Persecuted under communism, Eginald Schlattner emerged after 1989 as one of the most successful writers of the German community in Romania. His personal collection, which contains books, manuscripts, letters, photos and video recordings, reflects his troubled relations with the communist regime.
Eginald Schlattner, the creator of this collection, has gathered for five decades various items in accordance with his intellectual interests. Many of these items illustrate his troubled relationship with the communist regime, which resulted from his involvement in the activity of German literary circles. In the mid 1950s, Schlattner initiated a German literary circle in Cluj and attended meetings in Sibiu and Braşov. These circles temporarily enjoyed a relative freedom of expression. They provided alternative milieus of socialisation, and stimulated their members to author non-conformist literary works. In the aftermath of the Hungarian Revolution of 1956, however, the circles came under surveillance by the secret police, which regarded them as “counter-revolutionary groups.” Eventually, numerous members of such groups (Schlattner included) were arrested, and some were put on trial and subsequently sentenced to many years of imprisonment. Schlattner himself was arrested in 1957 due to the interpretation given by the Securitate to some of his literary texts, such as “Gediegenes Erz” (Solid ore), and to his correspondence with other writers. Some of these writers were subsequently involved in the so-called Trial of the German Writers, which took place in 1959 in Brașov. The most interesting items in the Schlattner Collection illustrate this turbulent period, when the upheaval in neighbouring Hungary changed the boundaries between tolerated and prohibited in Romania, and implicitly limited the liberties of writers in general, and of those writing in minority languages in particular. It was after his release from prison that Schlattner started systematically to collect documents which bear witness to his activity. Some of the writings he preserved illustrate his attempts to express himself as if he enjoyed freedom of expression in the hope that one day his thoughts would be made public. At the same time, many of these documents were produced during, and were meant to serve, Schlattner’s daily activity as a Lutheran pastor. Besides the documents produced by him, there are items which were bought from different individuals Romania or abroad, especially from the Federal Republic of Germany, where Schlattner’s daughter had emigrated. In 2004, he donated his collection to the Friedrich Teutsch Centre for Dialogue and Culture of the Evangelical Church A.C. in Romania in order to make it available to future generations for research. The collection has manifold significance for present day society, but its importance resides primarily in the cultural, social, and political aspects of the daily life and career of a German writer and Lutheran pastor under Romanian communism.
Description of content
The Eginald Schlattner Collection includes literary manuscripts, correspondence, books, sermons, and video recordings, which reflect the lifetime intellectual activity of its creator as a German writer and Lutheran pastor living in communist Romania. Schlattner has collected practically throughout his entire adult life the items to be found today in the collection bearing his name. He is the author of many documents in the collection, such as the literary manuscripts. A significant part of the collection is represented by the documents which illustrate Schlattner’s religious activity, such as sermons or correspondence with other Lutheran pastors. The other items were gathered in accordance to his intellectual interests at the moment of their issue or purchase. They thus cover a broad variety of fields from literature and philosophy to theology and history. The collection reflects his relations, on the one hand, with the German speaking cultural milieu in Romania and, on the other, with the communist authorities. At the same time, the collection illustrates the intellectual sources of his literary works. Particularly interesting are the literary manuscripts and the correspondence from the 1950s. These items are illustrative for the alternative cultural milieus which the German literary circles in Cluj and Sibiu represented before the Hungarian Revolution of 1956. From among these items, the most significant are the manuscripts and letters which were confiscated in 1957 by the secret police and, amazingly enough, later returned to the author. Schlattner preserved them in the hope that they could be published one day. Some of the manuscripts were indeed published in 2012.
Nowotnick, Michaela. 2012. “‘95 Jahre Haft’ – Kronstädter Schriftstellerprozess 1959: Darstellungsformen und Deutungsmuster der Aufarbeitung.” Halbjahresschrift für südosteuropäische Geschichte, Literatur und Politik 24(1–2): 173–181.
Pintilescu, Corneliu. 2014. “Literatură şi vinovăţie politică în cazul Procesului Scriitorilor Germani (Oraşul Stalin/Braşov, 1959).” Interferenţe culturale în Sibiul secolelor XVIII–XX, edited by Ioan Popa and Mihaela Grancea, 187–206. Sibiu: Astra Museum.
Totok, William. 2012. “Empathie für alle Opfer: Eginald Schlattner, ein Leben in Zeiten diktatorischer Herrschaft.” Halbjahresschrift für südosteuropäische Geschichte, Literatur und Politik 24 (1–2): 181–198.
Schlattner, Eginald Norbert, interview by Pintilescu, Corneliu, April 28, 2016. COURAGE Registry Oral History Collection
