20-24 septembrie 2009 - Biblioteca Metropolitana Bucuresti

782 Adina Berciu-DrăghicescuJuly/10 th of August 1913, established a new political reality in the BalkanPeninsula. The three Balkan countries Bulgaria, Greece and Serbia wereobliged, through an exchange of letters made with the Prime Minister ofRomania Titu Maiorescu, to grant autonomy to schools and churches forthe Romanians in their countries, which could be subsidized under thesupervision of the governments of the states in question and to acknowledgefor the Romanian a different bishopric.All Balkan states acknowledged after 1913 the existence of theAromanian schools, except for Serbia who considered the Treaty ofBucharest as being obsolete to it, rejecting the acknowledgement of theautonomy of schools and churches in Serbian Macedonia where there wereclosed all primary schools for boys and girls, a high school, a normal schooland 10 churches.In Greece, however, the situation was better, especially underdemocratic governments after 1913. Bilateral cultural agreement concludedwith the Greek state relative to the autonomy of the Romanian primary andsecondary schools and the right of the Romanian government to subsidizethem ended in July/August 1913 and was one of the annexes to the Treatyof Bucharest in 1913. It stipulated the autonomy of Aromanian schoolsand churches and the creation of a Romanian bishopric, financed by theRomanian state, but under the supervision of the Greek government.Religion textbooks were prepared by the Romanian church authorities andthe teaching and school ones, after the programs of the Ministry of PublicEducation.In 1914 in Macedonia operated 91 primary schools, with 111 schoolteachers, 76 women school teachers, 53 priests, 1 high school, 2 commercialschools and 1 normal school for girls 42 .The outbreak of the I st World War, less than a year after the signingof the Treaty of Bucharest, brought important changes in the southern andeastern European space. In all the Balkan states, thousand of Romanianswere mobilized and deployed on various battlefields, and their schools andchurches were again closed. In August 1916 occupied male population ofMacedonia, remained as a result of the previous mobilization, was sent toconcentration camps or coal mines in Svistov, of which many Romaniansdid not come back 43 . As a result of the military operations which deployedin Macedonia, many Romanian villages were looted or destroyed. Sheepheck was requisitioned. Concerning the salaries of priests, owe to the fightbetween Greek and Romanian religious propaganda, the parishioners were42Cristea Sandu Timoc, op. cit., 30.43Gheorghe Zbuchea 1999, A history of the Romanians in the Balkan Peninsula: the18 th -20 th centuries, Bucharest, 181.