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With the ratification of the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages (ECRM) the Romanian state guarantees all members of national minorities the right to preserve, develop and express their ethnic, cultural, linguistic and religious identity.
The charter offers a catalogue of more than 100 activities; at least 35 should be chosen and put into practice by the member states, as is stated in the Declaration of Commitment.
The article analyses, using the example of “education”, which activities Romania has chosen in its first report on the implementation of ECRM (2010) and how the international commission of experts evaluate the application of the Charter in Romania in their inspection report (2012).
The article is devoted to a historical German settlement in present-day Slovakia, since the small German minority of the lumberjacks/woodcutters (Slovak. Huncokári) has received little attention. The urgency of the need for research is also pointed out, since there are only very few speakers of this dialect left. The article therefore informs about some background of the settlement history, the present state and about approaches for ethnological field research.
In the 1930s and 40s the leading political figures of the German minority in Romania embraced a pro-fascist attitude. Therefore, after the WWII, Germans had to suffer expropriation, deportation and privation of civil rights. Since 1949 they were permitted to rebuild their cultural life which – according to the communist paradigm – had to be „Marxist in its content and national in shape“. In 1956 an Institute for Social Studies and the Humanities of the Romanian Academy was created in Sibiu in order to continue important scientific projects of the German minority, and since 1959 the review Forschungen zur Volks- und Landeskunde appeared as a tribune of Transylvanian studies. Although the editorial staff had to make concessions to the communist regime, its members tried to keep high scientific standards. Therefore the review Forschungen, the sole scientific periodical of the Romanian Academy published in German, was one of the most important reviews of the time.
The paper deals with letters of the publicist, poet and translator Viktor Orendi-Hommenau addressed in 1944 to Rudolf Spek (1893-1953), the director of the Brukenthal-Museum in Sibiu. The letters are preserved in the handwritings collection of the Museum’s Library. Before the 23rd of August 1944, when Romania was an ally of the Axis in WWII, Orendi-Hommenau enjoyed high esteem, but when the country changed sides and joined the Allies, the German minority was considered the “Fifth Column” of Nazi Germany and consequently had to suffer. The poet became so poor, that he was forced to ask Spek for help in order to survive. In 1946 the worst was overcome and Orendi-Hommenau became optimistic again.
The tendency to apply media in regional studies for students of German as a foreign language (Deutsch als Fremdsprache, DaF) is no longer a novelty. Thus, we see media applied as such in multiple different forms, like videos, press releases, radio segments or online statements. This contribution is focused on the radio interview, as a constitutive part of the regional studies’ courses for DaF students of Germanistik in Romania. As a starting point serves the assumption, that the application of visual media can be enhanced through dialogue sequences, which further highlight the subject of the course. Through chosen interviews, that have been aired by the state channels, students can become familiar with such issues, that affect the German minority in Romania. The authenticity that is being sought for, will result from the primary situation of the interviewer and the interviewee communicating, as well as through the utilization of Rumäniendeutsch as the standard language of the German minority, living in Romania. Thus can cultural, social, historical and linguistic phenomena that are specific for the local German speaking population and that are (re)constructing the cultural inheritance of Germans in Romania, be regarded in greater detail.