---
title: "Eugen Relgis"
chunk: 2/12
source: "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eugen_Relgis"
category: "reference"
tags: "science, encyclopedia"
date_saved: "2026-05-05T04:03:21.362889+00:00"
instance: "kb-cron"
---

=== From Umanitatea to Mântuirea ===
After training in architecture, Relgis was enrolled at the University of Bucharest, where he took courses in Philosophy. During the period, he first left Romania on a trip to the Ottoman Empire and Kingdom of Greece. He interrupted his studies shortly after Romania entered the war, in the second half of 1916. Back in Iași after the Central Powers stormed into southern Romania, he was reportedly drafted into the Romanian Land Forces, but refused to take up arms as a conscientious objector; briefly imprisoned as a result, he was in the end discharged for his deafness.
Resuming his publishing activity upon the end of war, Eugen Relgis began publicizing his humanitarianist and pacifist agenda. In summer 1918, Relgis became one of the contributors to the Iași-based review Umanitatea ("The Humanity" or "The Human Race"). Historian Lucian Boia, who notes that Umanitatea was published when Romania's temporary defeat seemed to announce sweeping political reforms, believes that the magazine mainly reflected the "nebulous" agenda of a senior editor, the Bessarabian journalist Alexis Nour. In addition to Relgis and Nour, Umanitatea enlisted contributions from Ludo and Avram Steuerman-Rodion. The short-lived magazine, Boia writes, supported land reform, labor rights and, unusually in the context of "pronounced Romanian antisemitism", Jewish emancipation. On his own, Relgis published a magazine of the same title, issued during 1920. According to one account, Umanitatea was closed down by Romania's military censorship, which kept a check on radical publications. In 1921, an unsigned chronicle in the Cluj-based Gândirea journal recognized in Relgis "the kind and enthusiastic young man who was propagating [...] the religion of man through Umanitatea magazine".
Relgis resumed his literary activity early in the interwar period. He authored his ideological essay Literatura războiului și era nouă (Bucharest, 1919); another such piece, Umanitarism sau Internaționala intelectualilor ("Humanitarianism or the Intellectuals' Internationale"), taken up by Viața Românească in 1922. Viața Românească also published Relgis' abridged translation of The Biology of War, a pacifist treatise by German physician Georg Friedrich Nicolai. 1922 witnessed the birth of Relgis' manifesto Principiile umanitariste ("Humanitarianist Principles"), which offered Relgis' own conclusions on world peace, while reaffirming the need to create an international pacifist forum of intellectuals. It carried a preface by Nicolai.
Relgis also set up the First Humanitarianist Group of Romania, as well as a leftist library, Biblioteca Cercului Libertatea ("Freedom Circle Library"). Joined in such efforts by the veteran anarchists Han Ryner and Panait Mușoiu, Relgis also circulated an Apel către toți intelectualii liberi și muncitorii luminați ("Appeal to All the Free Intellectuals and the Enlightened Workers"). Before 1932, the Humanitarianist Group created some 23 regional branches in Greater Romania. Beginning 1925, Relgis also represented Romanian pacifists within the War Resisters' International.
In the meantime, he continued to publish sporadic poems, such as Ascetism ("Asceticism"), featured in Gândirea. The year 1923 witnessed the beginnings of a friendship between Relgis and the aspiring pacifist author George Mihail Zamfirescu. Relgis prefaced Zamfirescu's book Flamura albă ("The White Flag"), and contributed to Zamfirescu's magazine Icoane Maramureșene ("Maramureș Icons"). A prose volume, Peregrinări ("Wanderings"), saw print with Editura Socec the same year. Relgis also published, in 1924, the 3 volumes of his main novel Petru Arbore (a Bildungsroman named after its main protagonist). Two new volumes of his topical essays saw print in later years: the first one, published by the printing offices of fellow journalist Barbu Brănișteanu, was Umanitarism și socialism ("Humanitarianism and Socialism", 1925); the second, printed in 1926, was titled Umanitarismul biblic ("Humanitarianism in the Bible"). His press activity included contributions to Zionist papers: a writer for Știri din Lumea Evreiască, he was also briefly on the staff of Zissu's Mântuirea.