Details

Abstract / Summary

TITLE: The Reunion of Romanian Women from the District of Hunedoara, 1886-1911. DESCRIPTION: This document is a monograph of the Hunedoara/Hunyad district incarnation of the Reuniunea Femeilor Române/ Reunion of Romanian Women. The text was most likely authored by Elena Pop Hossu Longin, as it was also published as a part of her 1932 memoirs. Within the loose network of Women’s Reunions (i.e., Women’s Associations in Transylvania), the Hunedoara Reunion was focused on ethnic Romanian, peasant women and the association’s professed valorisation of peasant women’s labour. Elena Pop Hossu Longin (1862-1940) served as President of the Reunion of Romanian Women in Hunedoara/Vajdahunyad/Eisenmarkt between 1895 and 1919, and she was a founder, in 1880, of the Reunion of Romanian Women in Sălaj/Szilàgy county. See also, Augustin Vicas, XXV ani din viaţa Reuniunei Femeilor Române Sălăgene: 1881-1906 [Twenty-Five Years of the Reunion of Romanian Women, 1881-1906] (Simleul Silvaniei: Institutul Tipografic “Victoria,” 1906). Educated at Johanna Schreiber’s “Santa Maria” secondary school in Budapest, she was part of a politically-minded family. Her father, Gheorghe Pop de Băsești (1835-1919), was a landowner and a leader of the Romanian National Party in Transylvania. See also, “Emilia Dr. Ratiu to Gheorghe Pop de Basesti” (Letter, Turda, November 25, 1893), 780/1893, Fond 1246 Personal Fond Dr. Ioan Ratiu, ff. 1-2, Romania. Arhivele Nationale. Arhivele Nationale Istorice Centrale Bucharest. Elena Pop Hossu Longin’s husband, lawyer Francisc Hossu-Longin (1847-1935), was a prominent supporter of the “activist” stance among Transylvanian Romanian nationalists. He advocated participation in the Hungarian Parliament rather than the “passivist” strategy of boycotting Hungarian parliamentary institutions. Elena Pop Hossu Longin gained prominence in the Romanian-language public sphere in 1918, when she published an impassioned article titled “The Greeting of Romanian Women,” arguing that the union of Transylvania with Romania was a reward for Romanian women’s suffering for the children fighting the Great War and mentioning women as supportive participants in men’s deliberations on the union. Part of her documents are stored in the Special Collections section of the Central University Library in Cluj Napoca (Romania), while another part is stored by the Sibiu County Direction of the Romanian National Archives and will be available to the public in the near future. ¶ This monograph traces the activity of the Reunion from its beginning as a collector and supporter among peasant women of home-made clothing, untainted by “foreign” patterns and techniques to the 1907 opening of an Atelier for Home Industry and its successful functioning in the following five years. Inspired by similar initiatives by Princess Elisabeth in the Romanian Kingdom, the monograph shows that the company Atelier, which employed up to twenty peasant women, supplied middle-class families with the folk costumes that had become customary at gatherings and celebrations by the 1910s. Earlier, in 1897, with the mediation of the Reunion, a Viennese firm exhibited Hunedoara home industry items in its shop in Vienna. In the same year, at the request of Baroness Elena Dithfurth (Baroness Helena von Dithfurth), the Reunion sent items to an exhibition in “Tatatovaros, Pojon county” (Tata-Tóváros, near Tata, in fact) as a form of support and fund collection for flood victims in Upper Hungary (present day Slovakia). The monograph also contains the text of the original Statutes, a list of members and the donations received following regular appeals to the network of Romanian banks in the province. ¶ The monograph illuminates the activity of one of the most visible associations in the loose network of women’s Reunions in Transylvania. It also highlights the preoccupation with home industry, seen as a middle ground between traditional peasant occupations and waged labour, present in the articulation of the “woman question” among nationalist leaders, since the 1880s. At the same time, preoccupation for peasant craft and architecture characterized middle class culture in the whole of Austria-Hungary during the 19th century, partly as a reaction to urbanization. The monograph documents participation in events that stressed the multiethnic character of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, among which craft exhibitions. The celebration of peasant crafts and rural diversity was integral to the Austrian side of the Dual Monarchy’s justification of empire as protection of multiculturalism. KEYWORDS: Women and Practices/ Cultures of Empire; Imperial Identity; Women and Nation within Empire; Relations Between Women of Different Nationalities; Women and Nation-Building; Women and Relationship Between Nations in the Empire; National Identity; Social Reform and Political Activism; Welfare Movements; Work and Class Identity; Sexual Division of Labor; Habsburg Empire; Handicrafts; Statutes; Funds and donations.

Field of Interest

Women and Social Movements

Collection

Women and Social Movements, Modern Empires Since 1820

Content Type

Book

Duration

0 sec

Format

Text

Page Count

98

Publication Year

1912

Publisher

Tipografia Noua

Place Published / Released

Orăștie, Hunedoara County

Subject

Women and Social Movements, History, Women and Politics, Women and Rights, Transnational Women’s Movement, Eslovaquia, Austria-Hungary (Historical Place), Imperio Austrohúngaro, Império Austro-Húngaro, Rumania, Romênia, Reunion of Romanian Women from the District of Hunedoara, Elena Pop-Hossu-Longin, 1856-1946, Slovakia, Austro-Hungarian Empire (Historical Place), Romania, Political and Human Rights, Women and Development, Social Reform and Political Activism, Women, Colonization, Empire, and Post Coloniality, Work and Class Identity, Indigenous Women, Social and Cultural Rights, Household Crafts, National Identity, Empire and Feminism, Multi-Ethnic Participation in Social Movements, Sexual Division of Labor, Social Movements and Indigenous Women, Social and Political Leadership, Austrians, Hungarians, Romanians, Slovak

Topic

Social and Cultural Rights, Household Crafts, National Identity, Empire and Feminism, Multi-Ethnic Participation in Social Movements, Sexual Division of Labor, Social Movements and Indigenous Women, Social and Political Leadership

Keywords and Translated Subjects

Eslovaquia, Austria-Hungary (Historical Place), Imperio Austrohúngaro, Império Austro-Húngaro, Rumania, Romênia