Note of the informer “Marin Oltescu” on Nicu Steinhardt (16 November 1966)

Note of the informer “Marin Oltescu” on Nicu Steinhardt.

Received: Lt.-maj. Stănescu St.

Source: House “Marin Oltescu”: “Polar” Date: 16.XI.1966

[Resolution]: 24.XI.1966 Tov. Colonel Toadera ordered

to clarify more urgently the situation of this article

and contact him to convince us

whether he is suitable for recruitment.

Come with proposals.

302/2/SS/18.XI.1966

Top Secret

Spec. No. 1

 

Note

Nicu Steinhardt, 53 years old, Doctor of Law, is known as an intellectual of high culture and intelligence. Before 1940 (when he could not publish because of racial discrimination[1]) and after 1944, he published numerous studies on literary criticism and cultural issues in the Foundations Review and other periodicals, as well as several pamphlets and volumes on legal issues (constitutional law) or on the Jewish matter. His ideological position was bourgeois-democratic, liberal (but he never took part in politics); he was an avowed enemy of fanaticism and right-wing racist or mystical views; during the Antonescu period he helped (by sheltering and keeping secret manifestos) some people active in illegal anti-fascist groups. Before the First World War, together with his friend, the magistrate Juvara, he published a journal called Revista burgheză.

Around 1954-1955 he began to move towards the mystical thought and philosophy of Orthodox Christianity, while maintaining his anti-fanatic and democratic attitude for a long time. The main causes of this development were of a philosophical-literary nature, due to the reading of Russian Orthodox philosophers (Berdiaev, Leon Shestov, Bulgakov, etc.) and the reading of texts of Orthodox theology (Philokalia, Church Fathers, etc.). ), as well as conversations and contacts with some people who lived a mystical spiritual life, such as the priest Mihai Avramescu, Virgil Cândea (current director of the International Law Association), Paul Simionescu, etc.

After his arrest in prison in 1960, Nicu Steinhardt began to see Orthodox mysticism as a form of consecration of himself as a Romanian (he suffered from an inferiority complex as a Jew), and he saw prison as a God-given test of his Christian virtues; he practised a kind of apostolate in prison, giving his food to others, caring for the sick and elderly, and being extremely generous and kind to all prisoners, for which many former prisoners have very fond memories and respect. Even during his imprisonment and after his release, Nicu Steinhardt told all his friends that he intended to become a monk after his father’s death. Of his Jewish friends, some, such as Beatrice Strelisker, stopped seeing him, not so much because of his conversion to Christianity, but for other reasons related to the hostile way he treated her after his release from prison and how he spoke about her in connection with some of the heated and not always true testimonies she, B. Strelisker, gave as a prosecution witness in several criminal trials.

Other Jewish friends, such as Paul Copolovici (member of the PCR), Amelia Pavel (from the Institute of Art History, herself a practising Catholic), her son Toma Pavel, remained on good terms with him, although Amelia Pavel regretted the exaggerations to which N. Steinhardt’s fanatical mysticism led him, which had become a kind of obsessive, pathological religious mania. In fact, Nicu Steinhardt’s mystical practice and thinking became a kind of monomania that changed his way of thinking in general and negatively influenced his understanding of political or cultural issues.[2]

For example, he understands Dostoyevsky’s famous novel “The Possessed”, in which a group of Russian revolutionaries of the last century are portrayed as “outsiders”, as a vision of what later became communism, and the communists as “outsiders”. In conversation with him, the source explained that there is a kind of pathology of the moral sense in this novel, and that these revolutionaries are more nihilists than socialists, and certainly not Marxists. The source agreed with Nicu Steinhardt that one could see in “The Possessed” something akin to some aspects of Stalinism, but not to communism understood in a democratic and revolutionary sense, especially as it has developed in recent years. Nicu Steinhardt told the source, half-jokingly, that the source was an example of a “revolutionary aristocrat”, that he practised that well-known sort of “Bohemian socialism”, and that he was basically a “Trotskyist” (the source admits that this is pretty close to the truth). Nicu Steinhardt thinks that Geo Bogza or other writers are not really communists, but “generous”, good, intelligent, but naive and basically unconscious Christians.[3]

The source told him that if he was a Christian, he should remove himself from the worldly level where history and politics take place, and “give to Caesar what is Caesar’s”, and on the other hand practise Christian charity, which means love of people, social justice and forgiveness of those he considers sinners. Nicu Steinhardt replies that he agrees and that he has nothing to do with politics. But N. Steinhardt is an enthusiastic and expansive temperament who cannot restrain himself from expressing everything he thinks, whether it fits or not, which is why he often contradicts himself, not on the question of Christianity, where he is constant, but on general and political questions. N. Steinhardt regrets that the Source, who in the past had been interested in and even participated in questions of Christian thought and life, has developed along the lines of philosophical and political materialism, and declares that whatever disagreements on this level may arise between them, this will not be able to affect their good friendship, as in the case of Constantin Noica. He finds it strange that a man like Constantin Noica, whom he admires and loves very much, does not have more understanding for Christianity, and finds it even more strange that Noica today thinks almost in a Marxist spirit.

The Source was several times at Constantin Noica’s with Nicu Steinhardt, where in the always interesting discussions Nicu Steinhardt did not immediately find arguments to combat Noica, but later, in discussions with the Source, he found such arguments, often of a mystical nature (sometimes very just), to combat some of Noica’s philosophical exaggerations. (He has an extraordinary power of persuasion and not always fair thinking, often sophistical or one-sided, but particularly well supported). Nicu Steinhardt was very interested in C. Noica’s son, Razvan, who had become a monk in England under the name of “Father Raphael”.[4]

Today, Nicu Steinhardt, who has a very hard job in a cooperative, outside the city, where he has a more physical job (he was originally an accountant, but, not being good at bookkeeping and “getting his head screwed on”, he preferred to change to a job without responsibility), with a low salary and, with the travelling and the hours, he has a lot of extra hours to take care of his very old and frail father, and to give some English lessons to earn some extra money, or to do translations; he spends the few spare hours he has reading (he is up to date with all the literary and scientific movements), has very little time to meet the Source, and is unlikely to write anymore; indeed, he has told the Source several times that he has given up writing.

He is indeed very unhappy with his situation (and in poor health), not working in a field where he could use his knowledge and talent, and rightly thinks it absurd that he cannot find suitable work where he would be more useful and satisfied. This, together with his religious and mystical obsessions, is to a large extent the cause of his negative state of mind.

Knowing him well enough, the source believes that Nicu Steinhardt could be positively influenced, firstly, by being employed in a job which would correspond to his training and which would also ease his material and health condition, and secondly, by emphasising the Christian side, showing him that the social revolution, the striving for social justice, even if it cannot immediately and completely achieve it, is nevertheless, at least from this point of view, in accordance with Christian morality; then pointing out (as the source does whenever he encounters it) that such a Christian conception must “render unto Caesar what is Caesar’s”,[5] leaving history and politics on their own plane, which is the worldly, and the spiritual and mystical being apart from these matters.

It is probable that N. Steinhardt believes that if he could not find a more appropriate situation, it is precisely because he is familiar with these mystical concepts and because he was a political prisoner. On the other hand, he is sure that anything that would affect his religious beliefs would probably have a negative effect on him.

Source: Marin Oltescu

Office note: Steinhardt Nicu, former prisoner for counter-revolutionary activities in the C. Noica group, is being investigated by Bir. 1’s verification file. What the agent reported about Steinhardt N. is confirmed by other information lines.

When I talked to the agent about their relationship, he told me that they were good friends and that he would visit him in the next few days to return some books to the agent.

On this basis, the agent was given the task of discussing with him events on the domestic and foreign political scene in order to establish his true position.

Securitate Lt,

Stănescu St.

(ACNSAS, Information Fund, file no. 207, volume 4, pp. 21-24; document reproduced in Nicu Steinhardt in the Securitate files (1959-1989), edited by Clara Cosmineanu, Nemira Publishing House, Bucharest, 2005, pp. 117-121).

[1] Reference to the period 1940-1944. Before 1940 Steinhardt was able to publish freely and even made his debut in 1934. (n.a.)

[2] By mysticism with a “negative” influence on political or cultural issues, we actually mean the Orthodox faith in opposition to communist politics and “culture” of the Marxist-Leninist type.

[3] In an interview, Father Zosim Oancea, who also spent time in communist dungeons, says that “Romanians were not really communists at heart. Only a few fools were convinced”. Of course, in relation to the entire population of the country, there were few who were convinced of the “benefits” of communism, but enough to keep a nation in bondage for almost half a century.

[4] This is Father Rafail Noica.

[5] Father Gheorghe Calciu also recounts in his memoirs such a diversion, based on theological “arguments”, when, after very harsh investigations, “a gentle investigator came to talk to me and brought me quotations from the Holy Scriptures, saying that I did not respect the authority of the State, that look what the Holy Apostle Paul says, things like that…” (Life of Father Gheorghe Calciu according to his own and others’ testimonies, Christiana Publishing House, Bucharest, 2007, p. 92). Moreover, the cunning of the Securitate agents is revealed by the fact that they demanded obedience to “Caesar” on the basis of the Holy Scriptures, but it was also on the basis of the Holy Scriptures that “Caesar” should have obeyed God, which he did not do, since he persecuted his citizens through the repressive organ, the Securitate. So the Securitate used a double standard in their demands: one for the prisoners (Holy Scripture) and one for themselves (we make the law). But the essence of this “theological” deception is best explained by Father Nicolae Steinhardt himself:

“Render therefore unto Caesar the things that are Caesar’s, and unto God the things that are God’s” (Matthew 22:21; Mark 12:17; Luke 20:25). The phrase is clear, and totalitarian regimes, adding the verse from Romans 13, demand obedience and respect from believers. And many Christians, who confuse their religion with stupidity, are quick to agree: “It’s the law!” But they don’t read carefully. We give to Caesar (it is written: the State) what is his, if he is really the State and behaves accordingly. When the State (Caesar) is concerned with its own affairs, with the maintenance of the roads, the maintenance of order, the sewers, the transport, the defence of the country, the administration and distribution of justice, it is due respect and all that is its own: taxation, military service, civility. But when the State is no longer Caesar but Mammon, when the king becomes a physician and civil power an ideology, when it demands the submission of the soul, the recognition of its spiritual supremacy, the servitude of conscience and “brainwashing”, when the happiness of the State becomes the only and obligatory model, the rule established by the Saviour no longer applies, because one of the conditions of the obligatory nature of the contract is no longer fulfilled: the identity of the parties (Caesar has been replaced by Mammon). Not only did the Saviour not say to give to God what is God’s and to Mammon what is Mammon’s, but on the contrary (Matthew 6:24; Luke 16:13) he established that one cannot serve both Mammon and God. When a Caesar sits on the throne of temporal dominion, skill is not forbidden, and the Church has always had its politics. But when politics is in the hands of the other, the rule of the English pirate ships under foreign flags applies: as soon as the enemy bastion opened fire, the national flag was hoisted. Caesar’s due. To Mammon, no connection, however tenuous, not even on common points. To Mammon only the curses of St. Basil the Great”. (The Diary of Happiness, Polirom Publishing House, Iași, 2008, pp. 333-334)