Radu Filipescu

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Radu Filipescu in August 1981

Radu Filipescu (born December 26, 1955 in Târgu Mureș , Romania ) is a former dissident of the anti-communist resistance in Romania .

Life

family

Radu Filipescu is the youngest son of Zorel Filipescu and Carmelita-Ileana Filipescu. His older brother is Doru Filipescu, an orthopedist at the Sf Hospital . Ioan in Bucharest . Filipescu has been married to Daniela Filipescu, an anesthetist and head of an intensive therapy unit at the CC Iliescu Hospital , also in Bucharest , since 1988 . Both have a son, Radu-Zorel Filipescu, who was born on February 2, 1998. Radu Filipescu is the nephew of Victor Groza, the brother of Petru Grozas , the first prime minister of the first communist government of Romania.

Filipescu as a dissident

Filipescu studied electronics at the University of Bucharest from 1974 to 1979 .

As an expression of his political protest against the neo-Stalinist dictatorship in the Socialist Republic of Romania under Nicolae Ceaușescu , the young electrical engineer Radu Filipescu printed around 10,000 leaflets in his parents' basement between December 1982 and May 1983 and distributed them together with his best friend in Bucharest mailboxes. In it he asked the recipients to express their protest against Ceaușescu by going for two hours' walk on January 30, 1983 in a certain place. However, this protest did not take place.

The Romanian secret service Securitate became aware of his actions and moved several hundred additional employees to Bucharest to specifically monitor the apartment blocks in which no leaflets had yet been found. On May 7, 1983, when Filipescu was standing in front of a mailbox about to open his bag to distribute more leaflets, the Securitate detained him, arrested him, interrogated him for five months and later sentenced him to ten years in prison. In December 1984, he was selected by Amnesty International (as "Prisoner of the Month" German  prisoner of the month ) presented.

Radu Filipescu in May 1986

Shortly thereafter, his father Zorel Filipescu, a well-known doctor, tried "secretly" to contact prominent figures in order to persuade them to take an action critical of the regime, which failed, as did attempts to establish political contacts within the family. Herma Kennel wrote in There are things you just have to do. The resistance of the young Radu Filipescu : “All acquaintances that Dr. Filipescu spoke out against the regime. But nobody was ready to support a concrete action. ”Nevertheless, Filipescu's parents managed to build up a network of friends and colleagues who helped to get news about their son abroad. After three years in prison in Rahova , Jilava and Aiud , Radu Filipescu was released on April 18, 1986 under international pressure from non-governmental organizations such as the French League for Human Rights , the German International Society for Human Rights , the Swiss organization Le Pavé and politicians from Western Europe and early release from the United States .

After his release, Filipescu was monitored around the clock; the Securitate even followed him while jogging. Filipescu: "The first time, fat officials ran after me." Then a team of athletes was found who would follow him from now on. When, in September 1987, Radu Filipescu again distributed leaflets calling for a referendum, "Whoever is for Ceauşescu should meet at the Victory Square for Socialism, and whoever is against it should come to the Unity Square" and an interview with a French television team the Securitate reacted irritably. In December 1987, he was interrogated by the same officer as the first time, but this time he was beaten and ill-treated. In order not to betray his family, he made up the story of an English diplomat who smuggled the news abroad. Filipescu's family meanwhile managed to keep foreign countries informed. After the then French Prime Minister Jacques Chirac campaigned for Filipescu and the dissident Doina Cornea, who was arrested for an interview on the same television program , both (Filipescu after 10 days) were released.

In May 1988 Filipescu tried together with other former political prisoners, namely Gheorghe Nastasescu, Philip Iulius, Iancu Marin, Carol Olteanu, Costica Purcaru, Totu Victor, to found a free union called "Libertatea" ( German  freedom ). The undertaking failed, however, as those wishing to join were put under pressure by the Securitate, so that broad popular support could not be achieved.

Filipescu took an active part in the Romanian Revolution in 1989 and was arrested on the morning of December 22, 1989 in the wake of the unrest, but released in the afternoon. Subsequently, he was temporarily a member of the Council of the Front for National Salvation . From 1990 to 1996 he prepared reports and studies on the human rights situation in Romania and Moldova . Between 1990 and 2006 he wrote articles for Revista 22 magazine .

Inventions and company formation after the Romanian Revolution

While working as an electronics technician, Filipescu invented the so-called parrot clip ( English parrot clip , US patent 5,457,392, European patent 0563234) as an alternative to the crocodile clip , for which he won the gold medal at the EUREKA World fair of Inventions in Brussels in 1991 . In 1992 he founded the company "Parrot Invent SRL", which deals with the development and marketing of programmable time switches for building lighting and other patented electronic products.

Memberships

  • Founding member of the “Group for Social Dialogue” 1989, Chairman 1991, 1994–2000
  • Founding member and deputy chairman of the Romanian "Helsinki Committee" (APADOR-CH) 1990, chairman 1991 and 1992

Honors

  • Freedom Prize from the Danish “Poul Lauritzen Foundation”, 1992
  • In July 1997, Filipescu received a high five from US President Bill Clinton during his visit to Romania .

rating

The writer and journalist William Totok remarked: “Precisely because of the specific singularity of the Ceaușescu system, the Radu Filipescu action is difficult to compare with similar protests - such as that of the Scholl siblings in Nazi Germany.” It wasn't just “one, you could almost to say, a suicidal protest action by a political loner, but also a psychogram of a society deeply frozen in equalizing opportunism, which only functions according to the rules of a sober principle of self-preservation. Failure to conform to these unwritten laws of a society that called itself socialist had dramatic consequences for the individual. The pressure to adapt came from close circles of family, relatives and friends as well as from representatives of society and the state. This double pressure, to which everyone was exposed in one way or another, to a greater or lesser extent, had devastating consequences. He influenced public action, speaking, and appearances. This invisible-visible pressure produced deformations that made the work of the dreaded repression apparatus (the militia, the Securitate and the judiciary) easier. "

Radu Filipescu said in an interview published in 2013: "When I tell my story today, I always ask people what they would take if they could choose: three years in prison or ten days of beating?" [...] "That's not that Problem. The problem is, there are no rules. Anything can happen. And that is the mechanism of terror. ”[…]“ We have achieved a lot. We have become a democratic society in which the law rules in some areas ”.

literature

The book was published in 1998 in Romanian under the title Jogging cu Securitatea ( German  Jogging with the Secutitate ). The second edition from 2009 contains a foreword by dissident Ana Blandiana .

Web links

  • Mariana Hausleitner : Political Resistance in Romania , 1996 (→ online part 1 (PDF; 55 kB), part 2 )
  • William Totok : Coming to terms with the past between myth and trivialization - On the armed anti-communist resistance in Romania , 1997 (→ online )
  • Konrad Adenauer Foundation , Carmen Reichert: Post from the Resistance , 2013 (→ online )
  • Comisia Prezidențială pentru Analiza Dictaturii Comuniste din România: Radu Filipescu , in Romanian (→ online ; PDF; 28 kB)
  • Institutul de Investigare a Crimelor Comunismului şi Memoria Exilului Românesc: Radu Filipescu , in Romanian (→ online )

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Thomas Kunze : Nicolae Ceaușescu , Ch. Links Verlag, 2000, p. 356 (→ online )
  2. ↑ a b c d e f g h Konrad-Adenauer-Stiftung , Carmen Reichert: Post vomorben , 2013 (→ online )
  3. ↑ a b c d e f g Mariana Hausleitner : Political Resistance in Romania , 1996 (→ online part 1 (PDF; 55 kB), part 2 ( Memento from February 2, 2014 in the Internet Archive ))
  4. ↑ a b c d e f g h Biography Radu Filipescu (→ online ( Memento from January 22, 2013 in the Internet Archive ))
  5. ↑ Herma Kennel : There are things that you just have to do: the resistance of the young Radu Filipescu , Herder, 1995, ISBN 3-451-04446-3 , p. 222, here p. 170
  6. ↑ a b c Comisia Prezidențială pentru Analiza Dictaturii Comuniste din România: Radu Filipescu , in Romanian (→ online ( Memento from December 21, 2012 in the Internet Archive ); PDF; 28 kB)
  7. ↑ Nihal Sinnadurai: Discovering a heroic connection , Emerald Group Publishing, in English (→ online )
  8. ↑ William Totok : Coming to terms with the past between myth and trivialization - On the armed anti-communist resistance in Romania , 1997 (→ online ( Memento from January 16, 2014 in the Internet Archive ))


personal data
SURNAME Filipescu, Radu
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Romanian dissident
DATE OF BIRTH December 26, 1955
PLACE OF BIRTH Târgu Mureș , Romania