The victims of the “Great War” in Transylvania: Recovering the Sources and Designing a Database of Invalids, Orphans, and War Widows

The present work introduces the scholarly community to a database containing information about the invalids, orphans, and widows of the First World War in Transylvania—the IOW database, which uses data extracted from the files relating to pensions awarded to these social categories as its main sources. These consist primarily of civil status documents, reports on the personal characteristics of the enrolled soldiers, data relating to war participation and testimonies proving disappearance or death in addition to medical records, as well as information regarding the situations of the beneficiaries’ families and the amounts of money they received, and evidence attesting changes in the status of pension beneficiaries. Next, the details were entered into a relational database that will enable multiple scientific investigations in the fields of humanities, social sciences, and legal studies, as well as medicine and history of medicine, and offer the possibility of having a social and cultural impact among the general public and local communities. The preliminary results, drawn from the table relating to widows, illustrate the negative consequences of war on the lives of men, women, and children in Transylvania. Finally, the paper outlines further development of the database and future lines of research.