Radio România Internațional

Category: RRI Encyclopaedia

Nicolae Steinhardt

Nicolae Steinhardt was a part of a generation of Romanian intellectuals of the 20th century who clashed violently with history. He was born in 1912, near Bucharest, and died in March 1989, nine months before the communist regime fell, aged 77. He was born into a Jewish family. His father, an architect and engineer, had fought in WWI, getting wounded and earning a decoration. He debuted in the magazine of the Spiru Haret High School magazine, and during his university studies he was a constant presence at the meetings of the literary circle called Sburatorul, led by the prestigious literary critic Eugen Lovinescu. He became a lawyer, and got his PhD in constitutional law from the University of Bucharest.

Steinhardt started writing literary criticism and essays under the pen name Antistihus. Up until he was kicked out of the Royal Foundation Magazine, under the anti-Semitic legislation passed widely in the late ’30s, he published three volumes of reflections on Judaic spirituality.

However, the new regime installed on March 6, 1945, would be one unfriendly to Steinhard, and to those who chose not to collaborate. A double whammy followed in 1947: he was fired once again from the editing room of the Royal Foundation Magazine, and was disbarred. In 1958, two years after the anti-communist revolution in Hungary, Nicolae Steinhardt was once again arrested, as part of the so-called Noica- Pillat group, named after philosopher Constantin Noica and writer Dinu Pillat. He was sentenced to 12 years in prison under the standard charge that the communist regime filed against its opponents: conspiring against social order.

In prison, he converted to Christianity and got baptized. He was released in 1964, after a stint of six years. His experience of incarceration is written down in his best known book, The Diary of Happiness, a book that had a very strong impact on the Romanian collective awareness in the 1990s. George Ardelean, who edited Nicolae Steinhardt’s correspondence, recalls the two types of inferno described in The Diary of Happiness, mentioned in some of the critic’s letters:

“There is the inferno of the detainee alone in a cell, a man in tough contact with the pure time he has to fill. Let us think, for instance, of Lena Constante, who was kept by herself in a cell for 3,000 days, meaning 8 years. It was a cell with only 4 walls, a bunk that was raised during the day, a toilet, with no access to phones, the press, books, with no clock or any other people. Then there was the other kind of inferno, that of the din, the noise. It was the din of an overcrowded cell. It reminds me of the paragraphs entitled Bughi Mambo Rag in The Diary of Happiness, where he wrote down the intersecting dialogues within the close space of a prison cell.

After his release, he published five volumes of criticism and essays, and after 1989, five more books of his were published, posthumously. After 1967, he starts to look for a monastery to retreat to and take the habit, and in 1980 he is received as a monk at Rohia Monastary, in Maramures.

“In The Diary of Happiness we have several sequences in 1938, when Steinhardt was in Switzerland, at Interlaken, attending a meeting of the Oxford Group, a Protestant ecumenical group. This is a major step for Steinhard closer to Christianity, after he failed to integrate at the synagogue. Between 1935 and 1937, together with his friend Emanuel Neuman, referred to as Manole in the diary, he tried to reintegrate at the synagogue, meaning taking on a fully Judaic identity. Their attempts failed, the diary doesn’t make clear why, and then the spiritual paths of the two friends split apart. So he was in Interlaken, he was fascinated by the discussions, he feels drawn in. One morning, an Irishman approached him, telling him that he had a dream that Steinhardt would get baptized. This episode also transpires in his correspondence.

Nicolae Steinhardt’s correspondence is fascinating, as editor George Ardeleanu confessed, and raises many challenges:

“There were a lot of challenges. First of all, just collecting the approximately 1,200 letters and identifying their recipients. The letters were gathered from the personal archives of the recipients, and from various institutions, such as the monasteries of Rohia, Cernica, and Sambata, the National Museum of Romanian Literature, and the National Council for the Study of Securitate Archives. Last but not least, there were the letters that were published after 1990 in various volumes and the culture press. The other extremely difficult step was to find a criterion to classify them, how to put in order these 1,200 letter? We had three possibilities. The first would have been grouping them by recipient, or ordering the groups alphabetically. The third criterion, which is the one we chose, was to combine the previous two: grouping the letters by recipient, and then ordering the letters chronologically for each of those.

The two volumes containing Nicolae Steinhardt’s correspondence sketch the grand work of a great thinker. They can also be read as volumes sketching the contemporary history of Romania.

24 June 2022
Nicolae Steinhardt

Nicolae Steinhardt was a part of a generation of Romanian intellectuals of the 20th century who clashed violently with history. He was born in 1912, near Bucharest, and died in March 1989, nine months before the communist regime fell, aged 77. He was born into a Jewish family. His father, an architect and engineer, had fought in WWI, getting wounded and earning a decoration. He debuted in the magazine of the Spiru Haret High School magazine, and during his university studies he was a constant presence at the meetings of the literary circle called Sburatorul, led by the prestigious literary critic Eugen Lovinescu. He became a lawyer, and got his PhD in constitutional law from the University of Bucharest.

Steinhardt started writing literary criticism and essays under the pen name Antistihus. Up until he was kicked out of the Royal Foundation Magazine, under the anti-Semitic legislation passed widely in the late ’30s, he published three volumes of reflections on Judaic spirituality.

However, the new regime installed on March 6, 1945, would be one unfriendly to Steinhard, and to those who chose not to collaborate. A double whammy followed in 1947: he was fired once again from the editing room of the Royal Foundation Magazine, and was disbarred. In 1958, two years after the anti-communist revolution in Hungary, Nicolae Steinhardt was once again arrested, as part of the so-called Noica- Pillat group, named after philosopher Constantin Noica and writer Dinu Pillat. He was sentenced to 12 years in prison under the standard charge that the communist regime filed against its opponents: conspiring against social order.

In prison, he converted to Christianity and got baptized. He was released in 1964, after a stint of six years. His experience of incarceration is written down in his best known book, The Diary of Happiness, a book that had a very strong impact on the Romanian collective awareness in the 1990s. George Ardelean, who edited Nicolae Steinhardt’s correspondence, recalls the two types of inferno described in The Diary of Happiness, mentioned in some of the critic’s letters:

“There is the inferno of the detainee alone in a cell, a man in tough contact with the pure time he has to fill. Let us think, for instance, of Lena Constante, who was kept by herself in a cell for 3,000 days, meaning 8 years. It was a cell with only 4 walls, a bunk that was raised during the day, a toilet, with no access to phones, the press, books, with no clock or any other people. Then there was the other kind of inferno, that of the din, the noise. It was the din of an overcrowded cell. It reminds me of the paragraphs entitled Bughi Mambo Rag in The Diary of Happiness, where he wrote down the intersecting dialogues within the close space of a prison cell.

After his release, he published five volumes of criticism and essays, and after 1989, five more books of his were published, posthumously. After 1967, he starts to look for a monastery to retreat to and take the habit, and in 1980 he is received as a monk at Rohia Monastary, in Maramures.

“In The Diary of Happiness we have several sequences in 1938, when Steinhardt was in Switzerland, at Interlaken, attending a meeting of the Oxford Group, a Protestant ecumenical group. This is a major step for Steinhard closer to Christianity, after he failed to integrate at the synagogue. Between 1935 and 1937, together with his friend Emanuel Neuman, referred to as Manole in the diary, he tried to reintegrate at the synagogue, meaning taking on a fully Judaic identity. Their attempts failed, the diary doesn’t make clear why, and then the spiritual paths of the two friends split apart. So he was in Interlaken, he was fascinated by the discussions, he feels drawn in. One morning, an Irishman approached him, telling him that he had a dream that Steinhardt would get baptized. This episode also transpires in his correspondence.

Nicolae Steinhardt’s correspondence is fascinating, as editor George Ardeleanu confessed, and raises many challenges:

“There were a lot of challenges. First of all, just collecting the approximately 1,200 letters and identifying their recipients. The letters were gathered from the personal archives of the recipients, and from various institutions, such as the monasteries of Rohia, Cernica, and Sambata, the National Museum of Romanian Literature, and the National Council for the Study of Securitate Archives. Last but not least, there were the letters that were published after 1990 in various volumes and the culture press. The other extremely difficult step was to find a criterion to classify them, how to put in order these 1,200 letter? We had three possibilities. The first would have been grouping them by recipient, or ordering the groups alphabetically. The third criterion, which is the one we chose, was to combine the previous two: grouping the letters by recipient, and then ordering the letters chronologically for each of those.

The two volumes containing Nicolae Steinhardt’s correspondence sketch the grand work of a great thinker. They can also be read as volumes sketching the contemporary history of Romania.

24 June 2022
Aida Vrioni, Romania’s first professional female journalist

The modernization of Romania, which had began in the second half of the 19th century, intensified around the First World War and got in tune with the West in the interwar period also due to a very special generations of intellectuals. Among them was Aida Vrioni, regarded as the first professional female journalist in Romania. Maria Mateescu by her real name, she was born in Ploiești in October 1880 and began publishing in her hometown, in the Aurora magazine, a publication founded by herself and her brother. Between 1898 and 1904 she contributed articles and literary works to several newspapers and magazines printed in Bucharest, such as Dimineața, Adevărul literar şi artistic and Rampa. In 1904, the renowned Romanian journalist Constantin Mille asked her to move to Bucharest and offered her the position of permanent editor with Adevărul newspaper, which made her the first professional female journalist in Romania.

In the interwar period she also became known as a prose writer, playwright and activist in women’s organizations that had flourished at the time. An important part of her activity took place in the editorial office of the Writer’s Magazine, which in 1929 became the Magazine of Romanian Writers. Aida Vrioni was its editor-in-chief from 1931 until the end of her activity, in 1943. Monica Negru, with the National Archives of Romania, has recently started to recover and publish Aida Vrioni’s writings. Monica Neagu: She was one of the feminist movements leaders at the time and had with various initiatives. She initiated and organized the first literary competitions for beginner writers, in order to support them financially and to stimulated them to write and publish. So her cultural endeavors were wide and diverse. As for her articles in Revista Scriitoarei and other publications, they were also extremely diverse. There were chronicles, articles about events, and a lot of material about her visits to different localities in the country. For example, she wrote about Bucharest, but also about Constanta and Sinaia .

Aida Vrioni combined journalism with drama and prose, with travel literature and feminism, and her frantic activity brought her a well-deserved recognition among the intellectuals. Nevertheless, when the magazine she wrote for was closed, she started to be forgotten. Monica Negru: “The magazine was edited and run by Aida Vrioni who always had appealed to contributors to write and publish. She wrote for the magazine but also financed it. She made many calls to her acquaintances to subscribe, to support the magazine.

In 1943, the magazine was no longer published because, most probably, Aida Vrioni did not have the means to finance it any longer. So she continued her work as a journalist and wrote for other publications of that time. It’s a strange thing. In the interwar years she was not only known but also appreciated by some of her fellow journalists. She also wrote two novels and a collection of essays, apart from press articles, but she is now completely forgotten. Her works have been abandoned in the archives.

The end of World War II found Aida Vrioni sick, but still writing in her diary. In 1950 she had a stroke that left her half-paralyzed until her death, in 1954. At present, Aida Vrioni’s work is brought back to the readers’ attention with her volumes of memoirs edited by Monica Negru.

19 June 2022
Poet Ștefan Augustin Doinaș

The poet, translator, essayist, academician, and politician Ștefan Augustin Doinaș, whose 100th birthday anniversary is marked this year, is known to high school students and the Romanian cultural public thanks to the poem The boar with silver fangs. The poem was a subject of study in the Romanian language and literature textbook for the 12th grade and was popularized in the 1970s by the Flacăra literary circle.

By his real name Ștefan Popa, Doinaș was born on April 26, 1922 in Arad County, in a wealthy family, and died on May 25, 2002 in Bucharest, at the age of 80. He went to high school in Arad and became acquainted with the works of important Romanian writers of the 19th and 20th centuries such as Vasile Alecsandri, Dimitrie Bolintineanu, Mihai Eminescu, Tudor Arghezi and with the works of French poets such as Stephane Mallarmé and Paul Valéry. In 1941 he went to Sibiu to study medicine at the University of Cluj, which was transferred there, after in 1940, Northern Transylvania had been ceded to Hungary. He gave up medicine to study Philology and Philosophy, a faculty he graduated in 1948.

Between 1948 and 1955 he was a Romanian language teacher and in the same year 1955 he gave up teaching and settled in Bucharest. In 1956 he joined the Teatru magazine, a theater criticism magazine. In 1957, after being sentenced to one year in prison, he was fired and banned from publishing until 1963. After his release, he managed to join the Lumea magazine following the intervention of George Ivașcu, an influential cultural personality. In 1969 he moved to the literary magazine Secolul 20, one of the most important Romanian literary magazines, a magazine to which he was linked until the end of his life. From 1964 to 2000 he published 13 volumes of poetry on existentialist themes. His work also includes six volumes of literary criticism and essays, two volumes of children’s literature, a theater play and a volume of prose.

Paying homage to his personality, the poet and literary historian Ion Pop has showed that the style of Ștefan Augustin Doinaș is one in which a poetic language can be conceived by combining two opposite trends: the rigor of exact sciences and the freedom of a rule-free game.

Ion Pop: “At a first glance, the poetry of Ștefan Augustin Doinaș seems very far from the world of games, being considered by many as a space for free activities, in contrast with the existential seriousness. Doinaș is also a refined word craftsman, and his image, engraved from the beginning in the reader’s memory, is that of an author of poems written according to the classical rigors, controlled intellectually in a strict manner. He is ‘the man with a pair of compasses as the title of one of his important books goes.

Doinaș was also a renowned translator and had 30 volumes of translated poetry published. Doinaș translated two masterpieces of world literature, Dr Faustus by Johann Wolfgang Goethe and Friedrich Nietzsches Thus Spake Zarathustra. Both translations have been rated as monuments recreating into Romanian two masterpieces. Also, the works of Doinaș were translated into 10 European languages, including English, German, Italian and Spanish. In recognition of the authenticity and value of his work, Doinaș joined the Romanian Academy in 1992.

Doinaș was part of a generation of Romanians traumatized by the communist regime. He suffered a lot from the very establishment of the regime, in the late 1940s, when his parents were declared kulaks – prosperous peasants who were exploiting the poor peasants, according to the Marxist-Leninist ideology. In 1957, a big change occurred in his life. After Stalins death in 1953, Doinaș, just like most Romanians, was expecting big changes to occur in Romania, but they never came. After the repression of the anti-communist revolution in Hungary, in 1956, on February 3, 1957 he was arrested and sentenced to one year in prison for failure to report a crime. Writer Marcel Petrișor had visited him, had told him about the anti-communist revolution in Hungary and about the Romanians possible solidarity with the changes occurring there.

Arrested and tortured, Petrișor had confessed to the investigators with whom he had spoken about the events in the neighboring country. However, after 1989, it was found out that the political detainee Ștefan Augustin Doinaș, himself a victim of a denunciation, had, in turn, been an informer himself. Two writers, Ion Caraion and Ion Omescu, were arrested in 1957, also in the aftermath of the Hungarian anti-communist revolution. Caraion and Omescu faced prison sentences, with Doinaș being the witness of the prosecution. Doinaș was released from prison after one year, on April 8, 1958. He married Romanian Opera House ballerina Irinel Liciu, and had a 44-year long marriage. Just like in a Shakespearean tragedy, a couple of hours after Doinaș died, Irinel Liciu took her own life, swallowing an entire box of sleeping pills.

Ștefan Augustin Doinaș was also a politician. After 1989, he wrote dozens of virulent anti-communist articles and enrolled in the Civic Alliance Party. Between 1993 and 1996, Doinaș was a senator. (LS, EN)

12 June 2022
Bendic House in Târgovişte

A former capital of the province of Wallachia in the medieval period, the city of Târgoviște, located 80 kilometers away from Bucharest, is known for its famous Tower of Chindia, located on the precincts of the princely court. But the city also hosts a series of architectural gems, modern and not just modern, which are less known to the general public. One of them is Bendic House, which stands out not only thanks to its appearance, but also to its architect, a member of the Italian community in the city.

Ionuț Catangiu, the representative of the Restored Târgovişte Association, tells us more about the history of this building: “Very interesting things are known about the owner of the house, Mihai Bendic. He was an industrialist from the beginning of the last century, originating from Croatia. He specialized in mining on the Dalmatian coast and, once in Târgovişte, he started a very nice business: the exploitation of the lignite mine in a commune very close to Târgoviște. Once in Târgoviște, Mihai Bendic needed a house and so, he appointed Romano de Simon to design a beautiful house for him. The building is designed in the neo-Romanian eclectic style, it is very imposing, being located in a typically historical neighborhood of Târgovişte, on Calea Câmpulung, an old commercial route in our city. The house was built between 1925-1926, and the owner unfortunately did not enjoy it very long because in 1948 the house was nationalized with the coming of the communists. After nationalization, the house served as a Pioneers’ House, then as a Childrens Club, and now it is known as the Childrens Palace. It hosts various courses and seminars, being attended by many children.”

The ornaments and its location increase the value of the Bendic House, as Ionuț Catangiu also told us: “First of all, if we go there, we notice that this house is somehow located in the center of the estate, being surrounded by gardens and a beautiful park. At the ground floor one can see an imposing entrance, and above and on the back side of the house one can see some very beautiful loggias, designed by Romano de Simon. Besides its external appearance, the interior is also special. There is a salon that has a coffered ceiling, and the staircase is the most imposing, being sculpted by Romano de Simon himself. It has animal and vegetable motifs with a wild boar, birds and reptiles because the owner, Mihai Bendic, was a hunting enthusiast. Finally, with the coming of the communists, the house was modified and whitewashed. And, according to recent research, the hallway at the ground floor seems to have been painted with animals, which reminds of the owners passion for hunting.”

Bendic House also highlights the Italian community in Târgoviște, represented in this case by the architect Romano de Simon. Ionuţ Catangiu is back at the microphone with details: “At the end of the nineteenth century, many families from northern and north-eastern Italy came to Romania, perhaps also at the recommendation of King Carol I. At first, King Carol wanted to colonize the Bărăgan area with Italian families. Gradually, after the arrival of the Italian families in Romania, they migrated to different cities, to Bucharest, for example, and especially to Târgoviște. At that time, in the second half of the nineteenth century, Târgoviște was a small and constantly developing town and labor force was needed, such as stonemasons and craftsmen, to build the new houses. Therefore, they came and settled in Târgoviște. Many families are known, such as the Del Basso family, that designed and built the prefecture building, the current Art Museum in Târgoviște. Then there is Casa dItalia, designed by the architect Enzo Canela, these buildings being representative of Târgoviște. De Simon also settled in Târgoviște at the end of the nineteenth century. Romano de Simon was born on January 21, 1900 in Târgovişte, into a family originating from a commune near Udine, in northeastern Italy. He attended the primary and secondary school in Târgovişte and then his father sent him to specialize in architecture in Italy, at the Academy of Belle Arti in Parma. In 1923 he returned to Târgovişte where he worked both as an architect and as a teacher of drawing and Italian language at the commercial high school in the city.”

Although he designed many buildings in the neo-Romanian style, Romano de Simon did more than that. Here is Ionut Catangiu with more details: “We can see a very beautiful variety in the works of De Simon. We have several houses in the neo-Romanian style: Mihai Bendic House as well as another very beautiful house near the Târgoviște city hall. We can also see a Moorish Florentine trend in the religious buildings that he designed, and the Catholic Church in Ploiesti and the Catholic Church in Constanta are such examples. But we can equally detect a trend, not necessarily specific to the neo-Romanian style, in the Orthodox churches from Șotânga and Gura Ocniței, two very beautiful and imposing churches, which were also designed by de Simon. In 1956 he managed to get a chair at the Institute of Architecture in Bucharest, but he went to Târgoviște on and off. He went to Târgoviște after the earthquakes of 1940 and 1977, to check the condition of the buildings he had built.”

On May 26th, 41 years were marked since Romano de Simons death, a good opportunity for those interested in rediscovering his creations in Târgoviște, but also in other areas of Dâmbovița County. (LS)

5 June 2022
Rare old books at the National Archives of Romania

Old books are fascinating, both due
to their vulnerability to the passage of time, and to the craftmanship of those
who have illustrated them. The fragility of old paper, the language in which
the texts have been written, often even a dead language, the unusual typefaces,
are as many challenges to the contemporary reader. But it is precisely these
barriers that attract, challenge and fuel our curiosity for these objects of
the past, revered by those who thirst for knowledge.

The National Archives of Romania and
the Museum of Romanian Literature have joined efforts in organising an
exhibition of rare old books from the Archives. The organisers put on display
original items dating back as many as 600 years, to the times of the great
inventor Johannes Gutenberg. Fifty-two highly valuable books from the
institution’s collections are included. They were published in major European printing
centres in Germany, Italy, Switzerland, the Netherlands and Belgium in the 15th
– 17th Centuries, while the ones published in the Romanian
Principalities date back to the 17th – 19th Centuries.

Most of them are religious books, atlases
of the world, history books, books in Latin, Greek, German, French and Italian.
The names of the authors are no less impressive: Terentius, Ammianus
Marcellinus, Lucian of Samosata, Theodore Spandugino, Erasmus of Rotterdam,
Nicolaus Olahus. Among the authors we also find the early 18th
Century prince of Moldavia Dimitrie Cantemir, one of the most significant
figures of early Enlightenment, featured in this exhibition with the English,
German and Romanian editions of his History of the Ottoman Empire. Other Romanian
books on display are a 1767 mineralogy book published in Cluj, the Șerban
Cantacuzino Bible, the Romanian Book of Learning by Metropolitan Varlaam and
the Romanian Psalter in verse by Metropolitan Dosoftei.

Archivist Șerban Marin, a medieval
studies specialist and the curator of the exhibition, says we cannot talk about
distinctions between Romanian and foreign books:

Șerban Marin: These are old books, both Romanian and foreign, although this
distinction is not the most appropriate. Especially in this globalisation era,
we cannot draw a line between foreign books and Romanian books. We have
selected a number of books, among the oldest in our collection, including four incunabula,
which are books published before the year 1500, which are exceptionally
valuable.

Șerban Marin also told us the not so
pleasant story of how some of these books came into the possession of the
National Archives:

Șerban Marin: On the one hand, there
were donations from various personalities, first and foremost Bogdan Petriceicu
Hașdeu who was the director of the Archives for a long time. He donated a lot
to the National Archives, including some of these books. But there are also
books acquired more recently, namely in the communist decades, and this is a
different story. These books were virtually stolen from their owners, who were
thrown into prisons like Gherla, Aiud and so on, and died there. So we are
basically talking about a theft by the Romanian government, against private
property, against common people who valued books. Moreover, a small percentage
of these books no longer have their title pages and their back pages, and I dare
make the assumption that this is because on the title page, the name of the former
owner appeared, whether a politician or an industrialist. So the brave members
of our political police were fighting not only particular persons, but also the
innocent books that those people owned. They tore that title page so that
nobody could see the name of the former owner. This is an assumption I’m
making, but it is worth considering.

We also asked Șerban Marin about the
four incunabula:

Șerban Marin: First we have
Gerardus de Vliederhoven, a 14th Century author, whose books were
published in 1492, with a religious book entitled Quattuor nouissima. Then
there is the second edition, the 1497 one, of Liber Chronicarum by Herman
Schedel. This could be described as an extensive encyclopaedia, but also as a
very interesting tourist guide. Schedel was for the 15th Century
traveller what Michelin is for us today. The third incunabulum is Pomponio Leto’s
work on the life of Marcus Antonius Coccius Sabellicus. He was born in
Lazio-Latium region, and he also wrote a history of Venice. And last but not
least, we have a late edition of Gesta Romanorum, the famous work about the
deeds of the Romans published in 1497.

The spectacular exhibition of Rare
old books in the National Archives of Romania hosted by the Museum of Romanian
Literature, takes us on a journey back in time. (AMP)

29 May 2022
Photographer Adolphe A. Chevallier

Foreigners and Romanians immortalized landscapes, people, places and everyday situations, in the first half of the 19th century. Romanian war photography is associated with names such as that of Carol Popp of Szathmary, who took part in the Crimean War of 1853-1856. Franz Duschek was the author of some of the oldest photographs of Bucharest. The photographer of the Romanian War of Independence from 1877-1878 was Franz Mandy, Ioan Spirescu introduced color photography, and Iosif Berman was, at the beginning of the 20th century, the father of Romanian photojournalism. Adolphe A. Chevallier, a photographer of Swiss-Romanian origin from the city of Piatra Neamț, made a name for himself among all these personalities.

Born to a Swiss father and a Romanian mother in 1881, in northern Moldavia, Chevallier decided, as a child, that he would become a visual artist. He studied photographic art in Lausanne, Switzerland, where he was sent by his father. He obtained a license as photographer of the Royal Court and opened a photography workshop in Piatra Neamț where he made photographs. Some of them became illustrated postcards. Professor Sergiu Găbureac and Ilie Gînga are the authors of the volume Chevallier, the photo-chronicler of the German lands.

One of the two authors, Sergiu Găbureac, referred to the support that Chevallier enjoyed in his profession: “A forestry engineer at the time, especially as Adolphe Chevallier – the father was called by King Carol I to return to the country to deal with the forestry area of Moldavia, did not have financial problems. What sets Chevallier apart from the multitude of photographers of the time? First of all, all the photographers of the time were focused on earning a living. Of course, Chevallier was also concerned about earning a living, but he was very inspired to take photographs of public interest. These photographs of public interest became, over the years, a real ethnographic treasure for researchers and even in his time Chevalier was very much appreciated. Many of his photos turned into postal messengers.

What did Chevallier photograph? Sergiu Găbureac structured his book into eight chapters in which he answers this question to the reader: In the chapter ‘On mountain paths he describes Mount Ceahlău, Rodna mountains, Bistrița valley. The chapter ‘Hearths of Light includes everything related to spiritual light, churches and monasteries in the area of Moldavia, reaching as far as Cernăuți where he received an order to make a set of photographs for the Romanian Patriarchate in 1938. In the chapter entitled ‘The Brosteni and Bicaz Crown Estates, the photographs we have are almost unique in their kind, since they capture the development of that particular area. Chapter 4, ‘The Royal family and Bicaz is yet another one-of-a-kind thing, and that because he was the only photographer accepted by the royal family when they took a group photo while being stranded in Bicaz during the first World fatality. Chapter 5 is very interesting, since it includes almost all daily trades of the Bistrita Valley dwellers. In Chapter 6, the traditional apparel is presented in all its splendor and beauty, not only the traditional apparel of Moldavia, but also that OF other regions across the country. With Chevallier we can eventually take a stroll around Piatra Neamt, in Chapter 7, as well as around other places, thanks to the document-images, given that quite a few of the edifices built at that time were brought down during the communist regime. Chapter 8 focuses on Romanias first scouts jamboree, which was held in Piatra Neamt.“

World War One was looming large over Europe around 1914. In 1916, Romania took sides as a belligerent country. As for Chevallier, he volunteered in the army. He had a stint with the Military hospital in Piatra Neamt, and continued to photograph.

Sergiu Gabureac once again:

Chevallier turned out to be much more patriotic than quite a few of the patriots of that time, when it comes to people involved in politics. Sometimes he was indignant at the way the Romanian issue was being dealt with. We have many letters and fragments that are illustrative of that. He had always asserted his Romanian origin and did not deny it even when he lay dying.“

During the inter-war years, in Greater Romania, Chevallier was thriving, personally and professionally. In 1925, he got married and his two daughters were born. However, the Second World War would change his life. After the war ended, in 1945 he returned to Bucharest, only to notice that the world was different.

Sergiu Gabureac explains:

He arrived in Bucharest and was certainly indignant at the fact that his profession was forcibly included in a handicraft cooperative. Such cooperatives of Soviet origin would crop up in all walks of life. He was a very free spirit, so he was totally against that, therefore chicaneries directed at him were quick to appear. Chevallier reached the conclusion that his place was no longer in Romania and retired in Lausanne, Switzerland, with his daughters.“

On April 23, 1963, after 13 years of Swiss exile, the photographer died in Baden, at the age of 81. A rich photographic work is his legacy, and his photo cliches are extremely sought after by collectors, even to this day. (LS, EN)

15 May 2022
Arion Roșu (1924-2007)

Indian
and Oriental studies have had a number of remarkable representatives in Romania
as well. The first was Mircea Eliade, born in 1907, a reputed writer and
historian of religions, who had a vast scientific and didactic career in the
West. The following generation of experts in Indian studies included Sergiu
Al-George, Anton Zigmund-Cerbu, Eliza Zigmund-Cerbu, Marcel Leibovici and Arion
Roșu, the four latter being members of the Bucharest-based Jewish community.

Arion
Roșu was born February 1, 1924 in Bucharest, and passed away on April 4, 2007
in Versailles, France, at the age of 83. He studied classical philology at
University of Bucharest, and specialized in Indian studies, in Ayurveda and the
history of classical Indian medicine. In 1964, he moved to France, where he
continued his studies at La Sorbonne and defended his doctoral thesis about the
psychological concepts in Indian medical literature. He published extensive
scientific papers and volumes about India and classical Indian culture.

The
Institute for the History of Religions of the Romanian Academy paid homage to
Arion Roșu by naming a study after him. Indian specialist Eugen Ciurtin, the
director of the Institute, knew Arion Roșu, and was actually his student.
Ciurtin says Roșu was an accomplished scholar, his works being representative
not just for Romania.

Arion
Roșu is not a parochial figure, representing a single place, he was a European
scholar, to say the least. For instance, Professor David Gordon-White, who
teaches history of religions at University of California, studied with two
world authors who guided his career. One was published for the first time in
the USA, a certain Mircea Eliade, whereas the other was first published in
Europe, Arion Roșu. The fact that they happen to be Romanian is just our manner
of understanding the evolution of Indian studies, of humanistic culture, at the
end of the 20th century. Arion Roșu is a personality whose works
displayed extraordinary durability. He is the only Romanian-born specialist in
Indian and Oriental studies who, at the time of his death, was given the unique
honor of having an obituary signed by Pierre-Sylvain Filliozat in Journal Asiatique,
the oldest periodical of Oriental studies in Europe, which has been published
in the last two centuries without interruption.

Ayurveda
or Indian classical medicine has always fascinated people across time and
space. It also enthralled Arion Roșu. Eugen Ciurtin told us more:

Arion
Roșu
distinguished himself as a historian of religions, particularly of Indian
studies, with a special focus on classical Sanskrit medical literature. Why is
this so important? Because of all the ancient cultures, only a few have an
original medical system. In other words, there are only a few civilizations,
including those of Egypt, China, India or Greece, that first looked at the
human body with all its wonders and diseases. Devoting yourself to classical
Ayurveda meant reconstructing the science and philosophy of ancient Indian
culture.

All
Romanian Orientalists were influenced by Mircea Eliade, who was a beacon for
young Romanians who wanted to discover the secrets of India. Among them were a
few Jewish students who were forced to explain their Fascist options to their
teacher. We asked Eugen Ciurtin how Arion Roșu reacted to Eliade’s biography:

I
talked to Arion Roșu on a number of occasions in Versailles, where he settled after turning 70, and I
took it upon myself to tell him that in 1996 the extraordinary and painful
Journal of Mihail Sebastian had been published. Then, he would select and cut
out articles from major French publications and had them sent to me. The
articles discussed the rightist formation of Mircea Eliade, who had been
influenced by Monsignor Vladimir Ghyka, who helped him convert to Catholicism
in the wake of the Romanian communist authorities’ anti-Jewish drive. He found
it hard to understand how someone so gifted and kind as Mircea Eliade would end
up a captive of European far-right ideology for such a long time. There are
documents in which Arion Roșu condemns this situation. But because he felt his
destiny was bound to Eliade’s, because he always admired his amazing intellect
that helped him conquer the whole planet, Arion Roșu wanted to be fair and share the science. At
the same time, he would be very harsh when some of his colleagues failed to
grasp their predicament.

Arion
Roșu is an
iconic representative of Indian studies at global level, whose emblematic
contributions are used in specialised academic circles. And this makes him a
product of world literature. (VP)

1 May 2022
Architects and Developers in Interwar Galati

First documented in 1445, the city of Galati has always been a major port on the Danube. Its most important period, when the city reached its peak, was the century between 1837 and 1938, when it was a free port, between 1837 and 1883, and then the seat of the European Commission of the Danube, up until 1938. In those 100 years, the city developed tremendously, becoming home not only to major banks, shipping agencies, international corporations, and consulates, but also to a large middle class. The most obvious signs of the refinement and wealth of this middle class are the buildings they fostered, many designed by famous Romanian and foreign architects, since Galati has always had a multicultural community. Unfortunately, several wars and the communist regime changed the city, but archives preserve the names of architects and their blueprints. A recently emerged name is that of Francisc Viecelli, a local architect of Italian descent, who designed several buildings in Galati that are emblematic for the citys wealth and its intense economic activity between the wars. Daniela Langusi made the discovery, and she told us about it:

“I dont think we could call him an architect. In 1932, on the basis of the new law of organization and functioning of the Corps of Architects, he applied for an architect license, but did not obtain it. However, there is a certificate issued by Galati City Hall, where we can see his name in full, Francesco Vittorio G. Viecelli. Obviously, an Italian name, since he was of Italian extraction. Surprisingly, he was born in the town of Filesti, in Covurlui County, meaning in the Galati area, since back then it was Covurlui County. He was born in 1891, and gained Romanian citizenship in 1933. Various documents and applications made by him lead us to deduce that he started working in 1919, when he was about 28. He was born in Romania, most likely from Italian parents. So, in 1933 he gains Romanian citizenship, and makes another application in 1935 to obtain the title of construction architect. Unfortunately, he is turned down a second time. He is only licensed as an authorized draft architect, which I suspect did not mean that he was a recognized design architect.”

Unfortunately, most of the buildings drafted by Viecelli are no longer standing, lost along with most of the historic old center of Galati. However, archive research reveals blueprints that could be used to envisage what the long gone buildings would have looked like. Art historian Daniela Langusi actually found of list of all the buildings that Francisc Viecelli worked on:

“We have nine private contracts and a factory. The factory was called Talpa, and it made footwear. It produced footwear for the army, soldier boots, military gear. In the archives in Galati I found the building permit from 1925. In the file we have the blueprints signed by Viecelli. They are included in the building permit. What is interesting is that when the factory applied for this building permit, it was specified that the works would be supervised by an engineer. The factory was on the edge of town, and that street was called Ditch Street. Now it is called George Cosbuc Boulervard, but back in Viecellis day it was called Ditch Street. However, what I would like to point out is the treatment of the windows, which were in a rectangular framing. He used this French type of window divided into panels. This architectural detail of style is to be found in his other works as well. The Talpa factory applied for the building permit in 1925 for a building with a ground floor and one story, with 350 sqm of living space, offices, and workshops.”

Archive research also gives us a glimpse into the past, into how the central area of Galati looked like, an area that was the venue for many of the buildings that Viecelli worked on. Daniela Langusi is here with details:

“There was round square that sprung six major avenues. One of them was Royal Avenue. Another major road that originated in Royal Square is to this day one of the citys major east-west axis streets. This central area of the city suffered bombing during WWII. After August 23, 1944, the German army, which had major headquarters in this area of town, thought it was a good idea to mine many of the buildings around these parts, and they were destroyed. After 1945, the authorities, in their attempt to restore the city, erected a completely different type of buildings, and in the process, that part of town was completely changed. It no longer has anything to do with what the city used to look like.”

In the place of the fashionable buildings of the past, the communists built drab apartment buildings. The old city, with its old streets, is no longer in the memory of the inhabitants of Galati. However, to this day, one of the buildings designed by Viecelli in the late 1920s has survived. It is a house initially designed for Cristache Teodoru, in the historic center of Galati, across from the Palace of Justice, built in the neo-Romanian style. It now houses the University of the Lower Danube. Daniela Langusi described the only standing building that was drafted by Francisc Viecelli:

“What can we say about it? We recognize the simple style, the window treatment in six asymmetric panels. However, here the framing of the windows is in a semicircle, it is no longer rectangular. I dont know if this was the requirement of the client, or if this is the only house where Vicelli chose to treat the windows in this fashion. We can also see the upper decorative girdle, a basrelief with floral and vegetation motifs. This building has been renovated. Also, the ground floor has a very high ceiling, with a special foundation for tall buildings. Its owner, barrister Cristache Teodoru, held the position of mayor of the city two times, between 1928 and 1931, also between 1932 and 1933.”

Unfortunately, not much else is known in detail about the Italian Romanian architect and builder Francisc Vicelli. Further research may uncover more about his activity, and about the Danube port city of Galati.

24 April 2022
Historian Constantin Kiritescu

The First World War also known as the
Great War was a period in time when the world decided to get rid of
frustrations in the most violent way. According to historians, roughly 10
million people were killed in action during the four years of armed conflict. A
lot was written about those years to depict the gruesome realities of war and a
many inspired authors produced genuine literary gems, such as Camil Petrescu’s
‘The last night of Love, the First of War’ or the orthopedic doctor Ion
Ghilamila’s research ‘The Work of Providing Assistance and Re-education to
Romania’s Disabled Veterans’. The most successful history book though was ‘A History
of the War for Greater Romania 1916-1919’, which was largely employed by all those
who wrote about the Great War.

A
surprising detail about Kiritescu and his history book is the fact that the
author wasn’t actually a historian. He was born on September 3rd
1876 in Bucharest, where he also died on august 12th 1965 at the age
of 88. During his life, Kiritescu witnessed two major changes in people’s
outlook over the world, in 1918 and 1945. He was born and educated in a Romania
built by its first monarch, Carol I of Hohenzollern-Sigmaringen in the second
half of the 19th century. He witnessed the birth of Greater Romania
under its second king, Ferdinand I in 1918. And also saw the collapse of
democracy under the communist regime backed by the Soviet Union after 1945.
Kirițescu was a zoologist with a PhD in natural science and teacher at the
famous high-school in Bucharest Sfântu Sava.

He
was the man who paved the way for the study of serpents and reptiles in Romania.
He wrote a volume on ‘Research over Romania’s Herpethological Fauna and discovered
an unknown species by that time, a serpent called Eryx jaculus or the javelin
sand boa, which lives around the city of Cernavoda on the banks of the Danube
river. He also discovered the Danube newt (Triturus
dobrogicus), which lives in Dobruja, south-eastern Romania. With a great
passion for history as a publicist, he wrote the portrait of several people and
places. He got involved with the country’s education system and represented
Romania at the Nations League, the ancestor of the present-day UNO.

A
History of the War for Greater Romania 1916-1919 the book that made Constantin
Kiritescu famous was published three times. The first edition was published in
1922 and 1923 shortly after the war, and the second between 1925-1927. The
latest edition was printed in the year when communism collapsed in Romania, 1989.

The teacher and economist Costin
Kirițescu was interviewed by Radio Romania in 1994 and he recollected the
success his father’s book enjoyed.

Costin Kiritescu: The book first
appeared in two volumes, but they needed a third edition and the book got
revised, enlarged, updated and that time had three volumes. That proved the
perseverance of the author, who didn’t even go to war as he was disabled and
exempted from conscription. But with the connections he had and the huge amount
of reading that he had done, he managed to write this book, which is seemingly
a reference one.

The
third edition appeared in 1989, the last year of the communist regime in
Romania, when censorship was very tough. Here is Costin Kirițescu at the
microphone again.

Costin Kiritescu: I was working with
the Finance Ministry and a person from the Central Committee of the Romanian
Communist Party who wanted to know if it was possible to have a third edition
of the aforementioned book contacted me. Of course I said yes, and that was the
beginning of a real tragicomedy. Because after the dictator’s wife, Elena
Ceausescu had learnt about this project of reediting the book, she called in the
secretary in charge of the project and hit him in the head with the ink bottle.
After a series of delays and postponements, for one reason or another, the
third edition of this book appeared in the autumn of 1989. The third edition was
completed and commented upon by my father. I was asked to remove a couple of
words, which I wrote and somehow offended the communist party. That was all.

Constantin Kirițescu was a
teacher of zoology with a great passion for history who gave us one of the most
successful history books in Romania’s historiography.

(bill)

16 April 2022
Sabina Brătianu-Cantacuzino

Ion C. Bratianu, dubbed the most important Romanian politician of the 19th century, fathered a big family. The Bratianus gave Romania the second generation of exceptional politicians, who would make the family much bigger after 1918, after he and his brother had laid its foundation.

Ion C. Bratianu and his wife Pia had 8 children: Florica, Sabina, Ion, Constantin, Vintilă, Maria, Tatiana and Pia. The second-born, Sabina, was the most influential member of the family, who would be listened to even by her powerful brother, Ionel Bratianu, the most important Romanian politician of the second half of the 20th century. Known as the Bratianus’ big sister, Sabina, turned Cantacuzino by marriage, was a woman of deep intellectual interests and also a social activist.

She was born in 1863 in Florica, at the family residence in Arges County, 90 km west of Bucharest. She attended the Sfantu Sava High School in Bucharest and in 1885, a few years after graduation, she got married to doctor Constantin Cantacuzino. As she would later confess in her memoirs, her father had chosen her future husband. As a married woman she pursued her passions. She wrote poems, she loved music, and was very attached to theatre, which was something quite new in the Romanian space. Also, she gathered an impressive collection of paintings and traditional art objects.

Sabina Cantacuzino helped set up arts institutions such as the Toma Stelian Arts Museum, named after a famous lawyer, who also served as minister of justice, and who was a notorious art lover. She also helped establish the Universitatea Libera (Free University) Cultural Association, which organised many conferences and concerts. After her death, according to her will, her home in Bucharest was turned into the headquarters of an academic foundation.

Everybody who knew Sabina Cantacuzino would speak of her kindness and the serene environment her mere presence would create around. Diplomat Alexandru Danielopol was so close to the family that he was actually perceived as one of its members. His father was very close to Ionel Bratianu and he would spend a lot of time at the Bratieni property and in their home. In 1995, in an interview for the Center of Oral History of the Romanian Radio Broadcasting Corporation, Danielopol recalled the universe of Sabina Cantacuzino’s family, her special presence and the strong influence she had on everyone around her.

I hail from the Brătianu family and I’m proud of it! I was raised in the spirit of the Brătianus, and the head of this family was not Ionel Brătianu, but Sabina Cantacuzino. She was the eldest of Ion Brătianu’s children, and a highly intelligent and also very authoritarian woman. What she said carried a lot of weight, everyone pretty much followed her lead. She used to host these big luncheons twice a year and Ionel Brătianu always made sure he attended, no matter how busy he was. She used to serve this sweet dessert, kataifi, which she made herself, and which was really special. I looked for this recipe all over Europe, everywhere, in Greece and Turkey, but I never again ate kataifi the way she made it. Sadly, it never occurred to me to ask her for the recipe. And the recipe was gone with her, no one has it anymore.

Sabina Cantacuzino was also an active supporter of social causes. She was involved in the organisation of establishments for children and the sick, such as a children’s home where the teaching was based on the system invented by the physician and pedagogue Maria Montessori at the end of the 19th century. She was the president of the Association for the Prevention of Tuberculosis and in 1914 proposed the creation of a special hospital for those suffering from this disease.

During WWI, she was on the board of a hospital in Bucharest. In December 1916, as Romania entered the war alongside Great Britain, France and Russia, she stayed in Bucharest, which was occupied by the German army, refusing to flee to Iași. Given that she was the sister of Ionel Brătianu, a Romanian politician who opposed Germany and had been responsible for Romania’s joining the war on the side of the Entente, Sabina Cantacuzino was eventually detained by the Germans in 1917, being held at Pasărea monastery, east of Bucharest.

Despite her imprisonment, she retained her optimism and confidence that Romania would overcome the difficult situation arising from the end of Russia’s participation in the war following the Russian Revolution. When the war ended, Sabina Cantacuzino joined the efforts to consolidate Greater Romania. She authored two books of memoirs which begin in 1921, with the 100th anniversary of the birth of her illustrious father. She died on 23rd August 1944 in Bucharest, aged 81, on the very day that Romania withdrew from its alliance with Nazi Germany.

17 March 2022
Sabina Brătianu-Cantacuzino

Ion C. Bratianu, dubbed the most important Romanian politician of the 19th century, fathered a big family. The Bratianus gave Romania the second generation of exceptional politicians, who would make the family much bigger after 1918, after he and his brother had laid its foundation.

Ion C. Bratianu and his wife Pia had 8 children: Florica, Sabina, Ion, Constantin, Vintilă, Maria, Tatiana and Pia. The second-born, Sabina, was the most influential member of the family, who would be listened to even by her powerful brother, Ionel Bratianu, the most important Romanian politician of the second half of the 20th century. Known as the Bratianus’ big sister, Sabina, turned Cantacuzino by marriage, was a woman of deep intellectual interests and also a social activist.

She was born in 1863 in Florica, at the family residence in Arges County, 90 km west of Bucharest. She attended the Sfantu Sava High School in Bucharest and in 1885, a few years after graduation, she got married to doctor Constantin Cantacuzino. As she would later confess in her memoirs, her father had chosen her future husband. As a married woman she pursued her passions. She wrote poems, she loved music, and was very attached to theatre, which was something quite new in the Romanian space. Also, she gathered an impressive collection of paintings and traditional art objects.

Sabina Cantacuzino helped set up arts institutions such as the Toma Stelian Arts Museum, named after a famous lawyer, who also served as minister of justice, and who was a notorious art lover. She also helped establish the Universitatea Libera (Free University) Cultural Association, which organised many conferences and concerts. After her death, according to her will, her home in Bucharest was turned into the headquarters of an academic foundation.

Everybody who knew Sabina Cantacuzino would speak of her kindness and the serene environment her mere presence would create around. Diplomat Alexandru Danielopol was so close to the family that he was actually perceived as one of its members. His father was very close to Ionel Bratianu and he would spend a lot of time at the Bratieni property and in their home. In 1995, in an interview for the Center of Oral History of the Romanian Radio Broadcasting Corporation, Danielopol recalled the universe of Sabina Cantacuzino’s family, her special presence and the strong influence she had on everyone around her.

I hail from the Brătianu family and I’m proud of it! I was raised in the spirit of the Brătianus, and the head of this family was not Ionel Brătianu, but Sabina Cantacuzino. She was the eldest of Ion Brătianu’s children, and a highly intelligent and also very authoritarian woman. What she said carried a lot of weight, everyone pretty much followed her lead. She used to host these big luncheons twice a year and Ionel Brătianu always made sure he attended, no matter how busy he was. She used to serve this sweet dessert, kataifi, which she made herself, and which was really special. I looked for this recipe all over Europe, everywhere, in Greece and Turkey, but I never again ate kataifi the way she made it. Sadly, it never occurred to me to ask her for the recipe. And the recipe was gone with her, no one has it anymore.

Sabina Cantacuzino was also an active supporter of social causes. She was involved in the organisation of establishments for children and the sick, such as a children’s home where the teaching was based on the system invented by the physician and pedagogue Maria Montessori at the end of the 19th century. She was the president of the Association for the Prevention of Tuberculosis and in 1914 proposed the creation of a special hospital for those suffering from this disease.

During WWI, she was on the board of a hospital in Bucharest. In December 1916, as Romania entered the war alongside Great Britain, France and Russia, she stayed in Bucharest, which was occupied by the German army, refusing to flee to Iași. Given that she was the sister of Ionel Brătianu, a Romanian politician who opposed Germany and had been responsible for Romania’s joining the war on the side of the Entente, Sabina Cantacuzino was eventually detained by the Germans in 1917, being held at Pasărea monastery, east of Bucharest.

Despite her imprisonment, she retained her optimism and confidence that Romania would overcome the difficult situation arising from the end of Russia’s participation in the war following the Russian Revolution. When the war ended, Sabina Cantacuzino joined the efforts to consolidate Greater Romania. She authored two books of memoirs which begin in 1921, with the 100th anniversary of the birth of her illustrious father. She died on 23rd August 1944 in Bucharest, aged 81, on the very day that Romania withdrew from its alliance with Nazi Germany.

17 March 2022
Romanian 20th century writers and their popularity

Prose writer Radu Tudoran is the author of the most popular and the most widely-read adventure novel in Romanian literature, All Sails Up !, Toate panzele sus!, in Romanian. Radu Tudoran was born almost 112 years ago, on March 8th, 1910, in the locality of Blejoi, Prahova County.

All Sails Up! enjoyed a tremendous success; it was even turned into a TV series in the 1970s and, because of its popularity, critics and readership alike ignored the rest of his literary output, despite Radu Tudorans being a very prolific writer. Moreover, in terms of personal life, Radu Tudoran kept himself to himself and succeeded to stay away from the propagandistic tendencies of the communist-controlled literature, back in the day. So Radu Tudorans apparently unassuming personal life comes in stark contrast with the fame acquired by All Sails Up!. The novel is deprived of any ideological reference; surprisingly enough, it was published at a time when Romanian culture was under the strict influence of socialist realism. The author pursued his own path, which was rather neutral, and was not influenced by anybody, not even by his brother, Geo Bogza, an accomplished avant-garde poet and an author of literary reportages, who at one point was among the beneficiaries of the communist system. Literary historian and critic Paul Cernat gave us further details on Radu Tudorans biography.

“He was born into the family of a seaman, actually a naval contractor. He was the youngest child in his family. His real name was Nicolae Bogza. He followed in his fathers footsteps as he chose his profession and went on to become a navy officer. Politically, Nicolae Bogza, the future Radu Tudoran, did not take to the radical left, which lured Geo Bogza, but he did not embrace the far-right either, a path which, for a while, his elder brothers, who were writers themselves, Alexandru and Ovidiu Bogza, took. Their sister, Elena, wrote literature as well. It was a family where books were written.”

His passion for writing, as well as his passion for travelling, especially for the seafaring journeys, remained constant traits in the life of Radu Tudoran, who made his debut in 1939, the very year when World War Two broke out.

Literary critic Paul Cernat:

“His maiden volume was a collection of literary reportages, a book about Hitlers Germany, which caused a lot for dissatisfaction with everybody, irrespective of their political leanings, since it was being perceived as much too neutral. In the subsequent years, in his capacity as a navy officer, he contributed to the official press of the time and even had a stint in Bugeac, southern Bessarabia, where he was sent as a war correspondent. It was there that he drew his inspiration from, A Port in the East, arguably one of Radu Tudorans best novels, a wonderful book, which has remained a good read even to this day. At that time, he had already published a collection of short stories, The Town with Poor Girls (…) The writer would contribute a very interesting volume, in 1943, Seasons, a book that had already earned Tudoran the status of neo-Romantic and sentimental writer in the best sense of the word. That novel would be followed, in 1945, by a social novel, inspired from the extraction of crude oil, a world he was quite familiar with, since he was born nearby Ploiesti, in an area of oil refineries. The novel was entitled Flames and was reprinted several times. “

Nevertheless, Tudoran did not take kindly the instatement of communism in Romania, so he tried to smuggle himself out of the country in the early 1950s on board a makeshift schooner. The attempt was thwarted, obviously, and most of the crew were arrested. Save for Radu Tudoran, thanks to the intervention of his brother, Geo Bogza, who was well-placed, politically. However, the adventure did have its literary follow-up, since in 1954 All Sails Up! was brought out, a novel also revolving around a schooner which was full of adventurers. However, this time, fate takes them from the cosmopolitan world of Sulina harbour in the late 19th century, where river Danube flows into the Black Sea, to South America. But how was that book spared by then the tough censorship, being reprinted several times and even being turned into a film?

Literary critic Paul Cernat:

“Ive got two explanations. One has to do with the support provided by his brother Geo. A second explanation has to do with the refuge he took in a province which was safer from ideologies than other such zones, even though the intrusion there was very strong as well. However, it came in handiest to write a book of adventures, set in the 19th century, rather than writing about more recent times. So that particular kind of refuge he took, on one hand, in history and on the other hand, in the adventure children and youth fiction, turned out to be providential. Radu Tudoran travelled extensively after the Stalinist period, when the tribute he paid to the regime was rather modest as compared to other writers, for instance, he did that by simply writing the novel River Danube Bursting its Banks, a social novel in line with the ideology oh that time. After that, he would travel a lot and write books inspired by his journeys. He was a man who really enjoyed travelling, he was also very nice and even charming. After 1961, when River Danube Bursting its Banks was published, he also wrote quality literature for children, a mix of travel literature and fantasy. In the last two decades of his life, he also had a very consistent epic project, which sadly did not enjoy that much coverage. Im speaking about The End of the Millenium, a cycle of novels made of seven volumes, brought out between 1978 and 1994, with the last novel being published posthumously. It is a sort of historical fresco of the 20th century. “

A fresco the completion of which Radu Tudoran had the chance to witness, once the communist regime collapsed, since he died in 1992. To this day, All Sails Up! has been reprinted at least once. Radu Tudoran s other novels truly deserve to be reprinted, since they are really worth discovering by todays generations of readers.

(EN)

13 March 2022
Radio Bod

Radio Romania has been broadcasting permanently since 1928. It has been the most constant source of information and an active witness to the 20th Century landmarks of Romanian history.

The first broadcast station was obviously located in Bucharest. But in order to cover the entire national territory, the station network had to be systematically expanded in the 1930s. One of the most important local stations airing the programmes of the central structure was in the village of Bod, in Brașov County, central Romania.

Today, Bod comprises the village itself and the Bod colony, located some 10 km north of the city of Brașov. The village has around 4,000 inhabitants, 84% of which are ethnic Romanians, 8% Hungarians and 1% Germans. The settlement was first mentioned in official documents dating back to 1211, when Saxon settlers from the region between the Rhine and Mosel arrived here. In 1241, the village was burnt to the ground by Tatars. The German name of the settlement, Brenndorf, means precisely burnt village. In 1889, a sugar factory was opened in Bod, and the houses built for the factory workers are the core of what is known today as the colony.

It is precisely in Bod Colony that in 1933 – 1934 the Romanian government built a longwave radio station which is operational to this day. It is in fact the only longwave station still in operation in Romania. After August 23, 1944, when Romania joined the Allies, Bod saw heavy fighting between Romanian and German troops for control over the station.

In the ’90s, the Romanian Radio Broadcasting Corporation’s Oral History Centre documented the history of the Bod radio station with interviews taken to people who took part in its building. One of them is the locksmith Gheorghe Crisbășanu.

Gheorghe Crisbășanu: In 1934 I started working at the Bod radio station. I installed the 20 kW unit which was supposed to maintain the wavelength for the 150 kW station due to be installed later. I worked with engineer Ştiubei, the son in law of the writer Mihail Sadoveanu, with Lică Georgescu as manager and with another engineer, Schnoll, who was supervising the operation. The station had 2 panels with 4 vacuum tubes. The cooling system was located in a separate room, with a pump circulating the industrial water used for cooling the distilled water that was cooling down the filaments of the tubes. After that the 150 kW station was built, and the old 20 kW one was dismantled and taken to Chişinău.

Engineer Alexandru Lică was the manager of the Bod radio station and one of the people who took part in its inauguration:

Alexandru Lică: On the night when the Bod radio station was to officially begin its operation, I was in Bucharest for a meeting of the Board. The Board members were discussing the commissioning of radio stations. Among them was a guy called Dicem, representing the Marconi corporation, which had built the station. He was an expert, a scientist and he had come to Bucharest precisely to commission the unit. And he said, ‘We will commission the station provided that Mr. Lică Georgescu is there.’ We obviously had someone there, the engineer who had been monitoring the station for a year, but they gave me a car and at midnight I left for Bod, where the station was already on air, but without a programme, it was only for warm-up. When I got to Bod, I put the central studio through and we launched the official broadcast. It was a great satisfaction for me.

Gheorghe Cristoloveanu worked at the Bod station and still remembers the atmosphere at work and the change in the relations between people after the communists took power:

Gheorghe Cristoloveanu: We used to get along perfectly, there was perfect harmony and I am not overstating anything. Later on, in ’49-’50 when the communists took power, it was a little more difficult because we had to learn to keep quiet. I stayed with radio Bod because my salary was not really big. Because I had fought in the war and had received every possible medal, including the Iron Cross and Michael the Brave, I was under observation so to say, or rather I was afraid I might get in trouble. This is why I kept to myself, I was more restrained than others. We used to get along quite well, there was this club where we would get together and talk, play ping-pong and backgammon. I wouldn’t say it was a difficult time, we were around 50-60 employees and we all knew each other, we knew what to say when speaking to this or that person and whom to trust.

The Bod station continues to broadcast in the longwave band for 87 years. An AM veteran, today it competes with FM stations and with the internet. (A.M.P.)

5 March 2022
Radio Bod

Radio Romania has been broadcasting permanently since 1928. It has been the most constant source of information and an active witness to the 20th Century landmarks of Romanian history.

The first broadcast station was obviously located in Bucharest. But in order to cover the entire national territory, the station network had to be systematically expanded in the 1930s. One of the most important local stations airing the programmes of the central structure was in the village of Bod, in Brașov County, central Romania.

Today, Bod comprises the village itself and the Bod colony, located some 10 km north of the city of Brașov. The village has around 4,000 inhabitants, 84% of which are ethnic Romanians, 8% Hungarians and 1% Germans. The settlement was first mentioned in official documents dating back to 1211, when Saxon settlers from the region between the Rhine and Mosel arrived here. In 1241, the village was burnt to the ground by Tatars. The German name of the settlement, Brenndorf, means precisely burnt village. In 1889, a sugar factory was opened in Bod, and the houses built for the factory workers are the core of what is known today as the colony.

It is precisely in Bod Colony that in 1933 – 1934 the Romanian government built a longwave radio station which is operational to this day. It is in fact the only longwave station still in operation in Romania. After August 23, 1944, when Romania joined the Allies, Bod saw heavy fighting between Romanian and German troops for control over the station.

In the ’90s, the Romanian Radio Broadcasting Corporation’s Oral History Centre documented the history of the Bod radio station with interviews taken to people who took part in its building. One of them is the locksmith Gheorghe Crisbășanu.

Gheorghe Crisbășanu: In 1934 I started working at the Bod radio station. I installed the 20 kW unit which was supposed to maintain the wavelength for the 150 kW station due to be installed later. I worked with engineer Ştiubei, the son in law of the writer Mihail Sadoveanu, with Lică Georgescu as manager and with another engineer, Schnoll, who was supervising the operation. The station had 2 panels with 4 vacuum tubes. The cooling system was located in a separate room, with a pump circulating the industrial water used for cooling the distilled water that was cooling down the filaments of the tubes. After that the 150 kW station was built, and the old 20 kW one was dismantled and taken to Chişinău.

Engineer Alexandru Lică was the manager of the Bod radio station and one of the people who took part in its inauguration:

Alexandru Lică: On the night when the Bod radio station was to officially begin its operation, I was in Bucharest for a meeting of the Board. The Board members were discussing the commissioning of radio stations. Among them was a guy called Dicem, representing the Marconi corporation, which had built the station. He was an expert, a scientist and he had come to Bucharest precisely to commission the unit. And he said, ‘We will commission the station provided that Mr. Lică Georgescu is there.’ We obviously had someone there, the engineer who had been monitoring the station for a year, but they gave me a car and at midnight I left for Bod, where the station was already on air, but without a programme, it was only for warm-up. When I got to Bod, I put the central studio through and we launched the official broadcast. It was a great satisfaction for me.

Gheorghe Cristoloveanu worked at the Bod station and still remembers the atmosphere at work and the change in the relations between people after the communists took power:

Gheorghe Cristoloveanu: We used to get along perfectly, there was perfect harmony and I am not overstating anything. Later on, in ’49-’50 when the communists took power, it was a little more difficult because we had to learn to keep quiet. I stayed with radio Bod because my salary was not really big. Because I had fought in the war and had received every possible medal, including the Iron Cross and Michael the Brave, I was under observation so to say, or rather I was afraid I might get in trouble. This is why I kept to myself, I was more restrained than others. We used to get along quite well, there was this club where we would get together and talk, play ping-pong and backgammon. I wouldn’t say it was a difficult time, we were around 50-60 employees and we all knew each other, we knew what to say when speaking to this or that person and whom to trust.

The Bod station continues to broadcast in the longwave band for 87 years. An AM veteran, today it competes with FM stations and with the internet. (A.M.P.)

2 March 2022