“Humans for Sale” is the title of a play by Romanian playwright and director Carmen Lidia Vidu that depicts a little-known episode in German-Romanian relations, when the West German government bought the freedom of some 220,000 Romanians. German Romanian From the Romanian Communist regime of 1969-1970 1989.
German National Theatre Timisoara (DSTT) brought the play to Germany and staged it in Karlsruhe, the sister city of Berlin and Timişoara.
“This deal is unique in recent European history,” manager Carmen Lidia Vidu told DW.
People are exchanged for money or goods
The German people known as the Transylvanian Saxons and Banat Swabians are the Romania These occurred in the 12th and late 17th centuries, respectively.
Between 24 years of Nicolae Ceausescu’s rule (1965-1989), many of these ethnic Germans wanted to escape poverty and oppression under the Communist dictatorship and emigrate to West Germany.
The government Bucharest The German government recognized the potential and, in effect, sold its German minorities to West Germany for cash, a trade whose details and scale only emerged more than two decades after Germany’s collapse. Communism.
Secret negotiations in Cologne and Bucharest
Working for the West German government was Christian Democratic politician Heinz-Günther Hüsch, who kept all his dealings with the government secret. Security — Romania’s communist-era secret police — are kept closely guarded.
Bucharest has insisted the deal must remain secret and has threatened to walk away from negotiations on multiple occasions.
Huesch, who died in October 2023, regularly met with Securitate officials in the Romanian capital or Cologne to negotiate the number of Romanian-Germans who would be allowed to leave Romania each year and the amount that Bonn, the seat of West Germany’s government, would pay to Bucharest.
Germany paid an estimated 2 billion Deutsche Marks for the resettlement of Romanian Germans.
The amount paid per Romanian German varied over time and was determined primarily by Bucharest based on the individual’s skills and qualifications. Although the exact amount was never released, it is estimated that West Germany paid Romania around 2 billion Deutsche Marks (approximately 1 billion Euros or $1.07 billion in today’s value).
This was in addition to the numerous loans and goods that the Ceausescu regime demanded in return, including limousines, medical technology and wiretapping equipment.
take advantage of people’s misfortune
But that was not the end of it: Germans wanting to emigrate to Germany had to bribe Securitate officials to obtain the necessary papers to leave Romania.
The money had to be in foreign currency, as Romanians were strictly forbidden to hold foreign currency, and as a result many had to borrow from friends and relatives in Germany, some of whom offered to speed up the process or at least not interfere, in exchange for cash.
Recreating history on stage
Director Carmen Lidia Vidu has made a name for herself in Romania with her documentary dramas about the bloody overthrow of the Communist regime in 1989, cities and towns under the Ceausescu dictatorship, and the hopes and problems of today’s young people. Her work is multimedia.
“Humans. For Sale” is based on an extensive investigation of the Securitate archives, as well as interviews with historians and secret service experts, West Germany’s chief negotiator Heinz-Günther Hüsch, and Securitate official Stelian Andronić.
Vidou also spoke to Romanian-Germans who were directly involved, and excerpts from these interviews, as well as television documentaries about the Ceausescu era, are incorporated into the play.
Husch’s family and other people of German descent who came to Germany also speak about this dark chapter in German-Romanian relations in the form of video excerpts and demonstrations.
The play also highlights the fates of those who migrated legally and those who fled: one character, for example, recounts the story of his father, who was suffocated while trying to flee Romania in a tank.
The long-term impact of the deal
Should one negotiate with a dictator? What is the value of human life? Will dealing in goods save people? Did the agreement between Bonn and Bucharest signal the end of almost 800 years of German culture in Romania? How did Romanian Germans fare in their new country? How did their departure affect their German neighbors and relatives who remained in Transylvania and the Banat? These and other questions are explored in Vidu’s play.
Widow has no doubt that Hüsch had the people’s best interests at heart. “Heinz-Günther Hüsch really wanted to help these people,” she told DW. “I was moved by his humanity.”
Issues with overseas performances
“Going on tour abroad is a big challenge for DSTT, and probably for other minority theatre companies, because we have a limited audience back home,” the troupe’s manager, Lucien Valsandan, told DW.
Valsandan said performing in Germany was especially special for the group and they were interested to see how the German audience would react to the theme.
Great attention given to the discussion after the performance
Many Romanian and German audience members were able to relate to Vidu’s plays because they themselves or their relatives were of Romanian origin.
The play has been a huge success in Germany, with demand for tickets so high in Karlsruhe that extra seats had to be made available, and the Berlin show on June 14th sold out, despite it coinciding with Germany’s opening match of Euro 2024.
In Berlin, as in Karlsruhe and Timişoara, there was great interest in the discussions that followed the performances: Romanian-Germans in the audience shared their experiences, and even those who had nothing to do with the events at the time asked questions and were keen to learn more.
Both the play and the debate highlighted the pain still experienced by those who lost their homeland and roots when they left Romania. In Berlin, Hanni Hüsch, a television journalist and daughter of West Germany’s chief negotiator, shared her memories of her father’s involvement and her own enduring interest in the issue and in Romania.
“In a way, the post-show discussion was an extension of the show itself,” manager Valsandan said.
This article was originally published in German.