History of Modern Cremation in Romania

1. Auflage 2013
ISBN: 978-1-4438-4222-8
Verlag: Cambridge Scholars Publishing

Buch, Englisch, 480 Seiten

Cremation, as a means of managing the post-mortem body, was reintroduced to Europe at the end of the eighteenth century, but would not become common practice until the second half of the nineteenth century. This was a major development, with multifaceted implications which generated heated debate. Initially, armed with a variety of arguments (hygienic, economic, aesthetic, and philosophical arguments citing freedom of conscience and will) the advocates of modern cremation – who tended to come from the social and cultural elite – sought to impose their new model. This brought them into conflict with the traditional structures and patterns of burial, and thus with the Church, which had of course originally ended the practice of cremation.

The present study is a history of cremation in Romania, beginning with the emergence of cremationist ideas in 1867 and taking the reader up to the present day. It analyses the following key periods: the second half of the nineteenth century and early twentieth century, the Interwar period (Romania then being the first Orthodox country in the world to possess a crematorium, which provoked a vehement reaction against cremation on part of the Orthodox Church), the Communist period (when no new crematoria were built even though the Communist regime proclaimed itself to be atheist), and the post-Communist period.

Autoren/Hrsg.

Rotar, Marius

Fachgebiete

• Geisteswissenschaften Geschichtswissenschaft Geschichtliche Themen Kultur- und Ideengeschichte
• Geisteswissenschaften Geschichtswissenschaft Weltgeschichte & Geschichte einzelner Länder und Gebietsräume Europäische Geschichte
• Geisteswissenschaften Geschichtswissenschaft Weltgeschichte & Geschichte einzelner Länder und Gebietsräume Geschichte einzelner Länder Europäische Länder

Über Autor(innen)

Rotar, Marius
Marius Rotar (born in 1974) is a Researcher at “1 Decembrie 1918” University of Alba Iulia, Romania, and holds a PhD in History. His PhD thesis was dedicated to death and dying in nineteenth century Transylvania, and is the first PhD thesis within Romanian historiography to be focused on such a topic. He is Chairman of Amurg, the Romanian Cremation Association, and initiated the international conference, “Dying and Death in 18th–21st Century Europe”.

Marius Rotar (born in 1974) is a Researcher at “1 Decembrie 1918” University of Alba Iulia, Romania, and holds a PhD in History. His PhD thesis was dedicated to death and dying in nineteenth century Transylvania, and is the first PhD thesis within Romanian historiography to be focused on such a topic. He is Chairman of Amurg, the Romanian Cremation Association, and initiated the international conference, “Dying and Death in 18th–21st Century Europe”.