The Objectives and Activities

• I. Determining the current state of knowledge in the field of the proposed topic (Months 1-8)
  • - Consulting the main bibliographical references in the country and abroad referring to World War I and to the state-coordinated propaganda during the years 1914-1918.
  • - Identifying and studying the latest interdisciplinary methodological perspectives, highlighting both their methodological dimensions and the possibility of applying their interpretative paradigms to the historical realities in Transylvania.
• II. Investigating the domestic and foreign sources on World War I and the propaganda carried out in Transylvania between 1914-1918 (Months 1-20)
  • - Archival, press and bibliographical research: focused on the identification and analysis of a rich material (archival documents, manuscripts, war literature, correspondence, the periodicals of the time, etc.), related to the issue of the state’s mobilization of the Transylvanians through the Church, as well as for a comparison with the situations in North Tyrol and Northern Ireland.
  • - Collection of documents (prayers and sermons from the war, iconographic material broadcast during the war, ecclesiastical instructions, circulars, pamphlets, school textbooks, and instructions addressed to the military priests by the Church and the State) that attest the forms adopted by the propaganda messages of the Hungarian State, targeted at the Romanian population in the period 1914-1918, and will constitute a database of information/images related to the project theme.
• III. Drawing the coordinates of the propaganda carried out by the Hungarian State through the clergy of the Romanian churches in Transylvania between 1914-1918 (Months 1-24)
  • - Identifying the messages, transmission pathways and the target groups envisaged by the propaganda of the Hungarian civil authorities during World War I, implemented through the Transylvanian Romanian clergy.
  • - Determining the impact of the propaganda and its effects in terms of the mobilization and control of the Romanian population in Transylvania
  • - Identifying the stages in the evolution of the propaganda coordinated through the clergy, determined by the main events of the conflict: its outbreak (1914), Romania’s entry into war (1916), the death of Emperor Franz Joseph I (1916), the Great National Assembly from Alba Iulia (1918).
• IV. Dissemination of the research results related to the propaganda conducted by the state through the Romanian clergy in Transylvania between 1914-1918 (Months 4-24)
  • - Participating in international conferences in order to compare the preliminary and final results of our research with those of other specialists in the field.
  • - Writing and publishing studies in journals indexed in international databases in order to popularize the main results of the research; the development of the project website and of a Facebook page, with a view to promoting the research and its results online.
  • - Publishing a volume of studies in English, the result of the research undertaken (2017)
  • - Short documentary film about the war propaganda in Transylvania, 1914-1918 (2017).