The fascist, Romanian ultranationalist and orthodox mayor of Chisinau, Reinhold Scheibler

Yes, I’m not kidding, the title is as correct as possible. Reinhold Scheibler is known as the first to translate Eminescu’s Luceafar into German, but his life is much more interesting.

Scheibler was born in 1889 in Berlin. I don’t know under what circumstances he arrived in Chisinau, but already in the 1920s, he was a teacher of German and French at the Commercial High School in Chisinau. He was also a teacher at the Military High School in Chisinau, but also at the famous one Military High School from Dealu Monastery.

Also in the interwar period, Reinhold Scheibler got involved in politics. It was affiliated National Agrarian Party (of Octavian Goga, whose poems he translated into German)and then National Christian Party. Both parties were strongly anti-Semitic, fascist, pro-n@zist, ultra-nationalist, but, most importantly, orthodox. Nevertheless, Scheibler became one of the leaders of the Chisinau branch of this party.

In the 1937 elections, he ran for the Senate on behalf of the Christian National Party. Although he was not elected, he was elected to the local council in Chisinau. In the 1937 elections, the PNC got a modest score of 9%, but in Bessarabia broke, being in 2nd place, after PNL (in Balti county it was even in 1st place, and in Lapusna county, which included Chisinau, in 2nd place). Despite this fact, as a result of some political maneuvers, the PNC took over the government, with the support of King Carol II and the trasists from the PNL and the National Peasant Party. I will not now detail all the stupid things that Octavian Goga did while he was prime minister, but I will focus on Scheibler – with the support of the government, he became the mayor of Chisinau. academician Stefan Ciobanu, also from Bessarabia, made fun of the PNC, saying that the ultra-nationalist Romanian Orthodox are led by the Catholic Scheibler.

He remained in this position only for a few months, because King Carol II established the royal dictatorship in a short time, making him the mayor of Chisinau on Vladimir Cristithe son of the former governor of the Moscow Governorate during the Tsarist period, Grigori Christi. Scheibler continued to be an important official of the Carol II regime, managing the Chisinau branch of Guards (a kind of scouts).

The last available information about him is that, in 1940, following the Soviet occupation of Bessarabia and Northern Bucovina, he was among the repatriated Germans, following the policy Heim ins Reich of Germany N@ziste. It is not known when, where and why he died.