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The paper analyzes the handling of sources in the historic and ethnographic literature about Roma. In it a tradition of copying can be found without sufficient acknowledgement of sources, the unchecked assumption of foreign statements and inadmissible generalization. These characteristic features are integrated into a pejorative structure. The historic and ethnographic literature is characterized by a moralizing condemnation of those referred to as „gypsies” whereas the social realities remain largely hidden. It is based on only a few sources, in which statements about Roma in the Transylvanian area take a key role. Texts from the 17th to the 19th century are referred to in context of this aspect and are analyzed on their contents. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

For Central-Eastern Europe the aftermath of the war was apparent, especially in what concerned the disintegration, respectively, the formation of some new national states (e.g. Poland, Czechoslovakia) as well as the extension of some already existing borders (Serbia, Romania). In the case of Romania, the historiography was focused on the presentation of the event through one of its major aftermaths: the Great Union of December 1st of 1918 declared at Alba Iulia, by means of which the Romanians in Transylvania, Banat and Hungary expressed the annexation of the territories they inhabited to the Kingdom of Romania. Confirmed by the peace treaties in Paris, the Union from December 1st was a founding moment for the whole Romanian state, welcoming the attention of researchers, in spite of the political regimes that followed in the country, the utmost importance of this event in Romanian history arising from it being declared the national day of Romania. For the Saxons in Transylvania, the Great War did not get but a little of the researchers' attention, who focused as well on the first political document of the Saxon elite after the disintegration of Austria-Hungary: the adherence of the Saxons to the Union proclamation of Transylvania with Romania, an action that was explained by the need to win the Romanians' affinity and thus obtain a political status as favorable as possible within the new state. Romanian and German historiography did not consider in any way the perspective of common people, soldiers or civilians, peasants or town inhabitants, men or women, adults or children had on the war. This perspective started to change radically in 2012 when two Romanian historians, Nicolae Bocşan and Valeriu Leu, initiated a project to edit the Romanian memoirist of Banat concerning the Great War. The over 1500 pages in the two volumes that were already published give therefore a new image of the event, the mail, the journals, the memoirs were brought to light, turning into sources that renew historiography. In brief, we are discussing a new history that suggests a different approach by: 1) discovering the story of some human destinies, individual and collective, whose biographic path was irrecoverably marked by the development of the world war; 2) exploring the First World War from a different point of view, that of the soldier on the front or the one in prison, the military priest meant to comfort the souls, to offer moral support and to encourage the people sent to the battlefields, the viewpoint of the journalist and the politician who try to exploit the military events for journalistic or political propaganda. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]