“His Christian stance, confessed in his testamentary words “Do not avenge me”, defines his entire moral greatness”

It’s hard to put into words why so many of the world’s geniuses, and I’m talking about our own country here, have passed away at relatively young ages or at ages that were not quite the typical age of retirement.

Mircea Vulcănescu was one of these brilliant minds from Romania who faced death with grace and gratitude, celebrating the fullness of life he had lived and the wisdom he had gained.

Maybe the sacrifice of these remarkable men will be seen as a heavy price to pay in the eyes of history, for the many of us left to languish in life and in clay, or because our lack of gratitude and our lack of care, like our indifference to protecting these people, who did nothing to protect them, to shelter them from the fury of the barbarian invasions of all times and all directions, those who held the torch of our Romanian culture and spirituality.

One of the biggest injustices was done to Mircea Vulcănescu. Mircea Vulcănescu wasn’t involved in making government policy. He wasn’t a politician. He was a technician who just wanted to make sure the Romanian economy developed in a way that was good for his homeland. I think it’s fair to say that he was a great patriot who did everything he could to serve his country, not a political regime. Firstly, Mircea Vulcănescu wasn’t tied to any political ideology. Secondly, he wasn’t the Minister of Finance, he was the Undersecretary of State in that ministry. In both cases, he wasn’t legally able to get involved in a political affair.

Mircea Vulcănescu was a great thinker and a technocratic economist, but above all, he was a great specialist in the field of public finance.

When he was arrested in 1946, he asked if he could prepare his own defence in his cell. At the trial, his defence lasted six hours. It showed that the country’s economy had done well despite the war. In fact, it had done better than before. This was because he had left 17 wagons of gold bullion in the Ministry of Finance’s safe deposit vaults. This was in addition to the gold in the country’s treasury. But the court didn’t have any sympathy, and the panel members’ prejudices and the orders they were given had a negative impact on the accused’s fate.

After he was convicted, Mircea Vulcănescu was sent to Jilava prison, where he served several years of hard labour. With lots of other inmates in one room, it was only the height of the arrests, so he had to get organised so that he could cope with prison as best he could. That’s why he was always asked to speak – because Mircea Vulcănescu had a lot to say.

He wasn’t much of a library buff, but he was a natural-born genius and always looked for the deeper meanings in things. He was always happy to chat with anyone because he felt he could really be himself when he was talking to people. Constantin Noica summed him up perfectly when he said: He needed other people to be themselves too. He reflected on his own experiences through the eyes of others who encouraged him to discover himself and to seek new meanings to the problems they raised. This man, with his wise, kind gaze and head bowed, radiated wisdom and kindness.

After the First World War, he was one of the people who started the “White Lily” group and manifesto, along with other intellectuals who were really valuable, and he is considered one of the leaders of his generation. The meeting with Professor Nae Ionescu, who was his mentor and teacher, made him realise there was a new Romanian reality out there; Christian Orthodox metaphysics. But he didn’t stop there. 

His mind was very versatile, so he decided to study political economy abroad.

During the war, he worked as a technocrat in the relevant ministry, dealing with economics and finance. It’s also worth mentioning that, at just 24, he came up with a plan for Czechoslovakia’s economic recovery through Elena Văcărescu, at the request of President Thomas Masaryk.

His roommates in Jilava prison encouraged him to talk to them, and one day a guard who was more interested in humanity than common sense listened to him at the door as he presented various philosophical ideas. 

And as common sense in these utopian situations had become a joke, they were now informers, liars, and executioners, and thus fell within the communist moral standards. So, without the slightest sympathy for these unfortunate men who were sitting behind bars and trying to make things a bit more bearable, he took this great and peaceful thinker out of the room where he was protected against possible surprises and, along with two other prisoners who had probably done something wrong, stripped completely naked and forced to spend three days and three nights in an unheated room in the dead of winter, a room in which water dripped from the walls and ceiling. This was basically a death sentence, especially as one of them, the youngest, already had lung disease.

They knew they were in trouble, so they started working out how to save themselves. But how and under what conditions? It was coming on at night. If they stood naked like that, they’d catch cold and fall ill. They’d run out of effective medical treatment and die. So they came up with a plan: one of them would lie on the cold, wet concrete, and the other two would lie on top of it. Each of the three was prepared to make the ultimate sacrifice. But it was Mircea Vulcănescu who eventually won the argument.

He was the most stubborn, so he had to be sacrificed. The voice of self-sacrifice was the loudest in his conscience. This was the supreme test that Mircea Vulcănescu, the Christian and nationalist, passed in front of the history of the Romanian Nation, in the most shuddering moments of clash and struggle with the minions of Lucifer.

After the three-day punishment was over, the worst happened. Mircea Vulcănescu caught pneumonia, which was the cause of his sad demise at the young age of 48. The illness was so severe that those in charge of the prisoners had no choice but to send him to the prison infirmary. His situation seemed to have improved for now, but the disease was still affecting him.

I saw him at Aiud prison a few times over the next few years. By then, things had thawed a little and we were sent to work in the factory next to the prison, which used to belong to an engineer called Stoica but was now nationalised.

I could see him, along with other key figures, including Alexandru Marcu, head of the Italian language and culture department at the University of Bucharest, who translated Dante into Romanian, and Professor Nasta. There were also ministers and generals in attendance. They were doing menial work in the factory yard because they weren’t allowed to work in the factory. It was a real mill for grinding our energies and our health. We worked 12 hours in two shifts, day and night, not 6 or 8 hours like the communists once claimed when they weren’t in power. It seems they’ve had a change of heart.

After a while, Mircea Vulcănescu had a relapse. He ended up back in hospital again. It was around 1952 when I was hospitalised in the Aiud prison hospital after having a seizure. The writer and essayist Villi Beneș was also hospitalised there at the time. One scorching summer’s day, I found them both relaxing in the sun in the hospital courtyard. I was with someone else who was going through the same thing. We approached them with a bit of caution. I knew Mircea Vulcănescu represented a big deal for Romanian culture and spirituality. They were really welcoming. Villi Beneș was speaking, and Mircea Vulcănescu was mostly silent, though he did chip in now and then. His silence was significant. It could have been because he was thinking about what Beneș said or because he was overwhelmed by his suffering.

Once Beneș had finished, I managed to catch up with the great thinker and ask him about phenomenologism after his respective presentations and recommendations. I knew he was a bit of a fan of this movement and that when he was inspired, he became a real champion of it. But it seemed as if he wasn’t as quick as he once was, or as flexible in his thinking. He seemed a little tired and melancholy, although he didn’t say so. You could see it in his face. Anyway, he tried to present a kind of phenomenology that was as close as possible to his philosophical work, given his ability to organise and systematise. We had a few more discussions and comments, and then we said our goodbyes. He seemed friendly enough, but there was something on his mind. It was clear he needed protecting. I left feeling a bit sad because being near him felt like being near a spring of living water.

It wasn’t long after this that Mircea Vulcănescu was the victim of a new and great injustice. He was taken out of hospital and sent to the ward. The wards were different, though. They had rooms with 16 to 18 prisoners crammed onto iron beds. There was no peace and quiet, no way to keep the room or his body clean, let alone get proper treatment for his illness, and he was on a low-calorie, low-protein diet. All of this led to his illness getting worse.

What had gone on? What other plan had been made to get him out of the hospital, which he really needed? The hospital had a great team of doctors, including some former university professors and very skilled professionals who were also very kind to patients.

It seems that Mircea Vulcănescu’s fate was largely dependent on the whims of people who were unable to appreciate his value. This started with those who decided to condemn him and ended with the one who decided his tragic end.

So, here’s what happened. We heard a rumour that an empty bed was needed to admit a new patient, so someone from the hospital had to be discharged. The names of Mircea Vulcănescu and Fermo, who used to be an editor at the “Dimineața” and “Adevărul” newspapers (before the last world war), were being discussed. Fermo was an older gentleman, in his 80s. Mircea Vulcănescu had the backing of all the hospital doctors (and there were quite a few of them at the time) for a number of reasons: serious illness, age and personality. Fermo only had the support of one doctor, Iriminoiu, who always had a different opinion from the others. Iriminoiu only had one reason to back Fermo: he was human.

But the other options were against him. And as evil always wins, even if only for a short time, Dr. Iriminoiu’s opinion won out. This meant that evil also won, and had repercussions on Romanian culture and spirituality, perhaps from a historical point of view, perhaps not from a metaphysical one.

Mircea Vulcănescu was taken out of the hospital and taken to the ward, where he was deprived of effective treatment, regular medical observation and the food necessary for a lung patient. He died a few months later, on 28 October 1952. […]

The portrait of Dr. Iriminoiu makes us think about how he was involved in the death of Mircea Vulcănescu, who was a genius. Like his mentor Nae Ionescu, he was on the verge of sharing his thoughts on the most important issues in Romanian culture and spirituality. But it seems this nation always wants sacrifices, and they’re coming from the best of the best: the most spiritually sharp, the most enlightened.

The memory of Mircea Vulcănescu will always be there in the hearts of those who knew him. As time goes by, the further we move away from him, the more impressive he seems to us.

His Christian stance, confessed in his testamentary words: “Do not avenge me”, defines his entire moral greatness.

(George Popescu Glogoveanu, Under the Sword of the Knights of the Apocalypse, Majadahonda Publishing House, Bucharest, 1997, pp. 37-43)