Petre Pandrea | |
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 Pandrea c. 1967 | |
| Born | Petre Ion Marcu 26 June 1904 Balș, Romanați County, Kingdom of Romania |
| Died | 8 July 1968 (aged 64) Bucharest, Socialist Republic of Romania |
| Occupation | Lawyer, legal scholar, sociologist, journalist, critic, diplomat |
| Period | 1923–1968 |
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Petre Pandrea, pen name of Petre Ion Marcu, also known as Petru Marcu Balș (26 June 1904 – 8 July 1968), was a Romanian social philosopher, lawyer, and political activist, also noted as an essayist, journalist, and memoirist. A native of rural Oltenia, he was always a promoter of its regional identity, which blended into peasant populism. Other than these two traits, and his iconoclastic irreverence that bordered on anarchism, his political opinions fluctuated several times between extremes—from right-wing conservatism to Marxism-Leninism. Beginning from the 1910s, when Pandrea was training as a cadet at Dealu Monastery, he was intimately acquainted with the power structures and ideologies of the Romanian Kingdom; it was also here that he first met the anti-liberal ideologue Nae Ionescu, who became the object of his fascination, and, for a while, an intellectual mentor. Eventually dropping out of the Romanian Land Forces, he was an award-winning student at Carol I National College in Craiova, making his debut almost simultaneously in two rival national magazines: Gândirea and Viața Romînească.
Pandrea riled up the cultural establishment of Greater Romania in 1928, when, with Ion Nestor and Sorin Pavel, he produced the "White Lily" manifesto. This text formulated his desire to reconnect modern literature with Christian mysticism, and also credited unmitigated experiences as a legitimate source of inspiration—a philosophical credo that was later known as Trăirism. Pandrea had by then embarked on a prestigious career as a legal scholar and sociologist, which allowed him to travel in Europe; during his time in Weimar Germany, he studied Neohegelianism, embraced atheism and dialectical materialism, and explored psychoanalysis. He also returned as a committed anti-fascist, having been troubled by the Nazis' rise to power—described in his best-selling book of essays on "Hitlerian Germany". A columnist for left-of-center newspapers and magazines, Pandrea openly quarreled with the Iron Guard, though he continued to maintain cordial relations with Guardists such as Radu Gyr. He was also drawn into collaboration with, and possible membership in, the outlawed Romanian Communist Party, acting as a public defender for its repressed activists—though he was more publicly aligned with the leftist wing of the National Peasants' Party, working toward a "popular front". In 1932, he became the brother-in-law of a communist intellectual and conspirator, Lucrețiu Pătrășcanu.
In early 1938, while serving in the Assembly of Deputies, Pandrea caused uproar by joining the far-right National Christian Party. During World War II, he tested the patience of Ion Antonescu's dictatorial regime by defending both Iron-Guard dissidents (rounded up after the civil war of January 1941) and hundreds of people involved in anti-Nazi resistance. He was himself arrested by Siguranța agents on several occasions, but not prosecuted by the regime. While Pătrășcanu gained national prominence, and a seat in government, following the anti-fascist coup of August 1944, Pandrea maintained an independent, increasingly anti-Stalinist line. He provoked the communists, including his brother in law, by seeking fair treatment for prosecuted fascists and Peasantists; he also drafted plans for Romania's "Helvetization" and integration with a larger Balkan Federation, both of which contrasted with the Soviet Union's regional agenda. A victim of inner-party struggles, Pătrășcanu ultimately fell from power in 1948, during the earliest stages of the Romanian communist regime, and Pandrea himself was arrested at around that time. He was held without trial at various facilities, including Ocnele Mari, for almost five years, returning to civilian life as a committed anti-communist and a penitent son of the Romanian Orthodox Church.
Unexpectedly reintegrated as a lawyer, Pandrea again provoked the authorities, as well as church hierarchs, by agreeing to defend marginalized Christian communities, including the nuns of Vladimirești. He was rearrested by the Securitate in 1958, leading to the discovery and confiscation of his secret memoirs, with their unflattering musings about the communists' real-life personas. Moving between various facilities, he was eventually sent to Aiud Prison, braving a starvation regimen; the Securitate suspected that, during his time there, he began networking with the anti-communist resistance, including segments of the Iron Guard. He was selected for the final, least violent, experiment of re-education, and allowed to write (but not publish) controversial diaries detailing his experience. Released during the general amnesty of 1964, he was partly reintegrated in literary life, but kept under watch, and again repressed, for his repeated quarrels with the communist censors. Pandrea died of cancer in 1968, shortly after having published his final work—a monograph on his artist friend, Constantin Brâncuși. He was granted a rehabilitation months after his death; his ethnographer son Andrei fled abroad in 1979, and was sentenced to a prison term in absentia. Both Pandreas were only fully recovered in their native country after the Romanian Revolution of 1989, with Pandrea-father being awarded posthumous membership in the Romanian Academy.