Victor Neumann

Victor Neumann is a Romanian historian, member of the Academy of Europe/Academia Europaea, History and Archeology section

. He is professor of history and theory of history at the West University of Timișoara and at the Bucharest National University of Art. He was born in 1953, in Lugoj, Romania, into a middle-class family of intellectuals from the Banat region. His father was Andrei Neumann, an accountant; his mother, Ana-Catalina, née Gherban, a school-teacher.        Biography

Neumann studied History-Philosophy at the Babeș-Bolyai University in Cluj-Napoca. Neumann prepared his graduation thesis with professor Pompiliu Teodor and completed his doctoral studies in history at the University of Bucharest, coordinated by professor Răzvan Theodorescu. During his career, Neumann has worked as a curator, librarian, high-school teacher, researcher, and university professor.

He has been visiting professor and visiting researcher at prestigious European and American universities and institutes: University of Vienna; Institute for Advanced Study in Humanities/Royal Academy of Arts and Sciences, Amsterdam; École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales, Paris; University of Angers; University of Sorbonne, Paris; Central European University, Budapest; The Catholic University of America, Washington, D.C.; Holocaust Memorial Museum, Washington, D.C. Inspired by Reinhart Koselleck, he founded with Armin Heinen at the West University of Timișoara the first Romanian International Doctoral School of Conceptual History (2008). Neumann was director of  Timișoara National Museum of Art (2013-2021).  

He's works contain documentary information, hypotheses and theories based on strong facts and polished arguments. They are connected to history, fundamental anthropology, conceptual history and political theory. His contributions, dedicated to the knowledge of multi- and interculturality, nationalism, history of concepts (''Begriffsgeschichte'') and theory of history, are nothing short of remarkable . As a thinker who continuously distanced himself from political agendas and who denounced the attempt of confiscating the past for their benefit, Neumann always sanctioned the tendencies of many historians to impose a unique and absolute meaning on history. At the University of Timișoara, Neumann opened a Center for Advanced Studies in Conceptual History, which he coordinated between 2011 and 2018 and within which he collaborated with historians, philosophers, sociologists, linguists, and political scientists from Romania, Germany, France, Spain, Hungary, Austria, Serbia, Israel, and the United States. Thanks to Victor Neumann and Armin Heinen, the Center for Advanced Studies in Conceptual History in Timișoara initiated and organized important national and international meetings and published several collective volumes in Romanian, English, and German. Thanks to Victor Neumann and Armin Heinen, the Center for Advanced Studies in Conceptual History in Timișoara initiated and organized important national and international meetings and published several collective volumes in Romanian, English, and German. Reinhart Koselleck's ideas and interdisciplinary working methods have been consistently promoted and applied in the Romanian and Eastern European contexts. The impressive work of the great German scholar has been and continues to be the focus of Neumann's attention.

Those who have examined his books argue that Neumann is convinced that “only the multiplication of meanings regarding the sense of history and the abandonment of a caricaturized can ensure the freedom of our historical thought”. For the informed and open-minded reader, the interdisciplinary of history, philosophy, political thought, cultural studies, literature, geography and historical anthropology (and not only) of Neumann's writings show a permanent concern for the theoretical-methodological segment. They cultivate the historical understanding (Verstehen) open to various forms of interpretation, which should be a main concern for any historian. „''This attitude does not make Neumann an adept of relativism, but a researcher, theoretician and meta-theoretician who cautiously distances himself from the rhetoric of Universal History and rigid objectivism of uniqueness and completeness – adversaries in historical interpretations. Refusing the validity of such categories, the historian's task is to promote a larger spectrum of conceptual representations''”.

This approach is fundamental for the understanding of the past. It is a manner of giving sense to history, in other words bringing its perpetual absence in a possible and never-ending present and, most importantly, finding means to comparatively subdue it to judgements in the absence of transcendental, immutable criteria constantly rejected by Neumann. The critical analysis of the ideas of diverse thinkers such as Vico, Michelet, Herder and Fichte to Habermas, C. Taylor and Harvey Siegel – but also numerous representatives from the Romanian, Hungarian, Serbian and Czech communities – disclose new theoretical studies on the intellectual confluences that shaped the European modernity. The studies concern themes ranging from the great emancipation projects to overthrowing scientific and epistemological paradigms of history. Along with the purely scientific importance of the analysis, the concept of collective identity has a militant dimension, too.

As written by professor Florin Lobonț “''it is exemplary for Neumann's aspiration to open the areas and cultures of Central and East Europe (fallen in the homogeneity of ethnical and exclusivist nationalism) towards the universality, Europeanity and tolerance, distinctive to the trans- and inter-cultural cosmopolitism dreamt by the Enlightened intellectuals of early modernity''”.

He has received awards and distinctions for outstanding merits in scientific, didactic and artistic activity. For example: The "A.D. Xenopol" Prize of the Romanian Academy for the volume: Tentația lui Homo Europaeus. Geneza spiritului modern în Europa Centrală și de Sud-Est/The Temptation of Homo Europaeus. The Genesis of the Modern Spirit in Central and South-Eastern Europe, Scinentific Publishing House, Bucharest, 1991; The National Order "Faithful Service" in the rank of Knight conferred by the President of Romania for outstanding merits, the talent anddedication shown in the long artistic, scientific and didactic activity through which he promoted the cultural traditions specific to each cultural community and the authentic values of universal art, creating a space of exemplary coexistence of Romanian civilization/Decree no. 488 of 1.06.2002; Diploma of Excellence for promoting the image of Timișoara, awarded by the Timișoara City Hall, 2005; Diploma of Excellence awarded by the West University of Timisoara for promoting international research projects, October 4, 2010.

Works translated into English:

''The Temptation of Homo Europaeus. An Intellectual History of Central and Southeastern Europe, Columbia University Press, New York, 1993; Scala Publishers, London, 2020;''

''The End of a History. The Jews of Banat from the Beginning to Nowadays'', Bucharest University Press, Bucharest, 1999;

''Between Words and Reality. Studies on the Politics of Recognition and Changes of Regime in Contemporary Romania'', The Council for Research in Values and Philosophy, Washington, D.C., 2000;

''Essays on Romanian Intellectual History'', West University of Timișoara Press, Timișoara, 2008;  

''Key Concepts of Romanian History. Alternative Approaches to Socio-Political Languages  ''(Edited by Victor Neumann and Armin Heinen), CEU Press, New York-Budapest, 2013;

''Modernity in Central and South-Eastern Europe. Ideas, Concepts, Disocurses'' (Edited by Victor Neumann and Armin Heinen), RAO Publishers, Bucharest, 2018;

''The Banat of Timișoara. A European Melting Pot'' (Edited by Victor Neumann), Scala Publishers, London, 2019;

''Kin, People or Nation? On European Political Identities'', Scala Publishers, London, 2021.  

''Opera''

Starting with ''The Temptation of Homo Europaeus, An Intellectual History of Central and Southeastern Europe'', a work constantly revised and enhanced, the author assumed and cultivated, without exception, a firm methodological option. That is, to reunite – in equal measure – the documentary raw material found in archives and libraries with philosophical, epistemological, critic-cultural perspectives and interpretative outlines that allow contextualizations and flexible, always open multidirectional comparisons. “Neumann's works revealed his affinity for many important thinkers, historians, philosophers and political scientists, including Fernand Braudel, Karl Popper, R.G. Collingwood, Raymond Aron, Reinhart Koselleck and Hannah Arendt”.  

Neumann deliberately chooses the geographic area of Central and South-Eastern Europe and aims to rediscover the past from books that include a modern vision of these spaces. This is all the more meritorious given that the vast majority of the writings devoted to the history of Europe exemplify only the Western space. In ''The Temptation of Homo Europaeus,'' Neumann consecrated a whole chapter of the transition from medieval to modern times, invoking the echo of Renaissance in East-Central Europe and the Balkan Peninsula. Erasmus's conceptions, dialogues and polemics with different personalities have attracted his attention, causing him to draw parallels between the West and East of the continent as far as the spirits of European thinking are concerned. He finds that therenewal of the humanist culture through art and science has taken place in schools set up by cities, and this culture was not just in the Occident. In presenting religious reform in East-Central Europe, the focus is on the consequences of Catholic propaganda. As Donald Mengay mentioned “''in fact his book, The Temptation of Homo Europaeus, a work that explores the very notion of European unity going back to the Middle Ages, was thwarted by the Ceaușescu regime at a time when diverse ethnicities were being subsumed under a more nationalist, "Romanian" ideal. The mix of personal and national history, that collision, has resulted in a work of extraordinary insight, depth, and topicality''”.

It's a comforting concept in a way, homo europaeus, and as Neumann argues it's no fiction. He follows the way it emerged in the shift toward humanism in the lead-up to the Renaissance, which is to say in the lurch toward modernity. He refers to that turn as a and a kind of , arising in western Europe primarily, but not at all exclusively. And yet in some ironic twist the West is held up as the shining city on the hill, which eastern Europeans were encouraged to imitate and admire, never mind identify with, that is with a bill of goods, homo europaeus, manifesting a “universality of spirit” that again brought modernity into being.

The cartographic illustrations in the book that map the flow of ideas appear a great deal like choreographic notes for a contemporary dance, or a visual record of the game Twister, a game that played out across a continent. Though Neumann stresses that that took place in the West in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries moved ostensibly in an easterly direction, in an effort to participate in or
Neumann explains that the Enlightenment ideas were received in the region without abandoning their own perspective on life, the new and the traditional interfering. The phenomenon took place through the open-minded Viennese authorities, and through the Catholic Church's integration into government programs. For a long time, such transfer of Western ideas was not accepted by Enlightenment scholars, who argued that Eastern Europe began the transition to modernity only in the 19th century, which explains why its role could be neglected in terms of the history of ideas. The polarising notion of center versus periphery was combined by the Western public with the uncontrolled impression of cultural superiority, then being ‘exported’ on a large scale to Central and Southeastern Europe. “''According to Neumann, the imagined meaning of the notion of the Balkans does not reflect reality, but rather serves the West's cultural superiority complex''”.

Some regions of East-Central Europe belonging to the House of Habsburg and its institutional successors becoming a particular space of emotional resonance and the social and cultural-behavioral model. The education-oriented middle classes strived – together with the elite formed in the spirit of the ''Aufklärung'' – to transform society, provoking competition. This did not lead to a revolutionary escalation as in France. Enlightenment perspectives have found their expression in government political reforms, especially in the Josephinist current of ideas. Therefore, Neumann contradicts the widespread assumption in research that the civilising processes of the modern age can only be understood through temporality.

The true heft of the work involves Neumann's encyclopedic, almost otherworldly, proliferation of examples. There are far too many example, but a small sampling includes, among others, indepth discussions of the Transylvanian humanist and Catholic prelate, Nicolaus Olahus (1493- 1568), a proponent of the Counter-Reformation but enough of a humanist to be admired by Erasmus; the Portuguese-Jewish physician Amatus Lusitanus (1511-1568), who had a Leonardian interest in science and human anatomy to become the target of popes, inducing him to move to Thessaloniki, then part of the Ottoman Empire, where he lived out his life among the flourishing Jewish community there; the free-thinking Theophilos Corydalleus (1563-1646), a Greek neoAristotelian and Orthodox cleric who advocated for philosophical materialism in his courses in Constantinople; the Moldavian “philosopher prince”, Dimitrie Cantemir (1673-1723), a bridge figure for sure who also lived in Constantinople, for twenty-two years, and helped further a humanist dialogue that reached from the locus classicus of the Enlightenment, namely France, to the center of the Ottoman Empire...; another Portuguese Jew, Daniel de Fonseca (1672-1740) who also made the trek to the Ottoman realm, followed by Bucharest and Wallachia, where he advocated for the civil rights not just of other Jews but all people...; the German theologian-turned-historian and polyglot August Ludwig von Schlözer (1735-1809), who studied in Hungarian then settled in St. Petersburg, where he learned Russian and became a historian of the Slavs and a promoter of history coupled with a philosophy of ideas”; the Hungarian-born Serb, Ignaz Joseph Martinovicz (1755-1795), the secret agent who dreamt of overcoming the old order based on Enlightenment ideas, “establishing fruitful communications between Vienna, Pest, Zagreb, and Timișoara in the East, and Paris in the West... Indeed, the array of thinkers almost overwhelms by virtue of their numbers, not to mention the numbers of their accomplishments.

Donald Mengay argues that “''Neumann not only provides a wealth of resources for any reader open and visionary enough to transcend the usual clichés about West over East but shows the situation was always more nuanced, complicated, multi-sited, and interesting than Westerns have ever conceived. Perhaps one of the more welcome and salutary elements is the historicization of the contributions of European Jews toward the discourse on humanism, secularism, and a shared Europeanness. In a sense, the figure of the Wandering Jew epitomizes European identity. It's ironic really, given their treatment at the hands of clerics and governments both. And yet as a group they had no small hand in furthering dialogue; as the offspring of a mixed marriage, living in the Banat - his father was a German Jew and his mother Romanian Orthodox - he has a thing or two to say on the subject''”.

Neumann doesn't shrink from posing questions about the whys and wherefores of the Jews’ contributions to the advancement of contemporary European identity, toward which end he cites the nomadic nature of Jewish lives over many centuries, pushed as they were by shifting politics and tolerances in Christian Europe; their love of books; their facility with languages, related to the peripatetic nature of their lives; their general tendency to de-emphasize land ownership and an effort to excel in trades - which is to say their intelligence and adaptability. So long overlooked and misunderstood as a group, again they played an intimate role in the advancement of the European project. In another note, while the work purports to be a conceptual history, it also invokes and participates in what Foucault called a “thick history", that is a historiography that steps down from the heights of the powerful to the gritty - or dusty - earth. Donald Mengay states the following: “''I'm thinking in particular of Neumann's reading of cemeteries and libraries... the gravestones often indicate professions, functions, activities [...]: lawyers, doctors, merchants, judges, pharmacists, landowners, factory owners....  there's a dialogue in the book to be found between cemeteries and libraries both, and Neumann reads the latter with similar insight... He writes that a library “can be [. . .] seen as an institute of learning that transmits ideas and propagates culture. In this regard it functions like other institutions: school and church, printing press and publishing house. . .''”.  

One of the most insightful elements of the book is a new ''Afterword'' to the Scala edition of ''The Temptation of Homo Europaeus'' (2020) that queries, and in many ways deconstructs, the notion of margins and center, or center and periphery. The notion implies an ontology, one we all know but so rarely state openly, namely that the West - France, Germany, and England - constitute a centrality, and everywhere else is peripheral too it. That very thinking is the problem. It's akin to saying there's a place where things happen, outside of which one finds Nowhere, as though Nowhere were possible anywhere on the planet. It's a crucial point, one that asserts the notion of multiple and even infinite centers. Or to put it in another way, in the universalizing gesture of the book, the globe itself operates as a center.  

For Central and Southeastern Europe, space must first be considered as an explanatory category because its specific feature of civilisation has generated its own modernisation. As Müller-Pelzer remarks, “''from the perspective of Western atheist labeling, the area in question may seem like an ‘underdeveloped’ modernity. The inadequacy of this view is illustrated by Neumann's reference to nineteenth-century Russian great intellectuals like Feodor Dostoevsky. The book concludes with a consideration of the destructive consequences of the progress of romantic-nationalist thought in Central and Southeastern Europe. The ideology of ethnic self-assertion disintegrated multicultural''

''communities, leading to regional wars and then to World War I. With the historic reconstruction of multilingual, multicultural and multiconfessional regions, Neumann hopes for a Europe in which citizens with multiple identities will strengthen civil society, ensuring democratic balance: Europe can be seen with great benefit for the project of its unification as soon as its multiple identities are admitted”''''.  ''

''On the occasion of publishing the third Romanian edition of The Temptation of Homo Europaeus (2006), professor Bogdan Murgescu noticed an element that singularizes the book, namely the relation between two different temporalities: one referring to the studied theme, the first Central-South-East European modernity (eighteenth century), and the other lived by the historian, Ceaușescu's national-communism (end of the twentieth century):''

''“Victor Neumann's book can be read as a reflection of disquietude displayed by a group of intellectuals with cosmopolite vocation, impacted by the isolationism and retrograde attitudes of ‘Ceaușescu's era’, which attempted to build a universe of normality through the world of books and ideas and which, when the shackles were broken by the Revolution, tried to assert its European identity in a nuanced and balanced manner. His enterprise is governed by the ideas of Enlightenment, by the refusal of national and religious allegations, by the choice of laicism and by the tryptic of ideas: closeness-knowledge-communication. Obviously, Victor Neumann empathizes with the intellectuals of early modernity and their manner of cultivating the scholar vocation and the Europeanity in times of less than favourable conditions”''''.''

''The Banat of Timișoara. A European Melting Pot''

''Das Temeswarer Banat. Eine Europäische Regionalgeschichte''

From historian's point of view, Banat is a region of convergence, a territory in which the civilizations of the Center and South-East intertwine, generating on the one hand the multiple internal dialogue, on the other hand, the great European dialogue. Furthermore, a turntable of the area between Vienna and Constantinople. Banat is also the birthplace of Neumann; this story also is woven through studies and books. The various linguistic and religious communities that coexisted with the Romanians benefited from a rich description, thus understanding the dialogue with Central and Western Europe, the Balkans and before and after Byzantium. It is the note of originality in Banat, a region located between two worlds, between two civilizations and influenced by the ideas of the French Revolution, which gave rise to a “''form of manifestation of bourgeois democratism''”. Banat is present in many historical writings, coordinated collective volumes including the most important, ''The Banat of Timișoara. A European Melting Pot'' and ''Das Temeswarer Banat. Eine Europäische Regionalgeschichte .'' Neumann is the author of most chapters among the 23 contributions included in the final edition. It is a highly relevant synthesis, one that explains indetail the genesis of the region's particularities due to the cultural diversity of its inhabitants.

The book is very demanding from a methodological point of view, which is why its development required a researcher and editor who could combine several skills. Victor Neumann is a scholar who deals with early modern history, but also a contemporary historian. He has published articles and books on social and religious history, as well as the history of concepts.

Thanks to his biography, he knows the Banat region and its cultural and scientific institutions very well. Victor Neumann is interested in the theory of history, in a systematic reflection on how history is not only written differently depending on the time, but also better written. Historian Armin Heinen, who translated the book into German and wrote the preface, appreciates the complexity and novelty of such research: ''“...the questions and answers in the book dedicated to the history of Banat consider: multiperspectivity, the systematic expansion of the canon of sources, the recognition and reflection of the state of research, openness to theorising, intelligible argumentation, historical science seen as systematic exploration and not as authoritarian narrative. Historical enlightenment is directed against the "self-imposed immaturity" of people (Kant), against "ideology." This aspect of historical science fascinates Victor Neumann and is directly related to the Enlightenment, the first current of modernity that accepted European diversity in religions, languages, and thoughts. With regard to Banat, we have a glimpse of the people, their differences, and their attempts to find ways to live in harmony.''

''Regional history as a story of human existence finds its narrative power in its emphasis on diversity and sociability, exploration of human existence and coexistence. It is a special opportunity that Victor Neumann and the other authors of the book have accepted the methodological and'' ''historical-theoretical challenges to develop a European regional history of Banat. It contributes to a fruitful understanding of this world”''''.''

''Kin, People or Nation? On European Political Identities''

"Against the backdrop of the worrying return and spread of nationalism in the form of strong cultural and political identity, Victor Neumann approaches from a new perspective the unity–diversity relationship within and between cultural and political communities. His study combines historical and systematic moments of analysis of national thinking and arguing in order to problematise the concept of nation. His historiographical chapters construe the semantic field ‘nation’ – its constitutive moments, effects and supporters – explaining the nation state in France, the cultural nation in the historical German-speaking regions of the nineteenth century, and in Eastern Europe with a particular focus on twentieth-century Romania.

His approach subtly considers the use of the semantic field by distinct speakers in distinct circumstances for distinct purposes. In the foreword to the book Kin, People or Nation, conceptual historian Hans Erich Bödeker states that ''“the systematically oriented chapters build on the critical reconsideration of some remarkable theorists of those categories that had shaped the discussion about the ‘nation’ for a long time, such as identity, unity, diversity, ethnicity, culture, etc.”''. They, however, turned out to be inadequate for both a plausible analysis of the historical processes under consideration and a conceptualisation of the contemporary world, since they presuppose uniform, homogeneous and closed cultural and political communities.

Neumann regards the need to redefine these patterns of analysis as inevitable. His close look at these categories demonstrates that identity is always hybrid, that culture is always heterogeneous and that historical differences are not just exclusive. Cultures unfold, he convincingly argues, in the tension between diversity and what they have in common. 

“''According to Neumann, the political and cultural world is characterised by being individual and diverse at the same time. Neumann's book is a substantial plea for the recognition of the other, of the other's culture, of the other's political community. Reciprocity, however, constitutes an essential prerequisite for recognition as a fundamental model for socio-political life''”.

Starting from the history of concepts, Victor Neumann shows how the variety of connotations associated with the ideas of 'nation' and 'people' have been circumscribed in South-Eastern Europe, holding back the region over many decades. ''“''More important, with erudition and seriousness of purpose, he mounts a defence of a notion of identity that is neither fixed nor monocultural, and proposes a legal definition of 'nation' that can resist exclusivist or racist versions. In an age when counter-rational fantasies about identity seem to be prevailing, when many seem unaware of or have forgotten where such thinking leads, Neumann's is a much-needed voice of reason”.

''Key Concepts of Romanian History. Alternative Approaches to Socio-Political Languages''

''Key Concepts of Romanian History'' proposes a comprehensive history, opposed to the ideologizing positivist-nationalist historiography still present in historical research and writing in Romania. The alternative perspective on the past, the theoretical and methodological challenges, and, last but not least, the contributions of leading Romanian and foreign researchers have attracted the interest of academic circles in Europe and around the world. The publication of the English version, entitled ''Key Concepts of Romanian History. Alternative Approaches to Socio-Political Languages'' meets this interest and contributes to stimulating dialogue between Romanian and international historiography.

The fundamental objective of the volume is to rewrite the history of Romania, because "the Europeanization/Westernization of the Romanian world is also linked to the way history is read". Applying the method of conceptual history and studying the relationship between historical reality and language offers the chance for an alternative interpretation of Romania's modernization process. According to Neumann – the editor (with Armin Heinen), coordinator and co-author of this volume -, “the pragmatism resulting from decoding the key concepts of Romanian socio-political languages consists in a better understanding of the past, in the theoretical foundation of the present, and in thinking about future projects”.

Seeking to answer the question “Is it useful to rewrite Romanian history?”, Victor Neumann's points out that historiographical research in former communist states lags behind historiographies in Western Europe and the US. According to the historian, ideological partisanship and prejudice continue to influence the approach to the past in Central and Southeastern Europe. Multiculturalism and diversity, imagined reality versus concrete reality, (ethno)national history as opposed to an understanding of transnational historical phenomena and developments are just a few of the many issues that have hindered studies of Eastern Europe's past. While Reinhart Koselleck focused on concepts that reflect modern thinking, Victor Neumann delved into concepts that define cultural and political identities and that have often replaced the ideal of modernization. Eastern European examples point to the incomplete modernization of societies, the perpetuation of discrepancies between social segments, and the fact that the Enlightenment was almost non-existent in this part of Europe. Theorizing history cannot ignore geographical, socio-political, and cultural contexts, which suggest or conclude particular meanings. Victor Neumann believes that, unlike the idea of a rupture between different historical epochs (''Zeitschichten'') formulated by Reinhart Koselleck for the German world in the transition to modernity, Romanian society suggests continuities, long durée structures that Fernand Braudel described in the case of the Mediterranean regions.

As Cristian Roiban pointed out “''by analyzing the meanings of key concepts like'' ''people,'' ''nation'', and t''otalitarianism, Neumann reveals the specificities and differences between the notions and concepts in Western languages and those in Romanian, respectively in Central and Southeastern European languages. The observations are based on research into the history of Romanian regional culture, contributing to the identification of the particularities of the structure of thought. The historian identifies the sources that formed the basis of the formation of ethno-national identity, the interference of Eastern and Western cultural-political ideas, and its result”''. One of the conclusions shows that in Romanian culture, the meaning of the concept of nation overlaps with those of people and race, with political identity resulting from specificities of language and history, religion, and ancestral origins. Alongside the traits inherited from the East, Romanian identity refers above all to a ''Kulturnation'' inspired by the romantic ''Volk'', and not to a political thinking structured on the legal values proposed by the concepts of ''peuple'' or ''people''. As for the concept of ''totalitarianism'', Victor Neumann believes that there is a submerged continuity between fascism and communism “rooted in the pre-modern thinking of the elites and the masses”, exclusivism being characteristic of both regimes. This is a reality that can be discerned as soon as we look at things through the prism of the relationship between ''the majority and minorities.''

''Key Concepts of Romanian History. Alternative Approaches to Socio-Political Languages'' edited by Victor Neumann and Armin Heinen, is a must-read. “''The book impresses with its density of information, high level of analysis and theorization, and, last but not least, the participation of leading researchers from Romania and around the world. It is all the more meritorious in that the editors have structured and stylized each contribution, harmonized the studies thematically and methodologically, designed and proposed a rational and logical approach to modern Romanian history, and proven with multiple arguments the significance of intellectual history, the history of ideas, and especially the concepts that give meaning to the past and present. Key Concepts of Romanian History fully meets their goals of rewriting Romanian history from an alternative, critical, and scientific perspective. The book can be seen as a model lexicon of fundamental Romanian social and political concepts, a publication of great significance for Romanian historiography and, through its English version, for European historiography as well”''''.'' * Provided by Wikipedia