The Romanian Germans and the Securitate Heritage. An Outline of the Problem and Research Potential

This article deals with the efforts to assess the Securitate files, while focusing on Romanian German writers. I address, on the one hand, the explanatory power of this type of source and, on the other hand, the effects which the opening of secret service archives has had on a specific group, in this case, the Romanian Germans. On the basis of an analysis of the media discourse regarding the unofficial involvement of Romanian-German actors in the Securitate that is centered around concepts of “guilt”, “justice” and “legality”, I will outline the most important problems in the process of coming to terms with the Securitate heritage: the uncertain explanatory power and the hardly manageable amount of sources, the (delayed) need to come to terms with both the national-socialist and communist past as well as the deep involvement of affected persons in the process itself. As a potential way out of these dilemmas, I will apply a professionalized instrument of analysis to this problematic type of source, which involves a stronger focus on comparable cases and issues which overcome the ethnocentric perspective.