Henri "Ricu" Wald (October 31, 1920 – July 14, 2002), [1] also known as Henry Wald, [1] was a Romanian professor, philosopher, logician, and essayist. [2]
Early life
Wald was born to a family of small merchants in Bucharest, the capital of Romania. [2] Wald first became interested in philosophy at age sixteen, during a lecture given by one of his teachers. [1] He was forced to leave high school in 1940 due to discriminatory anti-Jewish laws. [2] Thus, Wald studied at a private college for Jewish students. [2]
Career
During World War II, Wald served in a forced labor detachment due to him being Jewish. [2] In terms of his political views, Wald was a Communist and "a radical antifascist". [2] Wald began publishing in September 1944 in the newspaper Tribuna poporului (The People's Tribune). [2] In addition, he also contributed to several additional leftist periodicals and to some cultural publications as well. [2] Wald graduated from the faculty of philosophy at the University of Bucharest in 1946, after writing a dissertation called “The Petty Bourgeois Mentality.” [1] [2] Wald became a professor of philosophy in Bucharest in 1948, a job which he occupied until 1962 (when he was fired due to his opposition to the official " nationalist-communist" stance of the then-Romanian government). [2] Wald worked in several other educational institutions as well until his retirement in 1983. [2] Due to his political commitments, Wald also worked in the propaganda department for the Communist Romanian regime in the late 1940s and early 1950s. [2] Later on in his life, Wald became significantly closer to Judaism, which he thought was a "matrix of humanist thinking". [2] Late in his life, the Romanian Radio Broadcasting Company’s Center for Oral History (C.O.H.) conducted an interview with Wald where he talked about and discussed his life story. [1] Wald died in 2002, at the age of 80. [2] [1]
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