The William Totok private collection can be divided chronologically into two parts: (1) the items that Totok created or gathered in communist Romania before his emigration to the Federal Republic of Germany in March 1987,and which he managed to smuggle out of the country in the period from 1987 to 1989; and (2) those items created or collected in the Federal Republic of Germany after 1987.
The first category illustrates Totok’s involvement in Romanian-German literary groups in Ceaușescu’s Romania, such as the Aktionsgruppe Banat literary group or the Adam Müller-Guttenbrunn literary circle, both in Timișoara. Both literary groups represented non-conformist cultural initiatives of those Romanian-German writers from the Banat who opposed the cultural policies of Ceaușescu’s regime.
While Aktionsgruppe Banat was from the very beginning a non-conformist cultural initiative, Adam Müller-Guttenbrunn was created as an official German language literary circle. The latter was under the strict control of the local cultural authorities and displayed a conformist attitude until the end of the 1970s, when several former members of Aktionsgruppe Banat joined it. They succeeded in changing the spirit of this literary circle and promoted a non-conformist literature. This development was stopped by the brutal intervention of the communist authorities in the mid-1980s. The relative cultural liberalization initiated in the 1960s allowed young intellectuals in Romania to access Western cultural products such as books, newspapers and magazines, and vinyl records of Western music. In this intellectual atmosphere, non-conformist initiatives were launched in various cultural fields contesting official cultural policies and social customs. For example, the film Reconstituirea (Re-enactment, 1968) directed by Lucian Pintilie and the rock music created by bands such as Phoenix and Sfinx may be mentioned, as well as the non-conformist literature of groups such as Aktionsgruppe Banat and Echinox in Cluj. After a relative cultural liberalization during late 1960s and early 1970s, Ceaușescu launched in 1971 through his “Theses of July” a “a mini-cultural revolution,” defined by a return to Stalinist cultural policies (Shafir 1985, 107). At the same time, non-conformism did not immediately cease to manifest itself, as the career path followed by Totok illustrates. Aktionsgruppe Banat, the literary circle which Totok founded together with friends and colleagues, was active between 1972 and 1975, when the Securitate dissolved it The group comprised the young Romanian-German writers Albert Bohn, Rolf Bossert, Werner Kremm, Johann Lippet, Gerhard Ortinau, Anton Sterbling, William Totok, Richard Wagner, and Ernest Wichner.
During the 1970s and 1980s, Totok gathered a large number of books, periodicals, and vinyl records which had become accessible due to the relative liberalization mentioned above. In this respect, his contacts with friends and relatives who had emigrated to the Federal Republic of Germany were an important source of Western cultural products. He himself states that he received by post from the West in the 1970s books such as The Origins of Totalitarianism by Hannah Arendt (1951) and the classic volumes of the historian and critic of Marxist philosophy Leszek Kołakowski. He also collected his literary manuscripts, correspondence, and copies of literary works of other colleagues from the Aktionsgruppe Banat and Adam Müller-Guttenbrunn literary circle. Many of these items contained criticism directed at Ceaușescu’s regime, most of it expressed through word plays and subtle ironies. Their criticism of “really existing socialism” was conceived from a neo-Marxist perspective influenced by the authors of the Frankfurt School (Bahro 1978).
These literary texts, most of them poems, were read during public performances, sometimes accompanied by music. Their strong influence on young people in Timișoara attracted the interest of the Securitate, which put their activity under close surveillance. In June 1975, the house of Totok’s family in Comloșu Mare (a village in Timiș county) was searched by the Securitate, following his brother’s arrest. On this occasion, Securitate officers illegally confiscated manuscripts, publications, and correspondence. Among the manuscripts, there were memoirs from the period 1970–1973 and two notebooks with poems in a draft form (Totok 2001, 30–33). In October 1975, the Securitate arrested William Totok, Richard Wagner, Gerhard Ortinau, all members of Aktionsgruppe Banat, and the literary critic Gerhardt Csejka, who played a key role in supporting the young writers (Wichner 2013, 7). After more than eight months of arrest at the Securitate from 1975 to 1976, during which the Securitate tried to artificially construct an accusation of anti-state propaganda, Totok was released due to the publication in the newspapers Frankfurter Rundschau and Le Monde of articles presenting the abuses of the communist authorities in his case. From 1975 to 1977, Totok wrote several official complaints in which he asked the authorities for the restitution of the documents illegally confiscated by the Securitate. In 1977, the secret police returned to him most of the documents, with the exception of the two notebooks of poems, which were annexed to his criminal file as legal evidences. In December 2009, these two notebooks were finally returned to their author by the CNSAS (Romanian acronym of the National Council for the Study of Securitate Archives, the institution responsible for the custody of the Securitate files). This restitution was made in accordance with the legal framework, which aimed at rectifying the wrongdoings of the communist regime, by, among other things, returning confiscated manuscripts to the rightful owners, while preserving photocopies of these documents in the former secret police archives for the use of researchers (D. Petrescu 2017, 125–136).
The repressive measures of the communist authorities continued after his release from prison in 1976. He was attentively kept under surveillance as the files created by the Securitate against his name reflect. In May 1982, the secret police again searched his home and that of the writer Horst Samson and confiscated several documents, including one copy of the manuscript of his memoirs entitled: Projekt für eine intellektuelle Extermination (A project for an intellectual extermination; ACNSAS, I 210 845, vol. 2, 265–66; Totok 2001, 107–108). In this manuscript, Totok recounts his experience during his arrest by the Securitate. After the search, he was arrested again for a shorter period by the Securitate and interrogated about the content of this manuscript. Due to the more and more difficult conditions of living in Romania during 1980s and the harassments of the state authorities, Totok decided to emigrate and he received an exit visa very soon after applying for it. He left Romania in March 1987. Before leaving the country, Totok destroyed the greater part of his personal documents, correspondence, lecture sheets, etc. in order to avoid their confiscation by the Securitate. He managed to smuggle a part of the manuscripts and photos to the Federal Republic of Germany through various channels. He also managed to take a significant number of books from his personal library with him to the Federal Republic of Germany.
The second category comprises documents, books, and audio and video materials collected by Totok after he had emigrated and settled in Berlin. Among these documents may be mentioned an impressive archive of audio and video documents containing interviews conducted with Romanian intellectuals.These interviews represent a valuable source of documentation on relations between the communist regime and intellectuals in Romania. Totok also collected an impressive number of copies of documents from the Romanian former secret police archives (both in paper and digital format), many of them documenting dissident activities in communist Romania. This second part reflects to a large degree Totok’s activity as journalist and independent scholar, collaborating with various radio stations such as Radio Free Europe, RIAS, DS-Kultur, DLF, and Deutsche Welle. Many of these materials were used to document his radio shows or the books that he wrote after he had settled in Berlin.
The items have been collected taking into account William Totok’s academic interests or the topics he was documenting for his radio shows.His academic research covers topics such as relations between intellectuals and the communist regime in Romania, the policies of Ceaușescu’s regime on national minorities, and far-right extremism in post-89 Romania. Many of the copies of the documents collected by Totok from the archives of the former Securitate dealing with intellectuals under communism have been made accessible on line on the website of the academic journal Halbjahresschrift für südosteuropäische Geschichte, Literatur und Politik.
