Assimilation

Assimilation

Armenia is a small country tucked into the side of Turkey. For fifty years prior to the nineteen nineties it was a part of the Soviet Union but before that it was an independent state with a tragic history. In 2001 it celebrated 1,700 years since officially adopting Christianity – the first country to do so in 301. For most of those 1,700 years it has been invaded and harassed by its larger neighbors. Successive waves of Armenians, forced from their homes, have traveled around the world. Many successful Americans, particularly in the sports, business and the arts, are of Armenian descent.

In the past week a group of 10 Armenian agriculturalists have been hosted by my organization, the Organic Farmers Association of Romania. What was most interesting about their visit was our trip on their last day to the small city of Gherla. Gherla was established around 1700 by a group of Armenians who had been evicted from their country fifty years earlier. There is a church just off the central square of the city built in baroque style and is Armenian Catholic.

Armenians generally are orthodox but this part of Transylvania was under the Hapsburg rule, thus they were serviced by a Catholic priest. The story is that after several false starts the Armenians agreed to become Catholic but with conditions – that the service be conducted in Armenian, that the church documents be written in Armenian and that the priests could marry.

Today, 300 years after the founding of the city and without significant new inflows of migrants from Armenia the community has been completely assimilated. In town there is said to be only one old man that can speak Armenian, all others have forgotten it. In church, the service is now done in Hungarian, but the hymns are sung in Armenian, although no one knows what the words mean. The family names have all been romanianized and so are not traceable to the original founders. It is said though, that the hair color of the inhabitants of Gherla is different than of the rest of Transylvania and the noses are bigger, both reflecting their heritage.

The church has two interesting paintings. One, a depiction of the first King of Armenia accepting Christianity in 301 and the second, a Rubens, which the church keeps being separated from, but now hangs in a side gallery. The first picture was featured prominently in 2001 as the church celebrated those 1700 years of Christianity with a special service. There were 1,000 people for the mass and the sermon was in Armenian, although no one knew what was said, everyone mentioned afterward what a wonderful sermon it was.

The Rubens spent most of its life in England where it was taken after capture from France - I'm not quite sure what it was doing in France. Returned to the church in 1908, it was removed by the Nazis in the Second World War. Returned to Romania in 1952 it resided in the art museum in Cluj until someone realized that it was the same painting that had been taken from Gherla. It was in 1999 that it was finally rehung in the Church. It is similar to others painted by the master and shows Christ being lifted from the cross.

The mayor of Gherla, population 22,000, came out to greet our guests and the townspeople seemed genuinely pleased to have them visit. The Armenians appeared happy with the reception but I wondered about the loss of the traditions of their cultural outpost, swallowed by time into the larger community. Much of Europe and the world define themselves by their ethnicity, almost as if a tribal notion. In America, ethnicity is more a curiosity than a statement. Gradually even racial features will become blended. Our guide yesterday pointed to his hooked nose and stated proudly, “See, I am Armenian.” He was speaking in Romanian although his preferred tongue was Hungarian.

It took 300 years for Armenian Gherla to become Hungarian/Romanian Gherla. Perhaps another 50 or 100 to turn completely Romanian (provided the boarders don’t switch again). Perhaps it will be 300 years, or 500 years or 1,000 years before everyone becomes what may be called European, but it has been 1,700 years since the country or Armenian adopted Christianity so, it would seem that we have time. One thing I suspect though, that when the world remixes and reblends itself the common language will be English. Perhaps it will not be an English that you or I will recognize, with prepositions altered and phrases twisted, but it will be English, because more than any other language, English adapts.