This blog post explores German-Romanian cultural diplomacy through academic inquiry and artistic practice. Focusing on the Goethe-Institut Bucharest—opened in 1979 under Romania’s communist regime—Lapadat examines how cultural transfer operated under censorship and how soft power shaped civil society.
15. May 2025 | Roxana Lapadat | Université d´Aix Marseille (AMU)
One of the many powerful moments I’ve encountered during my research was buried in a file at the German Federal Archive in Koblenz. It was a 1990 interview with Andrea Wittek, the librarian at the Goethe-Institut Bucharest during the fall of the Nicolae Ceaușescu regime. On December 21, 1989 – the day of Ceaușescu’s final public rally – a woman walked into the library just an hour after it opened. She had come directly from the square, where the rally had turned into a massive counter-demonstration. Tanks and amphibious vehicles were reportedly moving past the library. The woman had only one purpose: to thank the library staff. “She said it was only through the library that she had learned what freedom really is and what was going on in the West,” Wittek recalled. “She brought us flowers.” The story underscores the subtle but profound role cultural institutions can play, especially in closed societies.
In September 2023, I embarked on my PhD research as part of the Horizon Europe project “NARDIV – United in Narrative Diversity?”, under the coordination of prof. Nicole Colin (AMU) and prof. Dorothee Kimmich (University of Tübingen). My focus lies at the intersection of academic, cultural, artistic, and personal dimensions: examining how foreign cultural policy functions as a form of soft power during times of crisis.
This subject isn’t just an academic pursuit – it’s also rooted in my personal history. I was born in 1979 in Brașov, Romania, under the dictatorship of Nicolae Ceaușescu, and I grew up within the German minority community. My life has spanned three distinct phases of Romanian history: the hardship of communism during my childhood, the turbulent transition during my adolescence, and adulthood marked by the ongoing negotiation between Western values and Eastern mentalities in Romanian society.
As such, my research delves into the German-Romanian cultural transfer, beginning in 1968 – the year of the Prague Spring and just one year after diplomatic relations were established between the Federal Republic of Germany and Socialist Romania. A central focus is the activity of Goethe-Institut in Bucharest, which opened in 1979 as the very first cultural institute of the FRG to be established in a Warsaw Pact country.
As a cultural manager and artist, I’m driven by a constant interest about the role of culture and cultural diplomacy in shaping public perception and influencing civil society. One persistent dilemma in this field is the challenge of quantifying the impact of culture as a form of soft power – often leading to its undervaluation in political discourse.
To address these complexities, my research is structured into three key components:
- extensive archival work in both Germany and Romania;
- field research through interviews with cultural, political, and academic figures, and audience members who experienced German cultural institutions in Romania before and after 1990;
- artistic practice through performative installations, which serve as a tool to explore how audiences from different generations and cultural backgrounds engage with these themes, and how East-West perspectives might shape their interpretations.
This multifaceted approach bridges academic and artistic expression, bringing a layered perspective to the evolving dialogue around cultural diplomacy and its relevance in today’s world.
Digging Through Archives: Unearthing the Layers of Cultural Transfer in Communist Romania
My work has taken me through six different archives in Romania and Germany, where I’ve explored not just official records, but also the human stories behind them. At the Romanian National Council for the Study of the Securitate Archives, I examined surveillance files on the directors and German staff of the Goethe-Institut Bucharest between 1979 and 1990. These include reports from informers and transcripts of secretly recorded conversations – often disturbing, always revealing. The fact that the Securitate considered these individuals and events worth monitoring speaks about the institute’s impact.
At the Political Archive of the Federal Foreign Office in Berlin, I gained insight into the delicate and often difficult negotiations surrounding the opening of the Goethe-Institut in Bucharest. Beyond the formal diplomatic correspondence and agreements, the reports by German diplomats offered vivid portraits of the cultural and political landscape in Romania at the time – documents that blend official stance with personal perception.
In Koblenz, the German Federal Archive holds extensive documentation from the Goethe-Institut headquarter, including detailed annual reports and correspondence. The archive of ifa – Institute for Foreign Cultural Relations in Stuttgart, on the other hand, preserves program brochures, flyers, and other printed materials sent from Bucharest to the institute’s headquarters in Munich, covering events from its founding to the present.
I also spent time in the Berlin-Lichterfelde branch of the Federal Archive, researching the cultural ties between East Germany and Socialist Romania, especially in the realm of theatre. Last but not least, at the Romanian National Archives, I discovered among others the “Gabanyi Collection”, containg important reports of the Romanian Research Section at Radio Free Europe in Munich.
These diverse archives have offered more than just information – they’ve helped me grasp the complexity of cultural transfer in Cold War-era Romania. The reality was never black and white and resists simplistic judgment. What has become increasingly clear through my research is the immense significance of Western cultural institutions in that period. They served not only as platforms for cultural exchange, but also as small islands of intellectual freedom – spaces where individuals could access alternative perspectives and begin to imagine other possibilities. Their impact wasn’t just institutional, it was also deeply personal and very was often linked to the direct actions of the individuals serving the institutions, linked to their perseverance and creativity: cultural events often required more than a year of negotiations, all while under the watchful eye of the Securitate, with no guarantee of success or safety.
From Academic Research to Performative Installations
Drawing from the rich archive materials I gathered throughout my research, I developed two performative installations that explore how contemporary audiences engage with the history of cultural diplomacy, and how perceptions shift depending on the generation and personal background of each visitor.
The first installation, titled “In the Loop of Cultural Times: 45 Years of Goethe-Institut in Romania,” was created to celebrate the 45th anniversary of the Goethe-Institut’s presence in Romania. It aimed to build a bridge across time, connecting past and present through themes like cultural transfer, shifting perspectives, and collective memory – particularly in the context of East-West relations before and after 1990.
The installation took the form of a symbolic reconstruction of the Goethe-Institut’s journey in Romania, from its founding in 1979 through the early years of transition in the 1990s. Using archive documents, press articles, photographs, and personal testimonies, I sought to bring this history to life in an immersive space. Under the pressures of censorship and state surveillance, German-Romanian cultural exchange was often ambiguous and fragmented. Yet, even then, cultural dialogue found subtle ways to persist. Loopholes were discovered, symbolic and literal borders were crossed. That’s why I repurposed a line of barbed wire -echoing Romania’s once heavily guarded borders – into a “clothesline” that held the historical documents. This tension between restriction and expression became a central metaphor of the installation. Visitors were invited to interact with the materials and, in doing so, to physically shift and reshape the “red thread” of the narrative – becoming part of the cultural transfer themselves. The space was also filled with ghostly echoes of the past. Visitors could hear the recreated voices (performed by Ioana Iacob and Niko Becker) of former German Minister of State Hildegard Hamm-Brücher and Goethe-Institut President Klaus von Bismarck, who both spoke at the opening of the Bucharest institute in 1979.
But the heart of the installation belonged to the voices of the present. Through an open call we invited members of Generation Z – artists born and raised in post-communist Romania, shaped by globalization rather than ideological borders – to reflect on what the Goethe-Institute means to them today. The resulting contributions, though created independently, echoed a common concern: memory and perspective. Alma Buhagiar and her team created a video installation, Iulia Enkelana explored the topic through photography, and Vlad Hodrea contributed a sound installation.
“In the Loop of Cultural Times” was successfully presented in February 2025 at the Goethe-Institut Pavilion in Bucharest – an artistic dialogue across decades, shaped by both history and hope.
The second performative installation, “Reflections on East-West Perspectives,” dives even deeper into the evolving relationship between Eastern and Western Europe, aiming to analyse not only the development of mutual perception, and to explore the historical and contemporary dynamics of communication between Eastern and Western societies, but also to deal with the question of how facts can be distinguished from fake news (in times of censorship and propaganda, but also in the current situation of information overload and of the new extremist populist policies). This project is a collaborative work by the artist collective I’m part of – Postnational Theatre Interfonic (interfonic.ro) – and was conceived together with my fellow artists Alex Halka and Vlaicu Golcea.
From June to September 2025, the installation will travel to four cities – Brașov, Sibiu, Bucharest, and Vienna – each hosting an exhibition accompanied by artist talks and public debates. A key component of the installation is its participatory structure: visitors are invited to interact with the space, becoming active co-performers and co-creators of the experience.
To deepen the engagement, we’ve also created an online questionnaire accessible via QR codes at each exhibition. The responses will contribute directly to my academic research, helping to analyse how visitors’ perceptions vary depending on their generation and the geopolitical contexts they come from.
By merging artistic practice with sociopolitical inquiry, “Reflections on East-West Perspectives” offers not only a space for contemplation but also a platform for conversation – across borders, generations, and ideologies.
About the author
Roxana Lapadat
Lapadat is pursuing her PhD as part of the Horizon Europe project NARDIV at Aix-Marseille University, in cotutelle with the University of Tübingen. She is a member of the artist collective Postnational Theatre Interfonic. She holds MAs in German and English Literature, Performing Arts (Acting), and Communication and Public Relations. Prior to her PhD, she was the Artistic Director of Teatrelli, a performing arts venue in Bucharest dedicated to innovative theatre forms. She is a contributor to the performing arts magazine Scena.ro and a guest lecturer in experimental theatre practices at the German Acting Department of the West University Timișoara.