À la frontière de la survie et de l’extinction le destin de la Transylvanie du Nord et de l’Université hongroise de Cluj à la lumière du journal de Béla Zolnai (1944-1947)

Abstract

The aim of this study is to present the situation of Franz Josef University in Cluj, and more broadly of Northern Transylvania, between 1944 and 1947 through an exceptional contemporary source. The diary of Béla Zolnai (1890-1969), a literary historian and professor at the University of Szeged between 1925 and 1940 and in Cluj from the autumn of 1940, sheds light on the dilemmas of intellectuals who remained in the country during the final months of World War II, the power strategies of the Romanian state, and the gradual erosion of Hungarian cultural autonomy. The analysis describes how Franz Josef University – and later Bolyai University – became a tool in the game of great powers, and how the idea – still alive during the war – of an independent Hungarian university in Transylvania faded.