Research Department
(Oficiul de studii ) in 1942, after having been involved in the 1941
107
census.
106 Golopentia, Anton. Die Information der Staatsführung und d

Soziologie. Ph.D. thesis, University of Leipzig. Brasov: Gött, n.d. [193
107 For additional information on Golopentia, see Costea, Çtefan, ed. An
Restituiri. Bucharest: Ararat, 1995; Costea, Çtefan, and Francise
sociolog pasionat: Anton Golopentia (1909-1951)." Viitorul social 2
37; Cotoi, Câlin. "Reactionary Modernism in Interwar Romania: Anto
and the Geopolitization of Sociology." Nationalism today. Ed. by Tom
and Krzysztof Jaskulowski. Oxford: Peter Lang, 2009. 125-53; Golop
Opere complete. Vol. 2: Statisticã, demografie §i geopolitica. Buch
Enciclopedicä, 1999; Golopentia, Çtefania, ed. Anton Golopenfia: cea
reale. Bucharest: Editura FundaDiei Culturale Romàne, 1999. 7-38; Gu

132.174.252.114 on Sat, 22 May 2021 13:55:46 UTC
64 MICHAEL WEDEKIND
Until August 1943, during its 'miss

fifteen-member commission, includin
Chelcea, registered about 120,000 ethnic
village sociology, it also carried out anth
psychological, socio-economic, lingui
(including photography and film docu
recordings).109 In addition, members of th
temporarily attached to the Commission
from the Territories beyond the Buh R
Românilor de peste Bug), which was f
Drago$ (*1896),110 State Undersecretary
and National Inventory, in order to han
Romanian Chief of Civil Administrati
extensive field research in Transnistr
Manuilã. His large-scale serial biometrie s
on race membership of the local p
justification for Romania's territorial claim
Because of military failures on the Eas

Antonescu decided to postpone the resettle
war, although the Romanian government
plan for the ethnic reorganization of
Bessarabia and the Danube estuary as
Volk, Raum und Sozialstruktur. Sozialstruktur-

Reich'. Münster: LIT 1996. 537.
See Anton Golopenfia's minute on "Lucrãrile de inseriere a moldovenilor efectúate
peste Bug de Institutul Central de Statistica in 1941-1943", dated 21 January 1950,
in S. Golopentia, Ultima carte : 6-10, 9.
109 The ethnographie research results have partially been published by Rajiu, Anton.
Romanii de la Est de Bug: cercetãri etnosociologice §i culegere de folclor.
Bucharest: Editura Funda Diei Culturale Romàne, 1994. - Ra|iu (*1916) was a
member of the Golopentia Commission which operated East of the Buh.
110Drago§, formerly a member of the National Peasant Party, was a lawyer and civil
servant. After having been a secretary general in the Ministry of Finance, he was
appointed State Undersecretary for Romanianization, Settlement and National
Inventory in December 1941, holding the rank of minister. He kept this position until
November 1943. On 17 May 1946, the Peoples' Tribunal sentenced him to fifteen
years at forced labour for having been a war criminal. Drago □ was imprisoned in
Jilava, Aiud and, finally, in Râmnicul Särat, from where he was released in March
1961.
111 See Bucur, Eugenics : 39 and 215.

132.174.252.114 on Sat, 22 May 2021 13:55:46 UTC
territories East of the Buh river.112 In the end, only about 8,000 Roman
from the Kuban region and several hundred families from the Odessa a
were actually transferred. Yet, on behalf of the Romanian Statist
Institute, Golopenfia in a memorandum from May 1943 emphasized th
importance of wide-ranging ethno-political interventions for imposin
meaning to Romania's war participation.113 He further stressed that seiz
the favourable historic moment would allow for fundamentally
reorganising the ethnic composition of Bessarabia and for "ethnic
homogenizing an irrevocable Romanian territory" by deporting ab
1 00,000 Russians and Ukrainians (some of them already listed1 14) prima
from the district of Cetatea Alba (southern Bessarabia) to southern Ukra
After the previous resettlements of Germans and Bulgarians, "another s
towards the [ethnic] consolidation of the Lower Danube area"115 should
taken. However, in light of the disastrous military situation, Ion Antone
not only postponed the resettlements in the East, but in October 1942 (m
probably because of increasing tensions with the German ally) also stop
the deportation of 272,409 Jews from pre-World War I-Romani
territories and southern Transylvania to the German concentration camp
Belžec.116
6. "How could I be who I was?"
Also in Romania, the 'mathematization' of population, the

development of taxonomies of Man, supported by presumptively reliable
and accurately obtained scientific data, and the recourse to the powerful
effects of 'numbers' characterized the thought of disciplines interested in
'population' as object of scientific study and political intervention. Carried
112 Achim, Romanian Population Exchange : 594.

113 See Anton Golopenjia's "Notã despre stadiul actual al problemei repatrierii
românilor de peste Bug," dated May 1943. in S. Golooentia. Ultima carte : 449-52.
114 *
Report
Gh[eor
10, 607.
115 See Anton Golopentia' s "Notã despre stadiul actual al problemei repatrierii
românilor de peste Bug", dated May 1943, in S. Golopentia, Ultima carte : 450.
Agreed upon on 26 July 1942 between the Romanian Foreign Minister and Deputy
Prime Minister Mihai Antonescu on the one hand and SS Lieutenant Gustav Richter,
the German 'Adviser for Jewish Questions' in Bucharest, on the other, the action was
later planned in detail together with the Romanian Commissioner for Jewish Affairs
( Imputernicitul guvernului pentru reglementarea regimului evreilor din Romania ),
Radu Lecca (1902-1980).

132.174.252.114 on Sat, 22 May 2021 13:55:46 UTC
66 MICHAEL WEDEKIND
by the will to socio-political reorganisatio

designed measures of biological and s
taxonomies, socio-ethnic diversity or ho
quasi read. Measures of exclusion or assimilation based on these
taxonomies gained operationability and the appearance of rationality and
plausibility.
The idea of 'homogenizing' the nation in conjunction with both

biologistic concepts for modernizing the society and radicalized socio-
cultural images of the enemy, and finally the quest for eliminating the elites
of alien ethnic groups, were the main movers for developing 'scientific'
racial theories. They were a response not only to foreign revisionist claims,
but primarily to a reality dominated by ethnic, cultural and religious
plurality that was perceived as deviance against the leading Western
European nation model. It was this diversity to which exclusivist and anti-
modernist concepts of national identity were opposed.
Although in a different dimension than in Nazi Germany, also in

Romania a close connection between 'race science' and politics can be
perceived: In the 1930s, Iuliu Moldovan and Ion Gheorghe Banu assumed
ministerial responsibility in the health care sector, pursuing the political
implementation of eugenic concepts. Again, the name of Iuliu Moldovan
and even more that of his disciple Iordache Fácãoaru, who had served the
National-Legionary government and later took over policy advisory
functions under the Antonescu regime, can stand for the cooperation of
eugenicists with policy-makers and the (admittedly diminishing) support of
the authoritarian regime since 1938. Representatives of these scientific
disciplines introduced biologistic mindsets and discourses of exclusion into
the society and supported their popularization. They planned and
legitimized the marginalisation and even the destruction of ethnic and
socio-cultural minorities, seeking to provide social acceptance and a
rational understanding for these interventions.
Scholars generating statistical knowledge and data were, however,

even more closely related to the sphere of interventionist population
management than the eugenicists. The Central Statistical Institute planned
and flanked Antonescu's programme of 'ethnic homogenization', which
was strongly influenced by Sabin Manuilã and his biologistic categories.117
117 See Achim, Viorel. "Romanian-German collaboration in ethnopolitics: the case of

Sabin Manuilä." German Scholars and Ethnic Cleansing (1920-1945). Ed. Ingo
Haar and Michael Fahlbusch. New York - Oxford: Berghahn, 2005. 139-54, 139-42.

132.174.252.114 on Sat, 22 May 2021 13:55:46 UTC
As a scientific policy adviser, the Institute also provided data and materials
which enabled the implementation of ethnic extermination. Some of the
Institute's assistants, who had emerged from Gusti' s Sociological school in
Bucharest and Moldovan's Eugenic school in Cluj, were directly involved
in strategies of ethnic and social reorganisation carried out during the
Second World War in Romanian occupied territories.118
The question "How could I be who I was?", which Cioran -

politically converted in his Paris exile - presented to himself with
retrospect to his Fascist past, remained unanswered in socialist post- War
Romania - a country from which Manuilã emigrated in the USA in 1948
after having initially kept his functions; in which Golopentia died as
political prisoner in 1951; and in which eugenicist Petre Râmneanju
continued his academic career unchecked. Post-socialist Romania too,
however, struggles to come to terms with its Fascist and fascistic past.
These problems arise from shortcomings in the political culture of the
country that, at least partially, are to be ascribed to the epoch in question.
118 Since the end of 1944, both Manuilã and Golopentia had been engaged in the
registration of Transy lvanian Saxons to be deported in the USSR for forced labour.
Further on, Manuilã compiled materials meant for supporting Romania's territorial
claims for northern Transylvania on the Paris pace conference; see Hausleitner,
Ethnokratie : 107.

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THE MATHEMATIZATION OF THE HUMAN BEING: ANTHROPOLOGY AND ETHNO-

POLITICS IN ROMANIA DURING THE LATE 1930s AND EARLY 1940s

Stable URL: https://www.jstor.org/stable/41759355

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THE MATHEMATIZATION OF THE HUMAN BEING:

1. How to become a Romanian?

" Comment peut-on être Roumain ?" provocatively asked Romanian-

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Among the intellectual and political

Representatives of the humanities and the social, health and medical

Interwar sociologist and an early representative of eugenics Dimitrie

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sociological and strongly biological population studies of the Romania

Comparable claims were made by representatives of the Romanian

sociologique de Bucarest après cinquante ans / The Sociological School of Buchares

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Romanian eugenicists, most of whom

Geographers such as Simion Mehed

How did the interventionist orientat

9 Conea, Ion. "Geopolitica. O çtiinjã nouä

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of the cultural and political life contributed to the diffusion of eugenic

So far historiography has paid little attention to these topics.15

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Furthermore, research on Romania's pa

This article examines aspects of the

2. Doom in the Laboratory

In the early 1930s, the Institute fo

This massive presence of Hungari

17 See, e.g., Hausleitner, Mariana. "War Antone

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distinguishing between Szeklers, regarded as 'assimilable', from the rest

The scientific foundation of Bucharest's assimilation strategies in th

These theories were flanked by the Cluj Institute of Hygiene, whic

Romania: Regionalism, Nation Building and Ethnic Struggle 1918-1930. Itha

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before had got his Ph.D. degree in Gener

On its behalf, as early as 1924, Sabin M

A prerequisite for this method was the evidence of the heritability of

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turned from conventional morphological metric anthropology to an interes

Hirszfeld's biochemical race indices for Romanians and Hungarians

Schneider, William H. "The rise and fall of sero-anthropology." Actes du XXXe

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Social Román),26 teams under the di

26 On the Romanian Social Institute, see Larionescu, Maria. "Institutul Social

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Serological racial diagnostics had the aura of scientific innovation

However, the determination of blood group distribution, considered

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figures, was deemed capable of provid

The Szekler studies were conducted by Petre Râmneanju (1902-

Râmneanfu collected Szekler population data in the course of

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The Romanian blood group studies were summed-up by Gheorghe

Râmnean^u used the same procedure of comparative blood group

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