Weiss, a PhD student at the Babeș Bolyai University in Cluj (Kolozsvár), was handed the Romanian Ministry of Interior’s decision to ban him from the country for five years after landing at Cluj airport. He is currently in Hungary.
“I am sorry to say that all my current appointments in Romania will have to be postponed, having been forbidden entry until September 11th, 2023. It seems that i “pose a threat to the national security” of said country,” Weiss wrote in French, English and Romanian on his Facebook page.
Weiss, a linguist, writer and poet has occassionaly written commentaries about Romania under the pseudonym Modeste Schwartz. He was also an active supporter of the ethnic Hungarian folk dance movement “táncház” in Romania.
The decision of the Romanian Ministry of Interior
In an interview with Hungarian news agency MTI Weiss asked: “How could I have threatened the national security of Romania? With poems? With grammatical analyses?”.
Romanian writer Alexandru Petria wrote that Weiss is the type of “uncomfortable, non-partisan intellectual whose texts sting like inadvertently touching a nettle.”
