A few lines about my father, priest Liviu Galaction Munteanu
It is difficult to express in a few words what one feels, what one thinks, or to reveal memories that seem to be frozen in a hidden corner of the soul, about a man for whom one had unique feelings of love, respect, trust, pride and gratitude.
Although we lost him a long time ago, but much too early for us, the filter of time could not blur his strong personality, and in my mind’s eye I see him alive and young (…).
He is Professor Liviu G. Munteanu, my father. In my memories, my father was the king of the family, the one who, in ideal harmony with my mother, led us and followed our steps from the shadows, he was the “model” that we were more or less aware of being “destined” to follow.
He was an example of order and balance, of sobriety and fairness, of demanding himself and those around him. A thoughtful but also very active, practical spirit, a great lover of nature, a man who lived to leave something lasting. For us, however, he was first and foremost a warm and at the same time restrained parent, the man from whom came the peace and balance of the family. He followed us closely in our educational and intellectual development, constantly encouraging us to study and learn as the only chance for us to grow. The first period of my childhood I remember is the war period (1940-1944), during which my parents and I stayed in Cluj, while my sister and older brother took refuge in Sibiu.
My father’s decision to remain under Hungarian occupation, with all the consequences that this entailed, while the majority of Romanians were fleeing in haste across the temporary border, I now see as an act of great courage and consistency, which also characterised him.
The small circle of Romanians who remained in Cluj during the war naturally united them, and the life of the family at that time was naturally intertwined with that of a small group of friends, among whom I would mention the Buzdug, Litan and Nicolescu families in the immediate vicinity, then the families of the doctors Liviu Telea and Liviu Pop, the family of Professor Nicu Vlad and others.
But one relationship that I cannot overlook is that of soul, doubled by mutual trust and esteem, between my father and His Eminence Bishop Nicolae Colan, an old and strong bond that began in the years of the “Andrei Șaguna” high school in Brașov, a bond that was then strengthened in the “times of trouble” that they lived through together, and that over time became a true “pillar of strength” of Orthodoxy in the northern Transylvanian area. With my childish mind I vaguely sensed the vicissitudes experienced by the Romanian minority during the Hungarian occupation, just as my parents had faced those years with wisdom, courage and hope, when the divided family also faced great material difficulties.
However, the pain that my parents felt during the “Horst persecution” of the Jews, when they knew that my father had contributed to the enrolment of three young Jews at the Theological Academy, and thus to their crossing the border to Sibiu, saved them from deportation and almost certain death. In 1942 I was enrolled in the primary school of the only Romanian school in Cluj, the denominational school “Maica Domnului”. My memories of that time are brightened by the joy of the trips I made to Sibiu, usually with my mother, to meet Didi and Gugu, my older brothers. The nightmare that began in 1940, and of which I was less aware as a child, did not end with the end of the war, but was only the beginning of a new national tragedy, communism.
In 1944, as Soviet troops advanced on the Western Front, our house was temporarily occupied and used first as a surgical ward, then as a canteen for Russian troops, during which time some of the things in our house were practically destroyed in the heat of the war.
The end of the war and the joy of the return of Northern Transylvania to its natural borders, the desire to revive the cultural life in Cluj that had been buried during those four years, gave rise to many enthusiastic initiatives, among which the establishment of the two Orthodox high schools (“Simion Ștefan” and “Doamna Stanca”), including the construction of the building on Str. Avram Iancu, the girls’ high school, for which my father, in addition to his initiative, put all his soul and all his skills into the establishment of elite schools. The gradual but violent installation of Communism, with its harsh measures to destroy Romanian spirituality, to discredit and silence the Church, and to destroy the prosperous inter-war economy, stopped other initiatives, began to fear and then to undermine any desire for progress, for a return to normality, and forced the country’s brutal break with the rest of European civilisation. The anxiety of my parents was obvious.
The material survival of the family, school and study remained the only priorities. It’s with great nostalgia that I recall the evenings of those days, when, around the dinner table, the hustle and bustle of the house calmed down and the family atmosphere returned to its warmth, with jokes, laughter, talk of school, of everyone’s worries, of the wealth of books (published immediately after the war) that were eagerly read, of memories of holidays and much more.
I came to understand my father’s personality better and better, to appreciate him more and more. His life was extraordinarily rigorous, well balanced between his family, his department and his hobby, which had become a necessity at the time, gardening and fruit growing. He studied, wrote a lot, prepared his lectures, papers, sermons, conferences, and I know that in those years he worked intensively with several groups of professors from the Institute on a large “Theological Lexicon” and on chapters of a manual for all the university theological training institutes in the country, a manual that was later published in Bucharest (1954 and second edition in 1977).
These were the years 1948-1950. The country was going through troubled times, and even more difficult years followed in his personal life, starting with the death of his elder sister in a tragic accident in the mountains of Făgăraș (in 1949), a death that deeply affected the whole family. In the same year, my mother underwent a difficult operation, which was fortunately successful, but required a long convalescence.
In the summer of 1952 we were evicted from our own home, in a “flash” of 48 hours and without any legal reason.
In the same year, 1952, the Theological Institute in Cluj, of which my father had been Rector since 1937, was abolished, with short interruptions. At first he was deceived into believing that he would receive the chair of “New Testament Studies” at one of the remaining theological institutes in Sibiu or Bucharest, but finally, after some well-considered “machinations”, he was “exiled” to Bistrița as a simple priest-parish priest. The sober and erudite professor did not give up even in this new position. Through his highly respected sermons, his moral behaviour, his ability to reveal to the world the mysterious ways of faith and knowledge, he soon won new believers, in stark contrast to the ideology of the new regime.
Slowly but surely, Professor Liviu G. Munteanu became an unwanted representative of the Church, first persecuted, then threatened, and finally “offered” by the Church as a gift to the atheistic communist regime. He had never been political.
After 6 years of exile in the city of Bistrița, he returned to Cluj in the spring of 1958 as vicar of the Orthodox diocese of Vad Feleac and Cluj. Only a few months later, he was put on trial on the false and unproven charge of trying to introduce religion into schools, an act which the “Party and State Forums” of the time equated with “the crime of incitement against the social order”.
He was tried and, after a formal defence, sentenced to 17 years’ imprisonment (under Article 209 of the Penal Code) and, on appeal, to 8 years’ imprisonment and total confiscation of his personal property. The aim of destroying a representative personality of the Church was, in fact, to intimidate and silence a whole section of society, the courageous, those who, through their faith, could still oppose communism. And so, after a career of 29 years dedicated to teaching and writing, to enriching the theological heritage, to the progress and renewal of the Church, the erudite theologian, mentor of dozens of generations of theological students, Professor Liviu G. Munteanu, became the victim demanded by the “regime without God”. He was torn from his life and thrown into a hell from which there was no escape. He was dragged to the cellars of the Securitate in Cluj, then to the prisons of Gherla and Aiud, subjected to a merciless regime of extermination; with all the spiritual energy at his disposal, his physical resources betrayed him and, in a state of torpor, deprived of medical care, he ended up, like so many other martyrs, in the wretched prison of Aiud on 8 March 1961, at the age of 63.
Far from his loved ones and without a candle at his bedside, the man who prayed and knew how to bring so much comfort to the souls of others, left an unchristian world, in sorrow and abandonment, and raised his prayer to God in solitude. Thrown into an unmarked grave, his remains still lie in the “cemetery without crosses and without tears” of Aiud prison. On the 100th anniversary of his birth, my soul is filled with pious memories, but also with deep regret for his troubled and then so tragically broken destiny, the destiny of a man who could have brought so much joy and light to the lives of those around him and so much fulfilment to himself. My father will always remain for us, his children, the way, the model to follow.
– was born on 16 May 1898 in Cristian, Brasov County;
– In 1917 he graduated from the Andrei Șaguna High School in Brașov and enrolled at the Andrei Șaguna Theological Institute in Sibiu;
– After receiving his theological degree, he went to Cernăuți;
– There too, in 1923, he obtained his Doctorate in Theology, while also attending the Faculty of Philosophy of the University;
– In the same year he married Silvia Popa from Sibiu; they had three children (two are still alive: Lia Drăgănescu and Sergiu Munteanu);
– In 1924 he was appointed full professor at the Department of Biblical Studies of the New Testament at the Theological Academy of Cluj;
– Rector of the Cluj Theological Academy from 1937 to 1947;
– 1948-1952 – Rector of the Theological Institute of University Degree;
– 1952 – the Institute was abolished and the family was evicted from their home;
– In addition to his 29 years of teaching, he also made a name for himself as a publicist;
– He was a constant contributor to numerous professional journals and was also the editor and publisher of “Life Illustrated”; “New Testament” in the Handbook for Theological Institutes, published in Bucharest in 1954;
– He was not a member of any political party;
– He was arrested on 21 November 1958, tried before the Military Tribunal of Cluj and, after a political frame-up, sentenced to 17 years’ imprisonment and, on appeal, to 8 years’ imprisonment and confiscation of property for “the crime of conspiracy against the social order”, on the basis of Article 209, point 2, letter a of the Penal Code (in fact, for the imaginary crime of wanting to introduce religious education in schools);
– During his detention, he was not allowed to receive parcels or see his family;
– He fell ill and suffered an intestinal obstruction; he was operated on very late, his family were not allowed to visit him and, to add insult to injury, he was told at his trial that his son had committed suicide and his daughter had been expelled from university;
– after two years and three months of imprisonment, suffering torture and illness, he died in Aiud prison at the age of 63; he was buried in the prison’s unmarked and unnamed cemetery.
It is good not to forget those who fought so that this people would not turn its face away from God, not to forget those who, 50 years ago, sensed the disaster the country was heading towards and fought to prevent it.
(Lia Munteanu Drăgănescu – Memory. Journal of Arrested Thought, issue 24)