Hungarians In Romania

The Hungarian minority of Romania ( hu, Romániai magyarok; ro, maghiarii din România) is the largest ethnic minority in Romania, consisting of 1,227,623 people and making up 6.1% of the total population, according to the 2011 Romanian census, the second last recorded in the country's history.

Most ethnic Hungarians of Romania live in areas that were, before the 1920 Treaty of Trianon, parts of Hungary. Encompassed in a region known as Transylvania, the most prominent of these areas is known generally as Székely Land ( ro, Ținutul Secuiesc, links=no; hu, Székelyföld, links=no), where Hungarians comprise the majority of the population. Transylvania also includes the historic regions of Banat, Crișana and Maramureș. There are forty-one counties of Romania; Hungarians form a large majority of the population in the counties of Harghita (85.21%) and Covasna (73.74%), and a large percentage in Mureș (38.09%), Satu Mare (34.65%), Bihor (25.27%), Sălaj (23.35%), and Cluj (15.93%) counties.

There also is a community of Hungarians living mostly in Moldavia, known as the Csángós. These live in the so-called region of Csángó Land in Moldavia but also in parts of Transylvania and in a village of Northern Dobruja known as Oituz.

History

Historical background

The Hungarian tribes originated in the vicinity of the Ural Mountains and arrived in the territory formed by present-day Romania during the 9th century from Etelköz or ''Atelkuzu'' (roughly the space occupied by the present day Southern Ukraine, the Republic of Moldova and the Romanian province of Moldavia). Due to various circumstances (see Honfoglalás), the Magyar tribes crossed the Carpathians around 895 AD and occupied the Carpathian Basin (including present-day Transylvania) without significant resistance from the local populace. The precise date of the conquest of Transylvania is not known; the earliest Magyar artifacts found in the region are dated to the first half of the 10th century.

In 1526, at the Battle of Mohács, the forces of the Ottoman Empire annihilated the Hungarian army and in 1571 Transylvania became an autonomous state, under the Ottoman suzerainty. The Principality of Transylvania was governed by its princes and its parliament (Diet). The Transylvanian Diet consisted of three Estates (Unio Trium Nationum): the Hungarian nobility (largely ethnic Hungarian nobility and clergy); the leaders of Transylvanian Saxons-German burghers; and the free Székely Hungarians.

With the defeat of the Ottomans at the Battle of Vienna in 1683, the Habsburg monarchy gradually began to impose their rule on the formerly autonomous Transylvania. From 1711 onward, after the conclusion of Rákóczi's War for Independence, Habsburg control over Transylvania was consolidated, and the princes of Transylvania were replaced with Habsburg imperial governors. In 1765 the ''Grand Principality of Transylvania'' was proclaimed, consolidating the special separate status of Transylvania within the Habsburg Empire, established by the '' Diploma Leopoldinum'' in 1691. The Hungarian historiography sees this as a mere formality. Within the Habsburg Empire, Transylvania was administratively part of Kingdom of Hungary.

After the Austro-Hungarian Compromise of 1867, Transylvania became an integral part of the Kingdom of Hungary again, with Hungarian becoming the official language and Magyarization being introduced in the region not soon after.

Following defeat in World War I, Austria-Hungary disintegrated. The ethnic Romanian elected representatives of Transylvania, Banat, Crișana and Maramureș proclaimed Union with Romania on 1 December 1918.

With the conclusion of World War I, the Treaty of Trianon (signed on 4 June 1920) defined the new border between the states of Hungary and Romania. As a result, the more than 1.5 million Hungarian minority of Transylvania found itself becoming a minority group within Romania. Also after World War I, a group of Csángó families founded a village in Northern Dobruja known as Oituz, where Hungarians still live today.

In August 1940, during the Second World War, the northern half of Transylvania was returned to Hungary by the second Second Vienna Award. Historian Keith Hitchins summarizes the situation created by the award: ''Some 1,150,000 to 1,300,000 Romanians, or 48 per cent to over 50 per cent of the population of the ceded territory, depending upon whose statistics are used, remained north of the new frontier, while about 500,000 Hungarians (other Hungarian estimates go as high as 800,000, Romanian as low as 363,000) continued to reside in the south.''
The Treaty of Paris (1947) after the end of the Second World War overturned the Vienna Award, and the territory of northern Transylvania was returned to Romania. The post-World War II borders with Hungary agreed on at the Treaty of Paris were identical with those set out in 1920.

After the war, in 1952, a Magyar Autonomous Region was created in Romania by the communist authorities. The region was dissolved in 1968, when a new administrative organization of the country (still in effect today) replaced regions with counties. The communist authorities, and especially after Nicolae Ceaușescu's regime came to power, restarted the policy of Romanianization.

Today, "Transylvania proper" (bright yellow on the accompanying map) is included within the Romanian counties ('' județe'') of Alba, Bistrița-Năsăud, Brașov, Cluj, Covasna, Harghita, Hunedoara, Mureș, Sălaj (partially) and Sibiu. In addition to "Transylvania proper", modern Transylvania includes Crișana and part of the Banat; these regions (dark yellow on the map) are in the counties of Arad, Bihor, Caraș-Severin, Maramureș, Sălaj (partially), Satu Mare, and Timiș.

Post-communist era

In the aftermath of the Romanian Revolution of 1989, ethnic-based political parties were constituted by both the Hungarians, who founded the Democratic Union of Hungarians in Romania, and by the Romanian Transylvanians, who founded the Romanian National Unity Party. Ethnic conflicts, however, never occurred on a significant scale, even though some violent clashes, such as the Târgu Mureș events of March 1990, did take place shortly after the fall of Ceaușescu regime.

In 1995, a basic treaty on the relations between Hungary and Romania was signed. In the treaty, Hungary renounced all territorial claims to Transylvania, and Romania reiterated its respect for the rights of its minorities. Relations between the two countries improved as first Hungary, then Romania, became EU members in the 2000s.

Politics

The Democratic Union of Hungarians in Romania (UDMR) is the major representative of Hungarians in Romania, and is a member of the Unrepresented Nations and Peoples Organization. The aim of the UDMR is to achieve local government, cultural and territorial autonomy and the right to self-determination for Hungarians. UDMR is a member of the European Democrat Union (EDU) and the European People's Party (EPP). Since 1996, the UDMR has been a member or supporter of every governmental coalition.

Political agreements have brought the gradual implementation of Hungarian language in everyday life: Public administration Law 215/2002 stipulates "the use of national minority languages in public administration in settlements where minorities exceed 20% of the population"; minority ethnics will receive a copy of the documents in Romanian language and a translation in their language; however, official documents are preserved by the local administration in Romanian only; local administration will provide inscriptions for the names of localities and public institutions under their authority, and display public interest announcements in the native language of the citizens of the respective ethnic minority under the same 20% rule.

Even though Romania co-signed the European laws for protecting minorities' rights, the implementation has not proved satisfactory to all members of Hungarian community. There is a movement by Hungarians both for an increase in autonomy and distinct cultural development. Initiatives proposed by various Hungarian political organizations include the creation of an "autonomous region" in the counties that form the ''Szekler region'' ('' Székelyföld''), roughly corresponding to the territory of the former Hungarian Autonomous Province as well as the historical Szekler land that had been abolished by the Hungarian government in the second half of the 19th century, and the re-establishment of an independent state-funded Hungarian-language university.

However, the situation of the Hungarian minority in Romania has been seen by some as a model of cultural and ethnic diversity in the Balkan area: In an address to the American people, President Clinton asked in the midst of the air war in Kosovo: ''Who is going to define the future of this part the world... Slobodan Milošević, with his propaganda machine and paramilitary forces which compel people to give up their country, identity, and property, or a state like Romania which has built a democracy respecting the rights of ethnic minorities?''

Notable Hungarians of Romania

Sports

Several ethnic Hungarians have won Olympic medals for Romania.
* Iolanda Balaș (Jolanda Balázs) (2G) High-jump 1960 and 1964.
* Ileana Silai (Ilona Gergely) (S) 800m 1968
* Ecaterina Szabo (Katalin Szabó) (3G-individual, 1G-team 1S-individual) Gymnastics 1984
* Emilia Eberle (1G, 1S, 1B) 1996, 2000 (father Hungarian)
* Corneliu Oros

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