Jassy, obsolete: Jaßenmarkt

around Iaşi

Latin: Jassium; Russian: Яссы, transliterated as Jassy; Hungarian: Jászvásár; Armenian: Yash; Turkish: Yaş

In Romanian, the city is also known as ‘Iaşii’ or ‘Târgul Iaşilor’, which literally means ‘the market of the Jasses’. The ‘Jasses’ were members of nomadic Turkic tribes who, during the High Middle Ages, settled primarily in the territory of the Cumans’ realm in the northern Black Sea region.

Jassy is situated in north-eastern Romania, approximately 20 km from the border with the Republic of Moldova, at 47° 09′ north latitude and 27° 38′ east longitude.

Jassy stretches across the riverside meadows and terraces of the River Bahlui, as well as across seven hills.

The municipality of Iași is the county town ofIași County and the fourth-largest city in Romania. Under the EU’s regional classification, Iași belongs to the North-East development region of Romania, which has the lowest level of development in the country.

The town’s coat of arms depicts a white town gate on a red background, with a white horse and a golden crown above it; the latter are ‘symbols of power’.^[1]

Jassy is also known as the ‘City of a Hundred Churches’ and the ‘City of Seven Hills’.

Intensive archaeological research, particularly after 1950, has unearthed evidence of Palaeolithic (flint tools) and Neolithic cultures (Cucuteni pottery) not far from Iași.^[2]

In 1408, during the reign of Alexandru cel Bun (Alexandru the Good, d. 1432), Jassy was mentioned for the first time in a document confirming trading privileges for merchants from Lemberg/L’viv/Lwów. Urban development began in the 13th century, influenced by the intensification of trade in Moldavia, the associated economic development and the influx of craftsmen, as well as the town’s strategically favourable location at the heart of the Principality.

From 1563 onwards – with some interruptions – Iași served as the capital of the Principality of Moldavia. From 1859 to 1861, Iași was the joint capital of the united principalities of Wallachia and Moldavia, a role it relinquished to Bucharest/București in 1862. During the First World War, Iași once again became the provisional seat of government for Romania from 1916 to 1918.

On 26 June 1940, the Soviet Union issued an ultimatum to Romania, demanding that Bucharest immediately withdraw its troops and administration from Bessarabia, Northern Bukovina and the Herza region. Romania accepted the terms in order to avoid armed conflict. The absurd assumption that Jews were responsible for the cession of these territories became a common cliché,^[3] as did rumours that Jews had sent signals to Soviet aircraft that bombed the city in June 1941. This contributed to the Jews being indiscriminately associated with anti-communist stereotypes.^[4] As preparations for the attack by Romanian and German armies on the Soviet Union intensified, anti-Jewish agitation in the border town grew. Immediately following the invasion of the Soviet Union, on 29 June 1941 and in the days that followed, an estimated 13,000 Jews were murdered in Iași: Around 3,500 were rounded up by Romanian and German soldiers, held captive on the grounds of the police headquarters in Iași and shot,^[5] whilst others were murdered as German and Romanian soldiers looted the Jewish quarter. Two trains were provided for the ‘evacuation’ of the remaining Jews. These were trains that had previously been used to transport carbide. The Jews were confined there for days, without air to breathe, water or food, some of them seriously injured; many died.^[6]

From the 15th century onwards, Jassy grew steadily; the population increased as various groups moved in: people from neighbouring villages, Armenians, Germans from Transylvania (who settled mainly in the so-called ‘Saxon’ Street, behind what is now the Metropolitan Cathedral), Romanians and Hungarians from Transylvania, Greeks, Russians and others.^[7]

In 1912, Iași had 75,229 inhabitants, of whom almost half – 42 per cent – were Jews.^[8] In 1930, the city had a population of 102,872, including 63,168 Romanians, 34,662 Jews, 980 Germans, 918 Russians and others.^[9] Before the Second World War, around half (45,000) of the city’s inhabitants were Jewish.^[10] At the turn of the millennium (2002), Iași was still Romania’s second-largest city after Bucharest, with a population of approximately 321,000.^[11] Over the following decade, the city’s population declined steadily, mainly as a result of the economic restructuring process, so that by 2011 only 263,000 people were living in Iași,^[12] including 89 Germans.^[13]

In the Middle Ages, the town lay on the long-distance trade route from Istanbul to Kyiv. Its status as a capital from the late 16th century onwards and the settlement of Jewish, Armenian and Greek merchants in the early modern period had a positive impact on Jassy’s economic development and, in particular, stimulated trade, for which particularly favourable conditions existed at this crossroads between the Ottoman Empire, the Habsburg Monarchy and Poland or Russia. The city’s industrialisation did not begin until the late 19th century and was vigorously promoted by the communist regime, leading to a massive increase in the population from the 1950s onwards. Iasi’s most important economic sectors are currently the pharmaceutical industry, metallurgy, mechanical engineering, the textile industry, the banking sector and tourism. Several software companies are based in the city.

The city had more than 50 synagogues, 43 Orthodox churches, one Armenian church, one Roman Catholic church and one Protestant church.^[14] As recently as 1930, approximately 34 per cent of the population were Jewish and 60 per cent were Orthodox. The 2002 census showed that 92.5 per cent were Orthodox and 4.9 per cent were Catholic.^[15]

In 1840, the first national theatre of the Romanian principalities opened in Iași. It was also the site of Romania’s first natural history museum and the world’s first Yiddish-language theatre (1876), founded by Abraham Goldfaden (1840–1908), a writer of operettas and plays. The Romanian Museum of Literature focuses primarily on aspects of Romanian literary history after 1848.

In 1863/1864, the Junimea literary society was founded in Iași, bringing together prominent writers, philologists, historians and lawyers such as Titu Maiorescu (1840–1917), Petre P. Carp (1837–1919), Mihai Eminescu (1850–1889), Ioan Slavici (1848–1925), Ion Creangă (1839–1889) and Ion Luca Caragiale (1852–1912). The association played a pre-eminent role in 19th-century Romanian culture and, in particular, also shaped Romanian historiography. Members of this society held important leadership positions within the Conservative Party and provided several Romanian prime ministers and ministers.

The Polirom publishing house, founded in 1995, is one of the largest publishers in Romania and plays a key role in promoting contemporary young Romanian literature (authors include Răzvan Rădulescu and Ana Maria Sandu).

It was not until June 2003, after more than 50 years of discourse seeking to justify the events and the denial of any Romanian responsibility for the persecution and murder of the Jews, that the Romanian government, under international pressure, established the International Commission (‘Wiesel Commission’)^[16] to investigate the Holocaust in Romania.^[17]

• József Benedek: Spatial Planning and Regional Development. In: Thede Kahl, Michael Metzeltin, Mihai-Rǎzvan Ungureanu (eds.): Romania. Space and Population, History and Historical Narratives, Culture, Society and Politics Today, Economy, Law and the Constitution, Historical Regions. Vienna, Berlin 2008 (Österreichische Osthefte. Journal for Research on Central, Eastern and South-Eastern Europe 48/2006, special issue), pp. 105–130.
• Cristina Ciucu: The Romanian Holocaust: Denial and Revisionism. In: Iulia Dondorici (ed.): Romania Today. Vienna 2011 (Passagen Europa South-East), pp. 69–82.
• Claudia Popescu: The Economy of a Regional Metropolis. Case study: Iaşi, Romania. In: Transylvanian Review of Administrative Sciences 33E (2011), pp. 255–276 (URL: rtsa.ro/tras/index.php/tras/article/view/294).
• Hugo Weczerka: The Principality of Moldavia and the Germans. In: Isabel Röskau-Rydel (ed.): Galicia, Bukovina, Moldavia. Berlin 1999 (German History in Eastern Europe), pp. 329–378.

• culturainiasi.ro/ (Announcements of cultural events in Iași, in Romanian)
• www.memorialmuseums.org/denkmaeler/view/1047/Erinnerung-an-die-Opfer-des-Pogroms-vom-Juni-1941 (Portal on memorial sites in Europe. Information from the foundation ‘Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe’ on the pogrom in Iași, in German)
• www.yumpu.com/de/document/read/4688699/gestern-und-heute-gymseredsk (Comenius project: Folk Art and Crafts in Europe – Past and Present, in German and other languages)
• www.icc.ro/ro (Website of the Jassy Municipal Council, in Romanian)
• www.recensamantromania.ro/rezultate-2/ (website of the National Institute of Statistics on Romanian censuses, in Romanian)

[1] Comenius Project: Folk Production and Folk Crafts in Europe – Past and Present. URL: www.yumpu.com/de/document/read/4688699/gestern-und-heute-gymseredsk (accessed 13 July 2021).

[2] Constantin Cihodaru, Gheorghe Platon (eds.): Istoria oraşului Iaşi [The History of the City of Iaşi]. Vol. 1. Iaşi 1980, pp. 20, 22.

[3] International Commission for the Study of the Holocaust in Romania: Final Report, p. 84. URL: www.inshr-ew.ro/ro/files/Raport%20Final/Raport_final.pdf.pdf (accessed 13 July 2021).

[4] Armin Heinen: Romania, the Holocaust and the Logic of Violence. Iaşi 2011, p. 124.

[5] Memorials Portal on Places of Remembrance in Europe/Iaşi: www.memorialmuseums.org/denkmaeler/view/1047/Erinnerung-an-die-Opfer-des-Pogroms-vom-Juni-1941 (accessed 11 September 2014).

[6] Final Report (note 3), pp. 118ff.

[7] Cihodaru, Platon (ed.): Istoria oraşului Iaşi (note 2), pp. 52ff.

[8] Lucian Boia: History and Myth. On the Presence of the Past in Romanian Society. Cologne, Weimar, Vienna 2003, p. 203.

[9] General Census of the Population of Romania of 29 December 1930. Vol. 2. Bucharest 1938.

[10] Memorial Sites Portal on Places of Remembrance in Europe/Iași (note 5).

[11] Peter Jordan, Thede Kahl: Ethnic Structure. In: Thede Kahl, Michael Metzeltin, Mihai-Rǎzvan Ungureanu (eds.): Romania. Territory and Population, History and Historical Narratives, Culture, Society and Politics Today, Economy, Law and Constitution, Historical Regions. (Österreichische Osthefte. Journal for Research on Central, Eastern and South-Eastern Europe 48/2006, special issue), pp. 63–88, here pp. 76ff.

[12] Comisia Centrală pentru recensământul populaţiei şi al locuinţelor [Central Commission for the Population and Housing Census] (ed.): Press release of 2 February 2012 on the provisional results of the Population and Housing Census. URL: www.recensamantromania.ro/rezultate-2/ (accessed 17 May 2012).

[13] National Institute of Statistics: Provisional results. URL: insse.ro/cms/ (accessed 17 May 2012).

[14] Weczerka: The Principality of Moldavia, p. 366.

[15] Permanent population by main religions according to the 2011 census [The resident population broken down by the main religions according to the 2011 census]. URL: www.recensamantromania.ro/rezultate-2/ (accessed 17 May 2012).

[16] Final report (note 3).

[17] Ciucu: The Romanian Holocaust, pp. 74–77.

Arinda Crăciun: Jassy/Iaşi. In: Online Encyclopaedia on the Culture and History of Germans in Eastern Europe, 2015. URL: ome-lexikon.uni-oldenburg.de/p32402 (accessed 16 March 2015).