Lena Constante
Encyclopedia
Lena Constante was a Romania
n artist, essayist and memoirist, known for her work in stage design and tapestry
. A family friend of Communist Party
politician Lucreţiu Pătrăşcanu
, she was arrested by the Communist regime
following the conflict between Pătrăşcanu and Gheorghe Gheorghiu-Dej
. She was indicted in his trial and spent eight years as a political prisoner
.
Constante was the wife of the musicologist Harry Brauner
, and the sister-in-law of the painter Victor Brauner
.
, she was the daughter of an Aromanian
journalist (who had immigrated from Macedonia
) and his Romanian wife. The Constante family left the city during the World War I
German occupation
, and Lena spent much of her childhood in Iaşi
, Kherson
, Odessa
, London
and Paris
.
Returning at the end of the conflict, she studied Painting at the Romanian Art Academy in Bucharest, and established friendships with leading intellectual
s of her time, including Brauner, Mircea Vulcănescu
, Petru Comarnescu
, Henri H. Stahl
, Mihail Sebastian
, and Paul Sterian. During the period, she became sympathetic to left-wing politics
and joined the sociological
project initiated by Dimitrie Gusti
, aiding in the creation of comprehensive monograph
s on traditional Romanian society; her visits to various villages acquainted her with traditional folk art, especially religious icons, which she later used as inspiration in her work.
Constante first exhibited her art in 1934, and had personal shows in 1935, and 1946; her last exhibit before being arrested occurred in Ankara
, Turkey
(1947).
After 1945, she was employed as a stage designer by the newly-founded Ţăndărică Theater, where she met Elena Pătrăşcanu, Lucreţiu's wife. In early 1946, when Pătrăşcanu, who was Romania's Minister of Justice, decided to go against the will of his party and intervened in the standoff between King
Michael I
and the Petru Groza
executive (greva regală – "the royal strike
"), she mediated between him and two well-known anti-communist
figures Victor Rădulescu-Pogoneanu and Grigore Niculescu-Buzeşti
, in an attempt to ensure their support for a political compromise.
Together with her friend Brauner, as well as Remus Koffler, Belu Zilber, Petre Pandrea, Herant Torosian, Ionel Mocsony Stârcea, the engineer Emil Calmanovici
, Alexandru Ştefănescu and others, she was implicated in Pătrăşcanu's 1954 trial, being sentenced to twelve years in prison. The person who took initiative in bringing her to trial was Securitate deputy chief Alexandru Nicolschi
.
During repeated interrogations by the Securitate
, Constante tried to fend off false accusations of "Titoism
" and "treason
", but, the victim of constant beatings and torture (much of her hair was torn from the roots), and confronted with Zilber's testimony — which implicated her —, she eventually gave in and admitted to the charges.
Throughout the rest of her life, she maintained a highly critical view of Zilber, and expressed her admiration for Pătrăşcanu, who had for long resisted pressures and had been executed in the end. As she stated in 2004,
For much of her time in prison, Constante was kept in virtually complete solitude, a special regime which she later attributed to her earlier refusal to confess. Repeatedly beaten and again tortured during her stay in special prisons for women, she much later confessed that she was never able to forgive the people responsible for her plight. She was freed in 1962, before the end of her sentence, due to an amnesty
; in 1963, she married Brauner, who had also been released. They both were rehabilitated
during Nicolae Ceauşescu
's campaign of reviewing Romania's history under Gheorghiu-Dej (1968).
Constante exhibited her works on two other occasions (in 1970 and 1971, both centered on tapestry and collage
art).
In 1990, after the Romanian Revolution
, she published her French-language autobiography L'évasion silencieuse ("The Silent Escape"), at the Éditions La Découverte
in Paris. The volume, which Vladimir Tismăneanu
has compared to the works of Margarete Buber-Neumann
, is written as a diary, and makes use of her prolific memory, which allowed her to record an immense succession of days, years after events had passed. It won the Prize of French-Language Writers' Association, and was translated into English as The Silent Escape: Three Thousand Days in Romanian Prisons, with a preface by Gail Kligman; the Romanian version (Evadarea tăcută) received the Romanian Academy
's Lucian Blaga
Prize. In 1993, she also published Evadarea imposibilă. Penitenciarul politic de femei Miercurea Ciuc 1957-1961 ("The Impossible
Escape. The Political Prison for Women in Miercurea Ciuc 1957-1961").
In 1997, Constante starred as herself in Nebunia Capetelor, a film by Thomas Ciulei based on The Silent Escape; Ciulei had originally intended to cast Maia Morgenstern
as Constante, but ultimately decided to pay a special tribute to the book's theme ("I wanted to force the spectator to build himself an imaginary space, as Lena Constante had done when she was in her cell").
Romania
Romania is a country located at the crossroads of Central and Southeastern Europe, on the Lower Danube, within and outside the Carpathian arch, bordering on the Black Sea...
n artist, essayist and memoirist, known for her work in stage design and tapestry
Tapestry
Tapestry is a form of textile art, traditionally woven on a vertical loom, however it can also be woven on a floor loom as well. It is composed of two sets of interlaced threads, those running parallel to the length and those parallel to the width ; the warp threads are set up under tension on a...
. A family friend of Communist Party
Romanian Communist Party
The Romanian Communist Party was a communist political party in Romania. Successor to the Bolshevik wing of the Socialist Party of Romania, it gave ideological endorsement to communist revolution and the disestablishment of Greater Romania. The PCR was a minor and illegal grouping for much of the...
politician Lucreţiu Pătrăşcanu
Lucretiu Patrascanu
Lucreţiu Pătrăşcanu was a Romanian communist politician and leading member of the Communist Party of Romania , also noted for his activities as a lawyer, sociologist and economist. For a while, he was a professor at Bucharest University...
, she was arrested by the Communist regime
Communist Romania
Communist Romania was the period in Romanian history when that country was a Soviet-aligned communist state in the Eastern Bloc, with the dominant role of Romanian Communist Party enshrined in its successive constitutions...
following the conflict between Pătrăşcanu and Gheorghe Gheorghiu-Dej
Gheorghe Gheorghiu-Dej
Gheorghe Gheorghiu-Dej was the Communist leader of Romania from 1948 until his death in 1965.-Early life:Gheorghe was the son of a poor worker, Tănase Gheorghiu, and his wife Ana. Gheorghiu-Dej joined the Communist Party of Romania in 1930...
. She was indicted in his trial and spent eight years as a political prisoner
Political prisoner
According to the Longman Dictionary of Contemporary English, a political prisoner is ‘someone who is in prison because they have opposed or criticized the government of their own country’....
.
Constante was the wife of the musicologist Harry Brauner
Harry Brauner
Harry Brauner was a Romanian ethnomusicologist, and composer, professor of music, director of the Institut de Folklor in Bucharest . He is the brother of Victor Brauner and the husband of Lena Constante. Harry Brauner is known as Constantin Brăiloiu's disciple and colleague...
, and the sister-in-law of the painter Victor Brauner
Victor Brauner
Victor Brauner was a Romanian Jewish painter of surrealistic images.-Early life:He was born in Piatra Neamţ, the son of a timber manufacturer who subsequently settled in Vienna with his family for a few years. It is there that young Victor attended elementary school...
.
Biography
Born in BucharestBucharest
Bucharest is the capital municipality, cultural, industrial, and financial centre of Romania. It is the largest city in Romania, located in the southeast of the country, at , and lies on the banks of the Dâmbovița River....
, she was the daughter of an Aromanian
Aromanians
Aromanians are a Latin people native throughout the southern Balkans, especially in northern Greece, Albania, the Republic of Macedonia, Bulgaria, and as an emigrant community in Serbia and Romania . An older term is Macedo-Romanians...
journalist (who had immigrated from Macedonia
Macedonia (region)
Macedonia is a geographical and historical region of the Balkan peninsula in southeastern Europe. Its boundaries have changed considerably over time, but nowadays the region is considered to include parts of five Balkan countries: Greece, the Republic of Macedonia, Bulgaria, Albania, Serbia, as...
) and his Romanian wife. The Constante family left the city during the World War I
World War I
World War I , which was predominantly called the World War or the Great War from its occurrence until 1939, and the First World War or World War I thereafter, was a major war centred in Europe that began on 28 July 1914 and lasted until 11 November 1918...
German occupation
Romanian Campaign (World War I)
The Romanian Campaign was part of the Balkan theatre of World War I, with Romania and Russia allied against the armies of the Central Powers. Fighting took place from August 1916 to December 1917, across most of present-day Romania, including Transylvania, which was part of the Austro-Hungarian...
, and Lena spent much of her childhood in Iaşi
Iasi
Iași is the second most populous city and a municipality in Romania. Located in the historical Moldavia region, Iași has traditionally been one of the leading centres of Romanian social, cultural, academic and artistic life...
, Kherson
Kherson
Kherson is a city in southern Ukraine. It is the administrative center of the Kherson Oblast , and is designated as its own separate raion within the oblast. Kherson is an important port on the Black Sea and Dnieper River, and the home of a major ship-building industry...
, Odessa
Odessa
Odessa or Odesa is the administrative center of the Odessa Oblast located in southern Ukraine. The city is a major seaport located on the northwest shore of the Black Sea and the fourth largest city in Ukraine with a population of 1,029,000 .The predecessor of Odessa, a small Tatar settlement,...
, London
London
London is the capital city of :England and the :United Kingdom, the largest metropolitan area in the United Kingdom, and the largest urban zone in the European Union by most measures. Located on the River Thames, London has been a major settlement for two millennia, its history going back to its...
and Paris
Paris
Paris is the capital and largest city in France, situated on the river Seine, in northern France, at the heart of the Île-de-France region...
.
Returning at the end of the conflict, she studied Painting at the Romanian Art Academy in Bucharest, and established friendships with leading intellectual
Intellectual
An intellectual is a person who uses intelligence and critical or analytical reasoning in either a professional or a personal capacity.- Terminology and endeavours :"Intellectual" can denote four types of persons:...
s of her time, including Brauner, Mircea Vulcănescu
Mircea Vulcanescu
Mircea Vulcănescu was a prominent Romanian philosopher, economist, ethics teacher and sociologist.-Biography:He studied philosophy and law at the University of Bucharest, graduating in 1925...
, Petru Comarnescu
Petru Comarnescu
Petru Comarnescu was a Romanian literary and art critic and translator.Born in Iași into a family that was related to the metropolitan bishop Veniamin Costache, he studied at the University of Bucharest law , philosophy and philology before going in 1931 on a two-year scholarship to the United...
, Henri H. Stahl
Henri H. Stahl
Henri H. Stahl was a Romanian Marxist cultural anthropologist, ethnographer, sociologist, and social historian.-Biography:...
, Mihail Sebastian
Mihail Sebastian
-Life:Sebastian was born to a Jewish family in Brăila. After finishing his secondary studies, Sebastian went on to study law in Bucharest, but was soon attracted to the literary life and the exciting ideas of the new generation of Romanian intellectuals, as epitomized by the literary group...
, and Paul Sterian. During the period, she became sympathetic to left-wing politics
Left-wing politics
In politics, Left, left-wing and leftist generally refer to support for social change to create a more egalitarian society...
and joined the sociological
Sociology
Sociology is the study of society. It is a social science—a term with which it is sometimes synonymous—which uses various methods of empirical investigation and critical analysis to develop a body of knowledge about human social activity...
project initiated by Dimitrie Gusti
Dimitrie Gusti
Dimitrie Gusti was a Romanian sociologist, ethnologist, historian, and voluntarist philosopher; a professor at the University of Iaşi and the University of Bucharest, he served as Romania's Minister of Education in 1932-1933...
, aiding in the creation of comprehensive monograph
Monograph
A monograph is a work of writing upon a single subject, usually by a single author.It is often a scholarly essay or learned treatise, and may be released in the manner of a book or journal article. It is by definition a single document that forms a complete text in itself...
s on traditional Romanian society; her visits to various villages acquainted her with traditional folk art, especially religious icons, which she later used as inspiration in her work.
Constante first exhibited her art in 1934, and had personal shows in 1935, and 1946; her last exhibit before being arrested occurred in Ankara
Ankara
Ankara is the capital of Turkey and the country's second largest city after Istanbul. The city has a mean elevation of , and as of 2010 the metropolitan area in the entire Ankara Province had a population of 4.4 million....
, Turkey
Turkey
Turkey , known officially as the Republic of Turkey , is a Eurasian country located in Western Asia and in East Thrace in Southeastern Europe...
(1947).
After 1945, she was employed as a stage designer by the newly-founded Ţăndărică Theater, where she met Elena Pătrăşcanu, Lucreţiu's wife. In early 1946, when Pătrăşcanu, who was Romania's Minister of Justice, decided to go against the will of his party and intervened in the standoff between King
King of Romania
King of the Romanians , rather than King of Romania , was the official title of the ruler of the Kingdom of Romania from 1881 until 1947, when Romania was proclaimed a republic....
Michael I
Michael I of Romania
Michael was the last King of Romania. He reigned from 20 July 1927 to 8 June 1930, and again from 6 September 1940 until 30 December 1947 when he was forced, by the Communist Party of Romania , to abdicate to the Soviet armies of occupation...
and the Petru Groza
Petru Groza
Petru Groza was a Romanian politician, best known as the Prime Minister of the first Communist Party-dominated governments under Soviet occupation during the early stages of the Communist regime in Romania....
executive (greva regală – "the royal strike
Strike action
Strike action, also called labour strike, on strike, greve , or simply strike, is a work stoppage caused by the mass refusal of employees to work. A strike usually takes place in response to employee grievances. Strikes became important during the industrial revolution, when mass labour became...
"), she mediated between him and two well-known anti-communist
Anti-communism
Anti-communism is opposition to communism. Organized anti-communism developed in reaction to the rise of communism, especially after the 1917 October Revolution in Russia and the beginning of the Cold War in 1947.-Objections to communist theory:...
figures Victor Rădulescu-Pogoneanu and Grigore Niculescu-Buzeşti
Grigore Niculescu-Buzeşti
Grigore Niculescu-Buzeşti was a Romanian politician who served as the Minister of Foreign Affairs of Romania....
, in an attempt to ensure their support for a political compromise.
Together with her friend Brauner, as well as Remus Koffler, Belu Zilber, Petre Pandrea, Herant Torosian, Ionel Mocsony Stârcea, the engineer Emil Calmanovici
Emil Calmanovici
Emil Calmanovici was a Romanian engineer, businessman, and communist militant. Known for the financial support he gave to the Romanian Communist Party during the late 1930s and early 1940s, he became a political prisoner of the Communist regime after being implicated in the show trial of his...
, Alexandru Ştefănescu and others, she was implicated in Pătrăşcanu's 1954 trial, being sentenced to twelve years in prison. The person who took initiative in bringing her to trial was Securitate deputy chief Alexandru Nicolschi
Alexandru Nicolschi
Alexandru Nicolschi was a Romanian communist activist, Soviet agent and officer, and Securitate chief under the Communist regime...
.
During repeated interrogations by the Securitate
Securitate
The Securitate was the secret police agency of Communist Romania. Previously, the Romanian secret police was called Siguranţa Statului. Founded on August 30, 1948, with help from the Soviet NKVD, the Securitate was abolished in December 1989, shortly after President Nicolae Ceaușescu was...
, Constante tried to fend off false accusations of "Titoism
Titoism
Titoism is a variant of Marxism–Leninism named after Josip Broz Tito, leader of the Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia, primarily used to describe the specific socialist system built in Yugoslavia after its refusal of the 1948 Resolution of the Cominform, when the Communist Party of...
" and "treason
Treason
In law, treason is the crime that covers some of the more extreme acts against one's sovereign or nation. Historically, treason also covered the murder of specific social superiors, such as the murder of a husband by his wife. Treason against the king was known as high treason and treason against a...
", but, the victim of constant beatings and torture (much of her hair was torn from the roots), and confronted with Zilber's testimony — which implicated her —, she eventually gave in and admitted to the charges.
Throughout the rest of her life, she maintained a highly critical view of Zilber, and expressed her admiration for Pătrăşcanu, who had for long resisted pressures and had been executed in the end. As she stated in 2004,
"I did not know [Lucreţiu Pătrăşcanu] too well. It was not [because of] him that I went to jail. Neither was it [because of] Mrs. Elena [Pătrăşcanu]. His friend, Belu Zilber, made us go to jail, me and my husband. Zilber was never pleased with all the things he kept inventing in his confessions and he would concoct some stuff that aimed to please the interrogators. To please [Gheorghiu-]Dej."
For much of her time in prison, Constante was kept in virtually complete solitude, a special regime which she later attributed to her earlier refusal to confess. Repeatedly beaten and again tortured during her stay in special prisons for women, she much later confessed that she was never able to forgive the people responsible for her plight. She was freed in 1962, before the end of her sentence, due to an amnesty
Amnesty
Amnesty is a legislative or executive act by which a state restores those who may have been guilty of an offense against it to the positions of innocent people, without changing the laws defining the offense. It includes more than pardon, in as much as it obliterates all legal remembrance of the...
; in 1963, she married Brauner, who had also been released. They both were rehabilitated
Rehabilitation (Soviet)
Rehabilitation in the context of the former Soviet Union, and the Post-Soviet states, was the restoration of a person who was criminally prosecuted without due basis, to the state of acquittal...
during Nicolae Ceauşescu
Nicolae Ceausescu
Nicolae Ceaușescu was a Romanian Communist politician. He was General Secretary of the Romanian Communist Party from 1965 to 1989, and as such was the country's second and last Communist leader...
's campaign of reviewing Romania's history under Gheorghiu-Dej (1968).
Constante exhibited her works on two other occasions (in 1970 and 1971, both centered on tapestry and collage
Collage
A collage is a work of formal art, primarily in the visual arts, made from an assemblage of different forms, thus creating a new whole....
art).
In 1990, after the Romanian Revolution
Romanian Revolution of 1989
The Romanian Revolution of 1989 was a series of riots and clashes in December 1989. These were part of the Revolutions of 1989 that occurred in several Warsaw Pact countries...
, she published her French-language autobiography L'évasion silencieuse ("The Silent Escape"), at the Éditions La Découverte
Éditions Gallimard
Éditions Gallimard is one of the leading French publishers of books. The Guardian has described it as having "the best backlist in the world". In 2003 it and its subsidiaries published 1418 titles....
in Paris. The volume, which Vladimir Tismăneanu
Vladimir Tismaneanu
Vladimir Tismăneanu is a Romanian and American political scientist, political analyst, sociologist, and professor at the University of Maryland, College Park...
has compared to the works of Margarete Buber-Neumann
Margarete Buber-Neumann
Margarete Buber-Neumann , was a leading member of the Communist Party of Germany during the years of the Weimar Republic. She survived imprisonment during World War II in both the Soviet Union and Nazi Germany...
, is written as a diary, and makes use of her prolific memory, which allowed her to record an immense succession of days, years after events had passed. It won the Prize of French-Language Writers' Association, and was translated into English as The Silent Escape: Three Thousand Days in Romanian Prisons, with a preface by Gail Kligman; the Romanian version (Evadarea tăcută) received the Romanian Academy
Romanian Academy
The Romanian Academy is a cultural forum founded in Bucharest, Romania, in 1866. It covers the scientific, artistic and literary domains. The academy has 181 acting members who are elected for life....
's Lucian Blaga
Lucian Blaga
-Biography:Lucian Blaga was a commanding personality of the Romanian culture of the interbellum period. He was a philosopher and writer higly acclaimed for his originality, a university professor and a diplomat. He was born on May 9, 1895 in Lancrăm, near Alba Iulia, Romania, his father being an...
Prize. In 1993, she also published Evadarea imposibilă. Penitenciarul politic de femei Miercurea Ciuc 1957-1961 ("The Impossible
Escape. The Political Prison for Women in Miercurea Ciuc 1957-1961").
In 1997, Constante starred as herself in Nebunia Capetelor, a film by Thomas Ciulei based on The Silent Escape; Ciulei had originally intended to cast Maia Morgenstern
Maia Morgenstern
Maia Morgenstern is a Romanian film and stage actress, described by Florin Mitu of AMOS News as "a symbol of Romanian theater and film". In the English-speaking world, she is probably best known for the role of Mary, the mother of Jesus, in Mel Gibson's The Passion of the Christ...
as Constante, but ultimately decided to pay a special tribute to the book's theme ("I wanted to force the spectator to build himself an imaginary space, as Lena Constante had done when she was in her cell").