Marius Turda- The Nation as Object- Race, Blood and Bio Politics in Interwar Romania

8/8/2019 Marius Turda- The Nation as Object- Race, Blood and Bio Politics in Interwar Romania

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The Nation as Object: Race, Blood, and Biopolitics in Interwar RomaniaAuthor(s): Marius TurdaSource: Slavic Review, Vol. 66, No. 3 (Fall, 2007), pp. 413-441Published by: The American Association for the Advancement of Slavic Studies

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The Nation as Object:Race, Blood, and Biopolitics in Interwar RomaniaMarius Turda

Introduction: Biopolitics and National PoliticsIn 1926, the Romanian social hygienist and eugenicist Iuliu Moldovanpublished Biopolitica, a book Maria Bucur described as "amanifesto thatcalled for a total eugenic state based on biological principles?an entirelynew way of organizing politics in Romania."1 By introducing biopoliticsinto Romanian public discourse, Moldovan was not just adopting a characteristically versatile modernist term, he was also investing it with aspecific

national mission: to directdisparate

narratives of historical experience and cultural traditions toward the idea of improving the racialqualities of the nation.2 The nation was portrayed as a living organism,functioning according to biological laws and embodying great physicalqualities, symbols of innate virtues transmitted from generation to generation. Equally important, the relationship between nation and state wasturned into a specific scientific form of knowledge, one based on biology.Biopolitics thus operated through investigations of biological processesregulating the triadic relationship between individual, nation, and state.3

Research for this article was funded by the Marie Curie Fellowship. Iwould also like to thankRobert Pyrah, Matt Feldman, and the anonymous referees at Slavic Review for their constructive comments and suggestions. I am deeply indebted to Mioara Georgescu andDr. Sanda Hondor from Biblioteca Documentara de Istoria Medicinii a Institutului deS?n?tate Publica, Bucharest; Nicolae Leasevici from Institutul de Antropologie Fr. I.Rainer,Bucharest; and Ioana Patriche and R?zvan P?r?ianu for helping me locate articles andbooks.

1. Iuliu Moldovan, Biopolitica (Cluj, 1926). See also Maria Bucur, Eugenics and Modernization in Interwar Romania (Pittsburgh, 2002), 83. Many of Moldovan's biopolitical ideasresurfaced in articles and books he published in the 1940s. See, for example, I.Moldovan,Statut etnic (Sibiu, 1943) and Moldovan, Introducere ?n etnobiologie si biopolitica (Sibiu,1944).2. The first discussion of biopolitics was attempted in 1911 in the modernist journal

TheNewAgein reference to policies of public health, reproduction, and social welfare. Thisarticle established a strong connection between these policies and the state, which wasseen as the only institution capable of implementing those policies. See G. W. Harris, "BioPolitics," The New Age 10, no. 9 (28 December 1911): 197. Another trend was to insist onthe fusion between political science and materialist sociology in order to explain the functioning of the state as a biological organism. One such interpretation was first suggested

by Morley Roberts, Bio-Politics: An Essay in thePhysiology, Pathology and Politics of the Social andSomatic Organism (London, 1938). For an early conceptualization of this direction, see Albert Somit, "Biopolitics," British Journal ofPolitical Science 2, no. 2 (1972): 209-38; for morerecent developments, see Ira H. Carmen, "Biopolitics: The Newest Synthesis?" Genetica99,nos. 2/3 (1997): 173-84.3. It was largely in this sense that Michel Foucault employed the term in the late

1970s, in connection with his theory of governmentality. See Michel Foucault, Naissance dela biopolitique:Cours au Coll?ge de France (1977-1978) (Paris, 2004); and Maarten Simons,"Learning as Investment: Notes on Governmentality and Biopolitics," Educational Philoso

phy and Theory 38, no. 4 (2006): 523-40. An enlarged definition was proposed by EdwardRoss Dickinson, according to whom biopolitics should include "medical practices from regimes of personal hygiene to state organized public health campaigns and institutions;SlavicReview 66, no. 3 (Fall 2007)


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414 Slavic Review

Ultimately, Moldovan insisted, biopolitics should become national politics. How was this transformation possible?During the interwar period, biological concepts became necessarycomponents of national identity.4 In addition, eugenics, racial anthropol

ogy, and serology received official endorsement from governments andpolitical regimes throughout Europe.5 Accompanying this transformationof the national body into an object of political adoration was the elevationof biopolitics as the emblematic symbol of modern theories of nationalidentity; indeed, the fusion between the need for biological identificationand the quest for national rejuvenation contributed to the transformationof biopolitics into national politics.Yet inmost scholarship dealing with interwar Romania, biopolitics has

not received the attention it deserves. The emphasis is either on literaryand religious constructions of national identity or on cultural politics andgenerational conflict.6 According to this interpretation, participants in thedebate about the nation appropriated themes that were created by successive generations of poets, linguists, and historians.7 There are a few notableexceptions, including Maria Bucur's above-mentioned study of the historyof Romanian eugenics, Radu Ioanid's examination of the politics of the

social welfare programs; racial sciences, from physical anthropology to the various racialtheories; eugenics and the science of heredity; demography, scientific management and

occupational health; and the related disciplines and practices such as psychiatry and psychology." See Edward Ross Dickinson, "Biopolitics, Fascism, Democracy: Some Reflectionson Our Discourse about 'Modernity,'" Central European History 37, no. 1 (2004): 3-4.4. Zygmunt Bauman, Modernity and Ambivalence (Ithaca, 1991); Ann Laura Stoler,Race and the Education ofDesire: Foucault sHistory of Sexuality and the Colonial Order of Things(London, 1995); Tzvetan Todorov, Hope and Memory: Lessons from the Twentieth Century(Princeton, 2004) ;and Roger Griffin, Modernism and Fascism: The Sense of a Beginning underMussolini and Hitler (London, 2007).

5. Margit Sz?ll?si-Janze, ed., Science in the Third Reich (Oxford, 2001); and MariusTurda and Paul J.Weindling, eds., "Blood and Homeland": Eugenics and Racial Nationalism inCentral and Southeast Europe, 1900-1940 (Budapest, 2006).6. Much of the recent literature dealing with nationalism in interwar Romania is indebted to Benedict Anderson's influential conceptualization of the nation as a cultural,imagined artifact. See Benedict Anderson, Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Originand Spread of Nationalism (London, 1986). According to Anderson, the idea of race doesnot play an important role in shaping nationalist imagination. For a different view, see

Nancy Leys Stepan, "The Hour of Eugenics": Race, Gender, and Nation in Latin America (London, 1991) ;Ann Laura Stoler, Carnal Knowledge and Imperial Power: Race and the Intimate inColonial Rule (Berkeley, 2002); and Marius Turda, The Idea ofNational Superiority in CentralEurope, 1880-1918 (New York, 2005).

7. See Katherine Verdery, "National Ideology and National Character in Interwar Romania," and Keith Hitchins, "Orthodoxism: Polemics over Ethnicity and Religion in In

terwar Romania," both in Ivo Banac and Katherine Verdery, eds., National Character andNational Ideology in Interwar Eastern Europe (New Haven, 1995), 103-33 and 135-56;Katherine Verdery, National Ideology under Socialism: Identity and Cultural Politics in Ceausescus Romania (Berkeley, 1991); Sorin Alexandrescu, Paradoxul rom?n (Bucharest, 1998);Irina Livezeanu, Cultural Politics in Greater Romania: Regionalism, Nation Building and EthnicStruggle, 1918-1930 (Ithaca, 1995); and Irina Livezeanu, "Generational Politics and thePhilosophy of Culture: Lucian Blaga between Tradition and Modernism," Austrian HistoryYearbook^ (2002): 207-37.


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Race, Blood, and Biopolitics in Interwar Romania 415Iron Guard, as well as Viorel Achim 's and Michael Wedekind's investigations of Romanian ethnopolitics during the 1930s and 1940s.8Romanian philosophers and literary critics did, however, make use ofracial typologies and racial arguments in their definitions of the nation,and it is essential that their presence in the cultural and political debatesof the interwar period be acknowledged.9 Complementing literary definitions of national identity, Romanian eugenicists and anthropologists focused on physical objects, such as crania and various archaeological artifacts. By conducting technical experiments, such as cataloguing andclassifying the blood groups within the population, they hoped to createwhat they considered to be scientific knowledge about the nation. Inother words, eugenics and racial anthropology aimed at creating a national ontology, wherein the nation as object was deemed paramount.These physical representations of the nation allowed eugenicists and anthropologists to engage in allegedly objective incursions into the ethnicfabric of society, contrasting their interpretations of national identity withthose viewed as more subjective, particularly literary texts.In this article, Iwill look at Romanian anthropological and serological research during the interwar period and examine how it shaped

biopolitical visions of an idealized Romanian Volksgemeinschaft.10 At thetime, the physical contours of the nation captured the attention of specialists and lay commentators alike, from skeptical believers in the historical destiny of the nation to those obsessed with national essence andspecificity. In this context, anthropological and serological research provided scientific legitimacy to the assumption that there was a racial nucleus within the Romanian nation that the natural and social environmentcould not obliterate; this racial nucleus was what anthropology and serology identified as "Romanian."

8. Radu Ioanid, "The Sacralised Politics of the Romanian Iron Guard," TotalitarianMovements and Political Religions 5, no. 3 (2004): 419-53; Viorel Achim, "RomanianGerman Collaboration in Ethnopolitics: The Case of Sabin Manuil?," in Ingo Haar andMichael Fahlbusch, eds., German Scholars and Ethnic Cleasing, 1919-1945 (New York, 2005),

139-54; and Michael Wedekind, "Wissenschaftsmilieus und Ethnopolitik im Rum?niender 1930/40er Jahre," in J?rgen Reulecke, Josef Ehmer, und Ursula Ferdinand, eds., Herausforderung "Bev?lkerung": Festschrift zum 80. Geburtstag Rainer Mackensens (Wiesbaden,2007).

9. See H. Sanielevici, "De ce rasa e poporul rom?n," in H. Sanielevici, Noiprobl?me literare, politice, sociale (Bucharest, 1927), 127-36; H. Sanielevici, "Rasa, limba ?i culturab??tina?ilor Daciei," in H. Sanielevici, Literatura si suinta (Bucharest, 1930), 17-46; Ion Pill?t, Rassengeist und v?lkische Tradition in der neuen rum?nischen Dichtung (Jena, 1939);C. R?dulescu-Motru, "Rassa, cultura si nafionalitatea in filozofia istoriei," Arhivapentru stiin?a si reforma social? 4, no. 1 (1922): 18-34; and Garabet Ibr?ileanu, "Caracterul specific?n literatura," Operen (Bucharest, 1977), 92-94.10. Unfortunately, space limitations do not permit me to deal here with Saxon racialresearch in Transylvania during the interwar period, Austrian racial research in the Banat

during the 1930s, or Hungarian serology in northern Transylvania after 1940. Hence racialresearch in this article is referred to as "Romanian," as it deals only with Romanian researchers. For the Austrian research in the Banat, see Maria Teschler-Nicola, "'Volksdeutsche' and Racial Anthropology in Interwar Vienna: The 'Marienfeld Project,'" inTurda and Weindling, eds., "Blood and Homeland, "55-82.


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416 Slavic ReviewAfter World War I, Romania's territory nearly doubled. It included the

ethnically diverse regions of Transylvania, Bessarabia, and northernBukovina, thus prompting the Romanian state to engage in an unparalleled process of nationalization and centralization.11 Not surprisingly, addressing Romania's ethnic diversity became central to biopolitical programs elaborated during the interwar period. Both anthropology andserology devoted considerable attention to the ethnic map of Romania, ingeneral, and Transylvania, in particular. Not only was this region notoriously multiethnic; Romanian nationalists traditionally viewed it as thecradle of the Romanian nation despite its long inclusion in the Kingdomof Hungary.12 "Anthropologically, Transylvania represents the center notthe periphery of the Romanian nation," the Romanian geographer N. Al.R?dulescu asserted in a memorandum submitted in 1941 to the GermanRasse- und Siedlungshauptamt (RuSHA).13 Indeed, the interwar period sawthe growth of a large body of Romanian racial writings dealing with Transylvania and its ethnic communities.14

Harnessing biological forms of national belonging to back up thescientific evidence provided by serology and anthropology was characteristic of racial politics in interwar Europe. In Romania, however, allegoriesof race and blood?especially insofar as they represented an intensification of national loyalties?were particularly appealing. In interwar Romania, it was nationalism rather than scientific commitment that determined the position one took on the question of racial anthropology and

serology.11. The institutional and political difficulties experienced by the Romanian state after 1918 have been the subject of much analysis. In addition to classic works such as HenryL. Roberts, Rumania: Political Problems of an Agrarian State (New Haven, 1951); Kenneth

Jowitt, ed., Social Change in Romania, 1860-1940: A Debate on Development in a European Nation (Berkeley, 1978); and Daniel Chirot, ed., The Origins of Backwardness in Eastern Europe(Berkeley, 1989) ;see Keith Hitchins, Rumania, 1866-1947(Oxford, 1994) ; ohn R. Lampeand Mark Mazower, eds., Ideologies and National Identities: The Case of Twentieth-Century

SoutheasternEurope (Budapest, 2004);

andJohn

R.Lampe,

Balkans into SoutheasternEurope:A Century ofWar and Transition (Basingstoke, Eng., 2006).

12. The subject generated an extensive scholarship. Such animated interest notwithstanding, critical evaluations are rare. See Katherine Verdery, Transylvanian Villagers: ThreeCenturies of Political, Economic, and Ethnic Change (Berkeley, 1983); L?szl? P?ter, ed., Historians and the History of Transylvania (Boulder, Colo., 1992); Keith Hitchins, A Nation

Affirmed: The Romanian National Movement in Transylvania, 1860-1914 (Bucharest, 1999);and L?szl? K?rti, The Remote Borderland: Transylvania in theHungarian Imagination (NewYork, 2001).13. N. Al. R?dulescu, "Anthropologische Beweise f?r das Alter und die Ureinwohn

erschaft der Rum?nen in Siebenb?rgen" (1941), Central State Archive Prague, file Reichsprotektor in Boehmen und Maehren, No. 114, Office RuSHA, Box 1, p. 12. Iwould liketo thank Michal Sim?nek for drawing my attention to this document. See also N. Al.

R?dulescu, Antropologie rasiala si antropogeografia (Bucharest, 1941).14. Although the main focus here is on racial research dealing with Transylvania, itshould not be assumed that other regions (and ethnic groups) were not subject to constant anthropological attention. See, for example, I. Botez, Contribuai la studiul taliei si alindicelui cephalic inMoldova de nord si Bucovina (Ia?i, 1938), and Olga C. Necrasov, Etude anthropologique de laMoldavie et de la Bessarabie septentrionales (Bucharest, 1941).


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Race, Blood, and Biopolitics in Interwar Romania 417

New Paradigms in Racial SciencesDuring the interwar period, racial terminology was fluid and underminedby divergent interpretations. Race was both a physical entity?one anthropologist described it as the "sum-total of somatological characteristics"?and a cultural artifact, the result of specific historical conditions.15As there was no consensus about what constituted race; neither did anthropologists agree on how many races populated Europe. Attempts towork through this problem are detectable in the effort to standardizeracial cartography. Here, three models competed for prominence. Thefirst was proposed by the French naturalist and anthropologist Joseph

Deniker, who identified six primary races: Northern, Eastern, IberoInsular, Western or Cenevole, Littoral or Atlanto-Mediterranean, and

Adriatic or Dinaric; along with four subraces: sub-Northern, Vistulian,Northwestern, and sub-Adriatic.16 Another model was outlined by theAmerican racial cartographer William Z. Ripley, who insisted that therewere only three European races: Teutonic, Alpine (Celtic), and Mediterranean.17 The German racial anthropologist Hans F. K. G?nther suggested that there were five European races: Nordic, Western, Dinaric,Eastern, and Baltic.18 All three authors considered the cephalic index tobe a reliable instrument for classification, meaning that cranial capacitywas what differentiated races: some were dolichocephalic (long-headed),mainly Northern and Ibero-Insular races; others were brachycephalic(short-headed), like Eastern, Western, and Dinaric races; and some raceswere mesocephalic (medium-headed).19 The more a race possesseddolichocephalic and brachycephalic characteristics, the more it claimed asuperior position within the hierarchy of European races.20Toward the end of the nineteenth century, however, the utility of cranial research for racial purposes was viewed with increasing suspicion.21

15. J. Deniker, The Races ofMan: An Outline of Anthropology and Ethnography (London,1900), 8. For a discussion of the relationship between the concept of race and physical anthropology, see Paul Topinard, "De la notion de race en anthropologie," Revue d'anthropologie 8, no. 2 (1879): 589-660.16. Deniker, Races ofMan, 325-35.17. William Z. Ripley, The Races of Europe: A Sociological Study (New York, 1899).18. Hans F. K. G?nther, Rassenkunde Europas, 2d ed. (Munich, 1926). See also Arnos

Morris-Reich, "Race, Ideas, and Ideals: A Comparison of Franz Boas and Hans F. K. G?nther," History of European Ideas 32, no. 3 (September 2006): 313-32.19. In 1842, the Swedish anatomist Anders Retzius (1796-1860) first used the ratioof width to length to distinguish between dolichocephalic and brachycephalic crania, thusestablishing a craniological comparative study of racial groups. For a discussion of different anthropological traditions of race, see Anders Retzius, Coup d'oeil sur V?tat actuel de l'ethnologie au point de vue de laforme du crane osseux (Geneva, 1860).

20. For a description, see Carlos C. Closson, "The Hierarchy of European Races,"American Journal of Sociology 3, no. 3 (1897): 314-27. For how ideas of racial classificationwere used in different institutional contexts, see Frederik Barth, Andre Gingrich, RobertParkin, and Sydel Silverman, One Discipline, Four Ways: British, German, French, and AmericanAnthropology (Chicago, 2005).

21. See the critique provided by G. M. Morant, "A Preliminary Classification of European Races Based on Cranial Measurements," Biometrika 20, nos. 3-4 (1928): 301


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418 Slavic ReviewThis suspicion was a symptom of the growing dissatisfaction with the concept of race, in general.22 As one form of racial research was slowly fallinginto disrepute, new

ones wererapidly making progress. Serology was oneof these. The innovative work by physiologists, immunologists, and

pathologists, like Karl Landsteiner?who discovered human bloodgroups (A, B, O) around 1900?and Ludwik Hirszfeld?who confirmedthat the percentage of blood groups in a population varied according toracial origin?not only helped the emergence of serology as a disciplinepreoccupied with deciphering the chemical properties of blood groupsfor the benefit of improving medical assistance (such as blood transfusions and the discovery of new vaccines), but also brought the fascinationwith blood into the mainstream of anthropological research.23 The ideaof "biochemical races," as Hirszfeld called them, provided racial anthropologists with a new method for classifying races by more accurate, biochemical means rather than by using highly contested anthropom?triecharacteristics. Equally important, serology also demonstrated that bloodgroups were inherited according toMendelian laws of heredity, thus conferring upon race a distinguishing attribute impervious to internal or external influences.24 As the Italian haematologist Leone Lattes declared inhis 1923 Uindividualit? del sangue: "The fact of belonging to a definiteblood group is a fixed character of every human being, and can be alteredneither by the lapse of time nor by intercurrent diseases."25 Since cranial

measurements had proved incapable of providing definitive answers tohistorical questions about racial identity, national ideologues hoped thatserology could offer the scientific certainty needed to legitimize theoriesof biological uniqueness.75. See also Benoit Massin, "From Vichow to Fischer: Physical Anthropology and 'ModernRace Theories' inWilhelmine Germany," in George W. Stockingjr., ed., Volksgeist asMethodand Ethic: Essays on Boasian Ethnography and the German Anthropological Tradition (Madison,1996), 79-154.

22. See Paul J. Weindling, "Central Europe Confronts Racial Hygiene: FriedrichHertz, Hugo

Iltis andIgnaz

Zollschan as Critics of RacialHygiene,"

in Turda and Weindling, eds., "Blood and Homeland, "263-80.

23. For a general discussion of serology and blood groups, see Paul Steffan, Handbuchder Blutgruppenkunde (Munich, 1931); P. P. Negulescu, Geneza formelor culturii: Priviri criticeasupra factorilor ei determinant (Bucharest, 1934); Fritz Schiff and William C. Boyd, BloodGrouping Technic: A Manual for Clinicians, Serologists, Anthropologists, and Students of Legal and

Military Medicine (New York, 1942); Arthur Ernest Mourant, The ABO Blood Groups: Comprehensive Tables and Maps of World Distribution (Oxford, 1958); Kathleen E. Boorman andBarbara E. Dodd, An Introduction to Blood Group Serology: Theory, Techniques, Practical Applications, 2d ed. (London, 1961); William H. Schneider, "Chance and Social Setting in the

Application of the Discovery of Blood Groups," Bulletin of theHistory ofMedicine 57 (1983):545-62; and Pauline M. H. Mazumdar, "Blood and Soil: The Serology of the Aryan RacialState," Bulletin of theHistory ofMedicine 64 (1990): 187-219.24. L. Hirschfeld [Hirszfeld] and H. Hirschfeld, "Serological Differences between theBlood of Different Races," The Lancet 197, no. 2 (18 October 1919): 675-79. The Romanianpresentation of Hirschfeld 's research appeared in 1922. See C. Velluda, "Dr. L. Hirschfeld?i Dna Dr. Hirschfeld, Incerc?ri de aplicaciune a medodelor serologice ?n problemaraselor," Clujul medical3, no. 12 (1922): 367-68.

25. Leone Lattes, Individuality of the Blood in Biology and in Clinical and Forensic Medicine (1st Italian ed., 1923; London, 1932), 43.


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Race, Blood, and Biopolitics in Interwar Romania 419As symbols of national belonging, race and blood transcended science; they operated within a new nationalist register, one unifying the

physiognomy of the nation and its resurrected spirituality.26 Subscribingto this axiom, anthropological and serological research redefined thebody of the nation according to the scientific standards of the age,whereby the physical and spiritual qualities of the nation were placed under close inspection by both state agencies and individuals entrusted withthe role of protecting them.

Romanian Racial AnthropologyRomanian anthropologists were rather late in producing a racial narrativefor territories that had been the focus of other competing national anthropologies before World War I. It was the French anthropologist

Eug?ne Pittard who conducted one of the first racial investigations in Romania.27 In "Recherches anthropologiques sur les Roumains de Transylvanie" (1919) and, especially, in Etude sur l'indice c?phalique en Roumanie(1927) Pittard argued that Romanians from the Old Kingdom were

dolichocephalic, while those from Bukovina and Transylvania werebrachycephalic, thus suggesting that the Romanian nation was composedof different racial types.28 A similar argument was advanced by the director of the Institute of Anatomy in Cluj, the physician and anatomist Victor Papilian. In a series of articles published in the 1920s, Papilian hopedto demonstrate the existence of "special cephalometric characteristics"among the Romanians in Transylvania. He concluded that the cranialcharacteristics of Romanians from Transylvania differed from those ofboth Romanians in the Old Kingdom and Hungarians in Transylvania.Compared with the latter groups, the former were "hyperbrachycephalic"

(round or broad-headed) and "mesocephalic": they belonged to a different racial substratum.29

26. For the role "blood" has played in shaping European imagination since theMiddle Ages, see Uli Linke, Blood and Nation: The European Aesthetics of Race (Philadelphia,1999).27. See, for example, Eug?ne Pittard, "Anthropologie de la Roumanie: Nouvellesrecherches sur le Skoptzy," Bulletin de la Soci?t? Roumaine des Sciences 22, nos. 4-5 (1913):

298-328; Pittard, Anthropologie de la Roumanie: Les Peuple Sporadiques de la Dobrudja(Bucharest, 1913); and Pittard, Anthropologie de la Roumanie: Documents somatologiques pourl'?tude des Tsiganes (Bucharest, 1915).

28. Eug?ne Pittard, "Recherches anthropologiques sur les Roumains de Transylvanie," Revue anthropologique 29, nos. 3-4 (1919): 57-76; and Pittard, together withAlexandru Donici, Etude sur l'indice c?phalique en Roumanie avec un essai de repartition g?ographique de ce caract?re (Bucharest, 1927). See also Eug?ne Pittard, Les Peuples des Balkans:Esquisses anthropologique (Paris, 1916); and Pittard, La Roumanie (Paris, 1917). Pittard exercised a lasting influence on Francise I. Rainer, the first director of the Institute of Anthropology in Romania. See Francise Rainer, Enqu?tes anthropologiques dans trois villages roumainsdes Carpathes (Bucharest, 1937).

29. Victor Papilian, "Studiul indicelui cranian vertical ?i transverse-vertical pe craniile de romani ?i maghiari," Clujul medical 1, no. 9 (1920): 763-77; Papilian, "Cercet?riantropologice asupra rom?nilor ardeleni," Clujul medical 2, no. 11 (1921): 335-39; and Papilian, "Nouvelles recherches anthropologiques sur la t?te des Roumains de Transylvanie,"


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420 Slavic ReviewGiven the use of the tandem dolichocephalic-brachycephalic in these

anthropological writings dealing with ethnic groups in Transylvania?particularly the alleged racial divide between Romanians from the OldKingdom and those from the newly united provinces, as well as betweenRomanians and Hungarians?the conclusions reached by cranial research contravened the general rhetoric of Romanian nationalism, whichinsisted on national unity and ethnic homogeneity.In fact, anthropological theories, like those expressed by Pittard andPapilian, encouraged researchers to believe in the existence of a specificRomanian racial type, one that they located in Transylvania. One such supporter was the sociologist and anthropologist Ion Chelcea, who analyzedthe crania collection existing in the Museum of Natural History in Viennaassembled by the Austrian anthropologist Augustin Weisbach in the secondhalf of the nineteenth century.30 Methodologically, Chelcea followed thecraniological principles outlined by the German anthropologist RudolfMartin in his 1914 Lehrbuch der Anthropologie, especially individual cranialmeasurements (length, breadth, diameter, and so on).31 Based on theseprinciples, Chelcea grouped Romanian crania into six racial types: RomanMediterranean (or Ibero-Mediterranean), Nordic, Kurgan, Dinaric, Dar?an, and Avar-Turanic. Practically, however, he followed the Romaniannationalist tradition and thus pointed to the existence of a "Dar?an racialtype," which was to be found especially among the inhabitants of the

Apuseni (Western) Mountains in Transylvania.32Chelcea's anthropological reflections suggest that although he waspersuaded by Pittard's arguments about Romania's racial diversity?forhe found it perfectly possible to differentiate between Romanian craniafrom Transylvania and the rest of Romania?his description of "Dar?an"cranial characteristics bears more than a passing resemblance to Pittard'santhropological writings. The graphic illustration of this resemblance notonly indicates a direct influence, it is also a testament to the way in whichracial anthropology turned nationalist in Romania and became increasingly obsessed with racial specificity.Substantiating Chelcea's claim about the existence of a distinct Romanian racial type was the idea of racial permanence?an idea that servedas amedium for various cultural constructions of the national past duringthe interwar period. For instance, an oft-voiced image underpinning Romanian nationalist tradition was the notion that the territories constitutingGreater Romania had frequently been invaded (from the Romans ofantiquity to the Magyars of the Middle Ages and the Jews of modern

Revue anthropologique 33, nos. 9-10 (1923): 337-41. Although Bucur notes that Papilianused "notions of hereditary determinism in evolution to define the parameters of [his]own scientific discipline, anthropology," she does not provide any evidence to support theclaim. See Bucur, Eugenics and Modernization in Interwar Romania, 70.30. Ion Chelcea, "Tipuri de cranii rom?ne?ti din Ardeal (Cercetare antropol?gica),"Academia Romana: Memoriile Secfiunii ?tiin?fice 10, no. 3 (1934/35): 341-68.

31. Rudolf Martin, Lehrbuch der Anthropologie in systematischer Darstellung mit besondererBer?cksichtigung der anthropologischen Methoden (Jena, 1914).32. Chelcea, "Tipuri de cranii," 360-62.


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times).33 This idea was neither new nor specifically Romanian: the countries of central and southeast Europe (especially the Balkans) have been repeatedly singled out as extremely heterogeneous ethnic regions.34 Yet thistroubled history only confirmed what Romanian nationalists overtly proclaimed with respect to the national past: only a race superior in its qualities could have survived centuries of dislocation and foreign domination.What constituted that race was the subject of heated debates, as commentators could not agree whether itwas Roman, Dacian-Roman, Dacian, orDacian-Roman-Slavic. For Chelcea, itwas the "Dacian racial type" that theRomanians deemed theirs and that gave them the right to rule over territories where descendants from that race either now lived or had lived.35

This racial expression of national identity may be seen as challengingthe scientific credentials claimed by anthropology; yet itmay also be seento be defining a specific process of national metamorphosis. Sorin Antohidescribes this process as "ethnic ontology," whereby universal categoriesare appropriated and transformed by nationalist traditions.36 We may seethe emergence of this "ethnic ontology" in the topical resemblance between the writings of such different authors as the historian Vasile P?rvan,the poet Lucian Blaga, and the philosopher Mircea Vulc?nescu.37 As thesewriters overtly employed the image of a Romanian national essence and

obsessively sought to integrate it into the discussion of national culture inRomania, it is possible to see the way in which the very concept of race became absorbed into the nationalist rhetoric of inclusion and exclusion,epitomizing the encounter between individuals representing differentethnic groups and cultures.Such a transformation of the national culture in Romania favored theemergence of an anthropological tradition complementary to yet distinctfrom that set out by western European scholars, like Eug?ne Pittard,

Augustin Weisbach, or Viktor Lebzelter.38 Iordache F?c?oaru, a racial

33. For the classical version of this narrative, see Nicolae Iorga, Histoire des Roumainset de leur civilisation (Paris, 1920).34. See, for example, Jovan Cvijic, La P?ninsule Balkanique: G?ographie humaine (Paris,1918); and Christian Promitzer, "Vermessene K?rper: 'Rassenkundliche' Grenzziehungenim s?d?stlichen Europa," in Karl Raser, Dagmar Gramshammer-Hohl, and Robert Pichler, eds., Europa und die Grenzen im Kopf (Klagenfurt, 2004), 357-85.35. N. Densu?ianu, Dada prehist?rica (Bucharest, 1913); A. Donici, "Crania Scythica:Contribution ? l'?tude anthropologique du crane scythe et essai relatif ? l'origine g?o

graphique des scythes," Academia Romana: Memoriile Secfiunii ?tiin?ifice 10, no. 3(1934/1935): 289-329; and N. Lahovary, "Istoria ?i o nou? metoda de determinare a

raselor," Arhivapentru stiinf? si reforma social? 7, nos. 1-2 (1937): 122-73.36. Sorin Antohi, "Romania and the Balkans: From Geocultural Bovarism to EthnicOntology," Tr@nsit online (Europ?ische Revue) 21 (2002), available at http://www.iwm

.at/index.php?option = com_content&:task=view&:id=235&Itemid=411 (last consulted25May 2007).37. See Vasile P?rvan, Dada: An Outline of the Early Civilizations of the CarpathoDanubian Countries (Cambridge, Eng., 1928); Lucian Blaga, "R?volta fondului nostru

nelatin," in Iordan Chimet, ed., Dreptul la memorie (Cluj, 1993), 3:41-43; and MirceaVulc?nescu, Dimensiunea rom?neasc? a existenfei (Bucharest, 1991).

38. See, for example, the anthropological framework suggested by Viktor Lebzelter,"La R?partition des Types Raciaux Romano-M?diterran?ens en Roumanie," L'Anthropologie


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422 Slavic Review

eugenicist affiliated with the Institute of Hygiene and Social Hygiene inCluj and the Institute of Statistics in Bucharest, was one author who contributed significantly to the crystallization of this tradition.39 F?c?oaru embraced the study of Romanian racial history with unabashed nationalistfervor. A new national politics required a committed racial anthropology,and F?c?oaru openly stated: "In our national politics, anthropology hasthe role of clarifying some of the most important issues concerning ourpolitical rights over the territory we possess and over the territories we donot possess."40 In proffering this assumption, F?c?oaru made clear reference to a new direction in Romanian national politics. Whereas Papilianand Chelcea expressed a restrained interest in connecting racial anthropology to biopolitics, F?c?oaru openly engaged in constructing a Romanian racial ontology, including all territories where Romanians could be

found.41That F?c?oaru was devoted to developing a Romanian biopolitical

program becomes evident when one turns to his racial studies.42 Whenhe declared in 1937 that the final goal of racial anthropology was to

45, nos. 1-2 (1935): 65-69. Despite his critical attitude toward Lebzelter and others, whenit came to explaining racial variety and composition, Iordache F?c?oaru had to rely on theracial taxonomies produced by western European anthropologists. He thus accepted six criteria for racial classification:height,

thecephalic index,

the facial index, the nasal index,and eye and hair color. Based on these criteria, F?c?oaru then identified four principalraces: Alpine, Dinaric, Mediterranean, and Nordic; and five secondary races living in Romania: Dalic, East-European, Oriental, West-Asian, and Indian. The study was first published as "Criteriile pentru diagnoz? rasial?," Buletin eugenic si biopolitic 6, nos. 10-11-12(1935) :341-68; and later as a brochure in the collection edited by the Institute of Hygiene

and Social Hygiene in Cluj. See I. F?c?oaru, Criteriile pentru diagnoz? rasial? (Cluj, 1936).39. Contrary to what Bucur assumes, F?c?oaru did not study in Berlin and did not receive a PhD in sociology. See Bucur, Eugenics and Modernization in Interwar Romania, 37. Interestingly, later in the book she partly corrects this by saying that F?c?oaru "had com

pleted his Ph.D. in anthropology at the University of Munich in 1929." Bucur, Eugenics andModernization in Interwar Romania, 112. In fact, F?c?oaru received his PhD (cum laude)from the Faculty of Philosophy at the University of Munich in 1931. He studied pedagogywith Aloys Fisher, anthropology with Theodor Mollison, and racial hygiene with Fritz Lenz.See Studenten-Kartei: F?c?oaru Jordache, O-Np-SS 31, Archiv der Ludwig-Universit?t

M?nchen and the Archive of Ministry of Health, Bucharest, F?c?oaru Iordache, PersonalFile, No. 10.489. I would like to thank Michael Wedekind for drawing my attention toF?c?oaru 's student files and to Alexandru Dumitriu in Bucharest for his help in locatingF?c?oaru 'spersonal files.40. Iordache F?c?oaru, "Socialantropologia ca ctiinf? pragmatista," Buletin eugenic sibiopolitic9, nos. 9-10 (1938): 358.41. A similar perspective was advocated by Petru R?mneanfu, "Rom?nii dintreMorava ?i Timoc ?i continuitatea spapului lor etnic eu al rom?nilor din Banat ?i din Timocul bulgar," Buletin eugenic si biopolitic 12, nos. 1-4 (1941): 40-62; and E. Petrovici,"Rom?nii dintre Morava ?iTimoc," Transilvania 72, no. 3 (1941): 201-11. For a discussionof Romanian irredentism in the 1940s, see Rebecca Ann Haynes, "'A New Greater Romania?' Romanian Claims to the Serbian Banat," Central Europe 3, no. 2 (2005): 99-120.

42. See especially the articles F?c?oaru published in Germany during the 1930s, suchas I. F?c?oaru, "Die 'Ganzheitsanthropologie' und das Studium des Menschen inRum?nien," Zeitschrift f?r Rassenkunde 6, no. 2 (1937): 248-50; and F?c?oaru, "Beitrag zumStudium der wirtschaftlichen und sozialen Bew?hrung der Rassen," Zeitschrift f?rRassenkunde9, no. 1 (1939): 26-39.


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Race, Blood, and Biopolitics in Interwar Romania 423determine the 'Wight to leadership of those who are superior'?namely thosebelonging to races deemed superior?he not only insinuated that the Ro

manians were destined to rule over other ethnic minorities, but that theracial variation within the Romanian national body justified Romaniansfrom certain areas ruling over those from other areas as well.43 F?c?oarudeveloped this synopsis of "ethnic hierarchy" in one of his most controversial articles, which focuses on three main ideas: racial composition,racial hierarchy, and Romania's racial diversity. All three ideas derive fromthe interrelationship between race, blood, and spiritual achievements.44

First, in order to determine the racial composition of the main European nations, F?c?oaru claimed to have synthesized the foremost racialtheories of his time, and indeed he used no less than twenty-five racialterms in his study.45 Next, he surveyed the "biological value" of Europeanraces, specifically the "integral, physical and spiritual, genotypic and phenotypic value of an individual or a nation, a race or an ethnic group." Hedivided them biologically into "over-endowed races," "medium-endowedraces," and "under-endowed races." According to this racial profile,Swedes were at the top of the chart; Romanians were in sixth place, while

Hungarians occupied one of the last places.46 Finally, F?c?oaru focused onthe "biological value of the Romanian population" inhabiting the historical regions constituting Romania: namely, Bukovina, the Banat, Transylvania, Cri?ana-Maramure? (the "western provinces"); Moldavia, Bessarabia, Transnistria (the "eastern provinces"); and Oltenia, Muntenia, andDobrudja (the "southern provinces"). Both rural and urban populations

(male and female) were examined, and F?c?oaru employed four norms toassess the "bio-racial level" of these samples of the population: economicefficiency, social mobility, military propensity, and spiritual development.47 As expected, the conclusions reflect F?c?oaru's nationalist commitment. Thus, the "western provinces (Bukovina, Transylvania, and theBanat) are at the highest biological level; the eastern provinces (Moldavia,Bessarabia, and Transnistria) occupy an intermediary place, while the

43. I. F?c?oaru, Structura rasial? a populafiei rurale din Romania (Bucharest, 1940), 16(emphasis in the original).44. I. F?c?oaru, "Valoarea biorasial? a nafiunilor europene ?i a provinciilor rom?ne?ti(O prima ?ncercare de ierarhizare ?tnica)," Buletin eugenic si biopolitic 14, nos. 9-10 (1943) :278-310.

45. Thus, for example, Bulgarians were composed of the following racial components: Mediterranean, 41 percent; Dinaric-Alpine, 24 percent; Alpine, 15 percent;Paleoasiatic-Mongoloid, 12 percent; and Nordic, 8 percent. Germans were composed ofNordic, 50 percent; Alpine, 20 percent; Dinaric, 15 percent; East-European, 6 percent;Oriental, 5 percent; Mediterranean, 2 percent; Lapoid, 1 percent, and Mongoloid, 1 percent. Romanians were composed of Alpine, 29 percent; Mediterranean, 19 percent;Nordic, 14 percent; East-European, 12 percent; Dinaric, 11 percent; Atlantid, 10 percent;Oriental, 3 percent; and Dalic, 2 percent. Hungarians were composed of East-European,35 percent; Dalic, 20 percent; Caucasian-Mongoloid, 20 percent; Alpine, 15 percent,Nordic, 5 percent, Mongoloid, 4 percent; and Mediterranean, 1 percent. F?c?oaru, "Valoarea biorasial?," 280-81. The lesser known "Dalic" and "Atlantid" races are subdivisionsof the Nordic race.

46. F?c?oaru, "Valoarea biorasial?," 283.47. Ibid., 292.


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424 Slavic Review

southern provinces (Oltenia, Muntenia, and Dobrudja) are last." The restof his commentary suggests the same stereotypical and simplistic vision:superior racial qualities are to be found among urban, educated, and

wealthy social classes.48How different were Papilian's, Chelcea's, and F?c?oaru 'sdescriptionsof Romanian racial characteristics from other theories of the nation proposed during the interwar period? Undoubtedly, these authors made excessive use of racial and anthropological terminology, but in fact theycommunicated in anthropological concepts what others in Romania wereattempting to express in poetic or philosophical terms.49 Ultimately, whatemerged from these anthropological analyses is an unconditional veneration for Manichean and stereotypical interpretations of the nation. Because the Romanians were composed of different races, there must alsobe a racial engine of superior origin within the nation, and Papilian, Chelcea, and F?c?oaru located it among the Romanians of Transylvania.50 Thisnarrative of national belonging clearly expressed the difficulties that interwar nationalists encountered when attempting to define the "Romanian nation."51 But this ambiguity about what constituted the nationhelped these nationalists to disseminate racial ideas, for as Ann Stoler hasnoted, "racisms gain their strategic force, not from the fixity of their essentialism, but from the internal malleability assigned to the changingfeature of racial essence."52

Romanian Racial SerologyOne issue, in particular, troubled those involved in this type of anthropo

logical research: physical similarity versus racial differences. Serology wascalled on to solve this conundrum. Based on the special properties ofblood groups, serologists attempted to identify biological relationshipsbetween individuals of the same and different ethnic groups, in order todemonstrate the preservation of biological characteristics whose physicaldistinctiveness might have been obliterated over time but whose hereditary uniqueness never disappeared.The Director of the National Institute of Statistics in Bucharest, thestatistician and demographer Sabin Manuil?, and Gheorghe Popovici,a professor at the Faculty of Medicine in Cluj, were among the first Romanian scientists to publicize the new theories of serology.53 In his 1924

48. Ibid., 306-7.49. For a literary and philosophical idea of race, see Lucian Blaga, "Despre rasa ca

stil," G?ndirea 14, no. 2 (1935): 69-73. See also Marin Simionescu-R?mniceanu, Contribuaila o id?ologie pol?tica specific rom?neasc? (Bucharest, 1939).50. See Iordache F?c?oaru, "Amestecul rasial ?i etnic ?n Romania," Buletin eugenic sibiopolitic9, nos. 9-10 (1938): 276-87.51. See Constantin R?dulescu-Motru, "Tipul rasial rom?nese dup? indicele cephalic,"in C. R?dulescu-Motru, Psihologiapoporului rom?n (Bucharest, 1999), 150-66.

52. Stoler, Carnal Knowledge and Imperial Power, 144.53. S. Manuil? and G. Popoviciu, "Recherches sur les races roumaine et hongroise en

Roumanie par risoh?magglutination," Comptes rendus des s?ances de la Soci?t? de Biologie 90,


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article, Manuil? saluted the introduction of a new anthropological tool:isohemagglutination, namely that the red blood corpuscles of one indi

vidual mix with the blood serum of another individual from the same species but not from a different one.54 He also offered a distilled version ofHirszfeld's theory on the "biological index of race" and its permanenceaccording to the laws of heredity. Subsequently, Manuil? discovered thatthe "biological index" of the Romanians was 2.20; by comparison, that ofthe Serbs and Bulgarians was 2.29; and of the Greeks 2.25. Manuil?unified these indexes under a generic name?"Southeast European index"?arguing that his research proved that, although these nations

might not have originated from the same race, they must have beenclosely connected. Not only were Romanians, Serbs, Bulgarians, and

Greeks related, they were also unique in their racial constitution: "Thereexists no other people whose index so closely approximates that of thesoutheast European peoples," Manuil? concluded.55Manuil?'s article gave rise to a considerable discussion about serologyin Romania. Popovici was the first to respond.56 Methodologically,Popovici was also a follower of the serological methods proposed by Emilvon D?ngern and Hirszfeld. Contrary to Manuil?, however, Popoviciaimed at more than just outlining a theoretical framework; he additionally engaged with two contentious topics: the viability of "race" as a scientific concept and the racial origins of the ethnic groups in Greater Romania, especially in Transylvania. From the outset, Popovici rejected the

methodological importance of "race" in defining national identity. "In theBalkans," he noted, "race cannot explain national differences and shouldbe used for this purpose only as a last resort."57 With the advent of serology, anthropology was endowed with a new method, described as "moreobjective, more precise, and more subtle"; a method that could identifythose "profound and less alterable differences in blood structure thatwere previously undetected by research."58 Serology therefore served several functions. On the one hand, it demonstrated that within the same"race" there were different "serological races," thereby unequivocallyrejecting the idea of racial homogeneity. Yet on the other hand, serologyconfirmed that blood characteristics were transmitted according toMendelian laws of heredity, unconditioned by natural or social environment. Corroborating the results obtained by Hirszfeld in Thessalonikiwith those of Oskar Weszeczky and Frigyes Verz?r in Hungary, andManuil? in Romania, Popovici added his own contribution to the dis

no. 1 (1924) :542-43; and S. Manuil?, "Recherches s?ro-anthropologiques sur les races enRoumanie par lam?thode de l'isoh?magglutination," Comptes rendus des s?ances de la Soci?t?deBiologie90, no. 2 (1924): 1071-73.54. Sabin Manuil?, "Cercet?ri biologice cu privire la rasse, prin aplicarea uneimetode noua," Convorbiri literare 56 (1924): 694-98.

55. Ibid., 696.56. Gheorghe Popovici, "Diferente ?i asem?n?ri ?n structura biol?gica de rasa a

popoarelor Rom?niei," Cultural (1924): 224-34.57. Ibid., 224.58. Ibid., 224-25.


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426 Slavic Review

cussion on the "biological index of the Romanians."59 He thus analyzed12,000 individuals from different social backgrounds (such as soldiers, patients in hospitals, schoolchildren, and villagers), as well as different ethnic origins, including Romanians, Hungarians, Germans, Roma, Jews, andRussians. Based on this research, Popovici reached a conclusion that differed from Manuil?'s: the "biological index of the Romanians" was 2.01,situating them "between peoples of the Balkans and those of Russia"; thatof the Hungarians from Transylvania, for instance, was 1.7, "close to thatof their brothers from the Hungarian plain."60With respect to dissimilar racial composition within the same environment, both Manuil? and Popovici noted that the racial index variedaccording to the geographical distribution of ethnic groups. Popovici,however, placed this assumption at the center of his argument. The Romanians from the mountainous regions of Transylvania, he claimed, differed in their blood properties from Romanians inWalachia or Dobrudja:as a general rule, the more exposed a region was to the migrations of theMiddle Ages, the lower itwas in the European group A (and the higher ingroup B). This geographical variation within one specific ethnic groupwas further tested by concentrating on ethnically mixed subregions inTransylvania, where Romanian, Hungarian, and German villages weresituated next to each other. According to Popovici, the serologicalcharacteristics of each group reflected their ethnic affiliation, which wasnot influenced by the geographical and historical proximity of other ethnic groups. Serology could ultimately indicate?Popovici reaffirmed?whether or not common racial elements found in different ethnic groupscould be explained by their similar origin. Based on this assumption,Popovici concluded that the plausible explanation for why Romaniansand Hungarians living in the same areas in Transylvania had approxi

mately similar biological indexes was that they might have had the sameracial ancestor: namely, an "autochthonous race" whose existence predated the arrival of the Hungarians in the Carpathian basin.61

Contrary to Popovici's efforts to distance himself from any nationalistinterpretation of serological data, his argumentation did in fact favor Romanian paradigms of historical continuity in Transylvania; as such, it hada particular resonance for nationalists attracted to biological theories ofbelonging. To discourage any nationalist appropriation and increase thecredibility of his research results, Popovici made systematic use of techniques like comparative analysis in the application of serological theories.In another article, he managed tomaintain a scientific fa?ade for his serological arguments, without reproducing the theories of racial originsemerging within nationalist circles. Agreeing with Manuil?'s conclusions(although without embracing his speculation about the "Southeast Euro

59. Oskar Weszeczky, "Untersuchungen ?ber die gruppenweise H?magglutinationbeim Menschen," Biochemische Zeitschrift 107 (1920): 159-71; and F. Verz?r and O. Weszeczky, "Rassenbiologische Untersuchungen mittels Isoh?magglutininen," BiochemischeZeitschrift 16 (1921/1922): 33-39.

60. Popovici, "Diferente ?i aseman?ri," 226.61. Ibid., 227-34.


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pean index"), Popovici's final observation was twofold: first, he arguedthat "the Romanians from Transylvania present blood groups in the sameproportions as other peoples from the Balkans"; second, he postulatedthat the "serological structure" of the Romanians from the Old Kingdom,Bessarabia, and Bukovina positioned them between the European and theAsian-African type.62The impact of Manuil?'s and Popovici's serological research on biopolitical theories in Romania was immediate, for both were connected toIuliu Moldovan, the director of the Institute of Hygiene and SocialHygiene in Cluj, who, in turn, was the mentor of the main Romanianeugenicists and racial anthropologists in the interwar period, includingF?c?oaru and Petru R?mneanfu.63 Racial narratives and typologies of ethnic groups in Romania were negotiated and popularized within this circleof friends and colleagues.64 The biologization of national belonging envisaged by eugenicists made it possible for racial anthropology to intersectwith serology. These were the disciplines that endeavored to transformthe Romanian national body in line with a new biopolitical program.

A Rejuvenated National BodyA dominant principle underlay Romanian biopolitics during the interwarperiod: the ideal of Greater Romania. The nationalist myth of

aterritoryoccupied by all Romanians (and only by them) involved the fusion ofvarious overlapping Romantic notions?the unity between language and

territory; the glorification of the Dacian empire; the sanctity of the nation.Nevertheless, as a formula for national cohesion, the content of an

62. Georges Popoviciu, "Recherches s?rologiques sur les races en Roumanie," Revueanthropologique 35, nos. 4-5-6 (1925): 152-64.63. In the first volume of Buletin eugenic si biopolitic edited by Moldovan and publishedin 1927, the legal physician and lecturer at the Law Academy in Oradea, Mihai Kernbach,published a short commentary on blood groups in which he evaluated the importance ofserology for anthropology and surveyed new vistas of research opened up by the discoveryof the agglutinating properties of blood. See M. Kernbach, "Grupuri sangvine," Buletin eu

genic si biopolitic 1, no. 3 (1927): 102-6. Other researchers interested in serological research were Francise Rainer, Maria Horia Dumitrescu, Alexandru Manuil?, and MariaVe?temeanu. See Francise Rainer, "Exista cordage ?ntre grupele sanguine umane ?i celelalte caract?re antropologice?" in Omagiu lui Constantin Kirifescu (Bucharest, 1937),696-701; Mar?a Horia Dumitrescu, "Cercet?ri asupra grupelor sanguine ?n Romania,"Romania med?cala 12, no. 10 (1934): 141-42, 144; and Alexandru Manuil? and Maria

Ve?temeanu, "Constat?ri cu privire la aplicarea metodei sero-antropologice pe teren,"Buletin eugenic si biopolitic 14, nos. 3-4 (1943): 121-25.64. A good example is the collaboration between F?c?oaru and R?mneanfu occasioned by the Seventeenth International Congress of Anthropology held in 1937 inBucharest. See P. R?mneantu and I. F?c?oaru, "The Blood Groups and the Pigmentationof the Iris in the Population from Transylvania"; P. R?mneantu and I. F?c?oaru, "TheBlood Groups and the Facial Index in the Population from Transylvania"; I. F?c?oaru andP. R?mneantu, "Das Verh?ltnis, zwischen Rassen und Blutgruppen bei der Siebenb?rgischen Bev?lkerung"; I. F?c?oaru and P. R?mneanfu, "Der L?ngen-Breitenindex und dieBlutgruppen bei der Siebenb?rgischen Bev?lkerung," all in XVIIe Congr?s Internationald'Anthropologie et d'Arch?ologie Pr?historique (Bucharest, 1939), 323-25, 333-37, 337-39,and 339-42.


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428 Slavic Reviewidealized Greater Romania was continually changing. Indeed, although itwas always a totalizing nationalist ideology, during the interwar period Romanian nationalists could?and did?understand it as an expression ofthe doctrine of the homogeneous ethnic state, one predicated upon racialaffiliation.65 From this interpretation follows the ideological importanceof the key arguments advanced by contemporary anthropological andserological research: the dispute over the racial origins of ethnic minorities and the struggle over the racial core of the Romanian nation (claimedto be located in the mountains of Transylvania).

R?mneanfu, another eugenicist and racial anthropologist from Transylvania, was instrumental in the development and application of serological research to the study of ethnic minorities in interwar Romania. In1935, R?mneanju (together with Petru David) published one of the mostarticulated combinations of anthropological theories of race with nationalism and serology.66 This article can be divided into two parts: the firstdeals with historical narratives, including arguments about the Romaniancontinuity in Transylvania and various theories concerning the origins ofthe Szeklers; the second comprises a synthesis of serological theories, followed by their application to ethnic groups in Transylvania.For R?mneantu, Romanian continuity in Transylvania necessitated noadditional confirmation. Accordingly, he moved immediately to a discussion of the origins of the Szeklers, engaging with two theories: the first assumed that the Szeklers were of Hun origin; the second suggested thatthey were instead Hungarian colonists. R?mneantu favored neither the

ory. Instead, he maintained that only the process of isohemagglutinationcould solve the historical conundrum regarding ethnic groups in Transylvania, for "blood is the real, perhaps the unique, source that has remaineduntouched by the vicissitudes of time and that will elucidate the Szeklers'true ethnic origin."67Two serological theories backed up R?mneantu's assertion: Hirszfeld's "biochemical race index" and Siegmund Wellisch's "blood specificgene index." Applied

to the ethnicgroups

of southeastTransylvania,these serological theories were meant to establish the "Romanians'

racial-biological index" and then identify villages that were, according toR?mneanfu, just "summarily Szeklerized" (namely those villages wherethe "Romanians' racial-biological index" was easily detectable). Yet serology was also employed to locate the biological "index" specific to the

65. That this was not something exclusively confined to Romania, but a common feature of racial nationalism in the Balkans is eloquently demonstrated by the case of Yugoslavia. See Rory Yeomans, "Of 'Yugoslav Barbarians' and Croatian Gentlemen Scholars:Nationalist Ideology and Racial Anthropology in Interwar Yugoslavia," in Turda and Weindling, eds., "Blood and Homeland, "83-122.66. Petru R?mneantu (in collaboration with Petru David), "Cercet?ri asupra originiietnice a popula?iei din sud-estul Transilvaniei pe baza compozi?iei serologice a s?ngelui,"Buletin eugenic si biopolitic 6, no. 1 (1935): 36-75. See also Pierre R?mneantu, "Origine ethnique des Sz?klers de Transylvanie," Revue de Transylvanie 2, no. 1 (1935/1936): 45-59;and I. F?c?oaru, "Compozitia rasial? la romani, s?cui ?i unguri," Buletin eugenic si biopolitic 1,nos. 4-5 (1937): 124-42.

67. R?mneantu, "Cercet?ri asupra originii etnice a populatiei," 40.


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Szeklers. With respect to the first assumption, R?mneanfu confirmedManuil?'s research results and considered that the racial index of Romanians from southeast of Transylvania varied between 2.60 and 1.76,with the average situated between 2.20 and 2.00, similar to that ofRomanians from other parts of Transylvania and the Old Kingdom ofRomania, though lower than that of Romanians from the ApuseniMountains, who were considered the "least racially contaminated."When conducting the same serological research in Szekler villages (inthe counties of Ciuc/Csik, Odorhei/Udvarhely, and Trei-Scaune/H?romsz?k), however, R?mneantu discovered that, in general, the racialindex of the Szeklers in that region varied between 3.07 and 1.56. Hehastened to explain that such variance was caused by the mixed ethnicorigin of the groups studied, for?R?mneantu continued?when concentrating on villages inhabited exclusively by Szeklers, the resultingracial index was 2.11, near the average of the racial index of the Romanians: "This mathematical and biological measurement, the result of anunprecedented number of analyses, proves beyond a doubt that the ethnic origin of those named Szeklers is identical with that of the Romanians."68 To prove that his serological research was indisputably confirmedby facts and comparative analyses, R?mneantu briefly reflected upon theracial indexes of the Saxons and the Roma population: he found no difference between the racial index of the first group and their counterparts from Germany; similarly, the racial index of the latter groupconfirmed their origins in India.To discuss the ethnic origins of Romanians, Hungarians, and Szeklers in Transylvania based only on the "race index" was mistakenly totreat a topic of paramount importance with a slightly outdated methodology, R?mneanfu argued. As a result, he decided?"in order to be completely well informed"?to augment his serological results by imple

menting Wellisch's "blood specific gene index," namely by consideringthe gene distribution (p, q, and r) corresponding to the three "biochemical races" (A, B, and O). Thisnew

serological configurationwas

then graphically represented using Oswald Streng's "race-triangle,"considered the latest synthesis in racial serology (see figure 1). Moreover, R?mneantu argued that a similar process of "Szeklerization" occurred to the Saxons of that region, whose "race index" suggested theirauthentic ethnic origin. "Because we could not establish a biological index specific to the Szeklers, as it does not exist," R?mneanfu concludedthat this ethnic group has the same "ethnic-anthropological origin as theRomanians."69

A similar interpretation was proposed by Popovici, who returned tothese topics in a series of articles published in the late 1930s and revisedsome of the serological assumptions he had made in the 1920s (for example, he deemed Hirszfeld's "biological index of race" redundant in thewake of the new serological research) and accepted that "the blood

68. Ibid., 56.69. Ibid., 64-65.


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430 Slavic Review

?foa6e/yr t/J/faer/&?/&

?/fO'?//JnO?/X\ A/myres

\ #


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mountainous regions of Europe. The proportions of p and q appear hereat the same levels as in the Alpine and Nordic races."72Popovici's nationalist interpretation of serology

wasfully revealed inan article he published in 1938 in Revue de Transylvanie?^ He commencedhis analysis thus: "Lately the problem of the racial origin of nations is often posed. Romania's adversaries attempt to prove that the Romanians

possess their frontiers unjustly and that the new provinces are inhabitedby populations that are either non-Romanian or only recently Romanized. This erroneous argument is especially made about Transylvania."74Next Popovici returned to one of his early serological convictions and discarded the importance of race in defining nationality, explaining that theoriginal "Hungarian race" became virtually extinct during the wars of the

Middle Ages. Indeed, a few enclaves of the "pure" Hungarian race arespread across the Hungarian plain, but contemporary Hungarians (livingin Budapest as well as in Transylvania) were simply assimilated Romanians, Slavs, and Germans. Nationality, religion, and the language of a particular group could not explain its racial origin.75 Not surprisingly then,according to Popovici, "The Hungarians of Romania are?as a rule?

Magyarized Romanians."76Inmany ways, this nationalization of serology reflected the political atmosphere of emerging authoritarian regimes in the late 1930s. Just as thedebates over national symbolism and territorial disintegration occasionedan exchange of views on the essential traits of the Romanian nationalcharacter, discussions about a new racial biopolitics prompted reflectionson Romania's national future. Similar to fascist Italy and Nazi Germany,various forms of radical politics that emerged in Romania during the early1940s endorsed the idea of a totalitarian state, seen to be the epitome ofRomanian ethnic supremacy. And like racial ideologues elsewhere, Romanian eugenicists and racial anthropologists adopted and championedprinciples of ethnic reengineering and social segregation.77

72. Popoviciu, "Comparaison entre les groupes sanguins," 181-89. See also GeorgesPopoviciu, "Les races sanguines en Roumanie," in XVIIe Congr?s International d'Anthropologie et d'Arch?ologie Pr?historique, 309-16.73. George Popovici, "Le probl?me des populations de la Roumanie vu a la lumi?redes recherches sur les races d'apr?s le sang," Revue de Transylvanie 4, nos. 1-2 (1938):14-27.

74. Ibid., 14.75. Ibid., 15. R?mneanfu proposed a similar argument: "The application of the sero

logical investigations in the populations is one of the most important achievements for anthropology. In this way, based on the variations among fixed limits of the classical blood

groups, we are able to determine to which nation belongs every population nucleus.We are convinced that the distribution of the blood groups gives better indication aboutthe extension of an 'ethnie,' than the language, the culture, and the customs." In PeterRamneantzu, "The Classical Blood Groups and the M, N and M, N Properties in the Nations from Transylvania," in XVIIe Congr?s International d'Anthropologie et d'Arch?ologie Pr?historique, 325.

76. Popovici, "Le probl?me des populations de la Roumanie," 24. See also R?dulescu,"Anthropologische Beweise," 12.77. According to Maria Bucur, "The relationship between Romanian eugenics and the

policies of the Antonescu regime, especially with regard to its treatment of 'undesirable'


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However, this conspicuous imitation, which proved perfectly suited tointegrating the biopolitical modernism of Romanian fascism within the

European context, should not obfuscate the specific cultural environment and political circumstances permeating the narratives of national

identity produced during this period. Not only was Romania a countrywith a significant number of ethnic minorities (28 to 30 percent of thepopulation), but its own dream of territorial expansion was short-lived.(In 1940, Romania lost northern Bukovina and Bessarabia, northern

Transylvania, and southern Dobrudja to the Soviet Union, Hungary, andBulgaria, respectively). Unsurprisingly, then, Romania's entry into the warin the subsequent year was portrayed as a "holy war" against external foesand hostile historical circumstances: war provided a new context for the"palingenetic myth"

of national renewal; throughcombat and sacrifice,

Romania could regain not only its territories but, equally important, its"mystical aura of a superior nation."78Within this new political context, racial anthropology and serology

professed the fervent intention to redesign the history and racial originof ethnic minorities living in Romania.79 Such processes of racialappropriation became popular in 1940s Europe, most tellingly in Naziresearch in central and southeast Europe.80 During the war in Romania,this transgression of ethnic boundaries was a pressing concern due tothe problem of defining the body of the nation in a period in which political revisionism reached its pinnacle?not only through scientific

minorities?the Jews and Roma?remains unclear." Bucur, Eugenics and Modernization inInterwar Romania, 224. Scholars dealing with the Holocaust in Romania, like Radu Ioanid,Jean Ancel, Lya Benjamin, and Dennis Dele tant, have documented clear connections,however. See Radu Ioanid, The Holocaust in Romania: The Destruction ofJews and Gypsies under

the Antonescu Regime, 1940-1944 (Chicago, 2000); Jean Ancel, "The German-RomanianRelationship and the Final Solution," Holocaust and Genocide Studies 19, no. 2 (2005):252-75; Lya Benjamin, "Bazele doctrinare ale antisemitismului antonescian," in ViorelAchim and Constantin Iordachi, eds., Romania si Transnistria: Problema Holocaustului: Perspective istorice si comparative (Bucharest, 2004), 237-51; Lya Benjamin, ed., Evreii din Romania intre 1940-1944, vol. 1, Legislaba antievreiasc? (Bucharest, 1993) ;and Dennis Deletant,Hitler's Forgotten Ally: Ion Antonescu and His Regime, Romania 1940-1944 (Basingstoke, Eng.,2006). Moreover, archival documents indicate the importance bestowed on R?mneantu 's

work on the racial origins of the Csangos by the religious leaders of the Csango communities in Moldova in their attempts to assure General Antonescu of their loyalty to the

Romanian state. See, for example, the informative note sent on 1April 1943 to ServiciulSpecial de Informal (SSI), "In jurul problemei originei entice a ceang?ilor ?i a rom?nilorcatolici din Moldova," Arhivele Statului Bucure?ti, Pre?edinfia Consiliului de Mini?tri,f. 63/1942 (I am grateful to Chris Davis for locating this document). The note was occasioned by the publication of Petru M. P?l's article, "Glasul s?ngelui," in Originea, a strong endorsement of Ramneanju's racial theories about the Csangos.

78. Nicolae Ro?u, Dial?ctica naponalismului (Bucharest, 1936), 18.79. See Arens Meinholf, "Die Moldauer Ungarn (Tschangos) im Rahmen der

rum?nisch-ungarisch-deutschen Beziehungen zwischen 1940 and 1944: Eine vornationalstrukturierte ethnische Gruppe im Spannungsfeld totalit?rer Volkstumspolitik," in Mariana Hausleitner and Harald Roth, eds., Der Einfluss von Faschismus und Nationalsozialismusauf Minderheiten in Ostmittel- und S?dosteuropa (Munich, 2006), 265-315.80. See Michael Burleigh, Germany Turns Eastwards: A Study of Ostforschung in the Third

Reich (Cambridge, Eng., 1988).


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practices and literary exercises, but in the very substance of nationalpolitics.81 In a report published after his research in Bessarabia in 1942,F?c?oaru established this point in reference to the "racial structure ofthe Romanians" from this region: "Racial researches about our conationals living outside the borders of the country have both scientificand biopolitical importance."82

Exemplifying this wartime evolution of serology, R?mneanfu indicated how the three main blood groups?A, B, and O?were distributedwithin each nation.83 In a series of articles published in the 1940s, R?mneanfu discussed the "sero-races of Transylvania" following the traditional, nationalist pattern: the Romanians were the oldest population in

Transylvania, the result of the Roman conquest and Dacian endurance;the Hungarianscame to

Europe from Asiain the ninth

centuryand

conquered Transylvania in the eleventh century; the Szeklers were eitherdescendants of the Huns or related to the Bulgarians (but they were certainly Magyarized before the Hungarians arrived in the Carpathian

basin); and the Germans (Saxons in the center of Transylvania; Swabiansin the Banat and the Partium) settled gradually between the twelfthand the eighteenth centuries. The Wellisch index for these groupswas as follows: that of the Romanians was between 1.16 and 1.31; the Hungarians between 1.17 and 1.19; the Szeklers between 1.22 and 1.35; finally,the Germans (both groups) between 1.23 and 1.41.84 Based on thesefigures, R?mneantu concluded: "Serological study is thus an important instrument of history and, at the same time, an admirable way to researchanthroposocial phenomena. By knowing the serological properties of different nations, we realize that their individuality is not dependent on external circumstances but on hereditary characteristics."85A further example of how racial research was instrumental in the creation of the Romanian biopolitical utopia isR?mneanfu's considerable research on the Catholic communities in Moldova known as the Csangos.

81. This exercise in racial mapping continued after the war, especially in the periodbetween 1945 and 1947 when some of the territories that Romania lost in 1940, like northern Transylvania, were reintegrated into the Romanian state. See Peter R?mneantzu, TheBiological Grounds and the Vitality of the Transilvanian Rumanians (Cluj, 1946).82. I. F?c?oaru, Contribute la studiul compoziiiei morfologice a rom?nilor din Rep?blicaMoldoveneasc? (Bucharest, 1944), 4. See also Iordache F?c?oaru, "Cercet?ri antropologicein patru sate din Transnistria" (unpublished paper, 1943) available on microfilm, Holocaust Memorial Museum Institute, f. 2242, op. 1, RG-31.004, reel 4 (I would like to thankRadu Ioanid and Carl Modig for their help in obtaining this manuscript). F?c?oaru andhis wife, Tilly, belonged to a group of Romanian research teams assigned by the Romanian Social Institute and Central Institute of Statistics to complete the social, economic, cultural, and racial evaluations of the Romanian population in Transnistria. See Anton Galopenfia, Rom?nii de la est de Bug, 2 vols. (Bucharest, 2006).83. Petru R?mneanfu, "Distribuya grupelor de s?nge la populaba din Transilvania,"Buletin eugenic si biopolitic\2, nos. 9-12 (1941): 137-59; and P. R?mneanfu and V. Lusirea,"Contribufii noi la studiul seroetnic al populafiei din Romania," Ardealul medical^, no. 12(1942): 503-11.

84. R?mneanfu, "Distribuya grupelor de s?nge," 152-56.85. Ibid., 158.


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434 Slavic Review

Figure 2. "Racial Biological Indexes." From P. R?mneantu, "Grupele de s?nge laCiang?ii din Moldova," Buletin eugenic ?i biopolitic 14, nos. 1-2 (1943): 64.

Two historiographie theories on the origin of the Csangos predominatedin the interwar period, especially within Hungarian historiography: theCsangos were either a group that became separated from the Magyartribes as they headed towards the Pannonian plain, or they were Magyarized Cumans. R?mneantu contested both theories; he developed afully articulated racial interpretation of the Csangos in keeping withthe main tenets of Romanian nationalism (see figure 2).86 Based on the1941 census (a census that considered race to be a category of identification) R?mneantu asserted that there were only 8,523 Csangos in

Moldova, a group that was characterized by their use of Romanian andtheir Catholicism.87 R?mneantu, however, explicitly discarded the centralargument of Csango self-identification, namely that their Catholicism

86. P. R?mneantu, "Grupele de s?nge la Ciang?ii din Moldova," Buletin eugenic sibiopolitic 14, nos. 1-2 (1943): 51-65.87. Ibid., 52.


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conflicted with their being Romanian. "Apriori," he declared, "I rejectedthe fact that Csango and Catholic are identical notions."88 Accordingly,R?mneantu divided the Csangos into four categories: 1) Orthodox Romanians speaking Romanian; 2) Catholic Romanians speaking Romanian; 3) Catholic Romanians speaking Hungarian; and finally, 4) Catholic

Hungarians speaking Hungarian. All four groups, however, had similar"blood groups and genes."89R?mneanfu's Romanian ethnic utopia also favored the emergence ofa new biological model of identity: once certain blood groups had beendefined as representing Romanian national identity, the only possible ex

planation for their occurrence in other ethnic groups was that thesegroups were, in fact, "Romanians" who had been exposed to cultural andlinguistic environments

different from that of other Romanians. This viewportrayed the Szeklers and the Csangos as "racially Romanian," since bothgroups belong to the same "autochthonous" race described by Popovici;their contradictory national identification can be explained by centuriesof Magyarization. Serology, R?mneanfu believed, helped rectify historicalconundrums about the ethnic mixing in Transylvania while also drastically revising fundamental assumptions about the national origin of thenon-Romanians.

The ethnic appropriation of the Csangos reached a critical stage in1944, when R?mneanfu published Die Abstammung der Tschangos, arguablythe most radical reconstruction of the national past of a minority ethnicgroup attempted in modern Romania.90 The first part of the book concentrates on historical narratives about the Csangos. Enlisting the worksof religious missionaries, linguists, and historians, R?mneanfu sought toestablish the verisimilitude of his interpretation by constructing as com

prehensive a description of the Csangos as possible. As evidence, hebrought forward extensive investigations into the geographical distribution and demographic structure of the Csangos: he amassed historicalrecords, identified the Csango villages in Moldova, and offered plausibleexplanations for their ethnonym. In many respects, R?mneanfu was a

meticulous researcher who accompanied his historical and linguistic arguments with evidence from medieval chronicles, and his speculationswith confirmation from contemporary historiography.91 He was also unreservedly nationalistic.Consider the issue of religion, for instance. No scholar before R?mneanfu had questioned the fact that the Csangos were Catholic. Dismantling the synonymy between "Catholic" and "Csango"?one of the mostcontentious of the claims first put forward in his 1943 article?served asthe introduction to R?mneanfu's discussion of racial serology. His em

phasis on Catholicism not being an aspect of the racial identity of the88. Ibid., 54. This highly nationalistic interpretation of historical sources was also ap

plied to Catholic Romanians in Moldova, whom R?mneantu declared to be "CatholicizedOrthodox Romanians."

89. R?mneantu, "Grupele de s?nge la Ciang?ii," 60-63.90. Petru R?mneantu, Die Abstammung der Tschangos (Sibiu, 1944).91. Ibid., 7-29.


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Csangos was invested with national significance, and it is not difficult tosee why: within this unsettling issue, the line traditionally drawn betweenautochthonous Orthodoxy and foreign Catholicism was treated as a fundamental distinction between racially different nations?just as itwas forother apostles of Orthodoxy in interwar Romania.92The second part of R?mneanfu's book concentrates on the importance of serological research for national affiliation. After first discussingthe "individuality of blood" and summarizing the main arguments aboutthe hereditary properties of blood, R?mneanfu examined the "ethnicmeaning of blood groups." The outline provided here repeats the racialarguments that R?mneanfu had been articulating since the early 1930s. Indirect reference to the Csangos, R?mneanfu did, however, amend theracial typology introduced in 1943, whereby the Csangos were now nominally divided into "Romanians by blood" and "Hungarians by blood," respectively.93 A section on racial morphology that catalogued physical characteristics such as height, hair color, and nasal index completed hisexamination. According to R?mneanfu, the ambiguity concerning theethnic origin of the Csangos had finally been resolved: racially, they were

Romanians.94The ethnic engineering proposed in Die Abstammung der Tschangos sur

passed previous representations of the relationship between the Romanian majority and ethnic minorities in Romania. The racial mythologyR?mneanfu advocated was indeed radical; yet itwas well integrated withina nationalist culture that became prevalent in Romania after 1940: a culture composed of clusters of biopolitical ideas and practices. R?mneanfucould thus advance the new program of national regeneration by invoking political (Hungarian revisionism, for example) as well as national necessities (the "holy war" for the reunification of lost territories).95

"Racial Commandments" and Totalitarian BiopoliticsIn order to comprehend the relationship between anthropology, serology, and biopolitics, one must investigate racial studies, not only in theirmost technical formulations (charts, diagrams, mathematical equations,and so on), but also in the popularly reiterated images that traversed interwar sociology and history, among other fields of study.96 In many con

92. Most prominently in the 1938 manifesto "Programul statului etnocratic" proposed by the poet and Orthodox philosopher Nichifor Crainic. See Nichifor Crainic, Ortodoxie si etnocratie. Cu o anex?: Programul statului etnocratic (Bucharest, 1938), 284.

93. R?mneanfu, Die Abstammung der Tschangos, 43 - 48.94. Csango priests themselves adopted R?mneanfu's racial narrative (although not

his negation of Csango Catholicism). See Iosif P. Pal, Origtnea catolicilor din Moldova sifranciscana lor, p?storii lor de veacuri (Roman, 1941). Later this view was integrated into the standard Romanian discourse on the Csangos developed during communism. See DumitruMartinas^ The Origins of the Csangos (1985; reprint, Ia?i, 1999).95. Petru R?mneanfu, "Probleme etno-biopolitice ale Transilvaniei," Transilvania 74,no. 5 (1943): 325-48.

96. In 1934, the Romanian philosopher Petre P. Negulescu provided a comprehensive investigation into biological theories of belonging. Preoccupied with deciphering cultural mechanisms that could influence the formation of national identity, Negulescu also


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temporary responses to this problem, sociologists and historians oftenimagined national metamorphoses centered upon racial content.97In the closing section of this article, I shall look at some specific racialarguments that further reveal the intimate links between racial anthropology, serology, and theories of national identity. Racial eugenicists suchas F?c?oaru and R?mneanfu stand not as exceptions but as representatives of a general intellectual and political process that I see as the biologization of national belonging. This process should be clarified, for it isimportant to note that Romanian biopolitics was integrated within thelogic of "ethnic ontology" and paradigmatic modernism so convincinglydescribed by Antohi and Roger Griffin.98 In its broader sense (to includeracial nationalism and antisemitism), the biologization of national belonging

was not merely a primitive simplificationof racism or a pseudoscientific distortion of eugenics; it was a defensive response to forms ofcollective and individual fragmentation brought about by the cultural,

political, social, and economic transformations of European modernityduring the interwar period.99If ideas of national rebirth provided the framework for the biologization of national belonging as it developed during the interwar period,racist fantasies also proved inspirational to those who wished to see Romania complete its ethnic revolution. Sabin Manuil? outlined his versionof the Romanian racial biopolitics thus: "The goal of our population policy should be to gather all Romanians in one place and to eliminate fromour body all minorities manifesting centrifugal tendencies." Manuil?based this biopolitical program on "racial commandments," including

pro-natalism; "the programmatic solution to the Jewish question"; "efficient solutions to combat the danger of Gypsy racial influence"; andfinally "practical eugenic measures," such as sterilization of those considered dysgenic. Deploring the fact that the country that gave the world theterm biopolitics lacked a proper institution dedicated to racial policy,Manuil? suggested creating a "Superior Council for the Protection ofRace," which would address racial issues scientifically and in accord withthe political governance of the new regime.100

reflected on the relationship between racial serology and national essence. He skepticallyconcluded that "Not even through the analysis of blood can we?at least not yet?establish the existence of a 'national specificity.'" See P. P. Negulescu, Geneza formelor culturii:Priviri critice asupra factorilor ei determinant (Bucharest, 1934), 375.97. See, for example, Ion Foti, Concep?a eroic? a rasei (Bucharest, 1936); and Alexandru Randa, Rasism rom?nese (Bucharest, 1941).98. Roger Griffin, "Tunnel Visions and Mysterious Trees: Modernist Projects of National and Racial Regeneration, 1880-1939," in Turda and Weindling, eds., "Blood and

Homeland, "417-56; and Antohi, "Romania and the Balkans: From Geocultural Bovarismto Ethnic Ontology."99. Roger Griffin, "The Palingenetic Political Community: Rethinking the Legitimation of Totalitarian Regimes in Interwar Europe," Totalitarian Movements and Political Reli

gions 3, no. 3 (2002): 24-43.100. Sabin Manuil?, "Comandamentele rassiale ?i poli tica de populate, "Romanianou? 7, no. 17 (26 October 1940): 3. Many of these ideas were also discussed in Manuil?"Acfiunea eugenic? ca factor de politic? de populate," Buletin eugenic si biopolitic 12, nos.1-4 (1941): 1-4.


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438 Slavic ReviewIn a series of articles dedicated to totalitarian biopolitics, the sociolo

gist Traian Herseni also stressed the relationship between eugenics andracial nationalism. In "Mitul s?ngelui" (The myth of blood), for instance,Herseni expressed his adherence to eugenics, glorifying both the Nazirevolution and the need for racial palingenesis in Romania. "A race," heobserved, "can be kept in existence, purified, increased, and improved byhereditary means, hence the possibili

Marius Turda- The Nation as Object- Race, Blood and Bio Politics in Interwar Romania

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