The last interview with Ernest Bernea

The following text is transcribed from an interview given by Professor Ernest Bernea on 12 August 1990. Shortly afterwards, the professor fell ill and had to stay in various hospitals, from which he never left.

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

Known in his generation as one of the country’s leading sociologists and ethnologists, this highly cultured man was also a philosopher, prose writer and poet.

His work, which branched out in many directions, is far from being known, even by the older generation, let alone the younger one. Volumes and volumes of manuscripts, systematically rejected by the merciless communist censorship, remain unpublished. Only when these works are published will it be possible to see that, in spite of his detractors, the essence of Professor Ernest Bernea’s thought did not deviate one iota from Christianity. Nor was he any different in his own life.

The author of this brief note had the privilege of meeting him in one of the communist prisons, at the sinister Canal, in the Peninsula camp. Day after day, side by side, we broke stones together. It was a hellish place, but it was also a place where people were forced to shed their appearances and reveal – willingly or not – the good and the bad, the core of their thoughts and feelings. My great good fortune (and there is good fortune in misfortune) was that I met the Professor. The light came into my soul in the evening, when, on the unoccupied bed, before I sank into a deep sleep, I listened to the voice of an angel called Ernest Bernea. Through him, the great spirits of the world reached me, the teacher, the student. Their invocation gave me courage and strength not to despair. He spoke beautifully, unimaginably beautifully. But his very being radiated kindness, with his unwavering exhortation – often spoken softly, with his eyes – never to fall into the nothingness that attacked us from all sides.

Those years were the years of our closeness, a friendship – I dare say – that never ended. We sought each other out, I sought him out in particular.

And then life – strange life – made me the one to whom the professor gave his last interview, publishing it in a magazine that we had designed together there at the Canal. When I interviewed him, I had no idea that it would be his last.

I was sure that I would be able to give it to him before it went to press, as we had agreed. He – demanding as always – is never satisfied with what he does. But … it was not to be.

That’s why I’ve now removed my questions from the interview (which are easy to deduce from the professor’s words), leaving only him to speak. The reader will understand why. But I have one great regret: that I did not press him more, convinced that he had much, much more to say in his tireless argumentation… “exhortation to simplicity”.

Banu Rădulescu

… of course it’s hard to tell your life story in an interview. You’d need the pages of a novel. They say that, don’t they? That a man’s life is a novel. Or several novels. In my case… I don’t know… a novel in several volumes. Maybe, I don’t know. Anyway, I’m going to try to dwell on some of the more significant memories. I mean those from which the reader will recognise me to some extent.

I was born in Brăila in 1905. My father was Moldavian, from the county of Galați, then called Covurlui, and my mother was from Transylvania. They came from different places and met in Brăila. They got married and had children. Most of my brothers and sisters left. But something else is interesting: the fact that two families met here, in Brăila: the mother from Ardeal and the father from Moldavia. My mother was a very interesting woman; she was very intelligent and also very beautiful; she attended only four grades in primary school. So was my father. Simple people, but with great respect for the educated folks. That’s how I explain to myself how we children loved books and won prizes at school – most of us. My father was first in the military, then he was reinstated as a junior officer; then he went to work as a stevedore in the port, in the docks of Brăila.

Brăila… Yes, when you say Brăila, you also say Panait Istrati. I knew him too. I was one of the children who often visited his house, which was somewhere outside the town where our house was. In fact, we were neighbours.

He tried to leave the country many times, but he couldn’t; the police would catch him and bring him back home. He was 15-16 years old. It was only after that that he ended up in the south of France and Romain Rolland and that’s where he started. A man with a few elementary classes, but an exceptionally gifted man. It was only after the shock of communism and writing “The confession of a loser” that he came closer to our generation, to Brăila and its social state. His socialism? A beautiful dream. When he woke up, he wrote “The confession”. A book that my generation knew almost by heart. It should be reprinted so that today’s young people know it too.

Back to my childhood… I went to high school in Brăila as a… regiment kid. In those days, it was customary for some large military units, such as regiments, to take care of 1-2 poor but study inclined children and send them to high school at the expense of the regiment: I was one of them. The school fees were high, my parents couldn’t afford to pay them, so… all the time I was at school I wore only one set of clothes – the military uniform given to me by the regiment. A uniform that, to tell the truth, I was a little embarrassed to wear among my civilian-clothed classmates. But I had no choice. With me in the regiment, another of my brothers was also a ‘regiment child’; an extremely gifted child, a great mathematician and a very good violinist; but he had an accident and died. The duty of a regiment child was not only to study well, otherwise the regiment would not keep you, but also to do some service in the barracks, where we ate and slept and had our lessons. They used me as a furrier – clerical work in the regimental office.

At the grammar school I studied well, but I didn’t shine. The friendships I made at school have unfortunately faded. […]

Of course, as in the development of every human being, certain talents develop in childhood. In high school I was drawn to reading and drawing. I even won a few prizes for literature and drawing. I still have four paintings in my house that I did when I was 16; people who come to see me today think they are the paintings of my son Horia, and that flatters me: what the father didn’t do, the son did. And that is a great joy.

As a writer, so to speak, I stood out during high school with some poems that I published in “Children’s World”. I also took part in a few drawing exhibitions, specially organised by my teachers.

After leaving school, I enrolled at two universities. My degree in English and French didn’t do me much good. I got a degree in philosophy. But what was important was the contact I had with two eminent professors who convinced me: Nicolae Iorga and Nae Ionescu.

It’s hard to say which one I liked more. They both charmed you. Each represented something completely different.

Iorga was a titan, an enthusiast; he was so great, a renaissance man, you couldn’t tell what era he came from, an extraordinary man. He used to give his lectures in the Hașdeu amphitheatre. Many people came to listen to him, students from other faculties and even old people from various professions. The hall was always full. He had a way with the girls who wore make up, and woe betide them if they occupied the first seats: he would scold them severely. But when he started talking… you forgot that you still existed. The titan who talked about everything, he talked about tigers and the Mother of God. And politics. A unique, overwhelming personality. I said then, and I say even more strongly now, that any criticism of him is nonsense.

His bestial murder? One of the greatest crimes against this nation. Three murderers, three madmen, one of whom killed himself after the murder. A couple of lunatics. When I heard that Iorga had been killed, I was shocked. And not only me, but many friends of my generation, like Professors Ionică, Amzer and others, all of them; it seemed as if I had no sense, no meaning, after a man like Iorga had disappeared like that.

Then – I can confess with my hand on my heart – my sympathies for the so-called “political right” died out. In my youth I believed differently. Iorga’s murder shook me to my core. I hated nothing in the world more than violence.

I am a good Christian, and Christianity is a religion of gentleness, of respect for your neighbour. Even if he disagrees with you. You confront him with arguments, not with bullets. But alas, God knows whether humanity will ever be cured of violence. A terrible disease!

Finally … to return to the other teacher who marked my adolescent years, Nae Ionescu. He came with a different tone and a different particular problem. And his classroom was full to overflowing. He was indulgent with the girls who wore make-up in the lecture hall, and coloured his remarks with a fine sense of humour. But it’s not about that, it’s about his thinking, his philosophy – I mean, it was something completely new, fascinating. I know some people deny his philosophical quality, saying he was just an impeccable logician. That was said even when he was alive. But I think that those who denied him as a philosopher, as a thinker to be more exact – have not read his work carefully. Of course, this is not the place to develop arguments. That is the task of exegetes. But the history of Romanian philosophy cannot ignore Nae Ionescu. What I can testify – as someone who attended his courses – is that he won the youth, he won the students (for philosophy), but he lost the teachers, who mostly did not agree with what Nae Ionescu “did”. In particular, he was in an open conflict with P. P. Negulescu.

Nae Ionescu’s disappearance from life was not natural either. He was exactly 50 years old when he died, at the height of his creative powers. He was found dead in his house one morning, with no apparent injuries: a suspicious story, much discussed at the time, in 1940, the year of his death. Several people were involved in the story: apparently King Charles II himself and … Marta Bibescu, people with whom Nae Ionescu was in open conflict. I heard about it then – all Bucharest commented on it – and later, in prison. In Văcărești, the central hospital for all the country’s prisons, where I was about to die, a neighbour – a political prisoner himself – a former colonel, a former aide to King Carol II, told me this version again, with some clarifications. In reality, however, we cannot say anything for certain. The truth is in God’s hand and often we humans do not have access to that truth. We make up our own truths, which may be untruths in the eyes of the Creator.

Now back to my person… After graduating from the University of Bucharest, I received a scholarship to study sociology and the history of religions in Paris. It was a scholarship awarded by the Romanian state, which at that time sent promising young people abroad to study and improve their skills. In Paris, I studied with Marcel Mauss, a world-renowned scholar. There I obtained a diploma from the “Hautes Etudes”.

A year later, in Freiburg, I studied with Martin Heidegger – another extraordinary man I was fortunate enough to meet. In life, I say, you rarely meet special people that you want to get close to. For me, Heidegger was one of them. The orientation of my generation was – rather – towards French culture, less towards English or German. Heidegger also made me love German culture. I did pure philosophy with him, which for him was largely reduced to the position of the ancients. I was also attracted by the fact that he taught Greek philosophy. Those courses stayed with me for the rest of my life. Since then I know about Heraclitus or Parmenides, since then I know about Plato and Aristotle.

Heidegger was a charming fellow, very casual, friendly, a small man of stature, very energetic; he spoke beautifully, in a sweet language; he had one great weakness: skiing. He used to go to university on skis. Freiburg is a lot like our Brașov: the mountains are right under your nose. Heidegger would go from skiing to class and from class to skiing. It is even said that he wrote part of his great work “Being and Time” in this way: on skis. It is known that in his old age he retired to the mountains and stayed there. He loved the mountains dearly.

From Freiburg, I returned to the country and was taken by Dimitrie Gusti to the Institute of Social Research, where I was appointed secretary of the sociological monographs section between 1933 and 1935. In 1935, I was appointed a lecturer at the Department of Anthropogeography, where Simion Mehedinți – another great personality of that time, unknown or too little known to today’s young people – was professor. It was there that I had the privilege of teaching the first ethnology course in our country, at the University of Bucharest. Not many universities in the world had such departments. I was a professor until 1940.

Of course, from what I am saying now, it would seem that all I did was study, withdrawn in an ivory tower, alienated from all that was troubling the society around me. This was not so. The period I’m talking about was a terribly turbulent time, politically speaking. And who could escape politics? And who could ever escape it? I don’t mean militant politics, of course: everyone can escape that. I’m talking about political thinking, about a certain option. And as an individual citizen, it’s impossible not to choose. Are you doing it right? Are you doing it wrong? It’s only when you see what has come of your choice that it becomes clear. At the time I am talking about now, I do not deny that my sympathies were with the right: but not with the right of a vain, extremist and violent nationalism, but with the right of a moderate, Christian one – basically.

Many malicious people have put all sorts of labels on my forehead because, among other things, I was a friend of Codreanu. I was not a friend – I can explain that – but I was around him for a while. And? I was close to many people, including many Jews, with whom I actually became friends. I could mention many names, but that would be like apologising, and I have no reason to do so. Suffice it to say, I think, that even the Security Service, as clever as it was in making everyone innocent and guilty, did not find any reprehensible fact in my past to attribute to me. They kept me in prison for years, but under the label of ‘administrative’, without any specific charge. When I tried to find out what was wrong with me, I was always told that I had done great harm to my generation and to young people with my exhortation to Christianity. It is easy to understand what harm the Communists saw in that. But, I admit, that was my position. A completely different position from the fascist one, an orientation towards Christian love.

This position annoyed the Communists, but even before them it annoyed Charles II, who offered me a camp as a place of meditation: a motel – when I think of it – compared to the Communist dungeons; there we were almost free, everyone could do what they wanted. There I specialised in bone and lime wood carving. The camp administration would bring us the materials we needed to work. There I also managed to write some books, which were later printed, and I also managed to make 18 wooden icons, which I later gave away. Today I only have one of them.

As we know, immediately after the assassination of Armand Călinescu, Charles II launched a massive repression, liquidating most of the legionaries in the camps. And I – at that time – was free. What’s more, I continued to teach comparative sociology and ethnology at the Mehedinți faculty.

Here, for those who want further proof of how dangerously “fascist” I was, is further proof that Charles II could spare me.

Charles II left and the Legionaries came to power. By then I was already in the Ministry of Information, and as a reward for my “fascism” I stayed there. My boring job as a civil servant allowed me to continue my studies.

There was also the Legion’s reign, which ended miserably with the short but bloody uprising that brought the Legion to the pinnacle of infamy.

As is well known, Antonescu immediately carried out a severe purge of the institutions – not a legionary soul was left standing.

I was promoted as a Director of Studies at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs – a post I held without interruption until Ana Pauker took over from Tătărăscu at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. She sacked me, not only me, but a whole bunch of old civil servants – specialists in foreign affairs and international law.

Then King Michael left, after which … the country collapsed into a quagmire.

Unchecked, the Red Plague swept in. In 1948, communist organised crime began.

Then I was arrested and didn’t get out of the communist prisons until 1962. The guilt? Never a clear one. The first accusation – if you can call it an accusation – was that … in my studies I had dealt with peasants and villages and not with workers in the cities. And that … there was too much Christianity in my books. Whenever I was summoned to the prison registry to be told that my detention had been extended, I was told all these things. But what? Was it ever necessary for the Security Service to give you reasons? It decided and you, the slave, obeyed!

The prisons? I’ve been in many. They were all terrifying, but working at the Canal seemed like hell. If I didn’t have a few good men around to help me, I’d stay there. A chance, though, the Canal, because after years of absence it gave me the chance to see my wife, a wonderful woman who stoically endured all the miser, as a camp visitor. She struggled alone to keep the house running and bring up the children, three of whom, a boy and two girls, were young enough to require a lot of attention. That’s what tormented me the most in prison: the thought that my family was left to fend for themselves and that I was powerless to do anything for them.

At some point, this thought became my obsession. I remember: I was in Aiud and the news spread from cell to cell that George Brătianu had died. Everyone talked about his suicide. I didn’t know whether it was true or not. The prison administration put forward the version of suicide, and did it so insistently that it could have covered up a murder. What couldn’t the security service have faked? In any case, after George Brătianu’s death, no one was allowed to remain alone in his cell when the others were taken out every day for the so-called 20-minute walk. There had to be another prisoner next to the one who did not want to or could not go out: “so that the solitary one does not commit suicide”. My state of mind was very bad; my physical condition was also very bad. I couldn’t get up from the bed. When the others went for a walk, there was always a guard next to me. But I had decided to end my life, and one day I tricked my guard: I had prepared some caustic soda beforehand. But when I put the cup to my mouth, the image of one of my little girls appeared and I heard her voice clearly: “You have no right to do this!” Then I dropped the cup. And today I shudder at the memory of that moment, a turning point.

In 1962 I was released from prison. Fourteen years had passed, wasted in vain. I went home and the first news I heard was of Mehedinți’s death. I regretted his disappearance terribly: he had died while I was in prison. He wasn’t imprisoned, he was marginalised, yes, I found out that he too had endured a lot of misery, he wasn’t allowed to write anything.

I was looking for work, but people were afraid of me because of where I came from. So I retired to Tohanu, near Brașov. There I wrote some philosophical essays on Dante’s work and a book, “Young Mistral”. I tried to get them published, but it was impossible. They are still not in print.

Around 1964-1965, in those years of a certain openness, I entered the Institute of Folklore on the recommendation of Miron Nicolescu, who later suffered as well, and of Perpessicius. I stayed there until 1972, when the “gentlemen” of the Institute’s management forced me into retirement. I was still able to work, but they sent me home. The director, who didn’t like me at all, had a lot to do with it. But the saddest thing was that during all this time I was unable to publish anything. And then again. My cupboards at home are full of typed manuscripts, ready to be printed, but … God knows how many of them I’ll see published, or if I’ll see any at all. Many of my works have disappeared, confiscated by the Security Service – as happened in 1984.

In 1984, the Security Service came to me and invited me to an “audience”. I didn’t know what their intentions were. I was taken downstairs to the Ministry of the Internal Affairs. The investigation began. They wanted to get something out of me that didn’t exist. The investigator, a major, called himself Nicolau. He kept insisting that I tell him what I was doing. Nonsense. What could a sick man, tired of life, be up to? I was 80 years old. When he realised he couldn’t get anything out of me, he called in a thug. In the Security Service “thug” is a job, he’s on the payroll. I can say that in all the 14 years I was in prison I was never beaten like that. I was only hit on the head. The bully was the investigator, who kept ordering him to hit more. Even the thug, probably a boxer, was nicer than the investigator. He patted me on the head, said “hello” and left. Deep down I don’t think he wanted to do what he did to an old man like me. It was terrible. I’d never been treated like that before. The beatings went on for a couple of weeks. When I got out I was very exhausted. They withheld seven files of papers from me, which were not political, and told me we’d see each other again. Thank God we never saw each other again. But I would very much like to get back my work that was confiscated at that time.

Finally, the good Lord gave me to witness December ’89. It had to come, but it couldn’t! I thank God for allowing me to witness this moment.

What will happen now? The recovery of the nation, of course. But it will be hard, very hard, and it will take time. Because communism left us with deep wounds: economic, but above all, I would say, moral. Morality is now moribund, in a coma. It must be restored, but not by clapping our hands, but by hard work, over time, through education. There are several problems that need to be addressed. I would start with the philosophical problem: a young person needs to be better informed about the fundamental ideas that govern a society. And our people today are not prepared for this. Our educational situation leaves a lot to be desired. We had a well-established educational base, in the sense that, until the advent of communism, people knew how to judge with their own brains, not with the brains of the party.

The Romanian people had a self-awareness, they knew how to think about their own specific problems and how to harmonise them with the problems of the world. This consciousness had been formed in a long process, with obvious fruits between the two world wars, but it started much earlier.

But it took the curse of communism to destroy everything. People no longer had a political, I mean a social conscience. The taste for fighting for permanent values disappeared and the taste for perishable, circumstantial values appeared. Everyone is fighting to get ahead, regardless of the fact that they are leaving corpses behind.

Yes, of course, this has left deep scars. I think it will take a long time for Romanian society to rebuild itself. How long? I don’t know. Years and years. How will it be done? Books, conferences, newspapers, radio, TV, etc. There are many ways. What’s important is that everything is done in the light of the truth. Our society is still tired of lies. That is what I think we have to start with, the cure for lies. But you can’t cure a physical illness all at once. You can’t cure a mental illness by clapping your hands. It takes time, a long time… Anyway, I have great faith in the spiritual regenerative power of the Romanian people. And I believe that, if not very soon, our nation will see the light again. It cannot be otherwise, it is impossible! Because there are some values in the heart of this nation that cannot be lost. But it will take time, a long time, for them to come to the surface…

(Interview by Banu Rădulescu – Memoria Magazine No. 2, pp. 26)