The death of Edgar Reichmann, writer and former contributor to “World of Books”

2023-11-27 22:04:11
Edgar Reichmann (undated photo). Private collection

The book is called The Sleepless Danube (Balland, 1992), and it is him that we leave the library upon learning of the death of Egard Reichman, Saturday November 25, in Paris. Because nothing could better account for the life of this magnificent man, a long-time contributor to the “World of Books”, where he knew how to give an account of the literature of Mitteleuropa like no other.

Edgar Reichman was born in Romania, in Galati, in 1929. In this port city, a mosaic of ethnicities and scents, where his father chartered boats leaving on the Danube, he grew up between German, Hungarian and French governesses, who will be a polyglot, and spends his summers in Brasov, in the Carpathian mountains. His parents are Jewish, well-off, open, and his childhood was privileged. Romania is going through good years, but everything will be swept away by the flow of history, the rise of anti-Semitism, the outbreak of the Second World War.

In 1941, the Reichmans left Galati for Bucharest, where they escaped bombs and deportation under the fascist regime of Ion Antonescu. When, at the end of the war, the Stalinist communists took power in Romania, they decided to emigrate. To obtain the necessary passports and visas, in 1949 they sold two paintings that the painter Victor Brauner had given them for their wedding.

“Neither stateless, nor refugee”

A few months later, they are in Paris. Without their son Edgar, who chose to stay, to their despair. He is 17 years old, attends student meetings where, he writes in his book, “the communists guaranteed a fairer world, from which terror and poverty would be banished forever”. He wants to believe it, and dreams of one day becoming Romanian ambassador to France.

But the time comes for humiliation, marginalization, attacks. The communist youth excluded him because of his “unhealthy social origin”, the university rejects him because“element harmful to society”, old friends avoid him. In the beautiful family apartment, which became collective after their departure, the air is unbreathable. Finally, the passport is issued, and Edgar Reichman leaves Romania.

In the fall of 1957, he was in Paris. Everything has to be built, but it is not intended “neither stateless nor refugee. The whole earth belonged to me, and France first.” he writes in The Danube Insomniac, showing his taste for life and putting aside nostalgia. He found a subordinate job at the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO), where he rose through the ranks, leading missions in several places around the world, particularly in Côte d’Ivoire, where he will stay for three years.

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