Ionel Gherea

Ionel Gherea, also known as Ioan Dobrogeanu-Gherea or Ion D. Gherea (Francized J. D. Ghéréa; 1895 – November 5, 1978), was a Romanian philosopher, essayist, and concert pianist. The son of Constantin Dobrogeanu-Gherea, a Marxist theoretician and critic, and the brother of communist militant Alexandru "Sașa" Gherea, he discarded their political and literary influence, being more interested in the aestheticism of his brother-in-law, Paul Zarifopol. As a youth, Zarifopol took him to meet playwright Ion Luca Caragiale and his family. Gherea's debut as a writer was a 1920 novel written jointly with Luca Caragiale, which was also his only contribution to the genre.

Enjoying national success as an accompanist for George Enescu, Gherea was also a respected literary essayist, and a noted Romanian phenomenologist, ontologist, and philosopher of art; his lasting friendship with philosopher Constantin Noica transcended ethnic and ideological barriers. An anti-authoritarian, Gherea was repressed by during the first decade of Romanian communism, but reemerged in the 1960s as a memoirist and Nietzsche translator.

Born into a Jewish family in Ploiești, he was the third child of Marxist Constantin Dobrogeanu-Gherea and his wife Sofia (née Parcevska, or Parcevskaia). The family originated in Yekaterinoslav, a Ukrainian part of the Russian Empire: patriarch Gherea fled to Romania to escape persecution for his political activism, and worked menial jobs before getting his break in journalism. At Iași, he married Sofia; she was the daughter of a Polish gourmet chef, who was also Gherea's business associate. Around the time of Ionel's birth, his father, mother, and his grown-up siblings were managing the Ploiești Train Station Restaurant, a venue for commercial and literary transactions, but also a hangout for Romanian and exile Russian Marxists, including Leon Trotsky and Pavel Axelrod. Alexandru soon made an impact as a revolutionary socialist, and later communist, militant.

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