Expropriation in Romania in 1945

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The expropriation in Romania in 1945 by the Land Reform Act of 23 March 1945 was the end of the Second World War in the late Kingdom of Romania and the newly created People's Republic of Romania (1948-1965) and was a mainly against Romania German directed state deprivation of property of "collaborators of Third Reich ”. Around 75 percent of the Romanian German population lived in rural areas, of which around 95 percent were expropriated. In addition, the Land Reform Act of March 23, 1945 provided for the abolition of large estates and their allocation to peasants who had no possessions. Large farmers of all ethnicities whose land holdings exceeded 50 hectares were expropriated .

The Nationalization Act of June 11, 1948 finally regulated the nationalization of all natural resources and industrial, commercial, commercial and transport companies, including insurance companies and banks.

history

Political situation

One day after the royal coup in Romania in 1944 and the accompanying change of sides by the Kingdom of Romania during World War II, the platform of the left-wing “National Democratic Front” founded by the Romanian Communist Party saw the expropriation and internment of the Transylvanian-Saxon and Banat Swabian people on August 24th "Hitlerists" and the nationalization of German companies and those of their accomplices. On September 27 and October 10, 1944, the Romanian government dealt with the question of internment, expulsion and expropriation of the Romanian Germans. The Second World War and the ongoing government crises initially prevented these measures from being implemented. The communist justice minister Lucrețiu Pătrăşcanu wrote in his book “Problems de bază ale României” ( German  main problems of Romania ), published in early October 1944 , that “the problem” with the dissolution of the “German ethnic group” had not yet been resolved; Petty bourgeoisie will be smashed before they can "build a new society".

A parallel campaign against Romanian Germans ran in the Romanian press. The communist newspaper Scânteia called on November 24, 1944 in its article "Romanians and Saxons in Tartlau" to eliminate the unequal distribution of land by expropriating the Transylvanian Saxons in order to "put an end to centuries of injustice". The social democratic Libertatea of September 12 and the communist România Liberă of October 1 demanded the immediate internment, expropriation and expulsion of the Germans. The newspaper România Liberă stated: “The German property that has been taken from the mouths of the Romanian workers and peasants must be expropriated immediately and returned to those from whom it was stolen. In free and democratic Romania , neither the Saxons nor the Swabians nor their accomplices should have any other place than in camps. Democracy and freedom cannot be desecrated through such channels. ” Iuliu Maniu , leader of the National Peasant Party ( Partidul Național Țărănesc ), which is mainly based in Transylvania , spoke out in favor of resettling and thus expropriating the Romanian Germans and Magyars in Romania .

execution

The people's democratic government under Petru Groza , newly established on March 6, 1945, initiated a land reform law by decree of March 23, 1945, a “national, economic and social necessity”. According to the law, the following categories of landowners were to be expropriated: “ Reichsdeutsche ” citizens and Romanian citizens “ Volksdeutscher ” who had worked with the German Reich (“Hitlerists”), war criminals and those “responsible for the misfortune of the country” who had fled the country after August 23, 1944, absenteeists, dead-hand goods and 50 hectares of land owned by any ethnic group.

The implementation regulations of April 11, 1945 stipulated that not only the members of the Waffen-SS and Wehrmacht , but all members of the Romanian Germans were to be expropriated. These were all German farmers in the country, with the exception of those of German origin who took part in the Romanian army in the war against Germany after August 23, 1944 or Germans who could prove direct “anti-Hitlerist activity”.

area Number of
expropriated
owners 		Extent of the
expropriated
land		 Average size
of expropriated
estates
In Transylvania 62.157 345,598 ha 5.5 ha
In the Tisza plain
(Banat and Sathmar)		 73,381 362,760 ha 4.9 ha
In the regat including
Bukovina and Dobruja		 7,681 735,553 ha 95.7 ha

According to the law, the expropriated land, along with the entire economic inventory and livestock, became the property of the state, which divided the land and distributed it to farmers who were entitled to property rights. Farmers without soil, with little soil and those who had fought against Germany in the last phase of the war were preferred. The allocated land should not exceed five hectares. Forests and vineyards remained in state ownership, as well as a certain state reserve of arable land, tractors, threshing machines, mowing machines, traction engines and combine harvesters.

So-called colonists were brought in from abroad where the number of native Romanians or Roma was insufficient to take over the property of German origin. These were residents of Romanian neighboring communities or farmers from the Western Carpathians (" Motzen "), from Maramureș , from Oltenia , Muntenia or Macedonia .

Although the expropriation regulations related to land, cattle, equipment and machines, houses and farms were also included. In quite a few cases even household items, clothes and food reserves were illegally included. Those of German origin were either housed in the huts of the now wealthy new owners or in their former property in a back room, an outbuilding or in the summer kitchen, or several German families were merged into one house. In the course of 1945, people of German origin were allowed to bring in the current harvest.

The expropriation seldom took place in a regulated manner. The farmers of German descent often had to work as day laborers for the new "masters", lease their own land or work it for half the yield, as the new farmers hardly had any agricultural knowledge of their own. Banat Swabians, Saxons in northern Transylvania and the Kokel area returning from their flight , as well as the Bukovina and Dobruja Germans who were resettled in 1940 and were partly forcibly repatriated after the Second World War , were often not allowed into their home villages or, if necessary, expelled from them. The Evangelical Church AB in Romania was also affected, although churches and monasteries were expressly excluded from the provisions of expropriation.

The Romanian German urban population was initially less affected by the expropriation measures. Craftsmen's businesses, trading companies, pharmacies, banks and factories of German origin mostly continued to work until 1948, even if not entirely undisturbed. At any time there was a risk of being arrested and convicted as a “saboteur”, while at the same time increased wage and tax demands often made companies unprofitable. Some Romanian-German manufacturers were forced to hand over their businesses, including the management of the “Hermannstädter Allgemeine Sparkassa”, which was taken over by a Romanian director and board member appointed by the state in 1947, while the deposed management was arrested.

In the course of the socialist transformation of society, the law of June 11, 1948 nationalized all mineral resources and industrial, commercial, commercial and transport companies as well as insurance companies and banks. This expropriation measure affected all Romanian citizens; it created the “socialist sector in industry” and thus the basis for the central administration economy. Banks were nationalized, and the expropriation also included savings and stocks. All gold and foreign currency holdings had to be turned over to the state; Failure to do so often resulted in torture and imprisonment. Those affected were often expelled from their nationalized homes and mostly evacuated with their families to other localities. The repressive measures were stopped for the time being in 1949. In 1952 the nationalization of industry reached 97%, in trade 76%.

Effects

Around 1.1 million hectares of land have been divided among more than 900,000 farming families, almost half of whom had previously owned no land of their own. However, the land reform did not produce the hoped-for successes; In addition, the country was hit by an excessive drought in 1946, which starved large parts of the population. The Romanian German peasantry became de facto dispossessed by the land reform. Although the proportion of Germans in the total population was only about 2.2 percent (in 1948 there were 343,913 people out of 15.9 million of the total population), 49 percent of the expropriated land was in the areas inhabited by Germans in Transylvania and the Banat. A further complicating factor for the dispossessed of German origin was the fact that their able-bodied women and men were deported for forced labor in the Soviet Union in January 1945 , so that the main breadwinners of the families were often absent. During this time there was a strong influx of Romanian colonists into the formerly predominantly German communities, after which there were hardly any towns in which the German population formed the majority, which was beneficial for the state policy of "Romanization".

State farm in Chelmac , Arad County , 1952

For the Romanian Germans, the land reform with the associated collectivization of agriculture in Romania meant a radical professional and social restructuring. Before the Second World War, around 70 percent of the Transylvanian Saxons were employed as self-employed farmers, in 1956 only 25 percent of Romanian Germans worked in agriculture, as farmers in agricultural production cooperatives (“collectives”) or as wage laborers on state farms. In contrast, the percentage of workers at 56.8 percent was well above the national average of 29 percent. Those of German origin looked around for new professions and generally tried to get a higher education.

In 1946 and 1947, the Romanian government planned to forcibly relocate the Romanian-German peasantry to Moldova , Muntenia, Dobruja, Maramureş, the Szekler and Sathmar areas . The deportation lists by name included 22,498 families with 96,452 people, i.e. a third of the Romanian German rural population. At the beginning of February 1947, the Protestant Bishop Friedrich Müller-Langenthal and the Catholic Bishop Augustin Pacha spoke out against Prime Minister Petru Groza and the Communist functionary Emil Bodnăraș against this already decided resettlement, but it is not clear why the plans were ultimately not implemented.

After the falling out between the communist leaders Josef Stalin ( Soviet Union ) and Josip Broz Tito ( Yugoslavia ), triggered by different views on the economic and political development in the emerging Eastern Bloc and the consequent exclusion of Yugoslavia from the Cominform alliance in June 1948, the Tensions between Yugoslavia and Romania, who professed Stalin, are increasing. The population of the western Banat in the area of ​​the Romanian-Yugoslav border was classified by the Romanian government as a security risk. For this reason, on March 15, 1951, the Romanian leadership decided to clear the border area "from politically unreliable elements". About 40,000 people from 297 villages, about a quarter of them with a Banat Swabian background, were deported there to cultivate the Bărăgan steppe . About half of the deportees were classified as "kulaks and innkeepers". Another large part of the affected group consisted of Bessarabians , Mazedo Romanians and Serbs .

Decree No. 2694 of December 7, 1955 regulated the return of the deportees as well as the restitution of their land and their houses. It stipulated that all persons who were allowed to return to their regions of origin on the basis of the Council of Ministers resolution No. 326 S of 1951 “to secure the necessary labor in the state estates of the Ialomița and Galați regions” and would have their fields and houses returned there. The resolution recommended that the agricultural production cooperatives, which had been established in the meantime, accept the returnees from Bărăgan as members. However, the agricultural land was not returned in 1956 because it had already passed into the possession of the collective and state economy, so that only the houses and the gardens belonging to them were returned to their former owners. The houses were often occupied by immigrants or in ruins.

Filip Geltz - initially first secretary and from 1951 chairman of the German Anti-Fascist Committee for Romania - was from April 1956 to February 1957 as minister for communal economy and local industry in the government of the then Prime Minister Chivu Stoica with the “reparation for the Germans as a result of the previous citizenship Discrimination inflicted damage ”. The Ministry of Geltz dealt with "tens of thousands of complaints", which in the summer of 1956 led to the issuing of a decree on the return of houses and farms to expropriated German-born owners, of whom around 22,000 received their farms and houses back by the end of 1956. In the period from 1948 to 1956, the proportion of those employed in agriculture among Romanian Germans fell from 74 percent to 22 percent.

Press reviews

An article in the social democratic newspaper Poporul (German Das Volk ) in Brașov ( German  Kronstadt ) on August 4, 1946, entitled “What are we doing with the Saxons?” Advocated the resettlement of the Transylvanian Saxons within the country:

“Anyone who has recently visited the villages in our district was certainly pleasantly surprised to find a new picture in these villages. Especially in Heldsdorf and Marienburg you can see strange people, new figures, peasants with tight trousers ('ițari') and women with skirt aprons ('catrințe') and necklaces in the large houses with high gates. They are colonists from the Argesch area who were brought to our region to be wealthy. The costume of the people from Argesch obviously brings something new between the old walls and the tall churches, which are built like castles for eternity.
According to the law, the agricultural commissions divided the land expropriated by Saxony to the [Romanian] inhabitants of the community, and colonists were brought in for the excess. However, it was forgotten to plan what would happen to the expropriated owners. As we have consequently been able to establish, the previous and present owners live in the same courtyards, even in the same houses. It is quite a difficult situation for both one and the other. If the Saxons remain calm and do not offer resistance, as was reported at the beginning of the work on agrarian reform, it is no less true that they regard everything as a temporary measure and wait for the opportune moment to regain their rights. Working in the same fields and living in the same houses, there is a risk that one day the embers that glow today will be kindled and we will have victims ”. The article also suggested isolating the Transylvanian Saxons and removing them from their villages. It is regrettable that deportation outside the country, such as in Czechoslovakia and Hungary, is not possible.

The national liberal newspaper Flamura liberală (German Liberal Flag ) found out on September 26, 1946 in Bucharest that

"The Saxons are of particular importance for the economic development of Romania and for their current economic recovery". The article spoke out against a collective guilt "with which the Saxons were burdened because of their recent turn to Germany" and expressed figuratively that one does not punish the entire German minority because of "some dry branches in the crown of the otherwise healthy tree" may. The Saxons are "not a national threat to Romania, but productive elements, for whose integration into the economy a solution should be found". At the moment, however, the farmers are threatened with hunger as a result of the agrarian reform.
"We therefore have in the midst of the Romanian people [because of the expropriation] a considerable number of people with crossed hands in our laps, of whom we, if a legal functional framework is found for their use, the regions concerned would no longer suffer so much, but in the The opposite would have to be won, since the labor of the Saxon people is highly productive, qualitative as well as quantitative. Consequently, the question of whether the Saxons are a danger to the Romanians must be answered with a categorical and decisive 'no'. On the contrary. An important part of our national economy is in danger without the labor force, without the work and without the productive power of the Saxon nation living with us ”.

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Hannes Schuster: Bucharest decrees "second expropriation" against Germans. In: Siebenbürgische Zeitung, volume 12, July 31, 2001, p. 1
  2. ↑ Hannelore Baier : Ackergrund, devices, wagons, houses. In: General German newspaper for Romania , April 23, 2012
  3. ^ A b c d Michael Kroner : Through the land reform 60 years ago, the Germans in Romania were expropriated and economically deprived of power. In: Siebenbürgische Zeitung, episode 6, April 15, 2005
  4. ↑ a b Federal Ministry for Expellees, Refugees and War Victims : Documentation of the expulsion of Germans from East Central Europe. Volume III: The Fate of the Germans in Romania , Section b. The economic situation of the ethnic Germans after the land reform . 1957, p. 86E ff.
  5. ↑ Monitorul Oficial, Part I, No. 134 of June 13, 1946: The provisions on the (2nd) agrarian reform in Romania ( Memento of February 22, 2014 in the Internet Archive ) , translations of the legal texts. In: Ernst Wagner: Sources for the history of the Transylvanian Saxons , Cologne, Vienna 1976, pp. 349–351
  6. ↑ Federal Ministry for Expellees, Refugees and War Victims : Documentation of the expulsion of Germans from East Central Europe. Volume III: The Fate of the Germans in Romania , Section b. The economic situation of the ethnic Germans after the land reform . 1957, p. 89E
  7. ↑ Edgar Hösch : History of the Balkan countries: from the early days to the present , Beck's historical library, CHBeck Verlag, 2008, ISBN 3-40657-299-5 , 454 S., p. 253
  8. ^ Wilhelm Weber : The fate of the Germans in the Banat after the coup d'état on 23rd August 1944 up until the deportation to the Bărăgan Steppes ( Memento of December 27, 2011 in the Internet Archive ) , in English
  9. ↑ Hans Gehl : Dictionary of Danube Swabian Lifestyles , Institute for Danube Swabian History and Regional Studies - Edition 4 of the series "Donauschwäbische Fachwortschätze" and Edition 14 of the series of publications by the Institute for Danube Swabian History and Regional Studies , Franz Steiner Verlag, 2005, ISBN 3-51508-671- 4 , 97 pp., 31
  10. ^ Wilhelm Weber: Legislation and Council of Ministers resolutions on the Bărăgan deportation , Munich, 1998
  11. ^ A b Hannelore Baier: The Germans in Romania 1953-1959. In: H-Soz-u-Kult, Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin , December 17, 2007. Conference report From thaw to frost. German and other minorities in Southeastern Europe 1953-1963 , 2. – 3. November 2007, Klausenburg / Cluj, Romania.
  12. ↑ Stelian Neagoe: Istoria guvernelor României de la începuturi - 1859 până în zilele noastre - 1995. Editura Machiavelli, Bucharest 1995, in Romanian
  13. ↑ Federal Ministry for Expellees, Refugees and War Victims: Documentation of the expulsion of Germans from East Central Europe. Volume III: The Fate of the Germans in Romania. 1957, pp. 117E and 118E