Formulating Germanness in the Banat : ‘minority making’ among the Swabians from Dualist Hungary to interwar Romania

Abstract

This article examines the shaping of a dominant discourse on Germanness among the Banat Swabians, a German-speaking minority community, over a long period of upheaval. Particularly following WWI, debates over what it meant to be German gained significance as a means of political contestation and a way of mobilizing the Swabian community vis-à-vis the Romanian state. While appeals to belonging within a broader German nation were popularized, the symbols developed to convey this affiliation showed particular local and regional understandings of Banat Swabian Germanness—a trend that only began to change in the 1930s, as these symbols were appropriated by new challengers.