Tokens of Identity

With the end of the First World War, Romania more than doubled its territory and population, and its ethnic constituency accordingly also changed, with a population that was now 72% Romanian, 8% Hungarian, 4% German, and 4% Jewish; 80% of the population lived in rural areas, with agriculture contributing more than 30% to the national income. ¹ Romania thus inherited various cultural narratives; the modern artistic histories constituted perhaps the only possible convergence platform for these multiple ethnic constituencies. In literature, theatre, and music, each could look back to its own nineteenth-century lineage.