Journal index

Die Studenten der reformierten Hochschulen haben sich in der Frühen Neuzeit ins Immatrikulationsbuch der Hochschulen handschriftlich mit der Formel Ego N. N. subcribo legibus scholae reformatae... eingetragen. Die 1895 im Klausenburg (ung. Kolozsvár, heute Cluj-Napoca) gegründete Reformierte Theologische Fakultät hat dieser Tradition unter ihren Studenten als Praxis wieder eingeführt. Ab der Gründung der Hochschule in Klausenburg bis 1948 hat sich jeder Student handschriftlich immatrikuliert. Bei der Immatrikulation sollte neben seinen Namen jeder auch noch sein Geburtsort, die Name und den Beruf des Vaters oder Widerhaltes angeben, sowie das Gymnasium wo er dem Abitur abgelegt hatte und weitere Daten über seinen Kenntnissen in Fremdsprachen im Immatrikulationsbuch einführen. Die statistische Verarbeitung dieser Angaben macht uns möglich spannende Daten und merkwürdige Zusammenhänge über der sozialen Herkunft und Hintergrund der Pfarrergesellschaft der reformierten und teilweise über der ungarischlutherischen Pfarrer in Siebenbürgen zu erschließen.

The 17th century sources of the Reformed Diocese of Küküllő describe with unparalleled details the everyday life and humanly character of participants of church life. The disciplinary cases of Bálint Veres Dálnoki and Bálint Márkusfalvi did not disappear without a trace, they were preserved in the records of this period. A research into the personal relations of the persons involved explains why pages were glued and embarrassing resolutions were covered up.

In 1956 Bishop László Ravasz expressed his views on church policy and the general situation of religious communities in Eastern Europe before the meeting of the Central Committee of the World Council of Churches in Galyatető, Hungary. His text was conceived as “advice” addressed to the members of the Bethany Movement. My paper’s main target is to contextualise and publish this interpretation regarding the relationship between Christian Churches and the communist state.
In 1958 a major turning point appeared in the church-state relation on both sides of the “Iron Curtain”. After the Lambeth and Nyborg Conferences, Western openness and diplomatic efforts led to the enlargement of the World Council of Churches (New Delhi 1961), gathering Protestant and Orthodox Churches in the communion of prayer and work. At the same time, Nikita Khrushchev’s totalitarian attempt to annihilate religious structures in the Soviet Union was concealed behind his apparent “disposability for dialogue”. By organising the „Christian” Peace Conference (Prague 1958), the Kremlin continued “destalinisation”, promoting, in fact, Stalin’s policy of apparent peace in the East-West relations, while the political police went on destroying the Church and the aim it was created for. The new abuses were justified by the slogan of “Leninist legality”. Trying to find the Romanian way to build communism, Gheorghe Gheorghiu Dej, the old-new party leader and his subdued judicial system brought religious faith in the prisoner’s box. Persecution focused especially on religious minority groups, such as Catholics, Reformed, Unitarians, Lutheran Evangelicals, Pentecostals, Baptist, and others, but, also, attacked the majority Orthodox monastic life. During the show-trials, the fictive scene became a sacrificial place, where those who were searching for the truth of God fell prey to the injustice of the immolators who imposed by force their atheistic “truth”.
The National Council for the Study of the Securitate Archives (CNSAS) has been preserving detailed data, descriptions of the facts and nuances concerning thousands of aggressors and victims of (post-) Stalinism. Emblematic was the case of Richard Wurmbrand, who first suffered imprisonment (after a sentence pronounced in a Kangaroo Court), being released afterwards by the authorities in 1964, for an amount of 10 000 USD.