Bernhard Stolz

One of the foreigners who arrived in Bucharest in the 19th century was a German journalist and teacher named Bernhard Stolz.

Steliu Lambru, 10.05.2026, 14:00

One of the foreigners who arrived in Bucharest in the 19th century was a German journalist and teacher named Bernhard Stolz. At that time, Romania was just embarking on a process to modernisation. Having left the Habsburg Empire under still unclear circumstances, Stolz left Prague travelling eastwards, passed through Pest and arrived in Bucharest where he settled with his entire family. Here he found that young Romanian elites were inspired by modern ideas and ardently desired a new society. Writer Ioana Pârvulescu says the early period of Romania’s Europeanisation, when Stolz arrived in Bucharest, also meant direct knowledge, person to person, of the inhabitants of Europe:

“The cultural exchange in the 19th century was between Romanians and Europeans, especially Germans, many of whom were very close to Romania and the exchange was twofold. The Europeans were looking at a country that seemed far away, a place forgotten by the world, on the other hand they realized that the Romanians were not, as Alecsandri said, cannibals. The Romanians were actually a very pleasant society, Alecsandri said. This is how the fiction of the stranger appeared in Romanian prose, the gaze of the stranger who sees us differently. Of course, this gaze of the stranger also belonged to the Romanians who studied abroad, returned and looked at their compatriots with the eyes of a stranger.”

Bernhard Stolz came to Wallachia and tried to integrate into local society. Although he finds a dynamic, changing world, historian and writer Alina Pavelescu says that he too experienced what all those who had left their birthplace behind were going through:

“This is about Bernhard Stolz’s experience in Wallachia, and about the entire Stolz family. And we might also say that it is also about the entire community of Germans in Romania, who lived like expats, ultimately very similar to those of today, at least at the level of personal experiences and the feeling of loneliness in a foreign land. And this is seen, of course, less in the articles that Bernhard Stolz sent to Prague to the published in the Ost und West magazine. It is seen more in the personal correspondence between him and his wife. As Bernhard Stolz observed, something also noted by historians who study the 19th century, in particular the first half of this century, writing was less widespread among Romanians. Therefore, the sources that allow us a foray into not only the administrative life, the life of institutions, but the life of ordinary citizens, are much rarer in Romanian historiography.”

Stolz’s Bucharest is that also found in the writings of all those who travelled through it at the time. Alina Pavelescu:

“This Bucharest is the Bucharest that processes the oriental fantasy of the Westerner Stolz, influenced also by the contacts and friendship he has with C. A. Rosetti at that time and, probably, by the entire circle in which Stolz moves, given that at one point he also gave Rosetti English lessons. The picture he paints of Bucharest is that of a city like a bazaar where East meets West, Muslims meet Christians, and in which there is also a sense of the Wild West, that is to say a Wild East of the European West. There is also a sense of El Dorado, a place where you can start your life from scratch, if you are willing to dig hard enough, figuratively, for gold. And this is what brings some of those foreigners to a city that does not even have the stability that it would achieve after 1866.”

Ioana Pârvulescu found in Stolz’s writings and those of his family fragments of a tragic existence.

“The letters are genuine masterpieces and the fate of these people takes you completely by surprise, as it often happens in life. Two letters in particular stand out as very moving. In one of them he recounts how his wife gave birth to a boy on one bed, while their daughter was dying on the bed next to her. We can imagine what such a letter might sound like. If it had been in a film today, we would have said that it was a melodrama, that it was an invention and that it did not happen. But in that century, such things happened quite often. Equally moving is Dora Stolz’s letter, and there are quite a few of her letters, in which she recounts the many problems they had in 1843. It is almost ironic that from one letter we learn that her husband’s luggage had been stolen on his way from Istanbul and from her next letter we find out that he himself died. The letters recount all the troubles she went through, taking care of a young child, sickness and everything else we can imagine going wrong the first half of the 19th century.”