Ernest Bernea, a mystic lost in politics

Sociologist, ethnographer and philosopher, Ernest Bernea was one of the leading intellectuals of the inter-war period. Ignored by the intelligentsia today because of his ignorance and political past, Bernea remains a reference in Romanian culture. Much of his work remains unpublished because publishers fear that Bernea is not marketable.

Born in Focșani on 28 March 1905, Ernest Bernea grew up in Brăila, where he attended primary and secondary school. His father, Marcu, was a Moldavian peasant from the outskirts of Galați, and his mother, Tudora, was the daughter of an Arad man who had become a harbour boatman. His hard childhood, spent in a working-class neighbourhood, was marked by hardship. Until the end of his life, he was content to live a simple, even impoverished life.

From the age of 13, with a seriously ill father, an older brother who died on the front and four younger brothers, Ernest had to work to support his family. He sold pretzels, cleaned the harbour, cut wood and taught maths to the children of wealthy families. Around the same time, he discovered his love for drawing and literature.

From 1926 he attended the Faculty of Letters and Philosophy in Bucharest. His teachers were Nicolae Iorga, Nae Ionescu and Dimitrie Gusti. With Nae Ionescu he collaborated on Cuvântul, and with Dimitrie Gusti he worked in ethnographic research teams.

Between 1930 and 1933, Ernest Bernea received a scholarship and specialised in sociology and the history of religion in Paris and in philosophy in Freiburg (Germany) (where he studied with Martin Heidegger).

In the autumn of 1932, Bernea met Maria Patrichi – Marcela, as he called her – from Galiza, a graduate of the Faculty of Letters in Bucharest, whom he married five years later. They had a son, Horia, and twins, Ana and Tudora.

The “Rânduiala” magazine and the Legionary Movement

Back in Romania, Ernest Bernea, together with Traian Herseni, at the Romanian Social Institute directed by Dimitrie Gusti, made a valuable contribution to monographic research in the various regions of Romania, publishing important studies and articles in specialist journals. Thanks to the Legionary sympathies of his colleagues Ion Ionică, Ion Samarineanu and D.C. Amzăr (the latter being his brother-in-law), Bernea joined the Legionary movement in 1935. That same year, the four of them founded the magazine “Rânduiala”, which was published quarterly for three years. Also in 1935, Ernest Bernea was appointed a lecturer at Simion Mehedinți’s Department of Anthropology, where he taught comparative sociology and the first course in ethnology in Romania until 1940.

Rânduiala, a magazine of cultural and political attitude, hosted important signatures of the time, such as Lucian Blaga, Radu Gyr and Haig Acterian. The Rînduiala group was part of the trend of the time, embodying the ideal of the “young generation” and supporting the legionary movement. However, after the assassination of Corneliu Codreanu, the leader of the Legionary movement, Bernea distanced himself from it, only to lose all sympathy after the murder of Nicolae Iorga.

Political imprisonment

During the Carlist persecution, Bernea was imprisoned in the Vaslui camp. He miraculously escaped the anti-legionary pogrom of 21-22 September 1939 (initiated by King Charles II in retaliation for the assassination of Prime Minister Armand Calinescu by a legionary team). Ernest Bernea was released shortly before the “Night of the Long Knives” because, according to a Securitate document, he was among those who had signed a declaration distancing themselves from the Legionary movement.

Bernea later claimed to Securitate officers that he had been expelled from the Legion in 1940 “for lack of activity”. In fact, he said, he had considered himself excluded since 1937 because his political views contradicted those of the movement. He was rather a mystic lost in politics, like many other intellectuals between the wars.

After the so-called “legionary uprising” in January 1941, Ernest Bernea was imprisoned in the Târgu-Jiu camp and in the Tg. Ocna prison on suspicion of having kept his job in the Ministry of Intelligence during the Antonescu-Sima government. He was released a month later after it was proved that he had not participated in the rebellion. Promoted to director of studies at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, he worked there until Ana Pauker took over in 1947. Unemployed, he was forced to move to the village of Poiana Mărului in Brașov County, where his wife had found a job as a teacher. In 1948, he too was hired as a teacher at the village school. Only a year later he was arrested again and imprisoned in Brașov for a year on suspicion of conspiring against the peasants. And in 1952 he was handcuffed again, accused of being an “ideologue of the legionary movement” and taken to several labour colonies along the Danube-Black Sea Canal. When he was released in 1954, he was seriously ill and sent to live in the commune of Schei in Galati County. In the meantime, his family had moved to Zărnești, where he lived until 1962, when Bernea was finally released.

Proof of his intransigence towards the Communists throughout his imprisonment is provided by a report written on 10 December 1954 by Mr Andrej Vaculin to General Ady Ladislau, Deputy Minister of the Interior. “During his time in the C.M. (Labour Colony – ed.) he showed no signs of rehabilitation, it is known that he spread rumours of a new war and that Horia Sima would come to the country with a new programme, urging the other prisoners to resist. (…) Since his arrival in the Schei community, he has maintained contacts with the most hostile elements and has constantly expressed his dissatisfaction…”. With such a “recommendation”, it is not surprising that three months later he was arrested again and sentenced to 10 years’ hard labour for “intensive activity against the working class”.

He was released on 1 October 1962 and in 1965, with the support of Perpessicius and Al. Philipide, he was employed as a researcher at the Institute of Ethnography and Folklore of the Romanian Academy, from which he retired in 1972.

Until 1989 he was under constant surveillance by the Securitate, and in 1984 he was arrested and severely beaten for refusing to become an informer.

He died on 14 November 1990 and was buried in the monastery of Cernica.

(Horia Brad – Rost magazine no. 18, August 2004)