‘The Evil Genius of a Country’. The War Profiteer in Romanian Satirical Press (1918-1918)

Abstract

At the end of 1918, Romania exits the Great War as a victorious country, after a German occupation and a double change in political alliances. The after-war years are dedicated to the national unification, political and cultural alike; there is much talk in the public agenda of starting anew and the ethical dimension of this renewing process is obviously at the top of the list. The present paper aims to examine a specific element of the Romanian public agenda at the end of 1918 and beginning of 1919: the press campaigns dealing with the aftermath of the occupation years, specifically the case of war profiteers, in the first months after the end of the war. From different forms of press campaigns used to expose the war profiteers, we choose to showcase the ad-hominem literary pamphlet, largely present in the Romanian press during the immediate post-war years. Seen as an intermediate genre (closely related
to the press in terms of form and immediate purpose, but claiming literary status for its use of literary techniques and structures), the literary pamphlet is used in the Romanian press of ’18–’19 for its symbolical charge and as a substitute for ‘real’ social justice.