Maciej Bielawski: “Nicolae Steinhardt and his Journal of Happiness”

 Nicu Steinhardt (1912-1988) was one of the most interesting, significant and representative persons of twentieth-century European culture. Born in Bucharest at the turn of the century in a Jewish family, he was educated in law and became a gifted literary critique. Moved by his natural intellectual openness, he proved himself to be a profound thinker and erudite, writer and philosopher between the two wars. During the totalitarian regime in Rumania, he spent four years in communist prisons, a turning point for him as an important experience linked him with the Christian faith. In the time after his release from prison, he deepened this experience both existentially and verbalized in various writings.