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Socialist ringlispíl, black and white mayalis, friendly trips and family trips in an increasingly closed world. Only a few decades ago, although we know little, Oradea can be seen through the lens of an amateur photographer, a glimpse into the daily life of the Hungarian bourgeoisie under Ceaușescu.
There are a couple of photos of the Szucs family that will soon be seen in Fortepanon’s private archives: passing a nationwide housing construction pit in the middle of the city panel, a boy with a slimy neck, boating with rubber tires, brainstorming with the old pond; looking in the other direction, there are many cranes. Blocks from socialist Romania are being built, families are having a picnic next to a Dacia, you can almost smell the roasted vineta. Maybe we can walk in the early seventies.
That’s Ceausescu Over time, in the spirit of socialist modernization, the great urban transformations called systematization began: “social homogenization”, which in practice meant, among other things, the swelling of cities with massive settlements. Oradea, which still had a 95 percent Hungarian population before Trianon, will have a Romanian majority from 1973, with the Rogériusz, Őssi and Tavirózsa apartment blocks emerging from the ground on the site of the old garden cities of the old ” Fish-shore Paris “. The healing waters of Oradea, however, of which already Janus Pannonius They also said a painful goodbye, still finding their way to the city dwellers who speak different languages.
A Leica filmmaker with a removable prism machine, he is a photographic engineer who enjoys photography very much, Szucs lorand As an engineer, he himself was involved in the use of thermal water; he designed a heat pipe between the blocks and worked extensively at Felix Baths, formerly part of Premontreys, near the city, where he also operated his office. However, his images are mostly family shots: children, friends, colleagues and excursions, moments of an air that shrinks in Romania, games of shadow and light in private space and system.
In the first years after Ceaușescu came to power in 1965, the Romanian system was relatively more flexible than before, and oppressive and anti-minority policies gradually intensified in the 1970s. However, Oradea still breathed air. more free. For the rest of Transylvania, Oradea was the gateway to the West, in the Királyhág it was still possible to catch Hungarian radio and television broadcasts, it was easier to access books and, with the Ady Endre Literary Circle and theater, life culture was lively, if not like this, like Ady, Gyula Juhász obsession Babies at the time. It was an interconnected and furtive world, with few telephones and many encounters, from which lasting friendships, racy reports, and brave samizdatas were born.
The artist’s middle family Szucs appeared through most of the trösztigazgató agricultural grandfather, father-Szucs Lorand. The communist but strongly aware Szekler director (this kind of left-wing nationalism was a special but not uncommon place in Hungarian worlds beyond the border) included mixed Hungarian and Romanian writers, teachers, painters, as well as the conductor his grandfather’s service. Also featured in a hiking photo: on the road splashing next to a car covered in splinters; a worldly smile in a Transylvanian city with a completely Mediterranean flair, with a striking palm tree.
The trustee’s son-in-law, our photographer, as a technician, was very interested in national historical issues and brought books from Hungary’s blacklist, which were no longer confiscated at the border. Hungarian intellectuals were also able to easily obtain irredentist and chauvinist stamps in exchange for nothing, but the Securitate’s attention to Soviet relations aroused: Szucs Lorand Leningrad – there he began to take pictures – and assiduously cared for foreign grademates in the relationship , which in Moscow compared to a special trip in Bucharest was enough for a Russian spy suspect.
As we look at the private photos of the actually completely harmless engineer, we can be sure that some observation photos of him were taken as well. State security has also systematically monitored him since the second half of the seventies, his phone was tapped (his apartment was invaded with the classic textbook trick: his son was summoned for a lung exam to steal and copy his keychain during the investigation), and was executed. This only intensified when their children entered the age of being of concern to the authorities in their own right. László joined alternative literary circles in Oradea, Tamás made brochures and tried to dissect as a teenager, and fabricated a radio receiver radio transmitter on the plaid spread out here, which would not have posed a serious threat to the system.
The sokadíziglen judge of Oradea Szucs Lorand 1978 descent went so far as to formally request resettlement in Hungary. However, he withdrew due to family disputes, when he had asked in the eighties, a long time not provided by the Hungarian People’s Republic to receive the statement, the Szucs couple, so it became a few days, on paper, for a chance to leave Romania since the two were married. However, finally, in early 1989, they received a blue one-way passport and, packing their lives in two containers, they crossed the border a few kilometers from their city. Leaving behind the companies of Oradea, the juries and the travels, they came to nothing, to a Hungary with a foreign mentality, where they had a hard time finding their place, they had to explain again and again where they know Hungarian once they arrived from Romania (the Major, Laszlo Szucs a year later he was back with Oradea, today he is the president of the Association of Hungarian Journalists in Romania). Home for them probably remained forever Oradea, the imaginary city that, with all its beauty, spent pride, and the wine deeds of decay, existed only in family photographs.
“I do not agree with the common place that the past embellishes everything. I cannot do it to “remember the beautiful.” I still love this city today, more precisely that city. Which was, but is no longer. Only in the memories. (…) Old acquaintances, friends, colleagues have become extinct or have dispersed to four parts of the world while the autumn breeze chases the fallen leaves of the chestnut trees of Oradea. Others are the people, the customs, the colors, the smells … I cannot find the old special atmosphere that characterized this city just a few decades ago ”- Lorand Szucs wrote shortly before his death.
Lorand Furrier was born in 1934 in Oradea in 2017 and died in Balaton, memorial side caring for his son. Her photos will soon be available in Fortepan, courtesy of her family. Thank you Thomas szucs help and a conversation about his father.
You can find more articles in the Weekly Fortepan series at weekfortepan.capacenter.hu. The blog is a professional collaboration between Fortepan and Capa Center.
Featured Image: Fortepan / Szucs Lorand
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