Why does the play bring up Transylvania, why is there a vampire wandering about, and what does any of it have to do with Romania?!
Contrary to what you may have assumed from Hollywood, Transylvania is not an imaginary country to serve as the literary home of Dracula and Dr. Frankenstein, but is rather an actual territory, consisting of a large stretch of land along the arc of the Carpathian Mountains. The name “Transylvania” comes from the Latin, roughly meaning “The Land Beyond the Forest.”[1] At present, Transylvania is legally considered part of Romania—though that has not always been the case. In fact, Transylvania has been (and continues to be) the subject of an often bitter dispute between Hungary and Romania for generations.
From the year 1000 until 1920, Transylvania was a part of the Hungarian Kingdom, though by the 11th century, a growing population began in the mountains of Southern Transylvania that would come to be understood as ethnic Romanians. The two largest groups of these were a sect of Saxon colonists from the Germany (at the time, part of the Holy Roman Empire), and shepherds from Wallachia who followed Greek Orthodox practices.[2] By the end of the fifteenth century, Transylvania had a population of about 800,000, approximately 65% of which were Hungarian, with the rest primarily being members of the evolving Romanian ethnic group. By the middle of the 18th century, the Romanian share had increased to just over 50%. [3]
As the Romanian population grew, so did their interest in claiming Transylvania as their own land (this claim was bolstered by a growing Nationality around a genealogical idea (called the “Daco-Romanian Theory”), which placed Romanian ancestry in Transylvania dating a thousand years prior to the founding of the Hungarian Kingdom, thus claiming Hungary acted as an occupier, and giving Romanians native claim.[4]
Years of second-class citizenry, a growing population, and this Nationalist zeal brought attention, diplomacy, and violence to the Romanian’s calls for an independent state of their own; that state—including the area known as Transylvania, was recognized in the Treaty of Berlin in 1878.
Both World Wars saw ultimately-failed attempts by Hungary to reclaim Transylvania; ironically, while Transylvania had long been a Romanian-majority region in Hungary, during the 20th century this reversed, with the territory becoming a Hungarian-majority region in Romania.
And what about today? Tensions still can run high around the subject; in fact, as recently as February 11th of this year, Balkanalysis.com reported that the “Undersecretary of State in the Hungarian Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Zsolt Nemeth, declared at the Kossuth Radio Station that Hungary would take ‘diplomatic measures’ against Romania,” regarding a recent decision by Romanian officials to ban the display of a flag with ties to Hungarian-ethnic claims on official Romanian administrative buildings in the disputed area.[5]
One can easily see why there are tensions; each country feels they were there first, and each country has felt oppressed and persecuted by the other. Each has held a position of powerless majority in the region, and each has, at various points, had their point of view endorsed by major world powers. Whatever else is going on in Romania and Hungary, this is always there, beneath the surface.
So what’s that got to do with the Vampire and the Dog?
While the exact meaning behind this scene is clearly up for interpretation, we cannot forget that—for most people in Hollywood-influenced Western cultures—Transylvania is synonymous with Dracula. Largely because of this, tourism represented $77 million dollars of revenue for the region in 2010.[1] Thus, in many ways, people of the West and the people of Transylvania largely see each other because of and through this mythical creature that wanders the Carpathian Mountains at night.
Meanwhile, Transylvania (and Romania in general) has a long-established problem with stray and feral dogs,[2] both in the cities and in the mountains (most commonly Transylvanian Hounds and various wolf hounds). Much like the vampires, these features of the landscape can prove both charming[3] and terrifying[4] to Western visitors.
Is there something about these two symbols of forever-wandering, hungry, sharp-toothed, attractive-yet-dangerous inhabitants that links them to each other? To us? To the region of Transylvania and the country of Romania? To the revolution?
Whatever Caryl Churchill had in mind, both the vampire and the dog are familiar images to anyone from Romania, and both have been rumored to wander the lonely mountains at night.
[1] http://econdev.transylvaniacounty.org/node/12; http://www.romaniatourism.com/dracula-legend.html
[2] http://www.inyourpocket.com/romania/bucharest/Stray-Dogs-in-Bucharest_72013f; http://www.liltransyl.co.uk/ren1/ren1e.html
[3] http://tomfesing.blogspot.com/2011/06/romanian-national-archives-and-stray.html
[4] http://www.huffingtonpost.com/lea-lane/wild-dogs-in-romania-an-u_b_491635.html;
[1] http://www.romaniatourism.com/transylvania.html
[2] Note: In researching, I noticed some Hungarian historians disagree that the Saxon colonists should be considered ancestral Romanians, insisting instead that only the shepherds should be. However, since the intermarriage is clear, and since such a claim so obviously biases toward Hungary’s position on Transylvania, this information is more useful as politics than as history.
[3] http://www.hungarianhistory.com/lib/faf/toc02.htm
[4] http://www.hunsor.se/dosszie/daco_rumanian_continuity_legend.pdf
[5] http://www.balkanalysis.com/romania/2013/02/11/revived-transylvania-dispute-strains-romanian-hungarian-relations-with-potential-for-future-internationalization-of-the-issue/
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