Will There Be Conflict? Identity and Values Tensions in Transylvania’s Saxon Villages

Abstract: Behind the loud national and international call to save Transylvania’s medieval Saxon villages – following the mass exodus of the Saxons in the early 1990s – lies an unspoken power struggle: a struggle between identities and values, at national and European levels. Following the Saxons’ replacement in the villages by Romanians and Roma from elsewhere, the villages' built fabric now acts as the battleground between several sets of identities and value systems: those of the old Saxon ethnic group (embodied in the villages themselves,) those of the new Romanian and Roma inhabitants, and those of the (mostly) European conservation organisations that arrived in the Saxon villages to 'save' them from destruction. Using post-colonial and conflict theories, this paper brings into the open this largely unrecognised clash of identities and the likelihood for this to lead to real, outward conflict.