Radio România Internațional

Tag: Romanian principalities

  • Physician Iuliu Barasch

    Physician Iuliu Barasch

    One of the many foreign nationals who came to
    the Romanian Principalities to contribute to the modernization process was also
    physician Iuliu Barasch. Born into a family of Jews in July 1815 in the city of
    Brody in the former Kingdom of Galicia, back then part of the Austro-Hungarian
    Empire, today in present-day Ukraine, Barasch furthered his studies in Berlin
    and Leipzig, but chose to return to Romania to practice medicine here. What he
    did was so much more: he helped set up modern medical institutions. He
    popularized the sciences through his publications. He edited textbooks and
    actually taught medicine. He set up a clinic which later developed into a
    children’s hospital, thus laying the foundations of Romanian pediatrics. He
    also supported the Jewish community here. He served as a quarantine physician
    in Călărași over 1843-1847 and in Dolj County over 1847-1851. Despite all that,
    Iuliu Barasch remains virtually unknown today to general audiences, including
    among scholarly elites. His works are now being published and translated in
    Romania, as most were written in German. Historian Ștefan
    Petrescu gave us an overview of Iuliu Barasch’s career.


    What do we know about Iuliu Barasch? He was a
    man of numerous talents, someone with an interest not just for medicine, but
    for other fields as well. He was what we call a true scholar. He could have
    been anything he wanted. His parents wanted him to become a rabbi, but that’s
    not what he wanted. Then they wanted him to become a merchant, and actually
    sent him to Moldova to learn the trade, unfortunately to no avail. So they sent
    him to study abroad, and this is where Iuliu Barasch would shine. He first
    study in Germany, then he came back, showing great potential for a scientific
    career. He was also a writer, an accomplished scholar, not just a physician. He
    was interested in the life of his community, in the fate of the Jews. This was
    a time when Jewish emancipation in the Romanian Principalities was on the rise,
    and he was one of the iconic representatives of this movement. He also capitalized
    on building momentum created by the 1848 Revolution, followed by the 1859
    Union. This was the rule of Alexandru Ioan Cuza, which created numerous
    opportunities for the Jews. Iuliu Barasch was in the middle of it all, but his
    life was cut short. After a lifelong of hard work, Iuliu Barasch passed away at
    only 40 years of age, leaving behind huge volumes of works. He worked as a
    physician in the public sector, which was no small thing for a Jew. He also
    taught in public schools, including at the Saint Sava High School in Bucharest.


    Iuliu Barasch achieved all that over a
    relatively short period of time, as he died in March 1863, at only 47 years of
    age. Back then, Romanian society was in dire need to people like Iuliu Barasch
    to help modernize the country, and Iuliu Barasch knew that. He was particularly
    known for helping Wallachia bridge the development gap compared to other
    Western countries. He also served as a press correspondent for a
    German-language newspaper. And that’s not all. To medical historian Octavian
    Buda, Iuliu Barasch brought to the Romanian Principalities the spirit of
    enlightenment, albeit with some delay, something which the region lacked back
    then.


    He brought out a series which has become a
    reference for the field of history and popularizing sciences, Natura, which he
    published at a time when Western countries were following the same trend. He
    made commendable efforts to write in Romania. He paid attention to every detail
    pertaining to modern procurements in the field of medicine, and he stood out as
    one of the first people to signal something was wrong with cholera. He
    suspected the transmission method was not by direct contact. The issue was
    disconcerting. There were two running theories at odds with each other – on the
    one side those who argued in favor of direct contact, while the other camp
    spoke of foul air that was infectious, which you had to avoid at all costs.
    Iuliu Barasch managed to examine all these things, and what he did was typical
    of any exponent of moderate enlightenment – he didn’t discard these popular
    practices from the very start as nonsensical, irrational and primitive. No. He
    thought there is a collective experience that could be instrumental in
    formulating a rational medical discourse based on causes, that sought the
    development of health policies based on prevention and education. And this was
    something truly remarkable. He was part of this specific strand of Jewish
    enlightenment which in the West was best represented by Moses Mendelssohn. He was
    under the influence of Kant, as he went to Leipzig to enroll in a course
    delivered by a professor who was a disciple of Immanuel Kant at Königsberg.
    Therefore, this was the sort of intellectual legacy that Barasch had. In Berlin
    he met with the great medical experts. He went to college with people who were
    considered the founder of modern pathology, the heavyweights of international
    anthropology in the late 19th century. Despite all that, he returned
    to Romania, and it is reasonable to ask if he actually missed on greatness.
    It’s hard to answer, because he graduated with a paper that is considered one
    of the first theses that systematize modern dermatology at the highest
    scientific level. He could have easily stayed in the West, practicing in the
    emerging field of dermatology, and he could have been featured today in
    standard textbooks of the history of dermatology.


    Corint Publishers have recently started to
    decrypt Iuliu Barasch’s biography by translating the volume called Iuliu
    Barasch. Pioneering medicine in Wallachia, a work that brings together a
    number of his medical articles. (VP)





  • False patriotism

    False patriotism

    In the 19th century, the Romanian intellectuals and society were trying to achieve the nation state. In order to build a nation state, historians and philologists resorted to scientific arguments and equally to fake ideas. Fake patriotism mobilized latent energies that eventually had a positive impact on national emancipation.



    In mid 19th century, at the end of the Crimean War, between 1853-1856, the fate of the Romanian Principalities of Moldavia and Wallachia was decided. The national movement that had emerged in the last decade of the 18th century was asking for the union of the two principalities in one state, which was to put an end to the Ottoman influence. This could only happen if the great western powers could be persuaded of its necessity, and consequently the Romanian elites resorted to all means possible to reach their political objectives. One of the means was to falsify medieval documents in order to present a better state of affairs that had preceded the Turkish invasion in Europe and the Turkish conquest of the Romanian Principalities.



    The best known instance of false patriotism was Hurus Chronicle, which is supposed to be the official chronicle of 13th century Moldavia attesting to the Latin origin of Romanians. The one who wrote the chronicle was Huru, the alleged chronicler of prince Dragoș, the founder of the principality of Moldavia.



    Mircea Anghelescu is a professor at the Faculty of Letters of Bucharest University and he wrote a book entitled ‘Mystifictions, which tackles fakes, apocryphal stories, farces and other mystifications in the Romanian literature. One of the chapters is devoted to Hurus Chronicle, which Professor Anghelescu considers a typical manifestation of a historical period.



    Mircea Anghelescu: “There are special conditions that create such contexts in which false patriotism emerges. The context of this phenomenon is related to what is called the establishment of historical periods. When the critical mass is created, there emerges the idea which someone will implement right away. There were talks about attempts to preserve independence, about fighting, as Romanians were surrounded by enemies, so it was very difficult to maintain a certain degree of autonomy. It is that very historical moment that requires and supports the emergence and dissemination of false patriotism. A famous fake that preceded the 19th century fake belongs to a Maltese monk named Giuseppe Vella. In the 18th century he claimed that certain anodyne Arab religious manuscripts were chronicles that included testimonies about land possessions in Malta. It was Emperor Napoleon who had to intervene to save Giuseppe Vella. This phenomenon can change the economic order in a country and produces consequences.



    False patriotism mobilized energies and the critical spirit was suspended. Higher-level thinking was more important than academic debate, and the Romanian intellectuals borrowed the practices of the epoch.



    Here is Professor Mircea Anghelescu with more: “On the eve of the 1848 revolution, which required, through the proclamation of Heliade Rădulescu, the return to a state of affairs existing prior to the Ottoman invasion, people would say: ‘we are not making a revolution, we want restitution which meant a return to the old laws. The proclamation must have been a source of influence for one of the members of the Sion family, who thought that the idea of ‘being ancient could be used to attest to the old tradition of his own family, because he wanted to enroll his sons at a noblemens school in Petersburg, Russia. However, no one could ever prove who the real creators of fake documents were, or the creator of Hurus Chronicle. This fake document, which was published, dates back to the period following the Crimean War, when the future of the Principalities depended on the decision of the Congress of Paris (1856). How did the fake actually emerge? One of the beneficiaries, who was naïve and not willingly involved in the creation of the fake, was the descendant of a boyar family named Boldur-Lățescu. He claimed that he had simply gotten in the possession of the document. Nobody however asked him about how he got in its possession. Who had given it to him, had it been found in the archives? Nowadays, when we have a legalistic perspective of history, this would be the first question to ask.



    Like any fake, Hurus Chronicle was proved a fake much later, after the requests of the Romanian politicians had already been met. Mircea Anghelescu is back at the microphone: “Language was the first argument used by the people of the time in the discussions that peaked and found a resolution towards the end of the 19th century. They compared the oldest document in the Romanian language, credited as an important document, which dated to the late 16th century and had a perfectly intelligible text, with Hurus Chronicle. The chronicle was absurd, the words observed the Latin order in a sentence. It also included forms derived from Latin etymons, most probably taken from Cantemirs writings. The fake would have been striking if the public had had some sense of history, or at least the experts. Critical sense emerges with the development of objective research. So, the first argument was the language. The second argument was related to knowledge about ancient epochs. This chronicle included many credentials: date of writing, signature of the author similar to a notarized document. In the 14th and 15th centuries nobody would have thought of that. The fake document also included descriptions of the Romanians way of organization, similar to that of the Israelite tribes mentioned in the Bible. Everything was ordered according to ecclesiastical rules and the rulers were some sort of bishops. There are descriptions of their dresses, white and red gowns with buttons that showed their position in the hierarchy. But these elements emerged much later in history.



    False patriotism was not an imposture but rather a means of reaching political purposes. And Machiavellianism used for the public good is an art, not a moral judgment. (translation by L. Simion)

  • Romanticism and national identity

    Romanticism and national identity

    Viewed as a product of western thought, Romanticism was often considered a reaction to the universalism of Classicism and to Cosmopolitanism. Tradition, the past and the language of a community shared by all its members were viewed as the fundamental elements on which Romanticism based its view of the world.



    The nation state was the political expression of Romantic ideas. Romanian Romanticism was no exception to the rule, being the first example of synchronisation of the Romanian cultural space with Western ideas. In the three Romanian Principalities, Romanticism came from two sources: French Romanticism in Moldavia and Wallachia, and German Romanticism in Transylvania. Literary historian Ioan Stanomir will now explain the Romanian Romantic project and how it was received in the Romanian cultural space:



    Ioan Stanomir: “Romanticism in Europe and in the Romanian cultural space projects a new image on ethnic communities. This image is actually a reinvention of their identity. It starts with the exploration of the archaeological and cultural heritage and ends with the creation of a pantheon of the nations ancestors and role models. This is a recipe that started from Western Europe and reached the Romanian cultural space with a significant delay. If we look at it from the perspective of aesthetic purity, Romanian Romanticism is a composite, eclectic strand of Romanticism. Many of the Romanian Romantic writers also wrote classical works, such as Grigore Alexandrescu. Other Romantics started as Romantic writers but ended up as classic writers, such as Vasile Alecsandri. There are few purely Romantic writers. Their Romanticism is today perceived as strident and impenetrable, such as the works of C.A. Rosetti. Romanian Romanticism observed the European formula in terms of the reinvention of the self. We have an entire inventory of images, from ruins and ancestors, to the evocation of the pasts military exploits.



    The elites of Wallachia and Moldavia preferred the French Romanticism as a model for the ideas of modernisation and statehood, while the Romanians in the Austrian Empire took the model of the German Romanticism. Literary historian Ion Stanomir explains:



    Ioan Stanomir: “The main difference between the two types of Romanticism is related to the definition of the nation. German Romanticism had an organicist, conservative and xenophobic strand. Its influence can be seen in the works of the 1848 writers and especially of the poet Mihai Eminescu. The latter was most strongly influenced by German Romanticism. Transylvania was influenced by the Enlightenment of the Josephinist type and by the idea of revolutionary ideology. But the revolution in Transylvania was paradoxical, because, in European terms, it was a counterrevolution, being a reaction to the xenophobic excesses of a European revolution per excellence, as was the case of the Hungarian revolution.



    The 1848 revolution was the climax of Romanian Romanticism. It marked the beginning of reforms and of modernisation in this area. Literary historian Ioan Stanomir tells us more:



    Ioan Stanomir: “Romanian Romanticism is represented by the 1848 movement. Its members were all involved, more or less successfully, in politics, by setting up cultural and literary societies and secret societies, in exile, and in the affairs of the country after they returned from exile, around the period 1860-1870, when in fact little had been left of the former movement. Some of these Romantics fell into obscurity, such as Grigore Alexandrescu, others went through a period of mutations and metamorphoses, such as Heliade Rădulescu, while others simply died, such as Nicolae Bălcescu, whose example was later used by the communist propaganda. There were also Romantic writers who abandoned their literary careers and devoted themselves entirely to politics such as C.A. Rosetti. There were other Romantics like Bolliac who was more of a journalist than a poet. It was a group of writers that Paul Cornea called the initiators of a new trend.



    Romanticism has in the meantime become a cultural model, giving rise to a form of standardised culture. Ioan Stanomir explains:



    Ioan Stanomir: “An example of standardised and oversimplified reception is the writer Dimitrie Bolintineanu, who is best remembered for his historical legends, now seen as a kind of textbook for 1848 patriotism. Historical legends became a sort of behavioural guidebook and a way to immortalise certain historical figures, lending them a mythological aura. This type of focus ignores, for example, Bolintineanus deepest and most vibrant romantic opera, the poem Conrad, which is a Romanian equivalent of sorts of Byrons Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage. Byronism was also in fashion among Romanian Romantics, who could not resist the temptation of imitating Byrons writing style.



    National unity was the key to the idea of national modernisation and emancipation proposed by Romanticism, says Ioan Stanomir:



    Ioan Stanomir: The concept of national unity was born out of the 1848 movement. Todays canonical image of ruler Michael the Brave is in fact the invention of Florian Aaron and Nicolae Balcescu, and especially of Gheorghe Bibescu, who used the rulers cloak during official ceremonies. National consciousness is an anachronistic formula that we ourselves project in order to explain behaviours that have nothing to do with how they were perceived in their day. The 1848 Romantics wanted the union of the principalities. Things were more complicated as regards Transylvania and Banat, because the latter were home to a federalist trend that took them closer to Central Europe than towards the Carpathians. We shouldnt forget that the Romantics in Transylvania and Banat had a complicated relationship with the Austrian Empire, many of them aligning themselves with the Empire in order to resist Hungarian republicanism.“




    Romanticism was an artistic movement, a political model and a social trend based on emotions and feelings, which may explain why it still enjoys a good image today.


  • The political class and the union of the Romanian principalities

    The political class and the union of the Romanian principalities

    On January 24th 1859, Alexandru Ioan Cuza, who had become ruler of Moldavia on January 5th, was also appointed ruler of the southern principality of Wallachia in a move that is believed to be the ‘de facto’ union of the two countries inhabited by the Romanians. Three years later, on January 24th 1862, the union of the two principalities got international recognition and the newly formed country became known as Romania. 59 years on, in 1918, Romania completed its territory after uniting with three other provinces preponderantly inhabited by Romanians: Bessarabia, Bukovina and Transylvania.



    In the wake of WW II, Romania lost two of these provinces, Bessarabia and Bukovina. The unification of Romania’s historical principalities is believed to be the first step in the process of creating the national union state of Romania and the 157 years that passed since the event have been celebrated by the Romanians all over the world. Traditional music concerts, military parades, religious services were staged all across the Romanian territory and communal meals were given by the local authorities. Attending the festivities in Iasi, north-eastern Romania, president Klaus Iohannis gave an address evoking the lessons of that historic event and their legacy, urging the political class to reconnect to the citizens’ expectations, rebuild the trust that has been shattered in time and assume responsibilities.



    Klaus Iohannis: “The desire of the Romanians on either side of the Milcov river to be together was understood by the elite of the time who managed to materialize their need into an act of high political ability and solidarity. Actually, there was no political entity or personality of the time that did not put their shoulder to this project. At that time the political stage was also marred by rows, divergences, hidden or open crises. The unification process had to stand up to the old political issues and also to interests from outside the two principalities. However, with maturity and skill the political elites of the time managed to get over all these obstacles and eventually made it.”



    At the events in Iasi, where the guest of honour was Chisinau’s mayor Dorin Chirtoaca, Romanian Prime Minister Dacian Ciolos drew a parallel between the country project of that time and the present one, underlying that his cabinet would be trying to capitalize on the generous idea of union around some widely-shared principles and goals. The Speaker of the Romanian Senate, Calin Popescu Tariceanu recollected that January 24th represented the corner stone in the process of creating the Romanian modern state.



    “The Union of the Romanian Principalities has been a blending of political intelligence and patriotism, a moment when the political elite shared the people’s ideals”, Social Democratic leader Liviu Dragnea said. The co-president of the National Liberal Party, Alina Gorghiu, said the present generation of Romanians has been called to improve the country project drawn up 157 years ago.