Acta Universitatis Danubius. Communicatio, Vol 6, No 1 (2012)

Abstract

The Lower Danube, an economic region par excellence in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century, is always an example for intercultural communication which has characterized this area for centuries to come. In the cities on the Danube, especially Braila and Galati, the understanding between ethnicities, who lived, worked and developed business activities, was proverbial. Hebrew, Greek, Armenian, Lippovans, Bulgarians, all lived in harmony with Romanians. However, the occurred phenomena in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century, when some historians consider that Anti-Semitic and xenophobic politics became state politics, have reached this area as well for a while, an area that seemed to be immune. It first appeared the Semitic magazines, which were struggling to gain political rights for Hebrew or the establishment of Palestine, after that the anti-Semitic and xenophobic magazines, in the early twentieth century and then between 1920-1930, it occurred as a reflex of the phenomena at national level. In 1905 it was released the first xenophobic magazine against the Greeks, Jos Asasinii/Off with the Assassins, urging the commercial strike and the refuse to make any trade with the Greeks; then the Anti-Semitic was released in 1906, and Revista naţiunei/The Nation Magazine in the same year. Several magazines were then published in the interwar period. Interesting enough is that they did not last very much, being only momentary outbursts, previously softened, as the understanding between ethnicity and the insurance of prosperity has proven to be stronger than the stereotypes promoted at national level.