Eugen Schileru

Eugen Schileru (pen name of Eugen Schiller; September 13, 1916 – August 10, 1968) was a Romanian art and literary critic, essayist and translator.

Eugen Schileru

Grave at Bellu Cemetery

Born in Brăila, his parents were Henri Schiller, an otorhinolaryngologist, and his wife Maria (née Demetrescu); his father was Jewish and his mother ethnic Romanian. He was first educated locally, at the Schwartzman Jewish–Romanian School, whose other alumni included Mihail Sebastian, Ilarie Voronca, Oscar Lemnaru, and Ury Benador. He then attended Brăila's Nicolae Bălcescu High School (1930–1934), followed by the literature and philosophy faculty of the University of Bucharest (1934–1938). His younger friend, the art historian Geo Șerban, notes that he arrived in Bucharest alongside another author, Dolfi Trost, and that both were fleeing the rapidly declining Brăila. Schileru completed his mandatory service in the Romanian Land Forces alongside fellow students such as Gellu Naum, Silvian Iosifescu, Mihnea Gheorghiu, Al. I. Ștefănescu, Miron Constantinescu, and Alexandru Balaci. As Balaci recalls, the unit they trained with did not provide them with uniforms; Schileru, as an "indigent boy", begged his commanding officer not to have him perform exercises that would have ruined his suit.

Schileru studied under various scholars, including George Oprescu, and graduated with a degree in aesthetics; his thesis dealt with art and pathological manifestations. In 1939, he also received a law degree. Under the pen name Adrian Schileru, he published in the Marxist review Era Nouă in 1936. In 1938, he received a vacation scholarship from the French Institute of Advanced Studies in Romania; also that year, he graduated from a pedagogical institute. He was welcomed into the literary and journalistic mainstream during the later stages of World War II (after the anti-fascist coup of August 1944). He collaborated as a columnist on Anton Dumitriu's daily, Democrația, as well as on the Marxist Veac Nou—with some additional articles appearing in the National Liberal Viitorul. According to Șerban, he was carried by "internal impulses to intervene, on multiple levels, toward the edification of public opinion", and overall a "spiritual restlessness".

From 1948 to 1951, under the newly established Romanian communist regime, Schileru directed the Romanian Academy's library. Șerban, at the time a young researcher, recalls that he was "always ready to give guiding suggestions, to let others borrow from his vast baggage of readings. His eyes were glistening upon discovering new venues for his bookish roving." In 1949, he became a professor of aesthetics at Bucharest's Nicolae Grigorescu Fine Arts Institute. During 1951, he was formally investigated by the governing Workers' Party (PMR) after accessing a scholarship for creative writing without delivering the required paper. In May 1952, as the PMR purged itself of Ana Pauker and her supporters, the authorities also instigated their own version of the "anti-cosmopolitan campaign". Schileru was caught up in this backlash, and singled out at the Plenary of the Union of Plastic Artists for acting in a "cosmopolitan" way.

Schileru was able to conserve his position at Grigorescu Institute in later decades, rising to chairman of the art history department in 1968. Students he helped form intellectually include Andrei Pleșu and Marin Tarangul. His writings include articles in literary and specialty magazines; short works on fine arts (exhibition catalogues, art columns, aesthetic commentaries, notes about Impressionism, classical and contemporary painting); film reviews; theoretical works about art; and commentaries partly collected in Rembrandt (1966), Ion Sima (1968), Ion Irimescu (1969), Impresionismul (1969), Scrisoarea de dragoste (1971) and Preludii critice (1975). He prefaced translations from Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, Thomas Mann, Herman Melville, Alberto Moravia and Cesare Pavese, while himself translating, alone or in collaboration, Sinclair Lewis, James Hilton, Horace McCoy, Giovanni Germanetto, André Ribard, Claude Lévi-Strauss, Albert Maltz, Richard Sasuly and Tirso de Molina.

As reported by Șerban, Schileru's death at the age of 52 was completely unexpected, leaving many to realize his cultural importance only through his absence. Pleșu sought to revive interest in his teacher's work in 1975, when he anthologized his essays as Preludii critice ("Critical Preludes"). It was accompanied by Pleșu's own "moving recollections". Schileru's daughter Micaela published a memoir of her father in 2016, the centenary of his birth.