The [German Democratic Republic] developed cultural ties with [the Socialist Republic of] Romania and specifically with Romanian Germans from the 1950s on.⁵ The early stages of this connection were circumscribed by greater state involvement and surveillance, and these connections were viewed accordingly with considerable suspicion in the political spheres of both the GDR and [the SRR].
Walter Ulbricht’s leadership (1950–71) in the GDR was thus characterized by growing circumspection towards [the SRR], while Gheorghe Gheorghiu‐Dej’s headship (1947–65) went in the equal and opposite direction regarding the East German state. Nonetheless, by the 1970s, cultural and educational exchanges between the two countries had become commonplace.⁶ Films produced in [the GDR] were highly popular in [the SRR] while literary exchanges ebbed and flowed according to political will between the 1950s and 1970s.⁷
Though educational and religious contacts were suppressed at times, they certainly flourished at others. Therefore, even though the cultural image projected of the GDR was politically constructed and constrained, it became a point of reference for many Romanian Germans, and this became especially palpable in the 1980s.
By the last two decades of the Cold War, [the GDR] came to fulfil several rôles West Germany could not: it was a space of ‘alternative socialism’, which was distinctly German, and therefore quenched the Romanian Germans’ thirst for German culture.⁸ It was also far more accessible to Romanian Germans than its West German counterpart.
Even, or particularly, at the height of immigration to West Germany in the late 1970s and 1980s, travelling to the GDR was a different undertaking: while emigration was a final decision, Romanian German visitors to [the GDR] could simultaneously satisfy their longing to experience Germany and return to their homeland [in the SRR].
By the second half of the Cold War, [the SRR] performed a similar function for GDR citizens: it was ‘German’ enough thanks to the presence of Romanian Germans; its rural beauty allowed East Germans to contemplate and discover alternative socialist spaces, and it was also far easier to visit [the SRR] than West Germany. The existing ties between Germans in [the GDR] and [the SRR] as well as the countries’ mutual Programmarbeit (cultural programme) ensured [the SRR’s] place as a destination for East German tourists.
As a consequence, a good number of backpacking tourists and travellers from [the GDR] explored [the SRR], especially the mountainous region of Transylvania.⁹ In the other direction, a small yet noticeable number of Romanian Germans ventured to the GDR as this was the easiest way of exploring ‘Germany’. All the while, various official institutions in both countries continued to observe and both encourage and control this German–German channel.
Yet despite these obvious connections and exchanges, scholarship has all but ignored German connections within Cold War Eastern Europe.¹⁰
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Drawing on recent attempts to open up debate on the complexity of identity politics in East–Central Europe and emerging scholarship on ‘alternative socialisms’ within the region, this article argues for a more intricate reading of Germans in East–Central Europe during the Cold War by focusing on [the SRR] and the GDR.¹⁷
Using travel writings, travel guides, oral histories, official travel data and other pertinent sources, I examine what rôle the GDR played in the Romanian German imagination of Germany as a Kulturnation and how Romanian Germans made sense of their own place within it.¹⁸ Conversely, as I show, [the SRR] — and in particular Transylvania — became, in turn, an attractive destination for tourists from [the GDR].
It was a place for escape and, especially in the 1980s, also demonstrated why German socialism may have seemed good enough to some East German travellers and tourists. Rather than focusing on the gaze westwards and reading the 1980s as the culmination of a teleological narrative of the drive towards ‘freedom’, this article will reveal a little‐known history of Cold War interaction in East–Central Europe.
It will explore four areas: the growing attention paid by the Stasi and other official channels to Romanian German matters in the early Cold War period; East German tourism and travel eastwards to [the SRR] from the 1960s onwards; Romanian German attempts at consolidating links between Germans from the GDR and Germans from [the SRR]; and finally Romanian German travel to and experiences of the GDR in the second half of the Cold War.
As will be shown, the GDR and [the SRR] acted as ‘alternative socialist’ places to Romanian Germans and East Germans respectively, precisely because the countries were both German and socialist enough to fulfil a number of rôles.