Henri Joseph Stahl (also known as Henric, Enric, or Henry Stahl; April 29, 1877 – February 18, 1942) was a Romanian stenographer, graphologist, historian and fiction writer. Born to educated immigrant parents, he was a friend and disciple of Nicolae Iorga, doyen of modern Romanian historiography. Much of his work in the field resulted in a monographic and conservationist study of his native Bucharest, which was published by Iorga in 1910.
Stahl created an original system of a stenography, which worked as one of the basic Romanian stenography standards, and, as resident expert at the National Archives, set up the Romanian school of graphology and paleography. The author of humorous stories and memoirs, he also contributed the novel Un român în lună ("A Romanian on the Moon"), seen as one of the pioneering works in Romanian science fiction.
In addition to his scholarly and literary work, Stahl worked as a stenographer for public institutions, which allowed him to witness significant events in Romanian political history, and was a distinguished veteran of World War I. Stahl was the father of sociologist Henri H. Stahl and of novelist Henriette Yvonne Stahl, as well as the stepfather of Șerban Voinea, a political thinker and militant of the Romanian Social Democratic Party.
Biography
Origins and early life Henri Stahl was the son of an Orientalist and lexicographer, Joseph "Iosif" Stahl (1820–1890), described in sources as "a cross between an Alsatian man and a Swiss woman",Ioanid, p. 40 or, in the Stahls' genealogy, as a Bavarian baron.Bălaj, p. 24. See also Mihăilescu, pp. 36–37 According to Henriette Yvonne Stahl, her grandfather was originally active in the Kingdom of Greece, in service to King Otto, before being taken prisoner by the Ottoman Empire.Bălaj, p. 24 He owed his relocation to Wallachia (an autonomous subject of the Ottomans) to the intercession of Prince Barbu Dimitrie Știrbei, who employed him as a Dragoman of the court.Bălaj, p. 24; Ioanid, p. 40 Reportedly, his second wife, Irma Niard, known in Romanian as Irina Stahl,Anuarul Bucurescilor, p. 149 was from a Normand family, the orphaned daughter of a prize-winning painter. From Joseph's earlier marriage, Henri had a half-sister, Ana "Nety" Stahl (1853–1929).Bălaj, pp. 24–25
The Stahls lived in Wallachia, and later in unified Romania as pedagogues and owners of a boarding school (although Irma never learned Romanian). By the time of Henri's birth, Joseph had had a lengthy career in publishing, with phrasebooks for German, French, or Romanian, beginning with the 1853 Kleine Walachische Sprachlehre.Angheluță et al., pp. 336–337, 810. See also Bălaj, pp. 24–25; Ioanid, p. 40; Stahl, p. 14
Born in Bucharest, Henri was himself a polyglot and a student of history. He enlisted at the city's university, where he became one of Iorga's star students and fervent followers.Stahl, p. 14 According to sociologist Mircea Ioanid, "he made himself famous with his modest but fruitful activities in the public sphere, but most of all through his cultural pioneering". A graduate of the Faculty of Letters, Stahl invented a method for Romanian stenography, which was based on Duployan shorthand.Angheluță et al., p. 335 He outlined its rules in a 1900 textbook: Metoda pentru a stenografia cu alfabetul latin pentru uzul studenților, ziariștilor și tuturor celor care au de scris repede ("A Method for Stenography in the Latin Alphabet, Useful to Students, Journalists and All Those Who Have to Write Fast").Angheluță et al., pp. XV, 335 By then, Stahl had been employed as a reviewer-stenographer by the Parliament of Romania.
Around 1900, Stahl was in France, where he published a guide to the Duployan method and a stenotype how-to: La machine à écrire—machine à stenographier. He fell deeply in love with Blanche-Alexandrine Francis Boeuve, who taught at her mother's school in Bucharest. She was three years his senior,Bălaj, p. 25 had worked as a seamstress, "Voinea Șerban", entry in Geografia exilului românesc, Institute for the Investigation of Communist Crimes and Memory of the Romanian Exile; retrieved July 12, 2014 and had French Jewish origins. Adrian Niculescu, "Români și evrei în exilul românesc", in Observator Cultural, Nr. 133, September 2002 From a previous relationship, Blanche had a six-year-old son, Gaston.
The affair angered Irma Stahl, who sacked Blanche after she let it be known that she carried Stahl's child. Moving in with her sister in Saint-Avold, Lorraine, she gave birth to a daughter, Henriette. The forceful separation and Henriette's health problems as an infant led Stahl to contemplate suicide; Irma Stahl eventually yielded to his threats, allowing mother and daughter to return and live with her in Bucharest.Bălaj, pp. 25–26
Henri legally married Blanche in 1901. The couple soon had another son, Henri H. Stahl. Blanche became an expert in touch typing, and, after her move to Romania, wrote several textbooks of her own. By then, Henri was experimenting with political and humorous writing. In 1901, he became a contributor to Ion Luca Caragiale's satirical sheet, Moftul Român.Iorga, p. 30 He was an imitator of Caragiale, and, according to Iorga, was one of the best, fitted with a "tender understanding of things".Iorga, pp. 183–184 Having acquired a first-hand understanding of the emerging Romanian trends in public speaking, Stahl also published a September 1906 notice on the "style of Romanian orators" in the Blaj review Revista Politică și Literară.Ileana Ghemeș, "Aplicări ale direcțiunii naționale în Revista Politică și Literară de la Blaj, în 1906", in Annales Universitatis Apulensis. Series Philologica, Vol. 6, 2005, pp. 45–48
Oral historian and science fiction author In 1903, Stahl was working for the Chancellery of the Romanian Senate and was teacher at his mother and wife's boarding school on Brutus Street (where he also resided).Anuarul Bucurescilor, pp. 6, 149, 228, 359, 410 Stahl resumed his close contacts with Iorga: Iorga regularly visited Stahl's home and office, where he freely dictated his books for Stahl to write down.Ioanid, p. 40; Stahl, p. 14 Stahl also joined the staff of Iorga's summer school in Vălenii de Munte, where, in 1908, he was teaching stenography courses. Cătălin Fudulu, "Dosare declasificate. Nicolae Iorga sub lupa Siguranței (II)", in Ziarul Financiar, September 16, 2009 Iorga's academic press of Vălenii put out his 1909 Curs complect de stenografie cu vocale ("Complete Course of Stenography, Vowels Included"). Also that year, he put out a French-language introduction to French and German stenography, lithographed in Bucharest.
In addition to such contributions, Stahl preserved a passion for oral history and the history of Bucharest. He walked through the city, made notes of its interesting features, created stone rubs from old inscriptions, and interviewed senior citizens.Stahl, pp. 16–17 His son Henri Jr, who followed him on such excursions, recalls: "He had the special gift of being able to converse with simple people, old and young alike, winning them over with his own matching simplicity, addressing them in their own language, in the very spirit of their mentality."Stahl, p. 16 As literary critic Dan C. Mihăilescu notes, Stahl and Iorga were both conservative adversaries of 20th-century modernization, who disliked popular culture and feared the growth of the petite bourgeoisie. Dan C. Mihăilescu, "Rău de București", in Ziarul Financiar, March 19, 2003 Henri Jr also sees his father as a disciple of Iorga's traditionalist doctrine, or Sămănătorism.Stahl, pp. 15, 16, 17
Occasionally, Stahl returned to fiction writing, producing Un român în lună, the found manuscript of space exploration: a newspaperman chances upon a mysterious text, which turns out to be the stenographic account of a Romanian voyage to the Moon.Popescu, pp. 33, 34, 38–39 Stahl described his novel as more of a "popular treatise in astronomy", a "well-written" and accessible illustration of scientific facts.Popescu, pp. 34–35 In his 1915 review of the novel, Mihail Sevastos of Viața Românească noted: "Mr. Stahl imagined himself a Flammarion of the Romanians".Rd. S., p. 303 According to philologist Petru Iamandi, the book's "rather obvious positivism" is balanced by "enthusiasm" and "funny remarks", but "the lack of a genuine conflict [is] the main shortcoming of Stahl's book".Petru Iamandi, "Romanian SF in the Latter Half of the 19th Century and the First Half of the 20th Century", in Analele Universității Dunărea de Jos din Galați, Nr. 1-1/2013 (Actele Conferinței Internaționale Lexic Comun – Lexic Specializat), p. 224 As noted in 1998 by cultural journalist Cristian Tudor Popescu, Un român în lună can indeed be considered important for the emergence of Romanian science fiction, but it is also "negligent" and "inferior" to its Western models, from Edgar Allan Poe to Jules Verne.Popescu, pp. 33–34 The unique element, Popescu suggests, is the explorer's motivation: he has left Earth out of misanthropy and disgust for politicking, but also for a belief in human transcendence (an "Omega Point", according to Popescu).Popescu, pp. 36–37, 39–41 Sevastos pointed out that Stahl's "social criticism" was of the "aggressive" kind, quoting a passage in which the narrator reads Iorga's initials, "dear as they will once be to all Romanians", into the lunar surface.
Stahl considered publishing the work, and showed it to Iorga for a critical opinion. He met Iorga's opposition, who asked him "to forget the moon and stars" and write a new book using the style around the first chapter, in which Stahl depicts life in turn-of-the-century Bucharest.Manolescu, pp. 231–233 Therefore, Stahl's literary debut was in 1910 with Bucureștii ce se duc ("Vanishing Bucharest"), serialized in Iorga's Neamul Românesc journal, then bound together as a volume issued in Vălenii.Angheluță et al., p. 335; Țurlea, p. 67 Iorga later described Stahl, alongside Ion Agârbiceanu, Romulus Cioflec and Dumitru C. Moruzi, as Neamul Românescs leading prose writer.Iorga, p. 209
The book is feted for its colorful depictions of Bucharesters at the beginning of the 20th century, Simona Câlția, "Henri Stahl, Bucureștii ce se duc", in Observator Cultural, Nr. 171, May–June 2003 but also for outlining the conservative thesis favored at Neamul Românesc. Stahl sees modern Bucharest as a playground for handmaidens and their aroused admirers, riddled with "moronic" pastimes such as binge drinking and visits to the City Morgue. Stahl also protests against the Haussmannian renovation of downtown Bucharest, and proposes that all condemned buildings be photographed and inventoried for historical reference. Tudor Mavrodin, "Orașul care a fost. Colțuri dintr-un București personal", in Revista 22, Nr. 934, February 2008
Stahl followed up with humorous sketch stories: Dela manevre ("From the Maneuvers"), printed by Iorga in 1912, and the 1915 Macabre și viceversa ("Macabre Ones and Vice Versa"). He did eventually publish his science fiction novel: first in 1913, serialized in Victor Anestin's Ziarul Călătoriilor magazine, then as a single volume in 1914.Manolescu, pp. 232–233; Popescu, p. 33 In the latter popular edition, produced at the Bucharest Institute of Graphic Arts, the "astronomical novel" was illustrated by Stoica D. and Ary Murnu.Angheluță et al., p. 335; Rd. S., p. 302 At an unknown later date, Stahl also produced a volume of Schițe parlamentare ("Parliamentary Sketches"), with models of oratory, samples of ignominious behavior, and memoirs of parliamentary disputes.
World War I