Paul Goma

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Paul Goma (born October 2, 1935 in Mana , Kingdom of Romania , today Republic of Moldova , † March 25, 2020 in Paris ) was a Romanian writer and dissident in the People's Republic and Socialist Republic of Romania before the Romanian Revolution of 1989 . Since 1977 he lived in France .

Life

In Romania

Goma was born in 1935 to a Romanian family in Mana in the Kingdom of Romania, now in the Moldovan Orhei Rajon . His parents Eufimie Goma (1909–1967) and Maria Goma (née Popescu, 1909–1974) worked as teachers in Mana. His brother Petre was born in 1933 but died before the age of one. After the Soviet occupation of Bessarabia and northern Bukovina in 1940, Goma's father was deported to Siberia . The family found Eufimie Goma in October 1943 as a prisoner of war in "Camp No. 1 for Soviet Prisoners" in Slobozia in the eastern Romanian district of Ialomia .

In March 1944 the family fled to Sibiu in Transylvania . Fearing involuntary repatriation to the Soviet Union, the family fled across the Târnava Mare river to Buia in August 1944 and hid in the forests of the area from October to December 1944. On January 13, 1945, the family was picked up by Romanian shepherds, who handed them over to a Jandarmeria in Sighișoara , from where they were now transferred to the Centrul de Repatriere (German "Center for Repatriation"). Eufimie Goma succeeded there in forging documents for his family with which they could return to Buia in June 1945. The family belonged to the Romanian Orthodox Church .

In May 1952 Paul Goma, then a 10th grade student at the Gheorghe Lazar School in Sibiu, was arrested by the Securitate for eight days. He was charged with sympathizing with the Romanian anti-communist resistance and keeping a coded diary . In September and October of the same year he was expelled from all schools in Romania. After some unsuccessful attempts to re-admission, he was finally granted entry to the Negru Vodă High School in Făgăraş .

In 1954 he was admitted to study at the Faculty of Philosophy Mihai Eminescu at the University of Bucharest . In November 1956 he was among the leading activists of the Bucharest student movement sympathizing with the Hungarian uprising . Because of the " anti- socialist demonstration" he was imprisoned by the communist authorities for two years in the prisons of Jilava and Gherla and then placed in Lăteşti in the Bărăgan steppe until 1963 under house arrest.

In September 1965 he was allowed to resume his studies in Bucharest as a freshman, but in the fall of 1967 he was forced to give up his studies under pressure from the Securitate. On August 7, 1968, Goma married Ana Maria Năvodaru; their son Filip-Ieronim was born in 1975. In late August 1968, Goma joined the Romanian Communist Party as an act of solidarity with the Romanian position for Warsaw Pact troops to march into Czechoslovakia during the Prague Spring (Romania did not participate, but condemned the invasion).

In 1971 the expulsion of Paul Gomas from the Communist Party was proposed because he had published his novel Ostinato in West Germany after publication in Romania had been banned by the communist censors . Goma refused to voluntarily give up his membership in the party.

In 1977 Paul Goma's open letter calling for the observance of human rights in Romania and calling on Romanians to sign Charter 77 was read out on Radio Free Europe . As a result, he was expelled from the Romanian Writers' Union and repeatedly persecuted, arrested and tortured by the Securitate. On November 20, 1977, Paul Goma and his family left the country and went into exile in France .

In France

In 1979 Paul Goma took an active part in the establishment of the Free Trade Union of the Working People of Romania, Romanian Sindicatul Liber al Oamenilor Muncii din România (SLOMR) .

On February 3, 1981, Paul Goma and former Romanian Interior Minister Nicolae Penescu received parcels delivered through the post. Penescu found a book in the package intended for him, which exploded after opening the cover, injuring his face and hands. Goma had already received two death threats since arriving in France and after receiving his package called the police, who defused the contents. Both packages were posted at the behest of Ilich Ramírez Sánchez (better known as Carlos the Jackal ).

In 1982 the Securitate planned an assassination attempt on Goma. Matei Pavel Haiducu , a secret agent of the Securitate, was commissioned with the execution. He turned to the civil domestic intelligence service in France, the Direction de la surveillance du territoire (DST), and with their help simulated an attack in a restaurant by poisoning a drink intended for Goma. The drink was then spilled by a supposedly “clumsy guest”, a member of the French intelligence service.

Goma lived in Paris as a stateless refugee , because after 1978 his citizenship was stripped of his citizenship by the communist regime of Romania. Together with the Czech writer Milan Kundera , he turned down the citizenship offered by the French government. An application from September 2006 to regain Romanian citizenship was unsuccessful.

Goma died in Paris in March 2020 at the age of 84 as a result of COVID-19 .

Controversy

Some of the articles and essays written by Goma after 2005 have been accused of having anti-Semitic content. Goma rejected this criticism and handed several lawsuits for defamation against his accusers one. He emphatically stated that his wife is of Jewish descent and stated that the Securitate had used similar arguments against him as early as the 1980s. On September 11, 2013, Goma lost the trial.

Goma described Romania's involvement in the Holocaust as a "lie".

On January 30, 2007, Goma was made an honorary citizen of the city of Timișoara . In February 2007, the Federation of Jewish Congregations in Romania and the Israeli ambassador protested against this award, as Goma was the author of numerous anti-Semitic articles.

On April 5, 2006 Goma was appointed to the "Presidential Commission for Research into the Communist Dictatorship in Romania". Nine days later, Goma was dismissed from this position by Commission President Vladimir Tismăneanu after accusing Tismăneanu of a lack of moral and scientific credibility and publishing his private correspondence.

Literary work

Goma's numerous works (both fiction and non-fiction ) have been translated into numerous languages ​​worldwide; however, except for his first work, they did not appear in Romania until after the revolution of 1989, between 1977 and 1989 his works were published in France and in French.

Goma made his literary debut in 1966 with a short story that appeared in the book review paper Luceafǎrul . Goma also worked with the newspapers Gazeta literarǎ , Viața românească and Ateneu . In 1968 he published his first volume with stories Camera de alături ( German  The room next door ). His novel Ostinato and its publication in West Germany in 1971 was followed by the novel Uşa ( German  Die Tür ) in 1972 , which was also published in West Germany. In 1976 his novel Gherla was published , before his emigration, but already in French.

1977 followed Dans le cercle ( German  within the circle ); 1979 Garde inverse ( German  Reverse Guard ) and Le Tremblement des Hommes ( German  Das Zittern der Menschen ); 1983 Chassée-croisé ( German  crossing ); 1981 Les Chiens de la mort ( German  The Dogs of Death ), and 1986 Bonifacia . The autobiographical work Le Calidor was published in French in 1987 and in Romanian in 1989 or 1990 under the title Din Calidor: O copilărie basarabeană ( German  In Calidor: A Bessarabian Childhood )

In its entirety, Goma's literary work contains a “convincing and grimly fascinating exposure of totalitarian inhumanity”, from which, as in his case, not even exile in a foreign country offered security. In his later novels Bonifacia and In Calidor: A Bessarabian Childhood the biographical element dominates, and he focuses on his childhood and youth in Bessarabia. Several diaries then shed light on his later life, such as Alte Jurnale ( German  Other Diaries ) about his time in the USA in the fall of 1978, and even more so about the years 1994–1996. Das Jurnal I: Jurnal pe sărite ( German  diary I: Sprunghaft , 1997); Jurnal II: Jurnal de căldură mare ( German  Diary II: Diary of the Great Heat , 1997), covering the period from June and July 1989; Jurnal III: Jurnal de noapte lungă ( German  diary of the long night , 1997), covering the period from September to December 1993; as well as the Jurnalul unui jurnal 1997 ( German  Das Tagebuch eines Tagebuches , 1997), which deals with this year.

Works (selection)

  • Gherla. Totalitarism și literatura Estului . Humanitas, 1990 (Romanian).
  • Ostinato: Roman . Suhrkamp, ​​Frankfurt am Main 1971, ISBN 3-518-06638-2 .
  • Novel intimate . Edition Allfa, Bucharest 1999, ISBN 973-9477-06-2 (Romanian).
  • The red mass: Roman . Thule, Cologne 1984, ISBN 3-924345-00-7 .
  • The door. Novel . Suhrkamp, ​​Frankfurt am Main 1972, ISBN 3-518-02938-X .

Honors

  • Knight des Ordre des Arts et des Lettres , 1986
  • Moldovan Writers' Union Prize, March 1992
  • Romanian Writers' Union Prize, May 25, 1992
  • Honorary Citizenship of the City of Timisoara , January 30, 2007

literature

  • Elvira Iliescu: Paul Goma - 70 . Criterion, 2005, ISBN 1-887304-76-2 (Romanian).
  • Alexandru László: Viceversa! Polemici pro și contra lui Paul Goma . Edition Bastion, Timișoara 2009, ISBN 978-973-1980-24-9 (Romanian).
  • Virgil Tanase: Le dossier Paul Goma. L'ecrivain face au socialisme du silence . Edition Albatros, Paris 1977 (French).

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Biografa oficială: Paul Goma a murit din cauza infectării cu coronavirus
  2. ^ A b Paul Goma: Bio-Bibliography. In: paulgoma.free.fr. November 11, 2006, accessed June 1, 2018 (Romanian).
  3. ↑ Paul Goma: Culoarea curcubeului '77. Cod "Bǎrbosul" . Polirom, Bucharest 2005, ISBN 973-681-833-0 , p. 550 (Romanian).
  4. ↑ Paul Goma: Le Tremblement des Hommes: peut-on vivre en Roumanie aujourd'hui? Éditions du Seuil, Paris 1979, ISBN 2-02-005101-X , p. 329 (French).
  5. ^ John Follain: Jackal: The Complete Story of the Legendary Terrorist, Carlos the Jackal . Arcade Publishing, New York 1998, ISBN 1-55970-466-7 , pp. 318, here pp. 130-131 (English).
  6. ↑ Rumanian Sting. In: Time . September 13, 1982, accessed on June 1, 2018 (English, beginning of article available).
  7. ^ A b Romanian dissident Paul Goma died. In: Deutschlandfunk Kultur from March 25, 2020.
  8. ^ Gabriel Andreescu: Goma și tema antisemitismului. In: ziua.net. February 17, 2005, archived from the original on October 12, 2007 ; Retrieved June 1, 2018 (Romanian). Marco Maximillian Katz: Anti-Semitism in Romania 2002 Report Anti-Semitism in Romania: Combating Holocaust Deniers and Protecting Jewish Memory. The Romanian Jewish Community, 2002, accessed June 1, 2018 .
  9. ^ Paul Goma: A fi 'Antisemit'. (pdf, 63 kB) In: paulgoma.free.fr. November 11, 2005, accessed June 1, 2018 (Romanian).
  10. ↑ Dan Culcer: Pledoarie pentru Goma. In: Ziua. February 23, 2007, accessed June 1, 2018 (Romanian).
  11. ↑ Paul Goma: Jurnal 2006. (pdf, 1.9 MB) In: paulgoma.free.fr. December 31, 2006, pp. 48, 191, 201 , accessed June 1, 2018 (Romanian).
  12. ^ Holocaust on the periphery. In: Half-yearly publication for Southeast European history, literature and politics . Retrieved June 1, 2018 (Romanian, "Paul Goma loses the trial of several people and publications that he sued in 2006." Excerpts from the grounds for the judgment of the Bucharest civil court).
  13. ^ Paul Goma: Scrisoare către prietenii din Timișoara / și din toată țara. (pdf, 52 kB) In: paulgoma.free.fr. February 22, 2007, accessed June 1, 2018 (Romanian).
  14. ^ A b Paul Goma: Despre Vladimir Tismăneanu - și nu numai - în 11 puncte. In: paulgoma.free.fr. June 22, 2006, accessed June 1, 2018 (Romanian).
  15. ^ Armand Gosu: N-am avut de-a face cu Securitatea (Vladimir Tismaneanu, Presedintele Comisiei Prezidentiale PEN). Interviu. In: Revista 22, 849. June 8, 2006, archived from the original on October 8, 2007 ; Retrieved June 1, 2018 (Romanian).
  16. ↑ a b c Harold B. Segel: The Columbia guide to the literatures of Eastern Europe since 1945 . Columbia University Press, 2003, ISBN 0-231-11404-4 , pp. 641, here pp. 189–190 (English).
personal data
SURNAME Goma, Paul
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Romanian writer
DATE OF BIRTH October 2, 1935
PLACE OF BIRTH Mana, Orhei District , Bessarabia
DATE OF DEATH March 25, 2020
Place of death Paris