VIVID

Dutchmen in Romania

Travelling in Romania as a Dutch citizen, I enjoy a high moral status that I have not earned. Nonetheless, I graciously accept the compliments bestowed on me in honor of their true recipient, Coen Stork. As ambassador of the Netherlands in Romania from 1988 to 1993, Stork was in function during the overthrow of Nicolae Ceausescu in December 1989. Before, during and after, he lent his personal help and the dignity of his office to the cause of democracy in Romania. By taking the side of the revolt when it was still dangerous to do so, and by making his support heard and seen to the world and to the people of Romania, he earned their eternal gratitude. They have not yet tired of expressing it, as I experienced again in a 9~ay visit to Bucharest last month.

Stork's heroism was closely related to his cultural interests. It was through his affinity with intellectuals, writers and artists that he became a trusted partner of the dissidents. His support for them did not cease with the installation of a new regime. As soon as the bullets stopped flying, he hurried to help repair the damage that had been done to museums and libraries in the fighting. Part of that story I heard from my travelling companion in Romania, Henk van Os. "I became director of the Rijksmuseum in September 1989. In December I got a telephone call from a man I had never met, asking me if I couldn't help restore some damaged Dutch paintings in the National Museum of Romania. I flew there with Pieter van Thiel, the head of the department of paintings, and we agreed to restore the best of the damaged works."

When the Central University Library of Bucharest was destroyed by a napalm attack, Stork was on the spot, commenting live on Dutch television. In February 1990 he arranged for the librarian, Ion Stoica, to visit the Netherlands in order to solicit help for rebuilding and restocking the library. "I was in the country for a week," Stoica told me a few minutes after we met, "and all I had collected was $50,000. We needed a million just to get started, and I was feeling desperate. Then out of the blue I got a call from Joost Ritman who donated $200,000. He spoke to other people, it got into the papers, and in a few weeks I had the million." At the end of the year, the Netherlands Ministry of Education of Science voted another million and a half guilders for aid in the form of materials, an automated library system, a training program for staff and restoration to the building. The director of the Amsterdam University Library, Norbert van den Berq. pushed and pulled this project from the Dutch side.

Since then, the level of Dutch support for culture and heritage in Romania has settled into a more normal, formal pattern. The annual report for 2001 of the cultural department of the embassy in Bucharest lists 40 small-scale projects and activities that were supported that year. The Prins Bernhard Cultuurfonds has also been active in Romania since 1990.

As it happens, van Os and I were invited not at the cost of the Dutch government but of the Getty Grant Program of Los Angeles, while our host, the New Europe College, is funded mainly by the Swiss government and a private Swiss foundation, the Zuger Kulturstiftung Landis & Gyr. For a period of three years, the Getty is paying for a program of lectures at the New Europe College by foreign scholars.

As it furthermore happens, another Swiss foundation was the featured cultural donor that week. On April 27th the medieval art galleries of the National Museum of Art of Romania were opened with a gala dinner. The only speaker (for a little over a minute) was Walter Feilchenfeldt, Swiss art dealer, Cezanne specialist and trustee of the International Music and Art Foundation (www.imaf.li). Seven large rooms presenting an outstanding, little-known collection of medieval art were opened that day, thanks to the support of his foundation. He makes no secret of the fact that his grant was a bargain. For a contribution of $1 70.000 toward a total budget of $250,000, he was able to witness within the time of barely a year the renovation and furnishing of a splendid new wing in the former royal palace. "For an amount like that," he told me, "you can't do anything in the west." He was willing to depart from the standard policy of funding only 50% of project costs because the tireless and effective work of the director of the museum, Roxana Theodorescu, more than made up for the difference.

Helping Theodorescu on this project was an expatriate Dutchman named Peter Oostveen. In his way, Oostveen is as reckless a Romania-loving idealist as Stork. Working as a surgeon in a Bucharest hospital, he also runs a contracting firm and organizes local charities when he cannot find one that meets his standards. He has worked with Theodorescu in various capacities, emphatically including that of a volunteer helper, on the total renovation of three wings of the National Museum of Art in a period of three years.

It is the dedication of people like Stork, Oostveen and their Romanian friends and partners that makes it worthwhile to invest in the culture of that country, which is far richer than you might think. As Walter Feilchenfeldt discovered, every penny contributed to the right Romanian project is matched many times over in the blood, sweat, tears and love of dedicated people who have nothing but that to give, but who give to the limit.

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