Nichifor Crainic
Nichifor Crainic | |
|---|---|
Ministry of Culture and Religious Affairs | |
| In office 14 September 1940 – 21 January 1941 | |
| Prime Minister | Ion Antonescu |
| Minister | Traian Brăileanu |
| Co-Leader of the National Christian Party | |
| In office 16 July 1935 – 10 February 1938 Serving with Octavian Goga & A. C. Cuza | |
| Preceded by | Octavian Goga (as president of the National Agrarian Party) A. C. Cuza (as president of the National-Christian Defense League) |
| Succeeded by | None (party banned under the 1938 Constitution) |
| Personal details | |
| Born | December 22, 1889 Philosopher |
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Nichifor Crainic (Romanian pronunciation:
Literary career
Crainic was a contributor of poetry to the modernist magazine Gândirea. After become disenfranchised with the publication's progressive views, rather than disassociate with the magazine he became increasingly intertwined in leadership positions in order to de-modernize it. At the end of a series of intellectual sparings within the publication itself, Crainic managed to wrest control of the magazine and institute a sea-change in editorial character supporting mystical Orthodoxy.
He developed an ideology given the name Gândirism (from gând – "thought"), a nationalist and neo-Orthodox Christian social and cultural trend. He edited the Gândirea magazine, and collaborated with numerous other publications such as Ramuri, România Nouă, Cuvântul, and Sfarmă-Piatră. He was also the editor in chief of the newspaper Calendarul.
Politics
Nichifor Crainic became a leading pro-Fascist figure in the political turmoil of the late 1930s, openly praising Mussolini and Hitler. He was an ideologue of antisemitism,
Our state is monarchical throughout its entire history. The monarchy is the principle of its continuity. The crown of the Romanian king symbolizes the glory of the people and the permanence of Romanian consciousness. ... The ethnocratic state differs profoundly from the democratic state. The democratic state is based on the number of population, without racial or religious distinction. The foundation of the ethnocratic state is the Romanian soil and people. ... The soil of the Romanian people has today inhabitants of other races and faiths, as well. They came here through invasion (like the Hungarians), through colonization (like the Germans), or through crafty infiltrations (like the Jews). ... The Jews are a permanent danger for every national state.[11]
— Crainic, Program of the Ethnocratic State
A fulfillment of ethnocracy was to be achieved through the means of a monarch-led corporatist system:[11]
Popularized and accepted by the entire nation, executed by government teams selected from the elites of the professions and controlled by parliament, it [a plan to redress Romania] will be supervised by His Majesty the King. ... The corporatist regime culminates in royal authority.[11]
— Crainic, Program of the Ethnocratic State
Crainic advocated creation of a Romanian spirit that was “antisemitic in theory and antisemitic in practice.” He applied his theological and rhetorical skills to breaking the Judeo-Christian relationship by arguing that the Old Testament was not Jewish, that Jesus had not been Jewish, and that the Talmud, which he saw as the incarnation of modern Jewry, was, first and foremost, a weapon to combat the Christian Gospel and to destroy Christians.[8]
— Friling, Ioanid and Ionescu, 2005, BACKGROUND AND PRECURSORS TO THE HOLOCAUST Roots of Romanian Antisemitism The League of National Christian Defense and Iron Guard Antisemitism The Antisemitic Policies of the Goga Government and of the Royal Dictatorship
In 1940 he was elected a
After World War II
After the Soviet army defeated the Germans and occupied Romania, Crainic went into hiding. A trial was conducted in his absence and he was found guilty of crimes against the people. He was eventually caught and imprisoned by the Romanian authorities in 1947, and spent 15 years in Văcărești and Aiud prisons. He was expelled from the Academy by the Communist regime.
Between 1962 and 1968 he was the editor of the Communist propaganda magazine Glasul Patriei ("The Voice of the Fatherland")—a magazine published in Romania by the Romanian Communist regime but sold only abroad, which they used as a tool to try to influence the Romanian intellectual émigrés to be patriotic and not work against the Communist Romania.
Described by the historian Zigu Ornea as "always adaptable" (249), Nichifor Crainic (1889–1972) joined and left a number of these groups while repeatedly attempting to establish himself as an ideologue who could draw the various ultra-nationalist parties together into a united front. ... Crainic occupied senior positions within right-wing regimes between 1940 and 1944, and after he was released from prison in the 1960s the Romanian Communist Party used his talents and reputation as an informer and a “reformed” ultra-nationalist to add credibility to its regime.[2]
— Clark (2012: 108)
On 8 May 1995, after the
Notes
- OCLC 46872499.
- ^ S2CID 153813255.
The institute only lasted one year, but allowed Crainic to advance ideas such as anti-Masonry, anti-Semitism, and biological racism within an LANC-approved forum (Crainic, Ortodoxie 147).
- JSTOR 41274855.
Nae Ionescu considered ethnicity as "the formula of today's Romanian nationalism," while for Nichifor Crainic the "biological homogeneousness," the "historical identity" and the "blood and the soil" were the defining elements of the "ethnocratic state."
- JSTOR 41759355.
A prominent proponent of the concept of 'ethnic homogeneity' was the chauvinistic, xenophobic and pro-Nazi writer, politician, poet and professor of Theology Nichifor Crainic (1889-1972), author of "Orthodoxy and Ethnocracy" (Ortodoxie și etnocrație), published in 1938.
- JSTOR 10.1086/529946.
Clearly there were affinities between the eugenicists and thinkers, writers, and politicians on the extreme Right such as Nichifor Crainic, Nae Ionescu, Corneliu Zelea Codreanu, Octavian Goga, and A.C. Cuza.
- S2CID 159706943.
Amongst those arrested for Duca's assassination were Nae Ionescu and Nichifor Crainic (a fascist ideologue, mediator between the NCP and the Iron Guards).
- ^ ISBN 978-973-681-989-6.
- ^ ISBN 978-973-681-989-6.
- ISBN 978-3-515-11333-5. Retrieved 27 March 2019.
Die ideologischen Mentoren der "jungen Generation", Nae Ionescu und Nichifor Crainic, lieferten den Antisemiten (besonders der legionären Bewegung) ein theoretisches Gerüst für ihre Argumentation.
- JSTOR 4211337.
Volovici's study is a complementary one; it examines competently the role of the Romanian intelligentsia in the inter-war years in legitimizing anti-Semitic ideas and thus facilitating public acceptance of them. Octavian Goga and Nichifor Crainic were extreme examples and Volovici rightly highlights their deeds and writings.
- ^ ISBN 978-1-879383-39-5.
- ^ Andrei Muraru, "Elie Wiesel” Institute`s Journal, 2020, Outrageous Rehabilitations: Justice and Memory in the Attempts to Restore the War Criminals’ Remembrance in Post-Holocaust Romania. The Recent Case of General Nicolae Macici (I) in Holocaust. Studii şi cercetări / Holocaust. Study and Research, vol. XII, issue 1(13), pp. 345-348
- ^ Alexandru Florian, Indiana University Press, Jan 24, 2018, Holocaust Public Memory in Postcommunist Romania, pp. 73, 79 and 93-94
References
- Roland Clark (2012): Nationalism and orthodoxy: Nichifor Crainic and the political culture of the extreme right in 1930s Romania, Nationalities Papers: The Journal of Nationalism and Ethnicity, 40:1, 107-126
- Peter F. Sugar, Eastern European Nationalism in the Twentieth Century, University Press of America, 1995 (includes transcript of Crainic's essay)
- The Report of the International Committee for the Study of Holocaust in Romania (on the Romanian Presidency site) - a review of the several Anti-Semitic doctrines, including Crainic's, that contributed to genocide of the Holocaust.
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