Paper short abstract:

We discuss the case of Transylvania which, in 1918, was united with the mother country, used ethnographic knowledge to demonstrate its belonging to the Romanian people, an exercise that called for field research: collecting ethnographic material, collecting folklore, questionnaire method.

Paper long abstract:

Starting from the concrete facts and figures which, in 1910 (when Transylvania was part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire and in the possession of Hungary), showed that over half of the population of Transylvania was Romanian but that this population was overwhelmingly rural and only three nations were recognized (Szeklers, Hungarians and Saxons, the Romanians being a tolerated nation) we will explain the need for Transylvanian ethnographers to assert the identity, cultural and spiritual belonging of Transylvania to the Romanian latinity. After 1918 (Great Union), the cultural country project, aimed to replace the minorities elites with the Romanian ones and to bring the cultural level of the masses of Romanians closer to that of the non-Romanians. In Transylvania, the cultural conquest of the cities was proceeding - university, theater, opera in Cluj. Ethnographic research, based on the solid foundation of the traditional village, on the study of the population speaking neo-Latin and on the applied methods (the collection of ethnographic material, the collection of folklore, the use of the questionnaire method) provided the establishment of the Ethnographic Museum of Transylvania in 1922, of the Archive of Folklore of the Romanian Academy in 1930, of the University Department of Ethnography and Folklore in 1926, in order to represent the Romanian ethnic being in a province coming from the Austro-Hungarian Empire.