Category: RRI Encyclopaedia

Writer Marin Sorescu was born in February 1936 in the village of Bulzești, in Dolj County, in southern Romania. A poet, playwright, prose writer and literary critic, Marin Sorescu was one of the best-known and popular Romanian writers from the communist period, both in Romania and abroad. After his death in 1996, aged 60, his work, however, fell somewhat out of fashion. Literary historian Paul Cernat tells us more:

Marin Sorescu hailed from Oltenia, a region that features in many ways in his works, especially in his cycle of poems entitled At Lilieci, which is one of his masterpieces. Sorescu went to high school in Craiova and then the military school in Predeal, an experience that left a deep impression on him and which he wrote about in a series of poems that were published after his death. He studied at the Faculty of Philology in the late 1950s and graduated in 1960. Soon afterwards he made his debut as a poet in the early days of the post-Stalinist thaw, something he took advantage of.

It didn’t take Marin Sorescu long before he made a name for himself. He wrote and published a lot and became involved in the literary life of the day, while his works were translated into other languages. Apart from poems, he also wrote drama and children’s books. His popularity helped him evade the negative consequences of a scandal known as the transcendental meditation. In the early 1980s, the communist regime marginalised a series of influential intellectuals who had taken part in yoga and Oriental mediation sessions. Although he took part in these sessions himself, Marin Sorescu lost neither his job nor his status. Literary historian Paul Cernat:

Beginning in the 1970s, Sorescu began to be known not only in Romania, but also abroad. He was known as a globetrotter, and someone whose work was translated into many languages, in many countries. He had close ties with many important poets from abroad, whom he interviewed. Some of these dialogues were published in 1985 in a volume called Inspiration treatise. He was also involved in many a polemic. He was a sarcastic literary critic, but also full of verve and ideas. He had already acquired legendary status by the time he was 50. In the 1980s he was a landmark of Romanian literary life from many points of view. After 1990 he also pursued a political career, including serving as minister of culture. Many were intrigued by his political choices post-1990. He wasn’t very inspired in this respect and besides, the times were very tense, there was a lot of political warmongering, something which perhaps contributed to his early demise. He died of cancer at the end of 1996, not making it to 61.

In the few years he got live in the 1990s, Marin Sorescu won the Herder Prize and was awarded his doctoral title in philology by the University of Bucharest. 15 volumes, including poems, essays, diaries and a novel were found in manuscript form at his death. Literary historian Paul Cernat tells us more about the specificity of Marin Sorescu’s writings:

It’s the combination of humour and seriousness, even tragic. I see in Marin Sorescu the literary equivalent of Brâncuși. I believe this combination of demythologising freshness and profound mythology is one of his characteristics. Also, the combination of a typically Oltenian facetiousness and restless meditation on the purpose of life, its essence. Marin Sorescu is a homo duplex, laughing with one eye, crying with the other. It depends what aspect of this personality we want to emphasise. Some have viewed him as more of a parodist or humorist. But I believe he is equally a serious soul who in fact wants to rehabilitate the myths and rescue them in the modern world through irony, a familiar tone, communication. I think he achieved this. Moreover, his work translates well abroad. He won all kinds of international awards, but his work is a very efficient combination of localism and universality. I’d say that his afterlife also deserves to be looked at, because it had its own ups and downs. After appearing to be forgotten for a while, things have settled down recently and his work is again appreciated.

Many of Marin Sorescu’s poems are available in English, with the first collection of his poems first appearing in English in 1983 in a book entitled Selected Poems, followed, in 1987, by The Biggest Egg in the World, a selection with translators including Ted Hughes and Seamus Heaney. The 2004 collection The Bridge, published in 1997, brings together the poems written by Marin Sorescu from his sickbed over the course of five weeks. Twenty years later, these poems inspired the American composer Michael Hersch to write the music and the libretto for his opera On the Threshold of Winter, which opened in New York in 2014.

Before the 19th century, treating mental illnesses was the prerogative of the Church, as it was the case anywhere else in Europe. But the increasing presence of the state within the society meant that the training of specialists was left to the newly established state institutions. The main issue, in the case of wrongdoers, was to establish if mental disorders influenced their behavior. There were also cases when people who held important positions within the state suffered from mental disorders. One such case was that of the Prince of Wallachia, Nicolae Mavrogheni (1735-1790). Psychiatrist Octavian Buda, a professor with the Carol Davila University of Medicine and Pharmacy in Bucharest, told us more about it: During the Phanariote era, we had a mad ruler, Nicolae Mavrogheni. Apparently he suffered from bipolar disorder. Ionescu-Gion says about him that he was a ‘joke of nature’. His bizarre behavior made the Ottomans execute him. So, by all evidence, they killed man with a psychiatric disorder.

Among the outstanding names of the Romanian psychiatry is that of Alexandru Obregia. He studied in Berlin and Paris and specialized in psychiatry and neurology. Among the personalities in the field that Obregia worked with was the famous physician, psychologist and philosopher Wilhelm Wundt. Born in Iasi in 1860, Alexandru Obregia continued the tradition started by his mentor, Alexandru Suțu and developed it. Obregia defended his doctoral thesis at the age of 28 in Bucharest. He became a professor and he worked for 25 years.

The opening of the first hospital for nervous diseases in Romania is also linked to his name. It was located in the south of Bucharest, in the current Berceni neighborhood. At the time of its inauguration, in 1923, the area was outside Bucharest. Built between 1907 and 1910 with the support of the conservative politician Gheorghe Grigore Cantacuzino, but inaugurated only in 1923 due to the First World War, the hospital benefited, over time, from the best minds in the field of psychiatry and neurology. Octavian Buda pointed out that 100 years since the opening of this public health institution are celebrated this year. It was a vital institution, that benefitted the work of an extraordinary team of physicians, led by Professor Alexandru Obregia: Specialists in the field of psychiatry had started to to appear, such as Alexandru Obregia. 2023 marks 100 years since the inauguration of the first psychiatry hospital, today the Obregia Hospital of today. He was a kind of minister of health, heald of the health department, with studies in Germany, in Munich. He was a great personality. And we also have the Minovici brothers, who started raising the issue of crime and society, challenging Lombroso with great courage.

Alexandru Obregia stood out, among the doctors of his generation, due to his correct diagnoses and innovative treatment methods. He oriented psychiatry even more towards the anatomic particularities of patients and their biological functioning. Thus, he is recognized as the one who proposed the anatomical-clinical method and the experimental method in the treatment of nervous diseases. He also spoke out against the beliefs of the Romanian medical circles of the time according to which the existence of a so-called degeneration and an irreversibility of symptoms favored the development of nervous diseases. In this respect, he undertook research on the disease called cyclophrenia, an affective mental disorder defined by confusion and excessive alcohol consumption, showing that the disease itself and its symptoms are reversible. In 1908, after years of research on his own, Obregia introduced the suboccipital puncture method.

In 1934, Professor Alexandru Obregia, who also had a lot of experience as manager that he had been acquiring ever since 1893, retired from the management of the hospital for nervous diseases. Since 1905, he had served as the director of the Mărcuța hospice, one of the most famous treatment institutions for the mentally ill where, for a short time, poet Mihai Eminescu had also been treated.

Obregia was decorated with the Legion of Honor in 1901, by the president of France and in 1913 by the King of Romania Carol I with the Medical Merit Cross. In the summer of 1937, three years after his retirement and four days after his 77th birthday, Obregia died at his home in Bucharest. After 1990 the hospital in the Berceni neighborhood was given his name in his honor. A boulevard in the same neighborhood was also given his name. (EE)

With a history of 155 years, the Romanian Academy Library is today the most important keeper of printed materials that have been produced or have circulated in the Romanian space. It had emerged as a natural consequence of the establishment, on April 1st, 1866, of the Romanian Literary Society, which a year later became the Romanian Academic Society. As of 1879, two years after Romania won its state independence, the Romanian Academy, as successor of the two previous organizations, became the most important scientific institution of the new Romanian state. The Romanian Academy Library, established in 1867, started assuming its role and increasing its knowledge fund with the help of acquisitions and donations. At the end of the 19th century, in 1897, the building that was to host the huge heritage that we have today, started being erected.

The first donor of the Library was the Orthodox Bishop of Buzau, Dionisie Romano, who offered 81 old Romanian books. In 1897, 25 years after the Bishops death, his entire personal book fund entered the Librarys possession. Other donors with substantial contributions were doctor Carol Davila, linguists Timotei Cipariu and August Treboniu Laurian, historians and archaeologists V. A. Urechia, George Barițiu and Alexandru Odobescu and inventor Petrache Poenaru. However, the person who would live its mark on the Library was its first director, linguist Ioan Bianu. In 1894, Bianu drawn up ”The Plan of National Bibliography” on five directions: a national bibliography of Romanian book, a bibliography of Romanian newspapers, an analytic bibliography that included articles from the newspapers, a registry of manuscripts and an inventory book with all documents of the Library.

The first book about the Romanian Academy Library has been coordinated by Nicolae Noica, the institutions director. In 700 pages, the book tells the story of its beginnings, from 1867 to 1885. Attending the launch of the first volume of the history of the Library, the President of the Romanian Academy, historian Ioan Aurel Pop, said the story of Romanias most important library is an important project for at least one generation.

Ioan Aurel Pop: “A history of the Romanian Academy Library in 10 volumes has never been written until now, in spite of many attempts and projects, and there is little expectation for it to be written soon. Which is why the present project, coming to life under our very eyes, is a remarkable achievement. The Romanian Academy Library took its first steps in 1867. This is believed to be its year of birth, one year after the founding of the Literary Society, the forebear of the Romanian Academy. Its role at first was to gather together, organize, and capitalize on specific national collections, book collections, and to issue and edit a retrospective national bibliography for all types of printed material.”

Ioan-Aurel Pop also said that the institution developed continuously, which, like any growing body, diversified and expanded its horizons: “The institutions aims and attributions have widened constantly in the 155 years since its founding. Today, it is the most important treasure library, the most valuable library in Romania. Its collections have an encyclopedic structure, starting with the oldest Romania language texts, going back to the 16th century, and some even older, in the chancellery and church languages, that set to paper testimonies from the past of the Romanian space – Slavonic, Latin, Ottoman Turkish, old Romanian, Greek, Arabic, Armenian, Hebrew, Hungarian, and more. There are also the chancellery and church texts that circulated in the Romanian space.”

According to Ioan-Aurel Pop, going to the library and reading texts of the past is an obligation for any quality research, that has relevance: “The special collections in our library grants them a unique place among the libraries that preserve such testimonies in Romania. Of those, the manuscript collection is the richest in the country, and the collections in the Print Cabinet, the Coin Cabinet, the Music Cabinet, and the Map Cabinet are true points of reference in their areas. No work on the history of sciences and disciplines, and no work on the history of culture can be written without resorting to this extraordinary institution. The library is a living institution, also organizing conferences, especially over the last years.”

The Story of the Romanian Academy Library started recently with the first volume. It is a long story, which people of culture have just started telling. (EE/CC)

Dobruja is the territory between the Lower Danube in the west, the Danube Delta in the north and the Black Sea in the east, which became part of the Romanian independent state in 1878. Thus, the province between the Danube and the Black Sea, which had a multi-ethnic population, made up of Romanians, Turks, Tatars, Bulgarians, Germans, Roma and Jews, united with Romania. After 35 years, in 1913, through the Treaty of Bucharest signed after the Second Balkan War, the territory of Dobruja expanded with the Cadrilater, or Southern Dobrogea.

Starting 1878, Dobruja developed at a fast pace. The construction of the Sulina navigable channel, the exit to the Black Sea, the construction of the Constanța Port and the Cernavodă Bridge turned Dobruja from a backward province into a prosperous, developed one. Also, the presence of the Romanian Royal House in this area was very important and would contribute a great deal to what the province became in the following decades.

Historian Delia Roxana Cornea is the author of the volume Royal Residences at the Black Sea. The Dream Homes of Romanias Queens. She tells the story of the province s development, but also a societal history related to the presence of Romanian sovereigns on the Black Sea shore, through their residences: The building of the old Royal Palace was administered by the Ministry of the Interior and the Prefecture since it was built. The first royal apartments were arranged there. Later, the building became the headquarters of the Court of Appeal, with King Ferdinand s approval, during a meeting he had at Palas Hotel in Constanta with the local leaders. As for the Royal Pavilion on the pier, it was administered by the Port of Constanta and the Maritime Service. In theory, it was in the possession of the royal family until the communists took over power. As for the royal residence in Mamaia, the donation document of December 1924 proves that that land was donated to the Royal Family. All the documents that I have researched prove that this residence was part of the royal property. The donation document of 1927, to Princess Mother Elena, clearly established the ownership rights, based on which the subsequent sale of the palace was possible.­­­

The Romanian Royal House moved in tune with the Romanian society, so in keeping with the rules of the market economy and the law – it received donations, sold, purchased and invested. Delia Roxana Cornea: The fact that Princess-Mother Elena was no longer allowed to own properties in Romania was well known. In 1932, she sold the palace and the Crevedia farm and used the money to purchase a villa in Florence, where she spent a big part of her life. So, all these residences, whether they were built by local authorities, or with the contribution of local authorities and the funds of the royal family, as it was the case with Balchik Castle, where Queen Maria also invested money of her own, belonged to the Royal House. They have become places of memory, places that speak about the role that the royal family had in the development and modernization of Dobruja as a whole.

For Delia Roxana Cornea, choosing a favourite royal residence out of the four wass difficult. She told us about Balchik Castle, visited every year by around 200,000 Romanians: Balchik is spectacular mainly due to the natural setting where it was built, its proximity to the rocky area of the sea. There is also the special style that Queen Maria imprinted to all the constructions in this area of Balchik, especially to the terraces and parks shaped under her close supervision. Queen Maria loved Mamaia as well, proof of that being her very own words, the notes she made in 1935, when she visited Mamaia for the last time. It is the moment when the Royal Footbridge in Mamaia was inaugurated. She was invited by the prefect of Constanta to attend the ceremony. On that occasion, she visited the new establishments on Mamaia beach, and also her former residence. Late that night, back in Balcic, she wrote in her diary that that she was deeply saddened by the poor state of the garden and park that she had built there, a beautiful garden of pink petunias, flowers that grow in sandy soils. The prefect of Constanta promised her that he would do everything to save her park and garden in Mamaia.

The presence of royal residences is an example of how a territory can develop economically and transform socially. The Romanian sovereigns castles at the Black Sea acted as catalysts for the development trend that Romanian society followed in the second half of the 19th century and the first quarter of the 20th century. (EE)

Victory Road, Bucharests central north-south axis, is the only public road in Romanias capital that has endured from the 16th century to this day. When it was built, around 1689, it was called the Mogosoaia Bridge, and along its 350 years it underwent the most profound transformations. It was renamed Victory Road after Romania won its state independence in 1878. It bears all the traces of the stages of history in Bucharest and Romania from the last three plus centuries. Victory Road is mentioned in hundreds of books written by Romanians and foreigners, some of them classics, and the stories told by the writers are already urban legends in the city.

One such classic book is Mogosoaia Bridge. The Story of a Street, by diplomat Gheorghe Crutzescu, printed in many editions due to popularity. Many consider it the most beautiful book about Victory Road. The explanation is the style of the author, who had the skills of a diplomat, not a historian or literary figure. He was born in 1890 into a family of middling noblemen. His grandfather was Col. Lacusteanu, who commanded the first battalion of the Romanian army in 1830, a fervent participant in the revolution of 1848. Gheorghe Crutzescu read law in Paris, got his diploma in 1915, and in 1916 he volunteer for the front lines in WWI. After the war ended, he got a job in the Foreign Ministry, and was appointed legation attache. His last position was in Stockholm in WWII. He did not want to return to Romania after the communist regime was instated in 1947. He died on December 30 in Mougins, in the south of France.

Catalin Strat is the editor of the 2022 edition of the book Mogosoaia Bridge. The Story of a Street, and we asked him about the success of the book he edited.

“Gheorghe Crutzescu was passionate about history. He wasnt studying it at the level of a researcher or a professor in history. I believe he was rather concerned with preserving a part of the oral history of his time, to save the stories he was hearing within his social stratum, which are delicious, and put them in a book. So he put them in this wonderful book, Mogosoaia Bridge. The Story of a Street, which is an extraordinary montage of Bucharest micro-history. It is the story of Victory Road, therefore the history of Bucharest. It is the story of the modernization of a city. It is the story of the becoming of Bucharest society, from its Oriental form to its Western, and very sophisticated, form. It is a story of costumes, of everyday life. We could say that this book is a sort of history of mentalities ahead of its time. It is a story of institutions, and a history of small things, before these things took their rightful place within the study of history.”

We joined Catalin Strat in an imaginary trip on Victory Road, starting, just as the author did, from its origin on the shore of the river Dambovita. We tried to see what emblematic buildings have been left since 1943, the year when Crutzescu published the book:

“He starts off in United Nations Square, and we could picture ourselves as some travelers or visitors in the city holding Crutzescus arm. He was a very elegant, likable, and very jocular gentleman, as the book depicts, and his explanations are delightful. From the old days, left standing are the CEC Palace, and Zlatari Church is left, which he jokingly says it looks like a bunch of building blocks. Also left is the Military Club building, on the old terrain of Sarindar Monastery, then there is Capsa, whose history he tells in a very funny key. The National Theater was not left, unfortunately, but we have a pretty sizable chapter about the beginnings of theater here. Also left are the passages, and the Continental Hotel. The Royal Palace no longer stands in the form described by the author, because many big changes occurred from its initial form as the Golescu House to its present appearance. In December 1926, the Royal Palace burned, so it was rebuilt in its present form under the guidance of architect Nenciulescu. Also standing is the Athenaeum, on the plot of land where the Bishopric Garden was. Also standing is the Athenee Palace Hotel, which changed between the wars. The Beaux-Arts facade was taken down and replaced with a modern facade in a vague Art Deco style. Also left are all the churches, such as the White Church, and houses of rich noblemen, such as Cesianu and Gradisteanu mansions. New buildings have sprung up in the meantime, and some have vanished.”

Mogosoaia Bridge. The Story of a Street is the story of the center of Bucharest, now told once again for the millennial generation, a story going back 350 years ago.

Bicycle Mita is a character in the urban folklore of Bucharest, mentioned in a borderline obscene jocular song and several anecdotes, and has always had an enigmatic aura, since no one knew if she really existed at all. This was the case until a few years ago, when a grandiose heritage mansion went under reparations in the historic area of Bucharest. It was Bicycle Mitas house, who had made a fortune in early 20th century as a high class escort and madam. Her real name was Maria Mihaescu, and she was born in 1885 in a village in Prahova County, coming from a family of very modest means. At around 14 or 15, it seems that she started her courtesan career in Bucharest, taking it by storm, ensnaring artists, writers, politicians, and aristocrats. In this way, Maria Mihaescu managed to overcome her social status, and even become a trailblazer in the capital city. Her house, recently restored and re-opened to the public, is as remarkable as its first owner. We talked about it with Edmond Niculusca, president of the Romanian Association for Culture, Education, and Normalcy, or ARCEN:

“The house was built between 1908 and 1910, so it was finished before WWI. It was gifted to the beautiful, extravagant, and very famous Maria Mihaescu by Prince Ferdinand, the future King Ferdinand of Romania. The building was designed by Nicolae Mihaescu, no relation. That was just the name of the architect. It is a building atypical for Bucharest, with Art Nouveau elements, which was rare in the capital. It is a large, impressive mansion, built across from Amzei Church, at the intersection between the Amzei Market commercial area, with the market warehouses built by King Carol I, and the aristocratic neighborhood. This was the place where the highest placed families had their capital residences. Maria Mihaescu, therefore, got the house as a gift. At just 23 years of age, she was already famous. She had won a flower fight on the Cote dAzurein France, then a hat competition in Monaco, and her fame is partially due to French press coverage, which writes about the beauty and extravagance of the semi-ingenue, as the press in Bucharest dubbed her.”

Back in those days, some indigent girls had to resort to prostitution, because, barring marriage, there were few opportunities for women to make a living on their own. It seems that in 1927, about 12,000 women were prostitutes, most of them under precarious conditions. High class courtesans like Maria Mihaescu were few and far between, which is why when one of them brought together courage and personal charm, they were immediately noticed, just like the one that came to be known as Bicycle Mita. Here is Edmond Niculusca with details:

“It was the Bucharest satirical press that dubbed her Bicycle Mita, because she was the first woman to ride a bicycle and to wear trousers in Bucharest, and who even sunbathed topless on the shore of Herastrau lake, which is what got her arrested by the police. She was an extravagant, and at the same time a feminist ahead of her time, who stole the heart of many a man in the capital Bucharest, and not only. She almost married the king of Portugal, Manuel. Even if she ended up not marrying him, she was a queen, a princess of her time. In Bucharest, the house in Amzei Market hosted many high class events, where political and trade alliances were forged.”

In the 1940s, Maria Mihaescu married General Alexandru Dimitrescu, but soon financial problems would appear. During the communist regime, Marias house was nationalized, but she lived to see another day. She went on to live over 80 years, and passed away in 1968, and all the while the legend of Bicycle Mita grew in popularity.

Among the old high schools in Bucharest, the Central School for Girls has a special place, not only due to a tradition of high performance, but also due to the building housing it, which is representative for the architecture style known as national, or Neo-Romanian. It was designed in its general lines by architect Ion Mincu, causing other architects to take up that style, which peaked between the world wars, and became the prevalent manner of designing public, but also private, buildings in Greater Romania. However, irrespective of changes over time, its beginnings lie in the very special style of the Central School for Girls in Bucharest. The institution was set up in 1852, during the reign of Prince of Wallachia Barbu Stirbey, but its buildings were inappropriate for the school in the years following the creation of the Kingdom of Romania, in 1881. in fact, right after the kingdom was set up, Parliament passed an ample program of building public venues, among them schools, allotting major funding for this program. We spoke about this with Nicolae Noica, who authored a volume called The History of the the Central School for Girls in Bucharest:

“A bill was introduced for schools and cultural education institutions, allocating a major portion of funding, which at the time was about 10% of the countrys budget, even up to 12%. The first step was made in 1885. Architect Ion Mincu was contracted to submit a project for the Central School for Girls. The building project specified all the functions that the venue had to tend to. Classrooms had to have a height and surface so that each student had 7 cubic meters of air available indoors. In the library, where the students spent a lot of time, there had to be 9 cubic meters. Architect Ion Mincu made it happen. He designed the school as a rectangle, with a basement, a ground floor, and one upper floor. The school at the time also had dormitories. The girls could live in the dorms, and also have all meals there, because it also had a cafeteria.”

After a change in the initial schedule proposed by the Ministry of Education, the bid for the construction contract was signed with the company of engineer Sicard, which started work in 1888. Two years later, in 1890, the school moved its venue from its initial one, near Coltea Hospital, and set up headquarters in the new building near Gradina Icoanei, where it still is. Architect Ion Mincu adapted his artistic vision to the idea of providing every comfort for study to the students there. Here is Nicolae Noica once again:

“The general rectangle shape consisted of a courtyard, which is still beautiful, after 100 years. He designed the yard to be the recreation space for the students. They could spend their breaks here. What is interested is that the corridor that servers as access way for the courtyard was closed, and had columns like those in monasteries. At some point, he wanted to have the corridor as an open space. However, the constraints of the weather forced his to close it, and, as opposed to monasteries, here they have some very sturdy windows, which still work today. I would just like to add that they were a first in a new style of architecture.”

The new style combined the vernacular architecture and the Brancovenesc style, as well as domestic church architecture, also borrowing from Mediterranean elements in ornamentation. This is best reflected by colored tile ornaments beneath the roof. Also, up there there are, in large letters, the names of the most prestigious wives of princes and rulers who were major sponsors of culture. While studying the archives to uncover the original plans drew by Mincu, author Nicolae Noica uncovered some more documents that show the interest in education during that time of deep reform in the country:

“We found the payrolls for the teachers who worked here back in the day. A teacher of geography, of history, or Romanian, was paid 270 gold lei. You could buy a gram of gold with 3 lei, so 270 divided by 3 equals 90 grams of gold. Today, a gram of gold is around 200 lei. 90 multiplied by 200 is 18,000 lei, which today even the president or his ministers dont get. The claim that there was scarcity back then is not sustainable. Professionals were respected, teachers were respected. The results could be seen along the years.”

Today, after 170 years since the creation of the Central School for Girls in Bucharest, and 132 years after it moved into its present complex, the building designed by Ion Mincu can still be admired in its original form.

One of the ethnic minorities that became part of Greater Romania after 1918 was the Hungarian minority. The new Hungarian intellectual elites started voicing their opinions in the newly created political framework. Among them was Salamon Erno, who died at a very young age, 31. He is considered one of the victims of the Holocaust in Northern Transylvania, a territory annexed by Hungary on August 30, 1940.

Salamon Erno was born May 15, 1912 in Gheorgheni, a small town with a majority Hungarian-speaking population, yet with various other minority groups, including Armenians and Jews. His father worked in timber manufacturing plants in the Mureș Valley, and came from a modest family, much like Ernos mother. His father died young, and his mother wanted her son to pursue a career that would earn him a robust income. As a writer, Salamon Erno was inspired by forest workers, ordinary people in general. He was also influenced by Hungarian folk themes and legends from the Szekler Land.

Historian Marius Popescu with the Wilhelm Filderman Centre for Studying the History of Jews in Romania has documented Salamon Ernos short life:

“A recurrent theme in many of his poems is the hardship of people working in timber manufacturing plants. He describes in great detail relations between workers in their living quarters. His poems speak of the brotherly relations binding together these people who had different cultures and spoke different languages, Hungarians, Jews, Romanians and Germans. The poet took part in the Mureș Valley strikes. By this time, he got a complete image of the hard life of workers here, one which he later transposed into poetry”.

To please his mother, Salamon enrolled at the Law School in Cluj, yet he remained devoted to his fellow workers. In 1932 he took part in their strikes. He got arrested and was imprisoned at Miercurea Ciuc. While in prison, he went on hunger strike for 6 days. Upon his release, he moved to Brașov, getting a job at the Foi brașovene Hungarian-language newspaper. He wrote articles about workers strikes and attended trials of communists. Among them was the future dictator of Romania, Nicolae Ceaușescu. Salamon Ernos Hungarian translations of works by Tudor Arghezi and Mihail Sadoveanu into Hungarian got published in Korunk. This magazine shaped the first generation of Hungarian writers from Romania, also helping promote Salamon Erno as a writer.

Erno loved the Hungarian language above all else, says historian Marius Popescu:

“This is how Salamon Erno expressed his attachment to the Hungarian language, which was his mother tongue: it is beautiful, unique, my mother tongue. For this reason, I cannot leave. He who leaves, will stutter and will never sing. These are very beautiful and expressive words and reflect what every one feels about ones own mother tongue.”

Erno married a teacher with left-leaning views just like him. The marriage was successful and she was his muse, appearing in many of his poems. However, Ernos life would soon take an unexpected and tragic course. Historian Marius Popescu explains:

“Salamon Erno moved to Târgu Mureș, where his life will be unfortunately marked by the consequences of the Vienna Diktat of August 1940, with the city now under Horthyst occupation. As a result of the implementation of the racial laws, the poet was sacked from his job, arrested, sent to forced labour and eventually dispatched to the eastern front. Forced labour for Jewish men in Hungary at the time meant they were forced to serve in the army, but in civilian clothes. They did not have the right to carry weapons, only shovels and pickaxes, and had to carry out hard labour in very difficult conditions. They were sent to demining and used as cannon fodder to ensure the safe passage of the Hungarian army.”

Salamon Erno was attached to his Jewish identity although this is not very explicit in his writings. The racial laws and the lists based on which the Horthyst regime took the Jews and deported them to the front or the Nazi extermination camps made him follow his destiny. Marius Popescu:

“Submitted to such interminable marches, a hard life which few men survived, he became increasingly weak. At some point he became ill with epidemic typhus. He could barely walk, but he never parted with his backpack full of books. He was killed by two Italian Fascist soldiers on 27 February 1943 during the withdrawal from the Don river area, in Ukraine.”

The high school built in 1905 in Salamon Ernos home town of Gheorgheni was named after him in 1968 and his bust can be seen today in front of the school. His work, consisting of six collections of poems, adds to his legacy.

Liviu Ciulei stands out among Romanian theater directors as, starting from the late 1950s and the early 1960s, he managed to take the Romanian theater away from the rigid and unnatural commandments of the socialist realism. Equally a film director, Ciulei brought back the aesthetic dimension in cinematography and theater, something that was also due to his intellectual training in the interwar period. He was born in July 1923 in Bucharest, into an old family of intellectuals. His father, whose name was also Liviu Ciulley, was a renowned constructor, a collaborator of the main architects who built modern Bucharest. Moreover, in order to respect his father’s wish, Liviu Ciulei first attended the Faculty of Architecture, then the Conservatory of Dramatic Art. On stage, he initially stood out as an actor, with both his talent as a performer and that of an architect being useful in his career, because Ciulei also performed roles in his films and made the stage design for many of his theatrical productions.

Next, theater critic Miruna Runcan will tell us how and when he switched from acting to directing: As we are used to his image as an adult, old person, we now see him as a patriarch of Romanian theater and cinema. But he was a very restless young man in the good sense of the word, who wanted to do many things, and besides the fact that he wanted to, he was also able to. He really wanted to be a director. Since the beginning of the 1950s, playing in bad propaganda films, which we no longer see today, he collaborated with the directors of the moment. In particular, he collaborated with director Victor Iliu on the film ‘Moara cu Noroc’ – ‘The Mill of Good Luck’, for which he also made the sets. He learned a lot from Victor Iliu, and that’s why he had the courage to enter the cinema world. It was a happy encounter. And then he directed ‘Valurile Dunarii’ – ‘The Waves of the Danube’, which was a great success at the Karlovy Vary Festival. But he always said that cinematography interested him less than theater.

The film ‘The Waves of the Danube’, made in 1960, was followed in 1965 by ‘Pădurea spânzuratilor’ – ‘The Forest of the Hanged’, an adaptation of the novel with the same name written by Liviu Rebreanu. It is the first Romanian film present at the Cannes International Film Festival where Liviu Ciulei also won the award for directing. Between 1960 and 1965, the director got involved in several projects, he worked in the field of theater and in 1961 he obtained his first success with the staging of the play As You Like It by William Shakespeare. In 1963, he became the director of the Bulandra Theater in Bucharest, where he built a team and staged performances that became famous.

What exactly characterizes his style? Here is Miruna Runcan with details: I don’t know if one can necessarily speak of a Ciulei style, but rather of a kind of perfectionist work methodology. He was sometimes labeled as being baroque, but not all his performances are baroque, and, generally, his gradual evolution tends towards a simplification of space. He had many important shows, such as Brecht’s ‘The Threepenny Opera’ in which actor Toma Caragiu played an extraordinary role. Later, during the period when he was still staging at Bulandra Theater from time to time, despite the fact that he had many contracts in the United States, one of the last shows in Bucharest was The Storm. An absolute masterpiece, starring George Constantin, which was not a baroque show. Instead, perfectionism was essential, his working with the team was essential, a team in which even the smallest presence had to be remarkable. If an actor was just walking across the stage, he had to be perfect in his role at that moment.

Due to his success, Ciulei was always in the attention of the Securitate – the political police during the communist regime. Miruna Runcan is back with details: Ciulei was monitored by the Securitate all his life, starting in 1955, when his file was first opened, until communism fell. Probably the most disgusting thing was the fact that he was monitored and denounced to the Securitate and the party by some of his own colleagues and theater people. Not many of his shows had big problems with the regime’s censorship, because he was very tactful in his relations with the authorities, otherwise he would not have survived as a theater director, almost ten years after the death of Lucia Sturdza Bulandra and until 1972, the moment of a scandal with the play ‘The Government Inspector’. Instead, as a director, he had to fight to save a whole set of shows that suffered greatly from censorship or caused turmoil in the press and in the relationship with the authorities. He was a very loyal friend and got along absolutely brilliantly all his life with his younger and much more turbulent colleague Lucian Pintilie.

Actually, Pintilie directed Gogol’s play ‘The Government Inspector’, a show that was eventually banned by the communist authorities. Anyway, after 1971 the atmosphere in Romania became more and more tense, so in 1980 Liviu Ciulei himself was forced to leave the country as many intellectuals and artists had already done.

Miruna Runcan is back at the microphone with details: He was urged to go abroad. We need to put things in context, as, after 1971, communist nationalism was actually established in Romania. Which meant a considerable increase in censorship, the rise of protochronism or nationalist ideology, which important, valuable artists were not comfortable with at all. And some of them simply left the country, escaped actually, taking advantage of a study trip or a tourist trip. Ciulei chose self-exile, and other artists, especially the very important ones, were actually advised by the party people to leave. ‘Look, the party will let you conclude contracts abroad, so please go wherever you can find a contract abroad and try to work abroad’ Ciulei recollected after 1990 in several interviews.

After leaving Romania, Ciulei worked in many countries in Europe, as well as in the United States of America, Canada and Australia. He was the artistic director of the Tyrone Guthrie Theater in Minneapolis, and since 1986, a drama teacher at Columbia University and New York Universities. Liviu Ciulei returned to Romania after the fall of communism and died in October 2011. (LS)