Early life Born in
Câmpulung-Muscel, Gyr was the son of actor Ștefan "Coco" Dumitrescu. When he was 3, his family moved to
Craiova, where he did his secondary studies at the
Carol I High School. Starting in 1924, he studied at the Faculty of Letters and Philosophy of the
University of Bucharest, where he received his
Ph.D. in Literature and became a Senior Lecturer. In 1927 he married Flora, with whom he had a daughter, Simona Luminița.
Iron Guard membership In the 1930s he published in right-wing, nationalist literary magazines such as
Gândirea, Gând Românesc,
Sfarmă-Piatră, Decembrie, Vremea, Revista Mea, and Revista Dobrogeană, and in the newspapers
Cuvântul,
Buna Vestire, and Cuvântul Studențesc. He joined the
Iron Guard fascist movement, becoming in time its commander in the
Oltenia region.
In prison Gyr was imprisoned for 20 years and he was never completely rehabilitated as a writer. In January 1941, after the
Legionnaires' rebellion was put down by the
Ion Antonescu regime, he was sentenced to 12 years in prison, for inciting the crowd. The poem called — in the style of a rally to war — the 'Romanian nation', symbolized by generic Romanian Christian names, to revolt. It had been issued as the last wave of brutal
collectivization was taking hold of rural Romania (a process which lasted between 1949 and 1962). An English translation of the poem: Not for a heaped shovel of ruddy hot bread, nor for barns full of grain, nor for fields full of corn, instead for your heavens to be free of dread rise up now Gheorghe, rise up now Ion! For the blood of your folk flowing red through the drains, for your beautiful song which was stifled at morn, for the tears of your sun, left imprisoned in chains, rise up now Gheorghe, rise up now Ion! Not so that your fury sinks teeth into bars, but to sing as you fill, on the crest of the dawn, a heap of horizons and a hatful of stars, rise up now Gheorghe, rise up now Ion! So that freedom you drink, flowing fresh from the pail, and to heavenly whirlpools be mightily drawn, while apricot buds shake on you, merry hail, rise up now Gheorghe, rise up now Ion! And so, as you kindle your kisses on fires, on thresholds, on doors, and on icons forlorn, on all that is free, and to freedom aspires, rise up now Gheorghe, rise up now Ion! Rise up now Gheorghe on chains and on ropes! Rise up now Ion on flesh and on bone! And high, to the storm-light which shines on your hopes, rise up now Gheorghe, rise up now Ion! (From
Romanian Poetry from its Origins to the Present,
Daniel Ioniță, Australian-Romanian Academy Publishing, Sydney, 2020) Gyr was sent to
Jilava Prison to wait for the ultimate penalty. He appealed the sentence, which was commuted to life imprisonment. He served only six years, two of which (at
Aiud Prison) with chains at his feet. Although severely ill (
hepatitis,
tuberculosis,
haemophilia,
gangrened
rectal prolapse), he was refused any medical assistance, was starved and tortured. Altogether he served 16 years in communist prisons (1945–1956; 1958–1964). In 1963–1964 all surviving political prisoners had to be released, upon pressure from the
West.
Collaboration with the Securitate After his release from prison in 1964 he was constantly tailed by the Romanian secret police, the
Securitate. Persuaded to use their perceived expertise in
ethnocracy, Radu Gyr and
Nichifor Crainic wrote propaganda articles for
Glasul Patriei ('The Voice of the Fatherland') – later called
Tribuna României – a newspaper published by the Securitate targeting exiled Romanians abroad.
Death and legacy Gyr died in 1975 in
Bucharest, and was buried in the city's
Bellu Cemetery. In 2012, his remains and those of his wife (who died in 1984) were moved to
Petru Vodă Monastery, in
Poiana Teiului,
Neamț County. In 2010, a street in the
Mănăștur district of Cluj-Napoca is named after him. In 2022, the
USR party requested that the name of Radu Gyr Street be changed to
Queen Helen Street. In 2025, the
Elie Wiesel National Institute for Studying the Holocaust in Romania renewed the request for a name change. ==Published works==