Selected text
My brother passed the final examination here [in Marosvasarhely], at the catholic gymnasium. After that my brother was sent to study to Vienna. He didn’t want to go to university, he adored the wood industry. He said he didn’t want to be sent to university, because he wanted to work in the wood industry, he adored woods, he adored timber. But my father kept on repeating: ‘High school degree? I have a high school degree, let my son have a superior education!’ So he went to Vienna and enrolled to the academy of commerce. He said in vain: ‘Daddy, I won’t go to university, I want to work in the wood industry!’ Daddy used to tell me as well: ‘My child, I don’t mind if you get married to a shoemaker, but not to someone in the wood industry! Because wood doesn’t grow on the asphalt. Thus you have to live your life in a forest or village.’ My brother wouldn’t listen to it. In his fourth year daddy went to Vienna to visit his son and to take a look at his course record. There was nothing written in it. He says: ‘How’s that? Aren’t you attending the university? Pack up and come home.’ So daddy was very strict and very determined. Anyway, he made the profit out of this on the ‘ladies’, that he learnt English and German perfectly. My father said: ‘It was quite an expensive course, you could have learnt German much cheaper in Szeben or even in Brasso.’ However he saw the world, more than in Gyergyovarhegy.
Period
Interview
Bella Steinmetz