Radio România Internațional

Tag: battle of Marasesti

  • August 6, 2017

    August 6, 2017


    EXTREME HEAT – Meteorologists have extended the code red alert for extreme heat, but only for two counties in the south-west, where the highs today will reach 40-41 degrees Celsius. Three quarters of the country remain under code orange alert. The extreme heat wave hit Romania on Friday and has created many problems, with a temperature – humidity ratio exceeding the critical 80 unit threshold. As of tonight, until Monday, though, torrential rain, hail and thunder storms are expected to hit the north, north-west and the mountain areas. Temperatures will stay high next week as well, especially in the plain areas. Four people have died and hundreds have needed medical attention because of the extreme heat. First-aid tents have been set up in all major cities to provide fresh cold water to people. Mobile ambulance and medical services have been placed on high alert and speed restrictions are in place on the national railway network as well as on the countrys main roads with a view to avoiding accidents. The noon reading in Bucharest was 37 degrees Celsius.



    MARASESTI – Military and religious ceremonies are held today in Romania, to honour the heroes who died in WWI. President Klaus Iohannis, Prime Minister Mihai Tudose and the Speaker of the Chamber of Deputies Liviu Dragnea are attending today the ceremony marking 100 years since the battle of Marasesti, in Vrancea County, considered the Romanian Armys most important military operation in WWI. One of the most imposing monuments in the country, the Marasesti Mausoleum was built on the field where, in the summer of 1917, the Romanian Army stood against the much better equipped German army. 480 officers and 21,000 soldiers died back then.



    DRILL – The Greek training ship Rodos is having a three-day stopover in the Romanian Black Sea Port of Constanta. The 230 crew members will visit the Fleet Commanders Office, the Naval Forces Warrant Officers School, the Mircea cel Batran Naval Academy and the Romanian Navy Museum. Civilians are allowed on board the ship on Tuesday. On Wednesday, the ship will leave Constanta and will take part in a bilateral drill in the Black Sea together with the Dimitrie Nicolescu Minesweeper and Horia Macelariu Corvette.



    UN SANCTIONS – China and South Korea have hailed the new sanctions imposed by the UN on North Korea on Saturday. The UN Security Council endorsed unanimously a resolution that bans exports and limits foreign direct investments in North Korea, in response to last weeks testing of two intercontinental ballistic missiles. The US President Donald Trump has hailed Chinas and Russias support for the resolution. The tests conducted by Pyongyang have been harshly criticised at international level. Experts in the field, however, doubt the north-Korean missiles capacity to hit the set targets.



    UNTOLD – Today is the last day of the third edition of the electronic music festival Untold, the largest of its kind in Romania and one of the largest in Europe. Some 200 Romanian and foreign artists have performed on ten stages hosted by the city of Cluj-Napoca in north-western Romania. The main stage was dubbed Dragons Nest and is the largest ever devoted to a Romanian production: 100 m wide and 35 m tall. In a very short period of time, Untold has become an international phenomenon. At the first edition, in 2015, it was designated the best festival in Europe, and in 2016 it was a genuine hit, with more than 300,000 spectators from Romania and abroad.



    ANONIMUL – The 14th International Independent Film Festival Anonimul starts in Sfantu Gheorghe, in the Danube Delta, on Monday. At the opening gala, the Mexican director Michel Franco, the festivals special guest this year, will be awarded the Anonimul trophy for contribution to the beauty of universal cinematography. The gala will be followed by the first screening in Romania of the film Aprils Daughter, for which Michel Franco won the Un Certain Regard prize at the 2017 Cannes Film Festival. For a week, the festival will host many film screenings and music shows.



    TENNIS – The Romanian tennis player Simona Halep, ranking 2nd in the WTA classification, is second seed at the Toronto tournament, with 2.5 million dollars in prize money, which is due to start on Monday. Halep, who won the Rogers Cup title, goes straight to the second round, where she will play against the winner of the game between the American Madison Keys (no. 21 WTA) and the Croat Mirjana Lucic-Baroni (no.30 WTA). On Saturday, another three Romanians reached the final tour of qualifications for the tournament. Irina Begu defeated the Japanese Miyu Kato, Patricia Tig eliminated the Russian Natalia Vihlianteva, and Sorana Cirstea won the game against Aleksandra Wozniak of Canada.




  • The Cult of National Heroes

    The Cult of National Heroes

    In 2014, Europe celebrated the centennial of the start of WWI, an event that deeply scarred the 20th century. It was a century that put into practice ideas from the 19th century, ideas that themselves formed in late 18th century, around the French Revolution. Socialism and nationalism, generous ideas that aimed to emancipate individuals and society, had moved away from their original aim and had gone radical. Through the world war of 1914-1918, humanity had spent bloodily the raging energies of radicalism, but much of that energy was not spent, and would erupt in the Second World War.



    Modern heroes are the product of wars that raged across Europe in the first half of the 20th century. Men and women of various social categories went to war with enthusiasm for their ideas. Romanians were no exception, and proof of that are the hundreds of thousands who died. In 1918, when the peace treaties were signed, the descendants of the 10 million dead left by the 4 years of conflict wanted to honor their sacrifice. This was the beginning of the cult of heroes in its grandiose, monumental form.



    Historian Daniel Gheorghe: “After WWI, the Versailles peace treaty established the cult of heroes as a measure of reconciliation and rapprochement between the nations that had fought in the war that left tens of millions dead, politically, socially and morally. Romania was one of the first European countries that had taken on the responsibility of paying homage both to its heroes and to those of other nations that had fallen on Romanian soil fighting against Romanians. Hero day was created by decree by King Ferdinand I on May 4, 1920, one month before the treaty of Trianon, which endorsed the Union of 1918, after 3 years of fighting on the frontline, and two years of diplomatic struggle. In Paris, Queen Marie played a crucial role in the recognition of the union.”



    All communities feel a need to celebrate their heroes. This cult in its modern state form was the result of the traumas inflicted by WWI. Here is Daniel Gheorghe:


    “The cult of heroes also worked during the reign of Carol I, when the heroes of the 1877-1878 War of Independence were honored, as well as the heroes of the Battle of Dealul Spirii of 13 September 1848. In WWI, Romania lost around 960,000 citizens, mostly as a result of disease, epidemics and hardship. At least 350,000 Romanians died weapon in hand, 30,000 in the Battle of Marasesti alone, in July-August 1917, when, on the hottest day, 6,000 Romanians died. The sacrifice was immense, and the cult of heroes was the way of paying homage to them.”



    In the years that followed the war, the cult of heroes manifested in various forms. The most important constructions, in addition to countless cemeteries, crypts, monuments and roadside crosses are the Mausoleum in Marasesti, the monument of the nameless hero in Bucharest, and the ensemble called Heroes’ Path built by sculptor Constantin Brancusi in Tg. Jiu.



    Here is Daniel Gheorghe: “The cult was under the patronage of the Royal House and the Orthodox Church. There was a Society of Heroes’ Tombs, presided over by Metropolitan Miron Cristea. Romania had hundreds of tombs of Romanian heroes, but also those of other nationals, German, Russian, English, American, French, Hungarians, Bulgarians, Poles who died in the first and second world wars. The Society of Fallen Heroes, under Queen Marie’s high patronage, took care of the tombs. Queen Marie had been the head of the Romanian Red Cross, and the member of the Royal House most sensitive to the suffering of Romanian heroes on fields of battle.”



    Heroes’ Day is today a day for all Romanian heroes who fell in battle against the enemies of democracy and freedom. December is a special month, full of symbolism, as it is the month when Romanians freed themselves from communism:



    “Heroes’ Day was set on the day of the Lord’s Ascension, a day dedicated to all those who have given their lives for country and freedom, the heroes fallen in the two world wards, the martyrs in communist prisons, the heroes in the anti-communist armed resistance, and the heroes of December 1989. The significance was that of the sacrifice that redeems, that liberates, the sacrifice that uplifts. Patriotism was the fundamental value. There was even a generation of the national ideal of 1918, politicians like the Bratianu brothers, Iuliu Maniu, Alexandru Vaida-Voevod, Nicolae Iorga, and others.”



    The cult of heroes is the last homage by which descendants value the sacrifice of people who left for the frontline not to die, but for ideas in interesting and exceptional times. But, as Chinese leader and reformer Deng Xiao Ping said, living in interesting times can be a curse.