Transylvania in the First World War

Transylvania, Siedmiogród in Polish, is the land within the arc of the Carpathians that in 1914 belonged to the Hungarian half of Austria-Hungary. Most of its inhabitants were Romanians, and it was for Transylvania that Romania entered the war in August 1916. Its armies held the south-eastern part of the country for a few weeks, but the counter-offensive of the Central Powers drove them back over the mountains. Victory came to the Romanians only with the collapse of the monarchy: on 1 December 1918 the assembly at Alba Iulia proclaimed the union of Transylvania with Romania.

The price of neutrality (1914–1916)

Alongside the Romanians lived Hungarians, Szeklers, Transylvanian Saxons and Jews. The towns were mostly Hungarian and German, and the Romanians had only a handful of deputies in the parliament in Budapest. In the neighbouring kingdom the fate of some three million Romanians of the monarchy stirred more feeling than the alliance with Vienna, so in the summer of 1914 Romania declared its neutrality. The Hungarian prime minister, István Tisza, feared an invasion of Transylvania from the start. Under pressure from Berlin he promised Romanian leaders wider language rights and new electoral districts, and in November 1914 the monarch amnestied Romanians convicted of political offences, while the government allowed the Romanian tricolour to be flown. But Tisza would not hear of giving up even a scrap of the country.

Meanwhile the Romanian prime minister, Ion I.C. Brătianu, bargained with both sides. As early as the autumn of 1914 Russia recognised Romania’s claim to Transylvania in a secret agreement. On 17 August 1916 the Entente promised Romania the whole of Transylvania, the Banat, Crișana, Maramureș and most of Bukovina, with the border on the Tisza.

Invasion and counter-offensive (1916)

On the evening of 27 August 1916, as the declaration of war was being handed over in Vienna, three Romanian armies moved through the Carpathian passes. The new Austro-Hungarian First Army of General Arthur Arz von Straußenburg, a Saxon from Sibiu, had only about 34,000 rifles and 76 guns in the first days. On 29 August the Romanians entered Brașov. The Hungarian authorities ordered the belt south of the Mureș to be evacuated, and according to Hungarian historians more than 200,000 refugees, Hungarians, Saxons and Szeklers, filled the roads. About two thirds of the inhabitants left Sibiu. Most local Romanians received the advancing army with a wait-and-see attitude, though some welcomed it as the herald of unification.

The Romanians advanced slowly, and after the defeat at Tutrakan on the Danube their command took some of the troops south and halted the offensive. The Central Powers had time to bring up reinforcements. The German 9th Army of General Erich von Falkenhayn defeated the Romanians at Sibiu on 26–29 September and at Brașov on 7–9 October, and by 14 October had driven them out of almost the whole country. In November Falkenhayn broke through the front in the Jiu valley, and on 6 December the Central Powers took Bucharest.

After the invasion (1916–1918)

The refugees and the Hungarian administration returned to Transylvania. The damage, heaviest in the Szekler land, was incomparably smaller than on the great fronts. The army and the authorities, however, looked for culprits among the Romanians: people suspected of disloyalty were arrested or interned, and in the autumn of 1917 the minister of the interior admitted that 825 people had been interned. At the same time several hundred thousand Romanians from Hungary were serving at the front in the Austro-Hungarian army. The minister of education, Albert Apponyi, began to create a “culture zone” along the border, in which Romanian church schools were to give way to state schools. In May 1918 the Peace of Bucharest moved the border in favour of Austria-Hungary, which received the Carpathian ridges and passes.

Alba Iulia (1918)

In the autumn of 1918 the monarchy was falling apart. On 18 October the deputy Alexandru Vaida-Voievod read out in Budapest the Romanian National Party’s declaration of the right to self-determination, and after the Aster Revolution a Central Romanian National Council was formed. Talks with the Hungarian government at Arad were broken off in mid-November. The Belgrade convention of 13 November drew the demarcation line on the Mureș and left Hungary the administration of most of the country. On the same day the first Romanian units began to cross the Carpathians from the east, while the army of Field Marshal August von Mackensen was withdrawing westwards through Transylvania and Hungary.

On 1 December at Alba Iulia 1,228 delegates unanimously voted for the union of the Romanians of Transylvania, the Banat and other Hungarian lands with Romania. According to Romanian accounts about a hundred thousand people gathered outside the town. The resolution promised full national freedom to all the peoples of the country but, as Hungarian historians point out, its fate was decided by the Romanians alone, without the Hungarians, Saxons and Swabians. On 24 December King Ferdinand confirmed the union by decree, and the Romanian army entered Cluj. The Hungarian government protested, and at a rally in Cluj on 22 December the Hungarians of Transylvania declared their loyalty to Hungary. On 8 January 1919 the Saxons backed union with Romania. The new border was confirmed by the treaty with Hungary signed at Trianon on 4 June 1920.