Teodora Bernea: “My father was a god to us”

Mrs. Teodora Bernea is the only direct descendant of Ernest Bernea living in Romania. His twin sister Ana emigrated to the USA and Horia Bernea, the famous painter and founder of the Romanian Peasant Museum in Bucharest, died a few years ago.

Teodora Bernea, a qualified hydrotechnical engineer, is now retired and lives in the Drumul Taberei district of Bucharest, in the apartment that belonged to her father.

– What is the most vivid memory you have of Ernest Bernea?

– I remember that he looked at me calmly, as if he had gone somewhere else. I can think of nothing unusual about him, because he was always discreet, sober, delicate. He censored himself and was very careful not to make a mistake to anyone. He never raised his voice. For example, I am a man who received only one slap from my father in my entire childhood. I lived in Poiana Mărului, I was seven years old and he told me not to go to the mill where I wanted to play. I said no, but I went to the mill, nevertheless. He caught up with me and slapped me lightly so I wouldn’t lie to him. He was sorry for a week: he told my mother it was a despicable thing to hit a defenceless person. Besides, I was the only child in the family to be punished like that.

– Do you remember when he was arrested?

– The last time, yes, when I was 11. We were in the apple orchard, it was five in the morning. Horia had gone to meet some geologists to look for, I don’t know, some rocks, because he was passionate about geology. On the way he met an ARO (a Range Rover type of all terrain vehicle) from the Security Service, but he didn’t know who was in it. The driver asked him if he knew where Ernest Bernea lived. My brother immediately said, “Of course. I’ll take you there,” and he took the secret police home. They arrested my father. Horia was very angry and swore at them. He was 13 years old.

– Did Ernest Bernea’s family ever dissuade him from his political orientation in his youth?

– No. But it was a closed issue. He didn’t say it was right to join the Legion, but he didn’t regret it either.

– Did he complain about anything after his release from prison?

– No. Just as he didn’t talk about the Legion and what he was doing at the time, he was silent about his time in prison.

– Why was that?

– He must have been afraid, because the persecution was terrible until the end of the communist regime. He was not allowed to say what he had gone through. On the other hand, under communism, the legionnaire was considered a monster; to enlighten us, he would have had to tell us far too much. I asked him a few questions, but he always avoided answering. “You wouldn’t understand,” he would say.

– What did you know about him when he was in prison?

– My mother did us a great service by keeping him “present” with us for the 11 years he was in prison for the second time. Although we were having a very hard time and my mother was struggling to keep us in school, she was so angry with herself that she couldn’t help writing to him about our difficulties. She didn’t think he deserved to be burdened with problems at home. Nevertheless, she wrote to him because he always wanted the truth and because she needed to tell someone what was happening to her. My mother didn’t allow herself a single bad thought about my father, let alone a word. She painted him in our minds in such a way that when he came back from prison, he almost couldn’t live up to the image we had of him. He was a man, but we saw him as a god.

– What do you mean by that?

– For example, I was a student and I was ashamed of the thought that my father might see me cheating, so I never cheated; I was invited to student meetings and I was embarrassed to go because I wondered what my father would say if he saw me dancing. When he came home, we wouldn’t let him make any effort in order for us to protect him. If we had had a different kind of mother, we might have seen him as a stranger because he left when we were a few years old and came back when we had finished school and were working.

– What did he want most when he got out?

– To be published. He worked 8-10 hours a day, reading and writing. But the publishers wouldn’t publish him because he was indexed. He knew this, and yet he kept trying to break this blockade.

– How did he live then?

– He was a consultant at the Institute of Ethnography and Folklore until he retired. He had a meagre pension of 1,400 lei. With 700 lei he paid the rent for this flat and with the rest he supported himself. He didn’t accept money. And he managed. My mother had already died, right after he came back from prison. She died of cancer at the age of 56. It was a big blow for him. He loved her very much.

– Which of the children did he inherit the most spiritually?

– Morally, he left his mark on all three of us, but spiritually, in terms of concerns and most of his character traits, Horia clearly inherited him. From the age of five he drew all kinds of houses, peasant things and peasants; he did a lot of ethnographic research. So when he created the Peasant Museum, no one who knew him was surprised. In this he is most like my father, who contributed to the creation of the Village Museum of Dimitrie Gusti. When he entered the heritage section of the museum, his colleagues said he seemed to go into a trance.

– This year marks the 100th anniversary of Ernest Bernea’s birth. How grateful or indifferent is posterity in regards to him?

– I have had discussions with the management of the village museum and I will ask for the support of other cultural people to mark this moment. Unfortunately, my resources are very limited and I will not be able to do it alone. We should at least print one or two manuscripts of my father’s 20 remaining unpublished books. So far, very few of his books have been published, and because of the isolation he suffered before 1989, he is not very well known.

(Interview by Nicolae Tescanu – Rost Magazine)