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Tag: George Valentin Bibescu

  • Prince George Valentin Bibescu

    Prince George Valentin Bibescu

    A writer and recipient of an award from the French Academy, Martha was also a very skilled diplomat. She made a striking pair with Prince Bibescu. Born in April 1880 in Bucharest, George Valentin Bibescu was a direct descendant of ruler Constantin Brâncoveanu and the nephew of ruler Gheorghe Bibescu, who ruled over Wallachia during the 1848 revolution in the Romanian Principalities. His nephew, George Valentin, was not as interested in politics as his uncle, but was an innovator in other fields. Bibescu and the son of the industrialist George Assan were the first in Romania to own an automobile. In 1929, George Valentin Bibescu was also the first man to cross the Sahara desert by car, leaving from Dakkar and finishing the journey in Oran.



    Academic Emanuel Badescu, who has done a lot of research into Prince Bibescus biography, tells us more: “Reading one of his diaries, I discovered that his first passion was the navy, but he gave it up rather quickly and took up car racing. In 1900 he even travelled by car from Geneva to Bucharest, driving more than 1,800 kilometres. George Valentin Bibescu was also interested in aviation. He was an equally good sharpshooter and won the Grand Prize of the Sharpshooting Society for a few years in a row. Looking at everything he did, we can safely say he was a pioneer at world level. It was also Bibescu who inaugurated the Paris-Dakkar rally at the start of the 20th century, while at home, he inaugurated the Romanian Automobile Club, founded the National Aeronautics League, and flew over Bucharest in a balloon in 1906. He was an adventurer all his life. In 1909, the prince invited the great French aviator Louis Bleriot to Bucharest for a flight demonstration. Bleriot performed some stunning acrobatics at the Baneasa race tracks in front of an audience that included Queen Elisabeth, the wife of King Carol I, prominent politicians and George Valentin Bibescu s own wife, Marta Bibescu.“



    Next to the navy, car racing and travels, George Valentin Bibescu was also interested in aviation, being the first Romanian to hold a pilot licence. In 1911, he established the first flight school in the country and the following year was among the founders of the National Air League, whose purpose was to train pilots and purchase aircraft for the army. In 1930, he became the president of the International Aeronautics Federation. Bucharest owes him the building of its first airport, located in Baneasa, on the northern edge of the city, on land inherited by Bibescu from an aunt.



    Unfortunately, his passion for flight had dramatic consequences as far as he was concerned, Emanuel Badescu tells us: “An event that marked George Valentin Bibescu profoundly took place during a long trip he made from Paris to Saigon in 1931. Flying on Indian territory, the plane carrying him, Radu Beller and two other persons was attacked by a group of eagles. The plane caught fire during landing. Trying to save the aviator Radu Beller, Bibescu was himself injured in his legs from the knees down.



    After this accident, Bibescu walked for a while supported by clutches, but he did recover and resumed his adventures and travels. He was always supported, albeit sometimes from a distance, by his wife, whose own adventures were of a more intellectual nature. While they were very fond of each other, they allowed each other the space to pursue their different interests.



    Emanuel Badescu: “From this point of view, they were the perfect couple. They were very fond of each other, but also very independent. They trusted each other completely. Moreover, Martha Bibescu was very proud of the aristocratic origin of her husband, who was a direct descendant of Constantin Brancoveanu on his fathers side and could trace his origins back to Napoleon Bonaperte on his mothers side.



    George Valentin Bibescu died at the age of 61, on July 2 1941, after a long battle with cancer.

  • RRI Encyclopedia Princess Martha Bibescu

    RRI Encyclopedia Princess Martha Bibescu

    Princess Martha Bibescu was born 130 years ago, on January 28th 1886 into a family of boyars, which gave the Romanian principalities rulers and kings. A travel enthusiast with a keen spirit of adventure (she was the wife of one of Romanias first aviators, prince George Valentin Bibescu) Martha established various diplomatic relations, not only at an intellectual level, thanks to the large circle of acquaintances she had at home and abroad. She got acquainted with Marcel Proust, at that time a friend to her cousins Anton and Emanuel Bibescu, while part of her rich correspondence included Britains Labour Prime Minister Ramsay McDonald as well as Ann and Neville Chamberlain, the British conservative Prime Minister. In order to cultivate such relations one needed to be part of certain circles and also to have the right education. Here is art critic Doina Mandru with more on Martha Bibescus personality.


    “Martha, as many other Romanian aristocrats, got her education inside the family, from her father and uncles. Her father was Jean Lahovary, Romanias minister in Paris, Foreign Minister and a leading figure of the conservative party. Her uncles, Jacques and Alexandru Lahovary, were also personalities of the Romanian diplomacy, Romanias ministers in Paris, Vienna, London and Constantinople. Part of her education came from her grandfather Alexandru Mavrocordat, the one she evoked in ‘Europe, the Nymph. But what was the cultural universe of this multilingual princess? She first became fluent in French as her family spoke French at that time; from her servants she learnt Romanian as she confessed in her book, ‘Izvor, Land of Willows’. In this book, she wrote back in 1923, the author makes an X-ray of the Romanian soul as she perceived it in all the 8 estates she owned at that time. It was there where she collected some of the songs, incantations and laments she heard from her servants. She drew up a calendar of the traditional holidays observed on her estate at Izvor, a name that could be translated as ‘Spring.



    All the books she published after ‘Izvor, Land of Willows, were written in French: ‘Le Perroquet Vert (the Green Parrot 1924), ‘Catherine-Paris 1927 and maybe the best-known ‘Au bal avec Marcel Proust (‘At the Ball with Marcel Proust) in 1927. All those books were extremely well received in Paris at the time. In fact the princess was into the habit of turning almost all her major life experiences into literary works. Here is Doina Mandru at the microphone again.



    “Martha Bibescu turned almost everything she touched into literature. She was a keen diarist and wrote her first diary as early as 1904. She kept a daily diary during her trip to Iran. She met Queen Marie whom she admired very much in her youth and whose rival she became at maturity. King Ferdinand is the main character of one of her books. She met Marcel Proust no less than three times and we know that from the writers personal housekeeper. Proust couldnt stand the perfumes Princess Bibescu used, so he kept his distance. Martha met the writer in a literary salon organized by her sister-in-law. The invitations sent by Proust and her replies to him would give birth to yet another book, also describing the mood of that salon. Everything she touched became history, because she herself had a taste for it. Although she saw Constantinople and Persia at 18 years of age, she could discover those places through historys lens.



    Married at only 16 years of age to Prince George Valentin Bibescu, Martha soon became the owner of wondrous estates. One such estate was a the foot of the mountains in Posada, while another one was close to Bucharest, in Mogosoaia, where her ancestor Constantin Brancoveanu had built a palace in the 18th century. Built in the Brancovan style and restored in the interwar period by Martha Bibescu, the palace owes todays aspect to the efforts of Princess Bibescu. Settled in Paris in 1945, Martha Bibescu became a member of the Belgian Royal Academy in 1955 and in 1962 she was awarded the French Legion of Honour. She died in 1973 in her apartment in Saint Louis in Paris.



    (Translated by D. Bilt and V. Palcu)