A novel of Franco-Romanian friendship: Cătălin Mihuleac

Vulnerability of cultural ties

This passage illustrates the deep-rooted Francophilia of the Romanian bourgeoisie in the 19th and early 20th centuries. Iași is described not only as a city, but as France's "needy grandchild," emphasizing the asymmetrical yet affectionate relationship. The novel demonstrates that Romania's modernization—from Eiffel's architecture to the state's diplomatic recognition—was inextricably linked to French influence.

Although Cătălin Mihuleacs Les Demoiselles de Fontaine (French 2025) was originally written in Romanian (under the title Poziția a unsprezecea și Domnișoarele lui Fontaine, Translated by Marily Le Nir, it can certainly be considered a "French" novel due to its deep thematic and cultural DNA. Described as the "great novel of Franco-Romanian fraternization," it centers on the young officer Marcel Fontaine, a French figure of identification whose life remains inextricably linked to Romania through the historical mission of Berthelot and decades of teaching. The narrative breathes the spirit of Francophilia, which, particularly in Iași—described as "the most Francophone city in Romania"—shaped the cityscape and its elite through French influences ranging from Gustave Eiffel to Sarah Bernhardt. Furthermore, the novel addresses the tragic persecution of the "Demoiselles de Fontaine" by the communist regime, a persecution directly related to their affinity for the French language and Western culture. This makes the work a literary monument to French influence in Eastern Europe. Finally, this dual identity is underlined by the fact that even after his expulsion from Paris, Fontaine continued to embody the moral and cultural bridge between the two nations through the program "L'Heure de la Roumanie".

Les Demoiselles de Fontaine On the surface, the novel tells the story of an extraordinary Franco-Romanian friendship spanning from the First World War to the early communist post-war period, while simultaneously tracing the fates of those shaped by their cultural affinity with France. The narrative unfolds through the eyes of the French officer and later university professor Marcel Fontaine, who works in Romania, and his Romanian confidant, Petru Negru. Episodes from war, everyday life, love, and teaching are woven together to form a loosely connected chronicle that focuses less on dramatic climaxes than on meaningful constellations. Narratively, the novel combines the fantastical, the grotesque, and the historical to demonstrate how individual actions are embedded in larger historical processes. The plot follows a logic of experience: encounters, loyalties, and losses structure the text more powerfully than political turning points.

In the novel's framing narrative, Romania's relationship with Europe is symbolized by a fairy tale. The unborn child's demand for a Franco-German bride reflects Romania's desire to be part of a larger European identity. The narrator draws a parallel to real history: A Francophone country elects a German king (Karol I) to ensure modernity and neutrality. This fairy tale serves as a leitmotif for the entire novel: The merging of cultures is portrayed as an act of "courage" against the "barbaric prejudices" of isolation.

Thematically told Les Demoiselles de Fontaine The story of a European promise, given, believed, and ultimately broken. It raises the question of whether cultural proximity, education, and moral integrity are sufficient to make history more humane. France appears as a projection screen for modernity and humanism, Romania as a space of appropriation, but also of disillusionment. The novel shows how values ​​are passed down through generations—and how quickly they can be criminalized by a change of system. In this sense, the text is less a historical novel than a reflection on responsibility, memory, and the vulnerability of cultural bonds. The story told is ultimately one of failure without blame. It is not the people who fail, but the political orders that cannot sustain their loyalties and hopes. At the same time, the text addresses fundamental epochal problems facing Europe: the failure of universalist values ​​in the face of totalitarian systems, the fragility of cultural transfer processes, the moral imposition of political adaptation, and the question of who bears the costs of historical upheavals. Thus, the novel tells less "the" story of Romania or France than a European experience of hope, rupture and memory that shaped the 20th century as a whole.

Cătălin Mihuleac paints a multifaceted panorama of Franco-Romanian relations that goes far beyond a mere historical narrative of friendship. The relationship between France and Romania appears as a cultural project, a moral hope, but also as a fragile construct that repeatedly came under political and ideological pressure throughout the 20th century.

From the outset, France in the novel is less a real state than a cultural ideal. The character of the French officer Marcel Fontaine embodies the Francophile yearning deeply rooted in Romanian history. France represents education, rationality, humanism, and a European orientation intended to extricate Romania from the tension between Russian influence and its own political instability. Mihuleac thus draws on a historically documented phenomenon: the role of France as a cultural model for the Romanian elites since the 19th century.

The French language plays a particularly significant role. Fontaine teaches French, and his students—the "Demoiselles de Fontaine"—become bearers of a cultural affinity with France. Language here functions both as a medium of belonging and as a threat. Under the communist regime, this very affinity with French culture becomes a source of suspicion, leading to persecution and repression. This gives Franco-Romanian relations a tragic dimension: what was once considered cultural capital later becomes a liability. Mihuleac vividly demonstrates how political systems reinterpret and instrumentalize cultural ties. France remains a moral reference point in the characters' memories, while the Romanian state treats this memory as a threat.

In the novel, however, this Francophilia is not idealized, but rather examined critically through narrative. Fontaine introduces French values ​​into an environment characterized by archaic hierarchies, structures of violence, and corruption. The Franco-Romanian relationship thus appears as an asymmetrical dialogue. France acts as the teacher, Romania as the willing but recalcitrant student.

Cătălin Mihuleac was born in 1960 in Iași, a city in northeastern Romania. In his novel, Iași is celebrated as the country's most Francophone city and a cultural center. He began his professional life studying geography, geology, and biology, and worked as a geologist for half a decade. Only after the fall of the communist regime in 1989 did he embark on a career as a journalist for various newspapers and radio stations. This dual perspective—the analytical eye of the natural scientist and the sharp pen of the journalist—continues to shape his literary style. Mihuleac began his writing career with satirical pieces that cemented his reputation as a sharp-tongued observer. He achieved international success with his novel. Oxenberg & Bernstein (French) Les Oxenberg & Les Bernstein), for which he received, among other awards, the prestigious Prix Transfuge for best European novel. With this work, he established himself as a voice that addresses even the most painful chapters of Romanian history with a blend of historical accuracy and literary brilliance.

That Romane Les Oxenberg & Les Bernstein and Les Demoiselles de Fontaine Both works share similarities in their structure and their perspective on Romanian history, both choosing Iași as the central setting for a lost world. Both employ a dual narrative structure, intertwining tragic 20th-century events (the 1941 pogrom and the First World War and communist repression, respectively) with a modern 21st-century framing narrative. In both books, Mihuleac combines historical harshness with biting satire to address national taboos and traumas such as antisemitism and moral corruption under Soviet influence. Central to both is the theme of migration and exile, whether it be the flight of Jewish families to America or the forced expulsion of French intellectuals.

The differences lie primarily in the type of historical tragedy that Mihuleac uses as a lens through which to examine Romanian identity. Les Oxenberg & Les Bernstein focusing on the Holocaust and the Iași pogrom of 1941, it addresses Les Demoiselles de Fontaine the Franco-Romanian fraternization and its violent end through Sovietization and Russification after 1947. A key difference lies in the underlying metaphor: Oxenberg's novel uses the trade in second-hand clothing as a symbol for a past that can become either a commodity or a burden. In contrast, in Les Demoiselles de Fontaine Folklore and the French language serve as anchors for an identity that becomes a danger under communism. This makes the protagonists' "moral integrity" the most "acrobatic position" of their time.

Epochal problems and their symbolization

Erster weltkrieg

the novel Les Demoiselles de Fontaine The novel unfolds its plot against the backdrop of several pivotal historical events of the 20th century, which are simultaneously reflected as defining problems of Europe's era. The novel's framing narrative takes place in 2018, when French university professor François Bertrand travels to Moldova to study Romanian folklore. This represents a return to academic and cultural exchange within a united Europe, while the old legends about the Franco-Romanian connection (such as the tale of the Franco-German princess) persist.

The historical starting point is the First World War, specifically the French military mission in Romania under the command of General Henri Mathias Berthelot. After Romania entered the war on the side of the Entente in 1916 and suffered heavy military defeats, France sent a mission to reorganize, train, and bolster the morale of the Romanian army. This mission was part of France's alliance policy in Eastern Europe and reflected its ambition to export military expertise and organizational efficiency.

The relationship during the mission is portrayed as that of a teacher to his students. The French brought technology (Lebel rifles) and discipline to an "excellently disorganized" army. The excerpt shows Fontaine as a kind of "missionary" attempting to educate the "modern savages" (the Romanian peasant soldiers) not only militarily but also morally. In the novel, this develops into a deep bond, in which Fontaine himself ultimately adopts the "Romanian soul."

In the novel, this mission not only serves as historical backdrop but also triggers the entire plot and its themes. It brings Marcel Fontaine to Romania, and for the first time, close, practical cooperation develops between France and Romania. At this point, the central questions of the text converge: the clash of different military cultures, the limits of Western promises of reform, the ambivalence of aid and instruction, and the formation of personal bonds that extend far beyond the war. The Berthelot mission thus becomes the catalyst for a long-standing European reflection on solidarity, power, responsibility, and the unforeseeable consequences of historical interventions.

The war is presented here not as a heroic event, but as a crisis of state order, military discipline, and human dignity. Mihuleac addresses the disintegration of pre-modern armies, the clash of Western military doctrines with Eastern European power practices, and Romania's geopolitical instability between France, Russia, and its own national ambitions. The war acts as a laboratory in which questions of authority, the legitimacy of violence, and cultural difference become visible.

Interwar period

A second historical focus lies on the interwar period, which the novel portrays as a phase of cautious cultural hope and relative openness. After the end of the First World War, a European space of possibility seems to open up for Romania. Territorial consolidation, institutional reorganization, and a stronger orientation toward Western models shape its political and cultural self-understanding. France assumes the role of a symbolic center during this period. Military support is replaced by cultural presence; instead of weapons and discipline, education, language, and intellectual exchange take center stage. The character Marcel Fontaine paradigmatically embodies this transition, transforming from officer to teacher and thus representing the hope of stabilizing Europe through cultural mediation.

At the same time, the novel reveals that this cultural rapprochement takes place on structurally fragile ground. Societal divisions persist; social inequality and clientelistic power structures are not overcome, but merely masked. Mihuleac makes it clear that the European gesture of the interwar period often remains performative. National kitsch, pathos-laden imagery, and symbolic self-aggrandizement replace real political and social reforms. Propaganda and emotional mobilization serve as compensatory mechanisms for unresolved problems. Europe is celebrated without being institutionally or morally grounded.

A kitschy painting with patriotic overtones becomes the central tool in the novel for making the French officer Fontaine understand the deep Romanian humiliation caused by the loss of Bessarabia. The painting is titled The Enlèvement of the Bessarabie (The Abduction of Bessarabia) depicts, in a naive style, a Cossack on horseback abducting a weeping girl across a river, while a distraught mother and two sisters remain on the bank. Petru Negru explains the allegory to the initially skeptical Fontaine: the abducted girl represents Bessarabia, the mother symbolizes Romania, and the sisters stand for Moldavia and Wallachia. Negru eventually acquires the work in a bistro from Russian soldiers who had traded it for liquor. Despite Fontaine's aesthetic reservations, Negru defends the painting as "our national kitsch." Fontaine recognizes the painting's psychological impact and subsequently uses it during his troop inspections like an exhibit in a traveling exhibition, to visually demonstrate Russian injustices to the soldiers and arouse their anger.

The function of this chapter lies in its explicit reflection on the power of images and kitsch, which, according to Negru, possesses a "secret power" and often surpasses the impact of masterpieces. National identity is constructed here not through historical truth, but through emotional effectiveness and simple, painful narratives. The painting acts as a bridge between cultures: through the analogy to the loss of Alsace-Lorraine in the Franco-German conflict, Fontaine grasps the Romanian soul and the hatred of the Russian occupiers. France appears here for the first time as an actor actively supporting Romanian nationalism, with Fontaine using the outrage over the territorial loss for moral mobilization. This moment marks Fontaine's transformation from a detached educator to a passionate patriot of his adopted homeland. He now understands kitsch as a necessary means of shaping national morality.

In this context, Romania appears as a formally sovereign but internally fragile state, whose European identity is intensely lived culturally but not politically stabilized. The French language, education, and lifestyle create an elite that sees itself as European, but whose position remains precarious because it is not protected by robust democratic structures. The novel reveals a central diagnosis here: the interwar period produces a European identity without resilience. What was intended as cultural openness proves, in retrospect, to be a transitional phase whose promise collapses almost without resistance at the next political upheaval—the triumph of totalitarian ideologies.

communism

The third and most dramatic historical turning point in the novel is the rise of communism after 1945, portrayed as a radical break with civilization. In Chapter 9, Romania's political climate darkens drastically due to advancing Sovietization. The newly formed Securitate sees itself as the "edge of the sword in the class struggle" and creates an atmosphere of total distrust. Former cultural prestige transforms into deadly danger as Western influences are systematically banned from May 1948 onward. Authors like Charles de Gaulle and Winston Churchill end up on blacklists alongside dictators, in order to stifle any sympathy for non-Soviet forms of government. The enforced Russification permeates all areas of society, replacing Western academics with Russian role models and forcing teachers to exchange their French heritage for the language of the occupiers. France's role here definitively shifts from a civilizational model to a politically suspect element. Any form of Francophilia is branded as a "cosmopolitan" threat.

Chapter 10 forms the dramatic climax of the novel, when Marcel Fontaine, who had lived in the country for three decades, was expelled by the communist authorities in 1949. The destruction of Franco-Romanian friendship is sealed by the persecution of his former students, the so-called "Lot français." They are arrested on the absurd charge of espionage simply for maintaining contact with their mentor. With the closure of the Lycée français in Bucharest, the last bridge to the West collapses, while young women like Michaela Ghițulescu pay with their freedom for their cultural engagement in prisons like Mislea.

This excerpt marks the end of the "grand narrative" between the two countries. Under Soviet pressure, French culture was transformed from a model to an enemy of the state. The banning of authors like De Gaulle symbolizes the "Iron Curtain," which is now also collapsing culturally. Fontaine, who helped build the country, is now persona non grata. This moment of "rupture" is the turning point in the novel. It initiates the persecution of the "Demoiselles de Fontaine" and seals the era of forced Russification.

The political system change not only brings about a new power order; it also entails a complete revaluation of history, culture, and loyalty. Romania's previously self-evident European orientation—embodied by its proximity to France, as well as by education, language, and cultural exchange—is abruptly delegitimized. What was considered progress and belonging in the interwar period now appears as an ideological threat. The novel vividly illustrates how this rupture impacts people's lives not abstractly, but very concretely: universities, schools, and private spaces of remembrance become the sites of political purges.

At the heart of this development lies the fate of the French-influenced educated elite, particularly the "Demoiselles de Fontaine." Their education, language skills, and cultural socialization become incriminating indicators, leading to mistrust, surveillance, and repression. Mihuleac makes it clear that this is not about individual misconduct, but rather about structural guilt: cultural affinity with the West is interpreted wholesale as political disloyalty. The novel addresses a central problem of the Cold War era: ideological totalization, which no longer allows for any neutral space. Biographies are judged not by actions, but by origin, education, and memory. The violence of the new system consists less in spectacular acts than in the systematic destruction of social and cultural continuities.

The novel powerfully illustrates how the communist regime retrospectively rewrites history. Past merits, loyalties, and moral stances are recoded and transformed into guilt. France, once an ally and cultural point of reference, becomes the enemy; European values ​​are discredited as bourgeois delusion. This retrospective reinterpretation generates profound existential insecurity: the characters lose not only their social standing but also the narrative coherence of their own lives. Memory becomes dangerous, silence a survival strategy. The novel thus depicts the long-term psychological consequences of totalitarian rule.

Beyond these specific historical events, it unfolds Les Demoiselles de Fontaine A comprehensive reflection on epochal problems facing 20th-century Europe. Central to this is the failure of universalist values ​​under totalitarian systems. The novel demonstrates that humanism, education, and cultural exchange have no guarantees unless they are institutionally and politically protected. It also addresses the fragility of cultural transfer processes: values, languages, and educational models can shape generations, but are extremely susceptible to political recoding. Europe is presented here not as a stable set of values, but as a historically precarious practice.

Closely related to this is the moral imposition of political adaptation, which the novel makes visible primarily through characters like Petru Negru. Survival demands compromise, silence, and occasionally even self-denial. Morality becomes situational, not heroic. Mihuleac rejects simplistic judgments and instead shows that historical upheavals distribute their costs asymmetrically. It is not the ideologues who pay the price, but those whose lives exist between systems. History thus becomes recognizable as a form of violence that inscribes itself in everyday decisions. Overall, the novel therefore tells less "the" history of Romania or France than a European experience of hope, rupture, and memory. History appears as a process that sediments itself in individual lives and permanently shapes them. Les Demoiselles de Fontaine It reveals how Europe in the 20th century was constantly reimagined, desired, betrayed and remembered – and how much these movements are tied to the vulnerability of individuals.

Marcel Fontaine

In the novel, Marcel Fontaine is conceived as a representative of French universalism and the European civilizing mission, as it was particularly effective during the long 19th century and the First World War. As an officer of Mission Berthelot, he embodies the belief in reformability through reason, education, and moral example. Fontaine represents that historical phase in which France understood its political and cultural authority as setting norms—not primarily through coercion, but through the transmission of values. His outrage at violence, corruption, and humiliation within the Romanian army points to the central problem of this stance: the conflict between universal aspirations and local reality. Fontaine believes in transferable principles but encounters social structures that can only be changed not through instruction, but through profound transformation. In this tension, he represents the historical illusion that modernization can be achieved without power politics, without violence, and without ruptures.

At the same time, he functions as a figure of a failed attempt at a solution, one who nevertheless remains morally intact. His transition from military service to a cultural mission—from officer to teacher—reflects a central European strategy of the 20th century: the hope of securing political stability through education, language, and cultural proximity. "Les Demoiselles de Fontaine" are the result of this approach, but also its tragic proof: what was intended as a civilizational investment becomes a burden and a source of suspicion in the communist system. Fontaine thus represents the historical problem of the long-term consequences of well-intentioned interventions. His presence generates loyalties, identities, and memories that are not politically secure. The novel portrays him not as a naive idealist, but as a tragic figure of European history—someone who does the right thing, but whose actions, in a world dominated by power dynamics, cannot produce a lasting solution.

Petru Negru

In the novel, Petru Negru embodies mediation, adaptation, and cultural depth—a deliberate contrast to Marcel Fontaine. While Fontaine acts from a position of normative certainty, Negru represents a situational, experience-based knowledge. As a peasant's son, soldier, folklorist, and intellectual in a nutshell, he possesses an intimate understanding of Romania's social, mental, and symbolic structures. He speaks several languages—Romanian, French, and Russian—not only linguistically but also culturally. Negru understands that in Romania, loyalty, belief, and action are determined less by abstract principles than by tradition, emotion, and the logic of survival. In contrast to Fontaine's moral universalism, he practices a pragmatic humanism that relies not on confrontation but rather on circumvention, irony, and indirect influence.

It is precisely in this pragmatic stance that Negru becomes a more tragic figure than Fontaine. While the Frenchman can leave Romania and preserve his moral integrity, Negru is forced to remain within the system and adapt to it. His famous insight that "sincerity is the most acrobatic position in the intellectual's Kama Sutra" marks the core of his characterization: for him, morality is not an absolute, but a risky practice. While Fontaine stands up for his principles and accepts their failure, Negru bears the burden of the compromises that history demands of him. He is less idealistic, but historically wiser; less visibly moral, but more resilient. In this juxtaposition, the novel presents two European attitudes: that of the teacher who comes and goes, and that of the one who stays, understands—and pays.

The wedding between the Romanian Petru Negru and the French consul's daughter, Alice, is portrayed in the novel as a magical-realist event. It is not a purely private union, but rather the symbolic fusion of two nations. Mihuleac employs the language of fairy tales ("cosmic," "indestructible") to emphasize the indestructibility of this Franco-Romanian brotherhood. The fact that the "Bolshevik secret police" are already mentioned as potential saboteurs foreshadows the later tragic shattering of this idyll by communism.

Volksglaube

In the novel, folk belief is portrayed as a superior form of knowledge, one that picks up where the "cold perspective of the historian" fails. Petru Negru does not understand folklore as mere superstition; rather, for him, folk belief is an "unconventional path to reality" that makes it possible to fathom the "national soul." A central example is the "Descolindat" (the cursed Christmas carol), which functions in the novel as a real metaphysical force: Captain Fontaine does not win the Battle of Mărășești through tactical superiority, but through the bellowing of a Descolindă, which multiplies the soldiers' strength and changes the course of history. Even the communist leader Gheorghiu-Dej bases his existential political decisions on the "sacred scripture of clay," believing that the matter reveals the "hidden evil of the world" and the unworthiness of his opponents more reliably than any intelligence report.

Folk belief also acts as an epistemological memory, preserving historical truths suppressed by official censorship or political ideologies. While historiography attempts to smooth over continuities, the logic of the curse reveals the uncanny persistence of trauma: The protagonist, Daniel Katz, dies in 2019 during a ceremonial parachute jump, riddled with bullets whose origin lies not in the physical here and now, but rather in the racist hatred of a village from 1934. This timeless causality proves that fairy tales and folklore reflect the "true geology of human nature," as they make the inevitability of fate tangible beyond rational explanatory models. Ultimately, the novel concludes that fairy tales actually advance the world because they contain moral truths and "seeds of European unity" that transcend the mere factuality of borders and wars.

During World War I, Petru Negru organizes supply runs to Odessa, Russia, due to an acute shortage of essential goods in Romania. In doing so, he descends into the catacombs of Moldavanka, a grotesque underworld mythologized in the novel as the "navel of the earth" or the "world of darkness." This subterranean realm is ruled by a smuggling king, a "dragon of darkness," who sucks marrow from bird-of-paradise bones and is surrounded by a swarm of "nymphs" in lace shirts. The narrative blends the profane aspects of the black market with elements of folklore: while Negru ponders tales of dragon abductions, the nymphs place pomegranate seeds in his mouth. This intertwines the eroticism of the moment with a magical guarantee of return. This scene illustrates the permeability between harsh reality and fictional myth, with the black market appearing as a space beyond conventional boundaries.

The function of this chapter is to depict the pragmatism of survival in an "excellently disorganized" army. The acquired luxury goods—from perfumes to transparent underwear—are strategically used to circumvent the system of corruption: they serve as barter for Colonel Anghel's family, who steals his soldiers' rations. In exchange for the lace shirts, Fontaine receives food, cigarettes, and alcohol, which he distributes to the starving soldiers as performance incentives. The novel contrasts Fontaine's French idealism and his civilizing mission with Negru's adaptable intelligence. While Fontaine attempts to reach the "Romanian soul" through instruction, Negru secures the troops' physical survival through his knowledge of Russian and his negotiating skills. This interplay of satire and the struggle for survival illustrates that in Mihuleac's world, moral steadfastness can often only be maintained through unconventional means.

European dimension

The European dimension of Les Demoiselles de Fontaine The novel initially unfolds as a cultural imagining of Europe, a precursor to the novel and structurally underpinning it. Europe does not appear as a political-institutional space, but rather as a network of symbolic attributions, historical longings, and cultural hierarchies. France emerges as the metonymic bearer of a European ideal: rationality, education, humanism, and moderation. Romania is portrayed as a peripheral but highly European-minded space, whose belonging is not territorial but rather culturally grounded. The Francophilia of the Romanian elites, the central role of the French language, and the historically entrenched French support for state formation mark Romania as a "belated European" that does not question Europe but desires it. Mihuleac makes it clear that Europe here is less a reality than a projection screen—an imagined center that one approaches without ever fully reaching.

At the same time, this European ideal is systematically disillusioned and fragmented in the novel. The First World War, the unstable alliance with Russia, and finally the communist upheaval reveal Europe as a space of competing empires, irreconcilable value systems, and asymmetrical power relations. The character Marcel Fontaine embodies a Europe of principles that loses its effectiveness in the face of violence, opportunism, and ideological co-optation. This is particularly evident in the fate of the "Demoiselles de Fontaine": their cultural affinity with France—and thus with Europe—is criminalized within the context of the Eastern Bloc. Europe no longer appears as a unifying horizon; it appears as a dangerous memory that burdens individual biographies. The novel thus formulates a sobering diagnosis: Europe does not exist as a stable community, but merely as a fragile, human-centered relationship that can be destroyed at any time by political systems.

The overall structure of the chapters follows a progression that leads the reader from the timeless origins of folklore, through the harsh facts of history, to systematic destruction and painful remembrance. The novel begins in the realm of myth, symbolized by the fairy tale of the unborn child demanding a Franco-German princess—an image of Romania's deep yearning for a European identity. In this mythical phase, France is established as an almost magical, civilizing force, making Iași the most Francophone city. In the subsequent phase of the story, this connection is fleshed out through concrete individuals like Marcel Fontaine and Petru Negru. Here it becomes clear that the relationship is not an abstract treaty between states, but a precarious cultural process: while Fontaine acts as a "teacher of righteousness," Negru teaches him the "Romanian soul." Thus, a fragile yet profound "Franco-Romanian fraternity" emerges, based on mutual respect and individual idealism.

The turn to tragedy marks the moment when this painstakingly woven network of individuals is torn apart by the arrival of a totalitarian system. With the Sovietization of Romania from 1947 onward, cultural affinity with France is transformed from a prestigious asset into a deadly source of suspicion. The Securitate system destroys individual destinies by reducing people like Fontaine's students to anonymous "lots" (groups) and persecuting them on charges of espionage. Fontaine's expulsion in 1949 seals the end of lived history and transitions into a phase of remembrance. In this final stage, represented by the framing narrative of 2018/2019 and the bitter end of Daniel Katz, the former fraternization appears only as a traumatic echo or a folkloric fragment. Mihuleac thus illustrates that while cultural bridges may be built through the passion of individuals, they offer no lasting protection against the cold logic of power structures that violently rewrite identities.

This article is written in German and can be found at https://rentree.de. Automatic translations into English and French are available. English, French.