Experiencing Collapse: Tibor Eckhardt’s Career in Transylvania (1914–1918)

This study examines the early career of Tibor Eckhardt (1888–1972) through his administrative and political activities in Transylvania during the First World War. Drawing on official records, memoirs, and contemporary press reports, the paper reconstructs his movements across the wartime bureaucratic and social landscape—from government service to local administration and militia organization amid imperial collapse. By situating Eckhardt’s experiences within the broader dynamics of displacement, social disintegration, and state transformation, the study argues that these forms of administrative and political mobility shaped his later worldview. The paper also serves to illuminate how local actors experienced and interpreted the disintegration of empire.