COURAGE

connecting collections

Already in the 1990s, Monica Lovinescu and Virgil Ierunca decided to donate their impressive collection in Paris to the Romanian state. In 1998 they named as the executors of their will Gabriel Liiceanu and Mihnea Berindei, who were thus entrusted with bringing the collection (composed of books, documents, and vinyl records) to Romania (Lovinescu 2010, 477). After the death of its owners and creators, the collection was divided between Gabriel Liiceanu and Mihnea Berindei. According to the archivists who organised the collection, Claudiu-Victor Turcitu and Laura Ristea, at the beginning of 2012 Mihnea Berindei decided to donate his part to the National Archives of Romania in Bucharest. Besides the 4.2 linear metres of manuscripts, memoirs, and press clippings, Berindei also donated 5.00 linear metres of books, collections of newspapers, and magazines, which were included as part of the library of the Central National Historical Archives in Bucharest. Since 2015, the Monica Lovinescu and Virgil Ierunca collection has been open for research at National Central Archives in Bucharest. 

As a way of commemorating the twenty-fifth anniversary of the Lesbian Section ŠKUC LL, Tatjana Greif and Nataša Velikonja co-authored an almost 400-page volume that traces the history of not only ŠKUC LL, but also of lesbian culture, art and the movement in Slovenia in general. The chapter “Lesbians Before the Lesbian Movement” (“Lezbištvo pred lezbičnim gibanjem”) gathers in one place all knowledge available about the lives and work of women who engaged in sexual and/or emotional relationships with other women (mostly prominent intellectuals and artists), from the late 19^th century up to the emergence of the lesbian and gay movement in 1984. Also described are the circumstances and some of the situations homosexuals and lesbians faced during socialism, especially at the time when same-sex relations were criminalized in the Criminal Code of Yugoslavia. Furthermore, the book delves in great detail into the 1980s gay and lesbian social life in Slovenia, focusing on the social climate and cultural events that created the conditions for the first gay film festival in socialist Europe that took place in Ljubljana in 1984. The book also recounts the circumstances surrounding the cancellation of the fourth gay film festival, when the authorities exerted pressure on the organizers. The organizers interpreted this pressure and the media attacks to which they were subjected as a direct ban. This event, along with intensive networking with other democratic and civil groups, greatly contributed to the politicization of the emerging LGBT movement and the gradual shift it made from the cultural to the activist sphere (Velikonja and Greif 2012, 73-74). The central and the longest part of the volume chronologically maps ŠKUC LL's activities and development in the period 1987-2012. While researching and writing, Grief and Velikonja heavily relied on archival materials from the Lesbian Library and Archive, reprinting many illustrations and photographs from the collection in the volume itself.

On August 27, 2012, Petr Šabata, the grandson of the Czech dissident Jaroslav Šabata, brought to the Moravian Provincial Archive in Brno the estate of Šabata as it was found at his summer residence. There were a total of 41 units that were handed over to the archive management. Originally, the National Archives of the Czech Republic was interested in this collection, but Jaroslav Šabata’s son Jan decided that his father would have wanted his estate to be stored in an archive in Brno because he lived and studied in Brno and he always liked that city.

Later, the collection was supplemented by another estate found in the summer residence.