Maintaining a “German” home in Southeast Europe: Transylvanian Saxon nationalism and the metropolitan model of the family, 1918-1933

In the interwar period, Transylvanian Saxons looked to models from the metropole by which to reform the Saxon community and reinforce their social standing relative to other ethnicities in Transylvania. In doing so, they were influenced by the ongoing debate in Germany over the “national character” of the German family. Saxon social reformers treated the metropolitan family as a prescriptive model providing a safe path to modernity that could be seamlessly integrated with traditional Saxon culture. In practice, social reformers selectively adopted and carefully adapted to local needs the metropolitan models that they urged the community to accept. They did so by dividing external influences into those that were beneficial, and thus “German”, and those which were harmful, and therefore “foreign”. The plurality of influences from Germany before 1933 facilitated the selective adoption of metropolitan models for emulation. This flexibility declined rapidly after 1933. National Socialism, which was far less tolerant of regional variations and interpretations, generated tensions between local and national. This article explores the articulation of the Saxon family in the context of domesticity, female emancipation, moral decline, eugenics and economics.