Radio România Internațional

Category: RRI Encyclopaedia

  • Titu Maiorescu (1840-1917)

    Titu Maiorescu (1840-1917)

    The literary society “Junimea”, founded in Iași in 1863, was one of the most important literary, philosophical and political trends in Romania. And one of its five founding members was Titu Maiorescu, a lawyer, literary critic, writer, journalist, aesthetician and politician. He also left his mark on the career of Mihai Eminescu, considered by many to be the greatest Romanian poet.

    With his full name Titus Liviu Maiorescu, he was born in 1840 in Craiova, and died in 1917 in Bucharest, at the age of 77. His father, Ioan Maiorescu, a professor, diplomat and author of history books, was an active participant in the 1848 revolution in Wallachia and Transylvania. Titu Maiorescu studied law, literature and philosophy in Vienna, Berlin, Giessen, and the Sorbonne. Even during his high school studies, he stood out for his ambition and tenacity, graduating from the Theresian Academy in 1858 at the head of his class.

    His intellectual career began at the age of 17 when he tried to publish literary translations in “Gazeta de Transilvania”, the most influential Romanian-language newspaper in the Habsburg area. After graduation, he taught psychology and French. In 1861, he published the first philosophy text in German, influenced by the post-Kantian realism of Johann Friedrich Herbart and the Hegelianism of Ludwig Feuerbach. In his prodigious work as an author, Maiorescu wrote several dozen volumes of literary criticism, philosophy, aesthetics, logic, history, parliamentary speeches, and his diary is a creation that includes over 10 volumes and is considered the longest diary in the history of Romanian literature. On a personal level, in 1862 he married his student, Klara Kremnitz, to whom he had taught French language courses and with whom he would have a daughter.

    In 1862, returning to Romania, he was appointed prosecutor at the Ilfov court, and became a professor at the University of Iași where he taught the history of Romanians. At the same time, he also taught Romanian language, Romanian grammar, pedagogy, and psychology at high school level. He spoke at public conferences on topics and subjects of law, literature, history and pedagogy. Maiorescu’s presence and competence in so many fields may seem excessive today, but the times demanded involvement. It was a period in which Romanian intellectuals were in the midst of the process of reforming the state and reinventing society according to the Western model. At the same time, they were trying to integrate new ideas and models that were appearing in the West. Literary historian Ion Bogdan Lefter noted Titu Maiorescu’s involvement in that considerable effort, an effort that had to be made by a thin layer of elites, and which was not only an effort in a single field of expertise.

    “Everything had to be founded, from scratch, including discursiveness, which is why Maiorescu makes personal efforts. In the meantime, he practices daily in diaries, but as a public discourse he writes one text at a time, after a while another text, watching what happens. At the same time, he witnesses, with exceptional intuition, the way in which what accumulates, and the way in which what accumulates will one day manifest. For example, the end of his preface, a famous one in the Eminescu edition, which he himself drafted against the author’s will, shows us a visionary through this text as well. He uses formulations of looking towards the future. He says ‘as far as humanly possible to foresee’, and what did this mean? It meant that Maiorescu and his group understood the extraordinary value of Eiminescu’s poetry. They read and understood both Creangă and Caragiale, they understood the phenomenon, they saw the direction, but the ensemble could, at that moment, barely foresee it, it did not yet exist. It would consist of pieces not yet assembled into a whole.”

    Although he had certain competences in several fields, Maiorescu felt closer to literary criticism. Ion Bogdan Lefter noted Maiorescu’s efforts in the field of literary criticism, part of the world of ideas at that time.

    “Maiorescu has a very broad, comprehensive, civilizational understanding, at a time when the accumulation of literary raw materials was still precarious. He is the one who assists and, in a way, stimulates the appearance of the first literary works of the highest level at Junimea, with all its story and the extraordinary group of which he was part of. His contributions are written, they are in the few fundamental texts, they are essential. He himself is a first literary critic, if we can truly call him a literary critic, considered the founder of literary criticism, with equally important contributions in the founding or structuring, crystallization of other socio-human disciplines in Romania.”

    Titu Maiorescu was also a politician. He was close to the values of the Conservative Party, but in the governments of this party he represented the Junimist group, a liberal-conservative group. Starting with 1871 he held parliamentary deputy terms, and served as Minister of Education. Between 1912 and 1913 he was Prime Minister, and signed the Peace of Bucharest after the Second Balkan War, when Romania obtained Southern Dobrudja. In 1914, on the eve of the outbreak of World War I, and 3 years before his death, Titu Maiorescu retired from politics.

  • The Royal Train

    The Royal Train

    In October of this year, the volume “The Story of the Royal Train” by Tudor Vișan-Miu and Andrei Berinde was released. A literary foray into the past and present of this symbol of Romanian royalty.

    The Royal Train is intended for the travel of the Royal Family of Romania and domestic and foreign guests. The train currently consists of a steam locomotive (under restoration) and five carriages: the dining car, the King’s car, the Queen’s car, the guest car, and the King’s Household (staff) car. About the significance of this train and how the Romanian Railways (CFR) came into being, we spoke with one of the authors of the volume dedicated to the Royal Train, the historian Tudor Vișan-Miu, passionate about the history of the royal family in Romania:

    “From the beginning I feel the need to state that there were several royal trains. The one we are referring to, because it still exists today, is the one that was put into operation in Romania in 1928, which was manufactured at the Ernesto Breda factories in Milan. The importance of these trains is certainly obvious. The members of the royal family must travel on a train that provides them with the conditions for traveling long distances. Hence the need to use special trains. Of course, these, let’s say, journeys that the members of the royal family make on the railway, become possible at the moment when the railway is developed, and this is during the reign of the Prince and then King Carol I. When Carol I came to Romania there was not a kilometer of railway. The projects had already been discussed for several years, even in a concrete way, but Carol I accelerated and established this as a priority.”

    Tudor Vișan-Miu tells us about the age of the Royal Train and how it was used during the years of the communist regime:

    “The Royal Train for sure, I mean the current one, is, as we can tell, 95 years old. It survived communism thanks to the travel conditions it certainly offered to those who used it during that period, during Gheorghiu-Dej’s regime. Nicolae Ceaușescu later used another train made in Romania, in Arad. But, the train was preserved, refurbished in the 90s, used for some, let’s say, special runs, because it has cars and uses locomotives different from those that currently run on the Romanian railways, and it also needs a special staff , which ensures, its movement on the railways.”

    The Royal Train is also an attraction for history buffs or the curious. He undertook journeys in which it could be admired by those interested throughout the country. There were projects where it was made available. And, most importantly, this train is closely related to the abdication of King Mihai on December 30, 1947 and his departure from the country on the night of January 3, 1948:

    “The train is certainly also of interest as a heritage object, and this can be seen in the fact that when, on several occasions, it was brought to the North Station, people went to visit it. Just as they did when the Royal Train crossed various localities on the occasion of the trips of the members of the royal family to those localities. It’s about those that began in 2012 and that followed various routes around the country. There have certainly been, up to this point, up to the use of it by the royal family, several ideas, several projects, one that even entered the royal family was a trip, let’s say, of the members of the Writers’ Union in 2009, with the occasion of an anniversary tour. This train certainly cannot be overused. It also has a special meaning after all. It is the train with which King Carol II left the country, the train with which King Mihai left the country, the first in 1940, the other in 1947. It is therefore a train that crossed moments of Romania’s history in it. Of course, those leaders also traveled during the communist period. Apparently certain meetings with foreign personalities also took place there. … The royal train has recently been associated with the funerals of King Mihai. It was used to take the royal cortege from Bucharest to Curtea de Argeș, where the funeral took place.”

    Myths and legends circulated about the riches of the Royal Train, the riches with which the royal family would have left the country after the establishment of the communist regime and after the new authorities, supported by the Soviet army, forced King Mihai to abdicate. Tudor Vișan-Miu tells about the departure of King Mihai from the country:

    “The train was associated with a certain mythology related to the departure of King Michael from the country, with fortunes that were alleged to have been put in the Royal Train. The research that could be done in the Security documents after the fall of communism completely disproved this, certainly confirming the accounts of King Michael’s traveling companions that they were closely watched, so that they could only take very strictly certain personal belongings and not high value objects, because some of them could also be confiscated if it was jewelry, say, or more valuable crockery.”

  • Photographer Franz Xaver Koroschetz

    Photographer Franz Xaver Koroschetz

    Romanian towns had their photographers. One such photographer was Franz Xaver Koroschtz. He was the photographer of the town of Focsani, the county seat of Vrancea, a county lying on the Carpathians’ Curvature. An Austrian-Hungarian citizen, in 1895 Koroschetz settled in Romania, in Focsani. From 1899 to 1934, the year of his death, he took pictures of the town.

    Documents about this photographer, unfortunately, are scarce, while the year and his place of birth are not mentioned in those documents. Koroschetz was the photographer of the local elite and of the middle class of Vrancea. The pictures were taken in his studio, located in the city centre of Focsani.
    Journalist and collector Sorin Tudose was born in Focsani.

    He is the author of an illustrated album dedicated to Franz Koroschetz, to commemorate 90 years since the death of the artist photographer.
    As part of the public event occasioned by the launch of the album, Sorin Tudose made mention of a personal discovery.

    ”I made a stunning discovery at the Romanian Academy, specifically, I discovered the most luxurious photographic product Franz Koroschetz ever made in his 35-year-long career. The story goes like this: in 1904, the royal family took a train trip on the Sinaia-Iași route, with stopovers in the main railway stations along the route and where, of course, the event was immortalized.

    With us, in Focsani, seven pictures were taken in the railway station. To the right-hand side as part of one of the photographs there is a bloke sitting with a hand of his knee. He was none other than the county prefect, Nicușor Săveanu, who, being a politician and being aware the royal family was soon to arrive, he commissioned an album to Franz Koroschetz, with pictures from Putna County, as today’s Vrancea county was then known.

    There were 14 pictures from the northern part of the county, and this album, once completed, was in the possession of this kid at the center of the picture, he is Radu Saveanu, the future mayor of Focsani and the son of Nicușor Săveanu. This man Radu Săveanu offered it as a gift to none other than Carol, later King Carol II. There was only one single mention of the album in the press of that time and, from 1904 to 2024, no one knew absolutely anything about it.

    It came into possession of the royal family, Carol, Ferdinand leafed through it, as well as the entire royal elite, it was in the possession of the royal family and subsequently it was appropriated by the Academy Library. Until 2024, nobody was aware of its existence, until I discovered it. “

    They say a photograph speaks through itself. Yet Sorin Tudose’s work and passion turned the stories behind some of the photographs into complete stories, when they appear in other sources as well:
    Track: Here we have two photographs, it’s about what the research behind the photographs meant. Neither of the two photographs had something written on them.

    “It is about two pictures taken by Koroschetz, belonging to the Rainu-Neguț family and, in the album, I would have liked the pictures to have Photo Koroschetz as a caption in the album. My conclusion was that the pictures were taken around 1910. Yet, being passionate about it, I read a lot in the press of that time and at one point, absolutely accidentally, I came across an article.

    It was written in there that in the house of Negut Family 25 years of their wedding had been celebrated, the silver wedding. And there, I discovered, in the atmosphere of the event, who the personalities were, who participated in the event, but also the fact that the mayor called in at their place and renewed their vows.

    I took a closer look at the article and I discovered it was written in 1908. And that’s how I succeeded to realize what the context was, when the two pictures were taken. Also, I succeeded to identify all the faces. Which, apart from the intrinsic values of the photographs, the fact that they come with their stories, that brings added value: it tells us who these people are, on what occasion they met, which somehow humanizes, to a greater extent, these otherwise special photographs. “

    Unfortunately, Koroschetz’s Focsani disappeared today almost completely, it only exists in Sorin Tudose’s book. Here he is once again, telling us the story of its disappearance:

    ”Beginning with the 1970s, demolition never ceased to be perpetrated. This, for example, is a church in Focsani, the town’s only church the communists brought down. What you can see in this picture is the princely church, but nothing exists any more. The picture was taken by Koroschetz in 1930 or thereabouts. Comrades didn’t like it, so they demolished it. They didn’t like this very special building either, known as the Economia Bank, they brought that down too.

    I somehow wanted to symbolize, through a drawing, what happened in my native town, Focsani. So I contacted a friend, a woman architect, telling her to symbolize what happened to our town, how it was demolished. And she asked me how I could imagine that, graphically? I gave her two major buildings in Focsani, the Economia Bank and the Princely Church. And I asked her to conceive how a couple of bulldozers were rolling, replacing their arms with a sickle and a hammer. “

    The album authored by Sorin Tudose has more than 250 photographs authored by Franz Xaver Koroschetz. The photographs capture the town and its inhabitants, in their day-to-day life or at special events.

  • Theodor Aman – Founder of the Romanian Fine Arts School

    Theodor Aman – Founder of the Romanian Fine Arts School

    Theodor Aman (1831-1891), the first great Romanian classical artist, was a Romanian painter, graphic designer, sculptor, pedagogue, and academician, the founder of the first Romanian school of fine arts in Bucharest, together with another great Romanian artist, Gheorghe Tattarescu. Theodor Aman represents for the history of Romanian art the first modern artist in the true sense of the word, influencing and speeding up, at the same time, through his activity in the United Principalities of Moldova and Wallachia, the opening towards cultural modernization and artistic development within the relevant institutions. But how did it all begin? How the idea of founding the School of Fine Arts in Bucharest was born in the mind and soul of this artist, the curator of the Aman Museum within the Bucharest City Museum, museographer Greta Șuteu, tells us:

    “Aman had the chance to leave at 19, like a normal kid today, to leave at 19 from a very, very backward, Ottoman-influenced Wallachia. He had this chance to even reach Paris, which was the capital of culture and art education at the time. But, a 19-year-old child from the space I have indicated arrives in Paris, and discovers a world that had developed according to other rules, completely and totally unknown. He adapts. He’s a very intelligent character, a character with an education though, for the time. He had left knowing foreign languages, he had left knowing music. He is very serious, he does school very well and very seriously. He should have returned around 1855 to this space he left, and he receives a message from none other than Prince Barbu Știrbei, who conveys to him through a nephew of his: “Tell Aman not to come back yet, because things are not ready for him.” He stayed in Paris until 1858 and learned everything there was to learn. That is why we find him now, we who are left to see, to enjoy his work, find him prepared for various techniques. He clearly took the Renaissance artist as his model there, who had to cover as many techniques as possible. And he returns to the country in 1958, but with a big idea driving him: he comes very determined to go to school. He realized where society had reached, and what a past European culture and art had in a space where things proceeded normally. And he realized that without education, a society, a people cannot evolve. And then, his first option was to create a school.”

    Greta Șuteu tells us about how Theodor Aman succeeded in founding the art school in Bucharest:

    “And starting in 1858 he petitioned all the officials of the moment. He was not successful, he had despaired at one point. He only asked for a plot of land and wanted to build a private school. And yet, in 1864 he gets approval. Alexandru Ioan Cuza had come in, who in the 1860s had founded the University of Iasi and the Art School of Iasi. It had been functioning since 1960. And in 1964, Cuza signed the founding decree of the School of Fine Arts in Bucharest, and then, in fact, the University of Bucharest was also opened. All these steps were taken together with his friend, his colleague, Gheorghe Tattarescu. Tattarescu was two years older than him. Tattarescu had gone to school in Rome, but together they fought for this goal. We find them as school founders in 1864. The school opens. Aman is appointed the headmaster of the school, and will remain so until his death in ’91. In this way, some talented young people from the Romanian space have the chance to study with people who had studied in the West.”

    What was Professor Aman like, from the perspective of museographer Greta Șuteu?

    “Many times I said Aman could have done nothing of what we see, i.e. his art, and he would have still remained in the history of Romanian culture as the founder of the school, but also as a teacher. Apparently he was an exceptional teacher. We have a lot of testimonies that talk about the relationship between the teacher and the students. He loved them as his children, and they loved him as a parent. We have fragments of correspondence between them, and this is how they address him, as a parent. And Aman was answering as a parent to his children. He had no children, and then these were his children. But not only as a human relationship. He is an exceptional teacher because he has an extraordinary education and has something to teach others, and then of course his requirements are also at the highest level. We have some artists, we can say that our first important artists from the late 19th, early 20th century are Aman’s students.”

    Theodor Aman remains an important landmark in Romanian art. His name remained in the history of Romanian art not only through the value of his signed works, but also through his contribution to the foundation of the first schools of fine arts. In fact, one of the most beautiful and original museums in Bucharest is the house / workshop of the artist, a house designed, painted and decorated entirely by him, a place that reflects the complex personality of the great Aman.

  • Colțea Street

    Colțea Street

    Over 1703-1707, Mihai Cantacuzino, a member of a famous noble family, built a hospital and a school on the estate of Colțea Doicescu. The first name of this great boyar, who was in charge of supplying the royal court, remained inscribed in the topography of the city to this day, and will definitely remain a memorable landmark. Colțea’s estate stretched from the present-day kilometer 0 milestone northwards, and from there the center of today’s Bucharest started to flourish. Starting with the end of the 19th century, the estate was systematized, while a side street of today’s Brătianu boulevard, linking the hospital to Saint George Church, where the kilometer 0 milestone is located, preserved its name, Colțea Street, a small urban relic reminding the dwellers of the capital-city of something that existed 150 years ago.

     

    On what was once the old street of Coltea, with its famous tower located in the middle of today’s Brătianu boulevard, a tower demolished in 1888, the central artery of the present Bucharest emerged, at the crossroads of the current Carol and Elisabeta boulevards east-west, and Brătianu and Magheru boulevards north-south. Colțea Street would help the new Bucharest breathe more freely by reducing overcrowding on Victory Road, the first north-south artery of Bucharest. Museographer Cezar Buiumaci from the Bucharest City Museum is in charge of the memory project devoted to Colțea Street. With a map in front of your eyes, it is much easier to follow the old route of the famous street. Cezar Buiumaci provides all the details that help build a mental map, with the help of works of art by 19th-century artists who painted the street. Everything falls in place as one pictures the street from Șuțu Palace, located just across Colțea Church.

     

    “Here we are, on Colțea Street, just across Colțea Church. This is where the slums and Colțea tower were, landmarks in the middle of our city that back then were on the outskirts. This is Colțea, a winding street, where people could find the Royal Court, Colțea Inn, Colțea Tower, a street that started from Saint George square, from the Church of Saint George, at the crossroads with Lipscani street, that took you all the way to Clemence Street. That’s where it ended, the present-day C. A. Rosetti Street”.

     

    A walking tour of Bucharest is even more helpful in restoring the memory of the old Colțea Street. Cezar Buiumaci told us how far Bucharest expanded starting from the new arteries drawn under mayor Pache Protopopescu, a name that must also be remembered.

     

    “Here, where Colțea Street ended, was the end of the city. It was the peripheral area on the current road that starts from North Station, goes on Titulescu road and reaches Victory Square. It continues on Iancu de Hunedoara, on Ștefan cel Mare roads and so on. It is the road that surrounds the city, a peripheral road based on the French model. How would Colțea Street look later, when it was designed? This happened in the second half of the 19th century, at the end, when the boulevard was built, the east-west artery that connected Obor to Cotroceni. It was the first boulevard. When it was marked, it didn’t even have a name, it was known simply as the Boulevard, it was the only one in the city. And on it were the most important edifices of the developing Romanian state, such as the Ministry of Agriculture or the Ministry of War. Nearby we have the hospital, just across the street, the first hospital in Wallachia, we have the University, we have the University Square which is opposite the University. It was a semi-circular square where we find the statues laid out like in a national pantheon. The boulevard was set up like that due to the May 10 parades, which were organized here on the national day”.

     

    Bucharest under the crown and scepter of King Carol I was becoming an increasingly European city. Cezar Buiumaci points out only a few of the key landmarks that appeared on the new boulevards in Colțea Street.

     

    “The statue of Michael the Brave was placed there in 1874, 150 years ago. Then followed the declaration of Carol I, which assumed the union of all Romanians under his reign, there were also declarations of independence and unification that Carol made during his reign. Further on, one came across a number of major institutions, print shops, there was the Military Circle, across the street there was a hotel, the Grand Hotel du Boulevard, a hotel that took its name from the boulevard. Then we have other important institutions, Eforia, a series of military institutions, the Donation House, and then the Official Gazette, but also Cișmigiu Park and a series of restaurants and cinemas”.

     

    Colțea Street in old Bucharest no longer exists today, but it is the one that gave birth to the city. And the iconographic sources of the time still keep it alive. (VP)

  • The Cerchez family of architects

    The Cerchez family of architects

    We’re more likely to come across the name of Cerchez, in the history of Romanian architecture, than other names of architects. The name of Cerchez family of architects stems from three families of Armenian origin. Bearing this name were no less than five major architects. Not only were they artists, but also, hey were men of their times: the brothers Grigore P. Cerchez and Nicolae P. Cerchez, brothers Grigore G. Cerchez and Artaxerxe Cerchez and their fifth brother, Hristea Cerchez.

    Speaking about the two pairs of brothers, here is professor with the Ion Mincu Architecture and Urbanism University and president of the Architects’ Union of Romania, Ileana Tureanu.

    ” Brothers Grigore and Nicolae Cerchez were born in mid-19th century, that is in 1850. They did their studies in France, in Paris, and founded the Society of Romanian Architects in 1891. In other words, they are some of the founding fathers of national architecture. Everybody mentions Grigore Cerchez’s name when they refer to the Palace of the Architecture School. Yet not everybody knows that Grigore P. Cerchez is Bucharest Municipality’s chief engineer over 1874 and 1879 and he is the one who drew up all the plans and took the entire action for the systematization of Dambovita River in Bucharest.

    He is the author of the first systematization plan for the city of Bucharest, in 1833. So he came after he had schools built, he laid the foundation of a scientific and systematic development of the city of Bucharest. He became director of Romanian Post and in that capacity, he brought specialized architects in the field, such as Alexandru Clavel of France. He brought younger colleagues and friends and he had Romanian Post headquarters built in all of Romania’s major cities. Quite a few of Romanian Post buildings were built under his supervision. They are blueprint projects, projects that were tailored to this or that urban context. For the second half of the 19th century, we’re speaking about an urban vision in its own right.”

    The first generation of the Cerchez brothers significantly involved in the modernization of Bucharest and in its transformation from a utterly oriental city into a city that was close to the European standards. Ileana Tureanu once again.

    ”In the field of monuments restoration, he is the one who created the Romanian scientific doctrine. ‘The principle that guided me’, he used to say, was to preserve the building just as I’d found it, consolidating it and restoring it, bringing it to the shape it had when it was built, disposing of all the parts that were unskilfully added. Against a backdrop when Andre Lecomte du Noüy’s principles were totally different regarding the historical monuments, Grigore Cerchez laid the foundation of restoration.

    Grigore Cerchez’s brother was Nicolae P. Cerchez, a year younger, both born in Moldova, in Vaslui County, who was also a very important figure in the era. He went towards political involvement and social involvement. He was a deputy in Parliament, he was a senator, and he was able to help his brother complete the programs I mentioned. He was the vice-president of the Romanian Automobile Club at the beginning of the 20th century, and took care of public spaces. He was also an entrepreneur. At the Royal Palace he designed the exterior arrangements, he designed the School of Veterinary Medicine and the Agricultural Pavilion for the exhibition of 1906, a building that received awards.”

    The second pair of Cerchez brothers was no less determined to continue the modernization. Another Gregory and his brother Artaxerxes wrote history. Ileana Tureanu:

    “The second family was also Cerchez. We don’t have any data that they were related, but it was probably something. After 20 years, another Grigore Cerchez appears, Grigore G. Cerchez, also the brother of Arta Cerchez. The two brothers did not go to school in France, like the first ones, but in Germany, in Karlsruhe. Both one and the other, but especially Grigore G. Cerchez, were, in parallel with design and execution, involved in the public square, held public functions at City Hall, and were present in all major city development initiatives, starting with coordination of the 1906 exhibition in Carol Park. Grigore’s brother was Arta Cerchez, who made a less neo-Romanian architecture.

    He started the Eforie Casino and the Movilă Casino in Techirghiol. It was a modern and powerful architecture. He also designed the racetrack. Arta Cerchez won the Sanitary Merit award, first class, for the buildings made in the Carmen Sylva resort. He was, in a way, an initiator of spa resorts.

    He is the one who initiated the study for the history of Romanian architecture. He was extremely vehement. His articles in Architecture Magazine can be picked up and reread today, and are just as valid, powerful and incisive. And one of the reasons why Arta Cerchez considered that Romanian architecture was adrift is that the history of Romanian architecture is not known. And then, he made the decision to launch a national competition for the writing of the history of Romanian architecture, and he would pay the winner out of public money.”

    The fifth Cerchez, Hristea or Cristofi, also left his mark on Bucharest, a representative building built by him being Vila Minovici, located in the north of the city.

  • The Ratiu family, an important Romanian family in Transylvania

    The Ratiu family, an important Romanian family in Transylvania

    The Rațiu family (Rațiu of Noșlac in Turda) is one of the oldest and most respectable aristocratic families in Transylvania with a history spanning several centuries and roots dating back to the 14th century.

    The existence of this family was first documented during the reign of Sigismund of Luxemburg (1368-1437), with origins in the locality of Noșlac, Alba County (central Romania). Along the centuries, the family received several aristocratic titles, having as ancestor Stefan Rácz of Nagylak (Noșlac), who was made a nobleman by the Transylvanian prince in Alba Iulia in 1625. The Rațius remained the only noble Romanian family in Turda, a city ruled at that time by the Hungarian aristocracy and situated in north-eastern Romania. The other Romanian families had been subjected to the process of Hungarization, and gradually disappeared.

    Out of the leading figures of the Rațiu family, we’d like to mention: Basiliu Rațiu, a Greek-Catholic Archpriest or Ioan Rațiu, one of the main political figures of the 1848 revolution, lawyer and politician, chair of the Romanian National Party and one of the main authors of the “Transylvanian Memorandum”. Along the centuries, the Rațiu family gave lawyers, scholars, politicians and clergymen. The name is strongly related to the fight for the rights of the Romanians in Transylvania and the preservation of the national identity against the assimilation policies.

    A leading figure of the family’s recent history was also Ion Rațiu (1917-2000). Born in Turda, the Cluj County, he was a politician, lawyer, diplomat, businessman, writer and Romanian journalist representative of the inter-war National Peasant Party, which later turned into the Christian-Democratic National Peasants Party. Between 1940 and 1990 he lived in the UK, where together with his wife Elisabeth he founded The Rațiu Family Charitable Foundation back in 1979, which is promoting and supporting projects of education and research into Romania’s culture and history, both in Romania and the UK. The foundation offers scholarships on an annual basis.

    After his return to Romania in 1990, Ion Rațiu got directly involved in the process of rebuilding the National Peasants Party, jointly with another leading political figure after the anti-communist revolution of 1989, Corneliu Coposu. Ion Rațiu ran for the presidential seat during the 1990 election, when he got roughly 5% of the votes, ranking third. He later became an MP. In 1991, Ion Rațiu founded the Cotidianul newspaper, the first private publication after 1989. Pamela Rațiu, a descendant of the family and president of the Rațiu Foundation told us the following about Ion Rațiu’s legacy and his candidature to Romania’s presidency.

    ” You know when you meet people that have given so much of their life in the positive directions and for the country or for the people, it’s really just an honour to sit with them and listen to them and try to take some of them in. I understand why people were taken by him and I take it’s incredible to see in demonstrations today people holding placards with his photograph. And there is a great deal to be said in that he was the best president Romania never had, I do believe and that has become a legacy. I think it was a plus, because I do believe if he had succeeded to becoming president he would have been held back and not allowed to do anything that he could have done. He could have made really serious changes, but he would have had his hands tied as many leaders are by all those around him. So, by not becoming the president he became a role model, which has a legacy, a positive legacy as opposed to those who were in place at that particular time.“

    The Ratiu Foundation has a partnership with the London School of Economics IDEAS ThinkTank. The Ratiu forum focuses on programs for Romania or the Balkan region. It is a platform for free discussion on democracy and the democratic challenges in the Balkan region. The forum brings together academicians, practitioners, and Romanian citizens who share ideas and knowledge about the promotion and support of the democratic values in Romania and its neighbouring states. Also, Ion Ratiu’s cultural heritage includes the Rațiu Democracy Centre, which promotes the democratic values among youngsters, through various initiatives for pupils and students. These initiatives include legislative education programs meant to stimulate youngsters to understand and exert their civic rights and responsibilities.
    Here is what Pamela Ratiu told us, about these educational initiatives

    ” What we do, also, is try to follow in Ion’s footsteps. I mean, everything is about the family, we’re moving forward, we’re taking different steps with our partnerships and the work that we do, that, again, it goes back to the values of the family and where we see a possibility, of bringing…you know…we have the good fortune to bring in this expertise to Romania from around Central-Eastern Europe and the Balkans.”

    Ion Rațiu was one of the most conspicuous democratic figureheads in Romania after December 1989.

  • Axiopolis

    Axiopolis

    Dobrogea is considered the densest and most varied province of Romania from the point of view of the civilizations that inhabited it. On a territory of 15,570 square kilometers, the surface of the Romanian Dobrogea, there are numerous archaeological sites and recovered artifacts that attest to the existence of overlapping cultures. In the course of time, Dobrogea was part of both the Greco-Roman world and of the Black Sea area. One of the most important centers of Greco-Roman Dobrogea was Axiopolis.

     

    On the right bank of the Danube, not far from the river, near today’s city of Cernavodă, one can find the ruins of the settlement called Axiopolis in the documents of the time. The history of this urban center spans several hundred years, its beginnings being in the Hellenistic period, between the 4th and 1st centuries before Christ, until approximately the 6th century of the Christian era. The name of the settlement is a compound noun in Greek and comes from the old Indo-European word “axsaena”, which means “black” or “dark color”, and the Greek “polis”, which means “city”. The name of the current city Cernavodă or “Black Water” is a translation that the Slavs made of the toponym when they arrived in Dobrogea at the end of the 6th century AD.

     

    Research until the early 2000s at Axiopolis was sporadic and historical documentation inconsistent. Archaeologist Ioan Carol Opriș, a professor at the University of Bucharest, has most recently researched the Axiopolis site. Here he is with details about the location of Axiopolis: “The site is located on a hill, somewhere at the island of Hinoglu, an island that, meanwhile, became bigger and bigger, as the Danube arm grew smaller and smaller. In 1900 the arm was about 300 meters wide, so it was still a navigable arm, as it supposedly was in the Antiquity period. It is located about three kilometers from the foot of the Charles I bridge, after crossing a Cretaceous reef, a big limestone massif. In this large limestone massif, at one point in time, quarries were set up that supplied the workers involved in the construction of the Roman fortress, then of the Byzantine one at Axiopolis.”

     

    The first excavations were undertaken by the archaeologist Pamfil Polonic, between the years 1898-1899. Polonic took rigorous photographs, made measurements and drawings, as he was also a very good surveyor. After 1900, the excavations stopped. However, illegal diggings are mentioned in 1907 and 1912 by the numismatic journals of the time. Before the outbreak of the First World War, the site came under the jurisdiction of the army and a military barrack was established there. In the interwar period, Axiopolis was researched by one of the most famous Romanian archaeologists, namely Vasile Pârvan. He believed that the settlement had been founded by the king of Hellenistic Macedonia, King Lysimachos, a general and heir of Alexander the Great, in the 4th century BC. The interest that Axiopolis aroused among Romanian archaeologists was revived after the Second World War. In 1947, the archaeologist Ion Barnea discovered an inscription which told about the martyrdom of some Christians from Dobrogea. In 2007, a new discovery put Axiopolis on the map of archaeological sites. In Balcic, the ancient Dionysopolis, an inscription was found following excavations that preceded the construction of a hotel. Its text tells of the presence at Axiopolis of a military leader Mokaporis of the Odrysian king, at the turn of the first century BC and the first century AD.

     

    Ioan Carol Opris: “We know much better about Axiopolis that, without a doubt, it must have been an emporium (a commodities hub) in the Hellenistic era and which actually knew how to take advantage of this extraordinary position on the Danube. At the same time, it also had access to the Carasu valley, a valley with lakes. But we don’t even know for sure if there were lakes. It is possible that, in Antiquity, there was a direct communication line from somewhere far away, perhaps even from today’s Medgidia all the way to the point where that ancient river, Axios, flew into the Danube.“

     

    Yet the area that was the most attractive for archaeologists was the Axiopolis fortress.  Actually, we’re speaking about three fortresses, the oldest dating from the Roman period. Ioan Carol Opriș is back with details: “What is important in this site is the central area as the essential area, namely the old citadel A. This is how the citadels were divided. It is the old citadel A, there is also a citadel addition which is also late Roman or Roman-Byzantine, and a citadel behind citadel A, towards the high area, which is the mid-Byzantine citadel.”

     

    According to field research, Axiopolis was an important center on the Lower Danube in the first half of the first Christian millennium. The presence of Rhodes-type amphorae shows that the city had commercial relations with the surrounding area. In the Roman period, the period of maximum development, Axiopolis was an important center of a college of navigators on the Danube, the so-called “nautae universi Danuvii”. The stationing of the troops of the 2nd Herculia legion in the city is mentioned in documents, which showed its importance. Also, as a sign of its importance, in the 6th century, the city was raised to the rank of bishopric. (LS, EN)

  • The Kiseleff Agora

    The Kiseleff Agora

    Kiseleff Park in Bucharest has become a model of good practice in managing historical parks and gardens, thanks to a project called the Kiseleff Agora. At the end of August, the park also hosted a number of cross-disciplinary events.

    Kiseleff Park, the first public garden in Bucharest carved out of a forest that used to cover this part of the capital city, was first landscaped in 1832. A road, which today bears the same name, was also created at the time, crossing the park right through the middle. Kiseleff Park was designed by the landscape architect Wilhelm Mayer, who also designed Cismigiu Park in the centre of Bucharest. Today, Kiseleff Park has a surface area of 31,690 square metres and inside the park visitors can see statutes depicting leading cultural figures from Romania and abroad. The park is listed as a historical monument in Bucharest.

    The Kisellef Agora project features workshops for the restoration of historical gardens and the management of trees and shrubbery. What is being tested now will allow in the future for the adequate management of green spaces. We talked to the project coordinator, the landscape architect Diana Culescu:

    “The Kiseleff Agora is in fact composed of two projects, one of which is the Green Register for Kiseleff Park. The Green Register for Romania, and which seeks to create a model, something Romania should have had since 2007, but is yet to implement. Also, this project merged with another project with a cultural purpose, based on the idea of the Kiseleff Agora. This activity has brought together students, professionals and the public administration to generate this instrument in the Romanian context. It exists at an international level, but it needs to be adapted for this context.”

    Diana Culescu tells us what the project has achieved:

    “We have carried out a number of activities related to the inventorying of Kiseleff Park and the analysis of all its elements. We often wrongly assume that the green register only refers to trees, when it in fact also refers to park benches, shrubbery, etc., which guides us in these activities about how we can model the app we use so that it is more useful. We had help from three foreign specialists.”

    What does the project seek to achieve further? Will it be implemented in other parks in Bucharest and around the country? Diana Culescu again:

    “The idea behind the Kiseleff Agora was to bring together people from different areas and we’re already having talks with the participants in this summer school to develop something similar in Aiud and Călărași. So, yes, this is definitely our intention, to take these ideas of original projects further. It’s called the Green Register for Kiseleff. The Green Register for Romania because we want this instrument, which is in fact a legal requirement, to be implemented all over the country.”

    Alexandru Mexi, a landscape designer who works at the National Institute for Heritage told us about his involvement in the Kiseleff Agora project:

    “I was involved in this project as an organiser and on behalf of the National Institute for Heritage. It’s a very important project because it helps outline new directions in the area of the protection of landscape heritage. This green register is basically a data base that is very important for understanding the dynamics of a park. What are the problems it faces and what does it need? How can these problems be solved? It’s an instrument which, although included in the law since 2008, has only been implemented to a very little degree and often in a flawed manner.”

    Who else was involved in the project?

    “Experts from abroad, from France, the United States and Hungary who are specialised in the protection of heritage, were also involved in the project.”

    Landscape designer Alexandru Mexi also shared his views on Romania’s legislation regarding green spaces and heritage.

    “I think the legislation concerning green spaces and the protection of green spaces is somewhat difficult to implement. There were various problems that resulted from the way in which the law was drafted. The law itself is good, but there are some problems in the way it is understood and it contains some instruments that need to be implemented and which should be first and foremost adequately drafted and funded. I think most often the problem lies with the list of specifications for the drafting of green registers. With respect to the heritage legislation, things are a bit better when it comes to the law on the protection of historical monuments, although there’s a lot of room for improvement. As I said before, this green register is an instrument that helps with a better and deeper understanding of heritage assets and which adds to the national registers on fixed cultural assets.”

  • The neurologist Gheorghe Marinescu

    The neurologist Gheorghe Marinescu

    Considered to be one of the most important Romanian physicians, Gheorghe Marinescu’s name is linked to the beginning of the study of mental illnesses and the birth of neurology in this country. He was born in Bucharest in 1863 and died in 1938, aged 75, also in Bucharest. He studied medicine in Bucharest and in 1889 left for Paris to further his studies at the clinic of the famous French neurologist Jean-Martin Charcot. He also went on study trips to Germany, Great Britain, Belgium and Italy. In 1897 he is awarded the title of doctor in medicine from the Faculty of Medicine in Paris. Most of his research is published in French magazines. He returned to Romania at the beginning of the 20th century and was elected member of the Romanian Academy and appointed professor at the Faculty of Medicine in Bucharest, while also working on the neurology ward of Colentina Hospital.

    The Bucharest City Museum has four collections that used to belong to physicians: that of the microbiologist Victor Babeș, of the pathologist Nicolae Minovici, the radiologist George Severeanu and the neurologist Gheorghe Marinescu. An exhibition dedicated to Gheorghe Marinescu was hosted by the Suțu Palace which houses the Bucharest City Museum. Psychiatrist and professor of medicine history Octavian Buda said Marinescu had a complex career and his legacy is fundamental for the Romanian school of neurology:

    “In essence, Gheorghe Marinescu concerned himself with what we would today call neuroscience. As a psychiatrist and historian of medicine, I have published several articles about Gheorghe Marinescu that also had international exposure. And I found myself finding it hard to explain what he did, because he used to conduct fundamental research in areas associated with neurology. These had to do with neuronal architecture, using very modern instruments for those times and trying to understand how the human brain works and many others.”

    Marinescu trained in the best intellectual and scientific environments when he studied in the West. One of his teachers was the eminent neurologist Jean-Martin Charcot, who inspired many generations of famous physicians. Octavian Buda noted the overwhelming influence of Charcot on his students, including Marinescu:

    “If you ask me who is the Romanian physician who is best-known internationally, it’s hard to say. But if we open a book of international history of neurology we’ll find the name of Mr Charcot, who led neurology in Paris, and who was a big success in cultural salons, as well. Everyone was fascinated with his personality, because he used photography and cinema, something which also influenced Marinescu. Charcot was a spectacular interface of Parisian and international scientific culture at the end of the 19th century. None other than Sigmund Freud was among those ecstatic about Mr Charcot’s courses. Marinescu never met Freud, but was influenced by the courses in medicine, psychology and psychopathology. Charcot was among the inventors of modern medicine. He can be criticised today for some of his ideas, but was a magnetic figure who built a whole school around him. And in that group was also Marinescu, the hard-working student from Bucharest, who was comfortable working with histological lamellae and analyse them in detail.”

    After his return to Romania, a country that was modernising at a fast pace, Marinescu became a role model for the next generation of Romanian neurologists. Octavian Buda:

    “Being a physician and having studied in Paris, he was feared by politicians. He was also quote intelligent, knew how to draw a line, and was part of a truly remarkable medical elite. So these objects that we have from him and his research, which was very detailed and very technical, reveal to us a man who wanted to stay abreast with what was new in his field and a man who was known internationally. He adapted many things from our university culture. We also see a man who was upset with the reality of his times. We can also see him as the witness to a society that was very civilised and very eager to import technology and culture.”
    The exhibition project at the Bucharest City Museum features documents and objects that belonged to the doctor, including the projector he used in his study of mental illnesses that caused limb movement disorders.

  • Old Romanian books

    Old Romanian books

    The printing press emerged in mid-15th century. It was arguably the most important revolution in the history of the book and the circulation of texts. However, until then, books were little known objects. Books could be found in monasteries, at the nobles’ courts and the prices and kings’ chancelleries. In the Romanian space as well, the printing press fulfilled the function of promoting the written word for the use of the education system, worship, princely chancelleries. It was the printing press that made the book increasingly popular.

     

    However, in the past, books were nowhere near the objects we see today, simple, user-friendly, accessible to everybody. In the past, books were the outcome of a remarkable intellectual and physical amount of work. Books had sumptuous covers, with engravings and decorations, while, in turn, their pages were decorated with suggestive drawings, the calligraphic text being a manual work of art in its own right.

     

    A key element of the old books, that including the books of the Romanian Principalities, was the hallmark of the one who had paid for their being brought out: a prince, a bishop, a nobleman, a merchant. And by that, we mean the emblem of the family, but also the dedications in verse that went with the volume, created by those who curated the edition.

     

    The Bucharest Municipality Museum has mounted an exhibition of Old Romanian books from the 17th to the early 19th century. The theme of the exhibition were the princely emblems and the rhyming lines that went with them. Bucharest Metropolitan Library holds a collection of Old Romanian books. The Library’s Ramona Mezei told us that the exhibition themed “Old princely books with emblems and poetical rhyming lines” was of great value, were it only to for the fact that it had items that were hundreds of years old.

     

    ” Most of the old books that are exhibited are worship books. And that somehow comes as something natural, given the timeframe when they were created. It was of utmost importance, in the old days, that those printed items were brought out under the patronage of the ruling princes of that time. Somehow in a bid to come up with a token of gratitude towards the ruling princes, in the printing process, the emblems were also printed. Moreover, those who curated the edition, editors and even printing workers, they created some sort of rhyming lines. That is, there were verses, some of them serious, others, funnier, yet it was important for that to be done. The very moment an image was imprinted, the book also became a source of beauty, apart from the fact that, broadly speaking, a book was a source of wisdom. In the long run, books have been, are and will be of a priceless value, all the more so as the seal of time put its hallmark on them. “

     

    Museographer Daniela Lupu is the one who coordinated the exhibition. Ms Lupu was keen on highlighting the central place of the emblem of the prince, the one who was the patron, as well as the value of the literary compositions dedicated to him.

     

    ”The emblems are points of interest for those who are into heraldry. The rhyming lines were studied by the literary historians. Some of them detected, in those rhyming lines, the beginning of the deferential poetry in Romanian language, even though, in the beginning they were just little rhyming lines. Their authors are great scholars of the past centuries: Udriște Năsturel, Antim Ivireanul, chancellor Radu Greceanu. Dating from the 17th century, these verse, poetic rhyming lines or political rhyming lines, just as they appear on the books, are still of great interest, even to this day. “

     

    The books that are on display in the glassed cases of the Sutu Palace in Bucharest city center inspire us to take a journey in the past. Here is Daniela Lupu once again, this time telling us the exhibition is also a look back at how emblems and dedication vary, in the course of three centuries.

     

    “If, broadly speaking, it is accepted that the princely emblems on the printed books, beginning with the first books printed in Wallachia and Moldavia, appear as early as the 16th century, we can see that beginning with the first printed books, such as Macarie’s Service Book of 1580. The Wallachian emblem is printed on the frontispiece. Then this emblem has its place on the books’ back page, just as we usually find it later. That happened in the time of Matei Basarab, in the 17th century. We have made an attempt to depict the evolution of how the princely emblems are being presented and we noticed the themes did not comply with the writing rules or the classical composing rules of the rhyming heraldry.”

     

    The books with princely emblems and poetic rhyming lines are more than the aesthetic flavor they have. The beauty of the language in which the rhyming lines were written goes ties in with the beauty of the images. The Cyrillic alphabet the Romanian language used for a couple of centuries when knowledge was conveyed, as well as the calligraphy, they are attractive because they cannot be understood at a single and cursory glance alone.

     

    From what can be noticed of the old books with princely emblems and their dedications, we get info about the people who lived back then, about the universe they were brought up in and the social position they held. We find out about ruling princes and the representation of power, about economic, political and cultural elites that professed the ideas of their times, we find out about moral principles and values that stood the test of time and are still valid, as we speak. And, not the least, we find out we resemble those who lived before us more than we can imagine.

  • Macca Family and their residence in Bucharest

    Macca Family and their residence in Bucharest

    In the old part of Romania’s capital city,
    near the centre and its main thoroughfares, like Lascăr Catargiu boulevard and Calea
    Victoriei, we find the Romanian Academy’s Archaeology Institute, hosted by the
    Macca House. A building of highly refined architecture and rich ornamentation,
    Macca House is one of the most fascinating buildings in Bucharest. Its history combines
    the cosmopolitism of those times, via the Swiss-born architect John-Elisee Berthet, with the biography of old local
    families, because the building was commissioned by Col. Petru Macca and his
    wife Elena, a well-known philanthropist, who also donated the house to the
    Education Ministry after his death.

     

     

    Since then, the Macca House
    has hosted a number of institutions, including a museum of antiques in the
    interwar period, and it eventually became the permanent home of the Archaeology
    Institute. The art historian Oana Marinache has studied both the history of the
    building, and its architectural plans, and she gave us details about the
    architect John-Elisee Berthet’s masterpiece.

     

     

    Oana Marinache: Basically it was a building commissioned
    privately by a very rich family. All of Mrs Elena Macca’s revenues actually
    came from her estate in Miroși, as the village was called at the time. With the
    help of her second husband, col. Petre Macca, with patience, with a huge
    financial effort and with the help of outstanding entrepreneurs, most of them
    foreigners as most works were commissioned in Paris and Vienna, they managed to
    complete this architectural jewel. The building brings together all the
    Historicist styles of the late 19th Century. The architect Berthet was
    commissioned the project in 1891, and the works were completed around 1894. This
    is when the family moved into the new house. There were good times and bad
    times for the building, for instance the stables and outhouses burnt down
    twice, in 1894 and in 1897. So some changes were bound to take place, but in
    spite of this the original architecture and art is largely preserved to this
    day. And modern restoration works still produce surprises, unknown frescoes and
    other decoration or furniture pieces come to light, which provide new insights
    into the lifestyle of the late 19th and early 20th Centuries.

     

     

    The building has 4 floors, including the basement and the loft. The
    interior and outdoor decorations include Baroque elements like festoons,
    pilasters and heraldic symbols. Preserved on ceilings and walls are also some
    of the original frescoes, and some stucco fragments are gold plated. At some point, the balconies were
    adjusted to the Art Nouveau style, and turned into beautiful winter greenhouses
    on the first floor.

     

     

    When we talk about the Macca family, we mean,
    first and foremost, Elena Macca, the art historian Oana Marinache says:

     

     

    Oana Marinache: It was her estate, and the house was built using
    her financial resources. I would say she was the epitome of a lifestyle and the
    image of the philanthropist ladies of the late 19th Century. She had
    outstanding role models in her family, especially her mother and her maternal
    grandmother. She followed in the footsteps of these female role models who
    obviously had a certain social and economic position, but who were also taking
    care of their servants, of the peasants on their estates, of the small
    entrepreneurs and tenants on their properties. I would say Elena is a role
    model truly worth being brought back today, over 100 years after her death.

     

     

    After the Macca house was donated to the Romanian state, it hosted the
    National Antiques Museum between 1931 and 1956, and since then it has belonged
    to the Romanian Academy. Because of
    the Macca House’s state of disrepair, a decision was recently made to start
    restoration works on the building, coordinated by the National Heritage
    Institute. (AMP)

  • Dimitrie Cantemir, the musician

    Dimitrie Cantemir, the musician

    Celebrated
    in 2023 on the anniversary of 350 years since his birth and 300 years
    since his death, the ruler and scholar Dimitrie Cantemir was born in
    1673 in Iași and died on his estate in Russia in 1723. Cantemir led
    the principality of Moldavia in 1693 and again between 1710 and 1711,
    fought to defend his country, read and wrote works of history,
    geography, musicology, philosophy and literature and was even
    admitted into the Berlin Academy of Sciences, being recognised to
    this day as the first promoter of the Enlightenment in these parts.
    Endowed with great intellectual abilities, Dimitrie also benefited,
    together with his brother Antioh, of a good education, secured by
    their father Constantin Cantemir. The latter also ruled over
    Moldavia, but was not himself educated, and it is even believed he
    was semi-illiterate. When he was young, Dimitrie was sent as a
    hostage to the High Porte in Istanbul, as was the custom at the time
    as a way for the sultan to secure the loyalty of the voivodes of the
    Romanian principalities that were vassal states to the Ottoman
    Empire. During his time in Istanbul, the future ruler furthered his
    education and training, learning to speak several languages,
    acquiring knowledge of theology and philosophy and studying music. He
    would excel at Oriental music, which was dominant in this part of
    Europe. His contribution in this field was crucial at a time when
    there were no musical scores in these lands, the musician Bogdan
    Simion explains:

     

    Before Cantemir we didn’t have manuscripts in these parts and
    even his manuscripts are very complicated to read and especially to
    perform. First of all, because there is no indication of tempo, we
    don’t know how fast or how slow the tunes in question are to be
    played. Of course, we can establish that by looking at Iranian,
    Afghan and Turkish music and imagine a kind of prolonged tempo. Other
    indications in this respect are given by foreign travellers who
    listened to the respective music. Cantemir, however, invented a music
    notation system. We, in the Romanian countries, didn’t write music
    before Anton Pann and his Hospital of Love work of 1851, that was
    already a different era and Pann was using the Byzantine musical
    notation, like in church chants. Cantemir invented a system that was
    relatively easy to write down and interpret, easy to use and which
    the composers at the court of the sultan of the Ottoman Empire
    adopted and used until 1900, so it was quite good. Travelling to
    Istanbul I was surprised to learn that Dimitrie Cantemiroglu, as the
    Ottomans called him, is remembered first and foremost as a pioneer of
    Turkish music in the Ottoman Empire. It isn’t much known that he
    was a ruler or that he wrote works of geography and philosophy or
    that he spoke Latin or that he was a member of the Berlin Academy.
    Dimitrie Cantemiroglu is believed instead to come from a province of
    the Ottoman Empire, perhaps being of Tartar origin himself, and of
    leaving an extraordinary mark on Turkish musical culture.

     

     

     

    Dimitrie
    Cantemir’s main contribution is a treatise of musicology entitled
    The Book of Science of Music, most probably written in Istanbul
    between 1695 and 1700. Musician Bogdan Simion tells us more:

     

     

    The Book of Science of Music was written in Arabic and was
    dedicated to sultan Ahmed III, a great patron of the arts and a man
    passionate about culture in general. It’s a work many specialists
    describe as more political than cultural. In the 17th
    century, Cantemir was asked to demonstrate that there was such as
    thing as an identifiable Turkish music. Around 1700, there was a
    heated debate in the Ottoman Empire, as many Turkish thinkers argued
    there was no Turkish culture as such, but that this was in fact a
    lower form of Persian culture. This book appeared around 1700 in
    Istanbul, which at the time was a very cosmopolitan city and home not
    only to Muslim thinkers and philosophers, but also the wisest and
    most widely read Orthodox Greeks, with whom Cantemir had excellent
    ties, as he never renounced his Orthodox faith. So, there were voices
    in Istanbul saying there was no such thing as Turkish culture and
    that Ottoman culture was the sum of a number of ancient cultures, of
    which the noblest and highest was that of the Persians. Naturally,
    sultan Ahmed wanted the brilliant young man to demonstrate that this
    was not so. In the forward, the author makes a diachronic historical
    analysis of music genres, after which he embarks on the treatise
    itself and the musical scores. At the end, which is the most
    interesting part for us, he included some original compositions,
    drawing on Sephardic sounds from North Africa and even a series of
    suites he calls ‘Moldavian’. Of course, listening to the latter
    today they sound as if they are entirely from Istanbul. No Romanian
    today will say they recognise anything of what we today call
    traditional music, but if we travel to the north of Moldavia, to
    Botoșani, the Tartar Bugeac, the
    centre of what is today the Republic of Moldova and if we listen to
    certain kobza tunes we understand that Oriental music influenced the
    music on the outskirts of towns and later even village music,
    following the abolition of Roma slavery.

     

     

     

    As
    someone who knew the Ottoman Empire well, having also written a work
    entitled The Rise and Fall of the Ottoman Porte, Dimitrie Cantemir
    tried to free Moldavia from under the sovereignty of the Sublime
    Porte, joining forces with Peter the Great against it. His plan,
    however, failed following the defeat at Stănilești in 1711. Forced
    to flee to Russia, he would spend the rest of his life as an advisor
    at the court of Peter the Great. His remains were brought back to
    Romania in 1935 and were buried at the Three Hierarchs’ Church in
    Iași.

  • Flamanda and St. Catherine slums

    Flamanda and St. Catherine slums

     

    Although close to the Union Square, an area that underwent demolitions and a radical transformation during the communist years, the area behind the Mitropoliei Hill in Bucharest has preserved its historical appearance. The origin of two of the neighborhoods there is linked to the past of today’s the metropolitan cathedral. Ana Rubeli, a researcher and author of the book “Heritage Slums. St. Catherine and Flamanda”, tells us more about the history of the place: ”If we position ourselves geographically in the metropolitan area, at the base of this hill there is a church called St. Ecaterina, which was once a monastery, and about which we have historical data from 1650. It is this monastery that gave the name of the St. Ecaterina slum, because, historically speaking, the slums took either the name of the church or the monastery around which they were formed, or that of a noble family in the area. However, if we look at the origin of the St. Ecaterina slum, it was practically formed due to long-term  contracts between the church and the people. Basically, the church decided to give plots of land to people in its vicinity. Thus, the monastery made some money, and the people had a settlement.”

     

    The human texture of the slum has changed over time, a social and economic evolution from one generation to another, taking place. If initially the inhabitants were small merchants, their families, in time, came to be made up of architects, musicians, lawyers or doctors. The architecture of the buildings also mirrors the social condition of the inhabitants. Ana Rubeli tells us what was typical of the houses in the St. Ecaterina slum, which has been preserved for the most part until today: ” Speaking in general, it is the type of house-wagon, the house which is narrower on the side of the street, but which is larger in the depth of the plot. With the increase and financial evolution of the family, new buildings were added to the main one. These were mainly houses with a slightly raised ground floor, whose ornaments testify to the financial status of the person who decided to build them. Some of the houses were made according to the plans of famous architects. They had distinctive elements believed to protect the privacy of the home. Some of the houses were surrounded by vines, an element of vegetation typical of the slum and typical of the soil, because we are near Mitropoliei Hill, which was once  Dealul Viilor (the Vine Hill), but also near Dâmbovița River, in an area easily flooded, but very fertile.”

     

    In this green and picturesque region, you can still find heritage buildings designed by architects such as Paul Smărandescu, Ștefan Ciocârlan, Gheorghe Simotta, Arghir Culina. And, in the immediate vicinity of the St. Ecaterina slum is Flămanda, one of the poorest areas of the capital until 1900, mostly inhabited by tailors, shoemakers and soap makers. This slum also appeared around a church, as Ana Rubeli tells us: ”It was, in fact, a plan of the metropolitan church, because we are on the border between the perimeter of the metropolitan church and St. Ecaterina monastery, further east. The project referred to the fact that the poor who came to beg at the metropolitan church were redirected to a wooden hermitage to stay and beg there. The hermitage came to be known as “Flamanda” which means “The Poor” and this is how it appears in the documents of the time. It practically took over this emotional charge of the metropolitan church, and although over time the settlement around it developed, not being at all poor and hungry, this name was kept.

     

    Today, a small part of the owners of the houses in St. Ecaterina and Flămanda know the history of their neighborhoods because few of the descendants of the original families still live there. The demographic change occurred during communism, when houses were nationalized and crowded with tenants. In spite of the fact that, after 1990, they became private property again, not all of them are inhabited today by the original families. But today’s owners can learn the history of the place from the book “Heritage Slums. St. Ecaterina and Flamanda”, released by the Vremea publishing house.

  • The Library of Sinaia Monastery

    The Library of Sinaia Monastery

     

    In the medieval Romanian space, erudition, together with everything related to learning as well as the writing and printing of books, were concentrated inside and around the monasteries. An example in this respect is the Sinaia Monastery, located in the mountain resort with the same name, on the Prahova Valley. Having an impressive architecture, this Orthodox place of worship also stood out for its association with an noble family of scholars: the Cantacuzino family. In fact, the founder of the monastery, built between 1690 and 1695, is Mihail Cantacuzino, the one who, in Bucharest, built the first civil hospital, the Coltea hospital.

     

     

    What is less known is the connection between this monastery and the modern libraries in Wallachia, a connection that is now emphasized by Simona Lazăr, researcher and librarian at the Carmen Sylva Cultural Center in Sinaia: “In 1695, when the monastery was opened, it was also when the foundations of the first Sinaia library were laid. Mihail Cantacuzino’s brother, Constantin Cantacuzino, a great scholar of his time, gave the monastery the book that still bears the inventory number 1. It is the “Gospel in Greek and Romanian”, printed in 1693 in Bucharest. At the moment, the monastery owns four copies of this work, which has something special from my point of view. It unites four Cantacuzini brothers. How? The donation was made by Constantin Cantacuzino to the monastery built by his brother, the patron Mihail Cantacuzino, published in 1693 in the printing press established almost a decade before by his brother, Şerban Cantacuzino, ruler of Wallachia, and translated in previous years by another brother, Iordache Cantacuzino. The monastery has books in Romanian, but written in Slavonic, with Cyrillic letters. It even has books in German. For example, the oldest book is the New Testament published in Leipzig in 1564, followed by an Anthology from Câmpina from 1643, then a correction of the law in 1652, in Târgoviște. Then come, in chronological order, the Bible from Bucharest 1688, also printed under the supervision of a Cantacuzino and therefore known as the Bible of Șerban Cantacuzino, given that he ordered its printing. But this library of the monastery grew over time. Most of the books that entered the library were religious books used during the service.”

     

     

    In fact, the love of books is another characteristic of the Cantacuzino family, a family that produced many rulers in Wallachia and marked political and cultural history up to the present day, as Simona Lazăr explains: “In order to understand how four brothers can be so close to books, we should know something about their childhood. Their father had founded in his own house a small library both for his soul and for science, for the upbringing of his children. They understood what reading meant and that is where their development began. I dare say that the seed of this library in Sinaia was also planted there. At least two of the brothers, Constantin and Mihail, studied in Padua. Constantin Cantacuzino loved collecting books, so that when he returned to the country, he founded his own library at the Mărgineni monastery. We librarians, also owe something to Constantin Cantacuzino: the fact that he brought from Padua the science of bibliographical description of books, as it was in the 17th century. Of course, a lot has changed in the meantime, but the way in which today, we catalogue books collected in a space that we call library, whether private, monastic or public, began in Wallachia thanks to Constantin Cantacuzino.”

     

     

    As for the Sinaia monastery, it was founded by Mihail Cantacuzino was expanded between 1842 and 1846 with a larger church and two buildings for monks’ accomodation. It gained its current appearance however, between 1897 and 1903, when Nifon Popescu was an abbot there and when large restoration works during the reign of King Carol I began. Simona Lazăr:  ”The monastery enriched its collection of old books under the rule of Carol I. At that time, the monastery was part of the 19 hermitages and monasteries under the care of the Civil Hospitals Eforia. The effort to establish a museum began, the first monastic museum in Romania to be inaugurated in 1895, when the monastery was two centuries old. So, around 1890, the abbot of the monastery received the serious task of going through the parishes that were in that region and collecting everything he could, from religious objects to old books for the establishment of the museum.”

     

    Unfortunately, in 1948, the monastery’s library entered, by order of the communist authorities, a period of so-called “denazification”, many volumes being taken from Sinaia, never to be found again. (EE)