Radio România Internațional

Category: RRI Encyclopaedia

  • The Museum of Sighișoara

    The Museum of Sighișoara

    Sighișoara is one of the cities in Romania that has preserved an appealing medieval center. The name of the famous prince Vlad “Dracula” Țepeș, born here in 1431, a medieval art festival, the fortified citadel, the Clock Tower and several other points of attraction are tied to the city. There is also a museum in Sighișoara which in 2024 will celebrate 125 years of existence.

     

     

    Today, Sighișoara is located where the Roman military settlement Sandava once stood. The city was founded later by German settlers from Franconia, deployed by the Hungarian king Géza II in the 12th century. The first documented records of the city, however, date from the late 13th century. In its 800 years of existence, Sighișoara went through periods of peace, but also through moments of fear and violence such as invasions, peasant uprisings, wars, sieges, plague epidemics, fires or social unrest. Sighișoara’s millennia-old history can be examined today at the local museum. Its director, Nicolae Teșculă, outlined some chronological milestones of the museum since its establishment.

     

     

    “The 19th century is particularly known as a century of nationalism, of nation-making, and of course, every nationality wanted to preserve and express its national values. This should also be produced through the creation of museums, by preserving some artifacts that identify a nation with a certain territory”.

     

     

    After the establishment of the Brukenthal Museum in Sibiu in 1817, local collectors made efforts to create new museums, such as the one in Sighișoara. Nicolae Teșculă gave us more details.

     

     

    “First of all, we’re talking about the collection of the German high school. The teaching staff of the Evangelical High School collected objects for school use. On the other hand, in 1879 Sighișoara hosted two events. The first was in early July, a general meeting of the Transylvanian Association for the Culture and Literature of the Romanian People, later known as ASTRA. Also that year, there was also a meeting of the Historical Science Society from the eastern part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire. One of the initiators of the organization of this session was theologian and historian Carl Fabrițius, originally from Sighișoara and a teacher at the German high school. On this occasion, he collected several objects from Sighișoara and the surrounding areas and set up an exhibition. This somehow served as his legacy to the younger generations to organize a museum in Sighișoara in the future, considering the exceptional value of the citadel that preserved and still preserves these medieval values”.

     

     

    The joint efforts of the Sighișoara elites in storing and exhibiting objects that remind us of the past were highly successful. Fabrițius was the one who started the history of the museum and his effort would be continued by Josef Bacon. Nicolae Teșculă explains.

     

     

    “One of the volunteers who contributed to the exhibition was a young man at the time, Josef Bacon. Later, he studied medicine and returned to his hometown, becoming the city physician. At the end of the 19th century, a museum would be set up in the most representative tower of the fortress, the Clock Tower. Initially, this tower had been restored in 1894. Later, it seems that a small exhibition, the so-called patrician room, was organized on the ground floor of the Clock Tower in 1898, although there is not much available data on it”.

     

     

    All good things usually progress and end well, and the same is true of the museum in Sighișoara. Nicolae Teșculă.

     

     

    “Later, more objects were added to the collection, basically, on June 25, 1899, the museum opened. It brought together a group of generous and history-loving people, and from 1905 it was linked to the Sibiu-based Sebastian Han Association. This association was specifically aimed at promoting historical and artistic values. It had two goals: on the one hand, the organization of exhibitions in different fortresses or fortified churches and, at the same time, the promotion of visual artists from the area, especially Saxons, who at that time were active in the centers of Transylvania, especially in Brașov and Sibiu. This Association administered the museum until 1925. After 1925, the museum came under the tutelage of the Evangelical Church, which started expanding its collections. In addition to the Clock Tower collection, which included the early history of Sighișoara, starting with the Bronze Age and ending with the First World War, there was also a small ethnographic museum set up in the monastery church, a small museum of church objects organized in the hill church and a school museum. They even tried to create a small dendrological park around the Clock Tower and the green area between the church and the tower, and starting 1933 Sighișoara has arguably had a genuine museum complex”.

     

     

    The history museum in Sighișoara is today one with a century-old tradition, built with the enthusiasm, dedication and experience of a group of people who more often than not remain unknown to future generations. (VP)

  • Prince Nicholas’ activity in exile

    Prince Nicholas’ activity in exile

    Born in August 1903, prince Nicholas was the only brother of King Carol II to make it into adulthood, with the king’s younger brother Mircea dying when he was a child. Brought up by his mother Queen Marie in an unrestricted manner, Nicholas was an energetic child and later as a teenager was interested in sports and car racing. He went to school at Eton and was educated in a British environment. He is, however, still somewhat of a mystery for the public, not least because he spent most of his life in exile. He was a regent between 1927 and 1930, as King Michael was still a minor, and until the return to the throne of Carol II.

    Prince Nicholas went into exile because he entered into a morganatic marriage to Ioana Doletti, which the Royal House did not accept. Although his brother Carol had a similar marriage, this did not prevent Carol from exiling his brother when he took back the throne in 1930. Nicholas’ exile began in the inter-war period and continued after the installation of communism after the war. It was this period that Diana Mandache covered in her recent book entitled Principele Nicolae. Exil și rivalități (“Prince Nicholas. Exile and rivalries”). The author conducted research both in the national archives and abroad. Here’s Diana Mandache speaking about the personality of prince Nicholas and his influence in the Romanian diaspora:

    “Nicholas was a firm man. He was temperamental, but also had the British manners owing to having studied and lived in Great Britain, after WWI. He also had as tutor the same man who was the tutor of the children of George V, Queen Marie’s cousin. So he had mentors who shaped his character and guided him in key moments. The historian Nicolae Iorga praised Nicholas for accepting the regency and thus lending a certain stability to Romanian political life. King Michael was a minor at the time, and the regency was ensured by three people: patriarch Miron Cristea, Gheorghe Buzdugan, the president of the High Court of Cassation and Justice in 1927 and Nicholas, at the request of Queen Marie. So he was morally ready for the task, but it was difficult to give up his personal life at that young age.”

    When he was definitively exiled in 1937, Nicholas embarked on a diplomatic activity, first in Venice, where he lived initially, then in Switzerland, in Lausanne. Diana Mandache explains:

    “Nicholas met in the 1940s with Romanian diplomats to discuss important matters, apart from the political and military problems of WWII and the need to join the war on the side of the allies, which meant a change of foreign policy. He wanted to create a committee of free Romanians, which wasn’t possible, Switzerland being a neutral state that did not allow for political activities. But he did have talks with foreign diplomats from the allied states, and an important figure was the United States ambassador, Leland Harrison, who had been familiar with Nicholas’ case since 1937, when he was accredited to Bucharest. He had frequent meetings with Harrison, as well as with Great Britain’s minister in Bern. Nicholas wanted to revise or to draw up a different Constitution and to this end, he hired a Swiss legal expert, which the latter mentioned to the authorities in Bern, because he was obliged to disclose any political interests or positions. Prince Nicholas was warned by the Swiss authorities, verbally, through an intermediary, very diplomatically, to put an end to these political meetings, which sometimes took place during private dinners. Nicholas was naturally allowed to express his views, but nothing more, as Switzerland was a neutral state and didn’t take sides.”

    After Romania became a communist country, prince Nicholas intensified his work in exile, with a focus on culture and trying to unify the Romanian diaspora, which was very divided. Diana Mandache tells us more:

    “After 1947, prince Nicholas shifts his attention to other states, like France, which had a strong Romanian community owing to the installation of the communist regime and the abdication of the king, as well as Spain, which mainly attracted members of the Iron Guard, and also Italy. Prince Nicholas played an important role in this period. He gave statements to Radio Madrid and Radio Rome on Monarchy Day, on 10th May, or on 24th January, and he organised Romanian festivals. He tried to unify the diaspora in these countries, visiting Romanian associations and organisations and the Romanian communities in Italy, Spain and France. He focused on these three countries. He gave interviews to the Italian and Spanish press, gave statements on the situation of the Romanians in Romania, and took a stand, for example by taking advice in connection to the attack on the legation of the People’s Republic of Romania in Bern by the Oliviu Beldeanu group. […] Prince Nicholas was also interested in cultural matters and he saw culture as a means of propaganda. During the Cold War, the Romanian festivals he organised in West Germany, his support for the Romanian Library in Freiburg, the establishment, after his wife’s death, of the Princess Ioana Cultural Foundation and the organisation of a Romanian festival in Madrid brought together not only his own supporters, but also Romanians living in exile who did not support a particular political group or orientation. These activities were a success in the sense that they were attended by great Romanian cultural figures who gave talks on Romania. So, for prince Nicholas Romania was first and foremost an ideal.”

    Prince Nicholas died in 1978 in Madrid and was first buried in Lausanne. This year, however, his remains and those of his wife Ioana Doletti were brought to Curtea de Argeș and reburied in the royal necropolis there.

  • Booksellers from old Bucharest: Leon Alcalay

    Booksellers from old Bucharest: Leon Alcalay

    Throughout history, culture has been a producer of economic and social change, as well as of spiritual development. In turn, books have educated minds and physical skills. The first information revolution that benefited the book was the printing press, invented by the German Johannes Gutenberg in the mid-15th century. Since then, in the book and printing press industry new trades appeared and developed such as typographer, compositor and later linotypist. But books also gave rise to such jobs as publisher, bookshop owner, bookseller, and book trader.

     

    The history of the widely circulated book in the Romanian space begins in the middle of the 19th century. The book trade appears against the background of the expansion of primary education and the drop in illiteracy and, more generally, as a result of the emergence and consolidation of the modern Romanian state. From an object intended for elites and ecclesiastical circles, the book diversifies and becomes a product for wide circulation, accessible to all classes and social categories. Popularizing the book was both a business opportunity and a means to educate those who could not afford expensive books. One of the best-known publishers, bookshop owners and booksellers in old Bucharest before 1945 was Leon Alcalay.

     

    Born in Bucharest in 1847, Alcalay was attracted to books from his adolescence. As the Bucharest of the 1870s was in a great fever of change and the infusion of books was massive, he started out as an itinerant seller of books, magazines and old prints. He was, what we call today, an antiquarian book seller. He placed his business on Calea Victoriei, at the intersection with Elisabeta boulevard, on the main street of the city, near the “Grand Hotel du Boulevard”.

     

    Felicia Waldman from the University of Bucharest, who is inventorying the landmarks of the Bucharest Jewish community, also put on the map of Jewish Bucharest the place where the history of the Alcalay brand began: “On the ground floor of this hotel there was, from the very beginning, since 1867 when it was built, the Alcalay universal bookstore. Leon Alcalay was a Sephardic, Spanish-born Jewish bookseller who began selling second-hand books at the age of 16 behind the hotel, where Eforie Street is today. The Russian legation was located there at the time, and in front of it there were two shelves of second-hand books. He was so passionate about books in general that from this small business of selling second-hand books he became the biggest publisher, bookseller, book producer and producer of all categories in the publishing industry, with this universal publishing house Alcalay.”

     

    Leon Alcalay’s book business was growing, and he moved to a higher level, publishing and marketing topical books. A modern spirit, Alcalay wanted to spread the universal values ​​of humanism and culture in Romania as well. Thus, in the trade of the books he printed or resold, universal literature held pride of place. The greatest names of universal literature thus reached the Romanian readers. He followed the trends on the Western book market and thus the pocket-book-format inspired by the famous “Library for all” collection from Reclams Universal Bibliothek in Leipzig appeared in Romania. Until the end of the First World War, Alcalay was one of the leaders on the Romanian book market. In 1920, however, the founder of ‘the book for all’ in Romania dies at the age of 73, ending an era.

     

    Here is Felicia Waldman back with details: “In 1920, he died and his family inherited and continued the bookstore business. It was practically all over the country, not only in Bucharest. It was the bookstore that brought to Romania what is called the “Library for all” concept. It was a German collection that made literature accessible to the less financially stable readers. Basically, he made books available at lower prices, so that both the Romanian and universal literature became accessible to a wider audience, through the Alcalay bookstore and the “Library for all” collection. The “Library for all” collection continued during the communist period, but it was obviously taken over by another publishing house, as the Alcalay publishing house no longer existed.”

     

    At the end of the 1930s, the name of the founder no longer appeared on the building that hosted the Alcalay publishing house, being replaced with the name of Remus Cioflec. And the explanation for that change is state anti-Semitism. Felicia Waldman is back at the microphone: “In 1938-1939, the Alcalay family understood what was happening, understood what was to come, and sold the business to Remus Cioflec. He was also a publisher of that time who had the opportunity and also the interest to buy the Alcalay network which he practically saved. The Alcalay publishing house was saved because Cioflec agreed to take it over and then it was nationalized by the communists, which meant its end. But at least it lasted until 1948.”

     

    Book accessibility in the Bucharest of yore is linked to the name of Leon Alcalay. Old books enthusiasts can find, even today, in second-hand bookshops, the brand that brought culture to everyone. (LS)

  • Dincă Schileru

    Dincă Schileru

    In Romania’s local history we find important names who got involved in social and charitable work for their native regions or contributed to the development of their birthplace. Others excelled in the cultural field and thus helped promote their regions. The history of Gorj, in south-western Romania, is dominated by the name of the great sculptor Constantin Brâncuși, but Gorj has given other important names to Romanian history. It is also the birthplace of Tudor Vladimirescu, the leader of the revolutionary movement of 1821; of Gheorghe Magheru, one of the leaders of the 1848 revolution; of actress Elvira Godeanu, philosopher George Uscătescu, and the politicians Gheorghe Tătărescu, Grigore Iunian and Vasile Lascăr. Entrepreneur, politician and lobbyist Dincă Schileru also hailed from Gorj.

    Dincă Schileru was born in 1846 and died in 1919, aged 72, into a family of wealthy peasants. One of his predecessors was a soldier in the army of Tudor Vladimirescu. Schileru was the first peasant to be elected to the Romanian Parliament. He may have come from the ranks of the peasants, but he was by no means poor. In 1868 he got married and moved to his wife’s village, where he built a family home, a church and a school, helping poor children get an education. He began his business career with a small tailor’s workshop and then moved into entrepreneurship and trading in grains, fruit tree growing and vine growing. He built mills and machines for processing wood and was passionate about horses. His business acumen and success did not only bring about wealth but also prestige among the people in his village. He was said to be a man with a strong personality and proud of his origins. Dincă Schileru helped promote the region’s traditional costume and his community placed its trust on him by electing him its representative to the local council in 1876, aged 30, and later to the Romanian Parliament in 1879, as a Liberal MP.

    Gheorghe Nichifor studied Dincă Schileru’s life and struggle of social and economic emancipation. He showed how Schileru took politics very seriously and tenaciously dedicated himself to the economic improvement of his native region:

    “Dincă Schileru was a member in the Romanian Parliament despite only having gone to school for 40 days, now and then from 1887 until 1911. He did not use beautiful words, but had a talent for repeating his ideas until they stuck with the the members of Parliament. Here’s an example: We have mines in Gorj, we have coal in Schela. He went to London with a piece of coal, showed it to the British MPs, told them where it came from and that’s how investors showed up in Gorj. He himself did some oil prospecting in Bâlteni, the village of his wife, and it was later confirmed that there was, indeed, oil in the area.”

    Schileru was therefore someone who was good at making money and he also put this skill in areas other than agriculture and wood processing, even becoming a patron of the arts. Gheorghe Nichifor explains:

    “Dincă Schileru at some point had his own newspaper. And he also had his own tailor’s workshop, which produced his famous outfit. He built schools. He even contributed to the construction of the county museum, which today houses the bell he donated to the school in Stănești and which was used not only to assemble the pupils but also to sound the breakfast, lunch and dinner time for the people in the village.”

    Energetic and willing to make things move, Schileru was considered the epitomy of a successful man, with wealth and offspring to leave his wealth to. He gave confidence to the people who elected him and he was even remembered in local folk songs and rhymes. Gheorghe Nichifor:

    “He had a descendant called Aristică Schileru. He was a senator in the Romanian Parliament but died young, aged 40. Another descendant was a first tier football player who was also called Schileru, whose name may ring familiar to those who are a bit older.”

    Dincă Schileru was a man of his times. He put his qualities both to his own service and that of his community.

  • The Romanian Opera House Palace in Bucharest

    The Romanian Opera House Palace in Bucharest

    Composer and conductor George Stephanescu in late 19th century established Romania’s first opera troupe, then known as The Romanian Lyrical Company, arguably the nucleus of lyrical theater in Romania.

     

    Notwithstanding, from its establishment and to the early 1950s, the Romanian Opera House did not have its own premises: its performances were venued by other theaters in Bucharest.

     

    The situation would change in the early days of the communist regime, mainly for propagandistic reasons. In 1953, Bucharest played host to a great international youth festival, and that was the reason why a string of buildings appeared in the capital city, with the purpose of playing host to all the events scheduled back then. Among these buildings there was the present-day building of the Romanian National Opera House. They were located on Dambovita river banks, quite close to the imposing building of the Law Faculty.

     

    And, despite the fact that this new palace had been designed to comply with the architectural pattern of the Soviet buildings, just as it happened with the Casa Scanteii building, the Romanian Opera House vaguely reminds us of that style.

     

    A recently-published work provides a detailed analysis of the stages of the construction as well as the aspect of the Opera House palace. The title of the work is “The History of the Bucharest Opera House building.” Its author is the Director of the Academy Library, Nicolae Noica.

     

    Here is the author himself, reminiscing about the history of the building:

     

    “The Opera House had been created by a great man of culture, George Stephănescu. Afterwards, for a good number of years, until 1952, with no premises of its own, it was housed by a building near the Cismigiu Park, and then, for a long time, it was housed by the National Theater building on Victoria Road. Unfortunately, the National Theater was shelled. I was baffled to find out, researching documents dated 1948-1949, that the one who had the first initiative to build an Opera building was doctor Petru Groza, the head of the Romanian Government. And then, through a government resolution, he offered a plot of land where today’s National Theater Building in the center lies, close to the University. He organized a competition, yet nothing was materialized. However, around 1950-1951 a resolute decision was taken and the Bucharest Project Institute, which was established at that time, was officially empowered to draw up the project. The respective project was coordinated and thought out by a great architect: professor Octav Doicescu. He was a man of the old school who had also represented us in a couple of international exhibitions between the wars, jointly with our great architects Petre Antonescu and G.M. Cantacuzino. Of course, first and foremost, the top priority was to pick the plot where the building would be erected and a place was spotted on the quay, right where the building of the Opera House lies today. An official stadium used to be there, at that time. The project was drawn up, just as I said, by architect Octav Doicescu and the works began in 1951 or thereabouts.

     

    But what was the selected architectural style and how was that done?

     

    Here is academician Nicolae Noica once again:

     

    “It has been often said that is has that aspect of the Russian or Soviet buildings. However, Octav Doicescu did not do something like that, but for the project to get through after the checks that had been made, the original sheets were signed by a Russian advisor, for the confirmation of the solutions. Then again, the Russian architects who had come here had a special consideration for Octav Doicescu, and for Macovei, and they allowed for a whole range of elements to get through so that the building could a monumental one and offer the initially envisaged image. Yet speaking about the style, I can say it is a Romanian style, with a string of elements that were borrowed, yet in no way is it true what was said about it, that it was a building following the pattern of the buildings in Moscow at that time. ”

     

    For the construction of the Romanian Opera Palace, Octav Doicescu teamed up with architect Pompiliu Macovei, the coordinator of the construction yard, and the Armenian-born construction engineer Aznavurian. The construction was completed in 1953, while the official inauguration was held in January 1954, with a performance of Tchaikovsky’s The Queen of Spades.

     

    The façade of the building, changed as compared to the architect’s initial idea, has a porch with three monumental arcades supported by columns on which heads we can find the statues of four muses. Also, there are three access doors facilitating the entrance to the imposing hall, elevated on two floors. It is also the façade that is adorned with bas-reliefs made by sculptors Zoe Băicoianu, Boris Caragea and  Ion Vlad.

     

    About the interior decoration, here is Nicolae Noica once again.

     

    “There is this foyer inside, which is splendid and somewhere to the left, when you climb up the stairs, there is the yellow salon: a beauty in itself, with a whole range of decorations made back then, in the year 1953, and preserved in spectacularly mint condition to this day. In the performance hall you find the lodges divided with little pillars for partition. Of course, at this point there was so much talk about it as well. If these little pillars do not bother from an architectural point of view, they had been imposed taking the resistance of the building into account. Also, the ceiling is splendid, made of carved wood, and, what is most impressive, the old chandelier with 100 bulbs is still there. Also, at that time a heating and a ventilation installation were made there, so they could create the appropriate climate. Unfortunately, years went by and this installation does not work perfectly. We also spoke with Mrs. Minister of Culture to support us financially, so much so that these works may live up to the present-day’s fair and modern standards, since it is our responsibility, 70 years on, to be able to preserve the building.

     

    Actually, from the very beginning The Romania Opera Palace was designed to be resistant. In the wake of the 1977 and 1986 tremors, not a single crack was reported to have damaged its walls.

  • Architects of Bucharest: Leonida Negrescu and Jean Monda

    Architects of Bucharest: Leonida Negrescu and Jean Monda

    A walk on the streets of Bucharest, many of which are still home to the old bourgeois manors, will inevitably impress walkers-by through the opulence of their architectural design. From marble plates pinned on houses or buildings, people can learn who the architect was. Two major names stand out when it comes to the houses of the old bourgeoisie in Bucharest – Leon Schwartz, better known as Leonida Negrescu, and Jean Monda. Felicia Waldman has been teaching the history of Jews in Romania at University of Bucharest. She told us more about the biography and projects of these two artists, starting with Leon Schwartz.

     

     

    “Leon Schwartz was born in 1857 in Bucharest. He graduated from the Roads and Bridges School, and in 1879 he went to Paris where he enrolled at the School of Fine Arts, the Architecture Department. He was influenced by the works of Charles Garnier, who designed the Opera in Paris, an iconic representative of the Second Empire eclectic style. In 1887, he got his architect diploma and secured employment as an assistant inspector commissioned for the Central School building in Paris. He also oversaw construction works for all the buildings in the Luxembourg district in the French capital-city. In 1888, he returned to Bucharest as chief-architect of the Romanian Railway Company. It was a big exception, as you didn’t see many Jews in such high-ranking office. He helped build the docks in the ports of Brăila and Galați and spent the next 7 years working as a tenured architect with the Ministry of Religious Affairs and Public Education, again marking a new premiere in Romania. In 1895, he stepped down to devote himself to private projects”.

     

     

    Leon Schwartz laid his mark on a number of beautiful buildings in Bucharest before 1945. Felicia Waldman told us more:

     

     

    “He designed several iconic buildings in Bucharest, including Jockey Club, the Trade Academy, the former Splendid Hotel, the Orfeu Music Store, all of which were on Victory Road and were demolished during the communist regime. He also built monuments that have endured to this day, such as Arenele Romane in Carol Park, which is an amphitheater for live performances, the Choral Temple Fraternity Boarding School, today the headquarters of the Federation of Jewish Communities in Romania. For all his merits, Leon Schwartz was one of the first Jews to receive the Romanian citizenship in 1894. He died in 1931 and was buried at the Filantropia Cemetery in Bucharest, whose chapel he designed”.

     

     

    The second architect whose legacy is still visible in modern-day Bucharest was not actually a dweller of the capital-city. Jean Monda’s works, however, were no less important for the city, Felicia Waldman says.

     

     

    “Jean Monda was born in 1900 in Ploiești. He graduated the Politechnics School in Milan. He returned in 1924 with a fine arts education typical of his age, specializing in austere Art Deco and a moderate strand of Modernism. He settled in Bucharest and was commissioned to design a number of real estate projects for Jews with refined tastes and knowledge of Western architectural trends. In 1932 he built a house on Armenească Street for Soli Gold. Jean Monda collaborated extensively with the Jewish engineer Jean Berman, for whom he built a house on Luca Stroici Street in 1930. That same year he designed the apartment building of his own residence on Tudor Arghezi Stret. He lived at apartment no. 2 his entire life. In the second half of the 1930s, Jean Monda started teaching architecture at the Architecture Department of the Jewish College, a private university set up by the Jewish community addressing Jewish students who no longer had access to public schooling”.

     

     

    Jean Monda’s name is frequently displayed on marble plates on houses in Bucharest, and his works are featured in Romanian architecture textbooks. Felicia Waldman has more details.

     

     

    “After 1948, after all his properties were seized, Jean Monda’s activity came to a halt, considering that in the two previous decades he had built over 25 lavish buildings of excellent design, the obvious result of a great professional and a talented architect. He wrote and published a number of architecture articles and 5 books, after publishing his first monography in 1940. Most of the buildings Monda designed can be observed today, as they bear his name and the year they were built. Monda also designed various utility buildings such as Regal Cinema and Colos Bar, built in 1927 and 1930 on Elisabeta Boulevard, which were demolished. He also designed the Frascati Performance Hall, the Constantin Tănase Theatre and residential buildings with the Eforia and Studio cinema halls at street level over 1945-1946 and 1946-1948 on Magheru Boulevard”.

     

     

    Leon Schwartz and Jean Monda are important figures tied to the architectural history of Bucharest, evidence of which can be found on the countless marble plates throughout the city bearing their names. (VP)

  • The Kerim House in Bucharest

    The Kerim House in Bucharest

    In a neighborhood that today stretches towards the east of the capital Bucharest, right behind the Union Square, the old streets and houses of the  city, built on the left bank of the Dâmbovița river, are still in place. Also there was the old Jewish neighborhood with buildings whose architecture and size varied, depending on the financial situation of the members of this minority which, at one point, had accounted for 11% of Bucharest’s population. Unfortunately, following the demolitions and systematization during the communist period, the area has changed a lot. Nevertheless, historical oases have survived, such as the Perfume Street, where one of the houses with a lot of cultural charge is located. It is the Kerim House, also called Perfumery by its most famous tenant, the writer, journalist and radio personality Silvia Kerim.

     

    Born in 1931, Silvia Kerim was known mainly due to her plays for children’s radio dramas and also due to her interviews with cultural personalities, from the world of theater and cinema. Her bohemian style is still visible in the house where she lived all her life, for a period of time together with her husband, film director Mircea Veroiu. One of the great directors and intellectuals of Romanian cinema, Mircea Veroiu stood out for his extremely personal style of directing famous literary works signed by Ioan Slavici, Garabet Ibrăileanu and Mateiu Caragiale. Deceased before Silvia Kerim, in 1997, Mircea Veroiu can also be rediscovered in the privacy of the Perfumery, says Doina Dogăroiu, the representative of the Hearth Cultural Association, which manages Casa Kerim today: “Silvia Kerim was born in this house where she lived all her life, with only one very short period when she did not live here. But otherwise, she lived here all her life. She even died in this house. She stayed with Mircea Veroiu only for a period of nine years, but the house got the shape it has now during that period, when Mircea Veroiu invested the money he had obtained from the few films made in the 1970s. So the house has the shape h we see nowadays also thanks to Mircea Veroiu. He left the country in 1981, and only Silvia Kerim remained in this house until 2016, when she died.”

     

    Although the marriage between Silvia Kerim and Mircea Veroiu ended, at some point, through divorce, the director’s love for the house on the Perfume Street did not fade even after his emigration to Paris in 1981. The changes he made to the building consisted mainly in its expansion by a wing where the bedroom was later located. However, these changes did not affect the architecture of the house Doia Dogăroiu says: “We are now in the former Jewish neighborhood, which was also a merchants’ district at the same time. And yes, it is a typical house belonging to wealthy middle-class merchants from the beginning of the last century. It was the home of the Kerim family, Silvia’s father, Turkish by origin, who bought it at an auction. It had originally belonged to a lawyer and it has a story that we know from Silvia Kerim, from her books. It was a lawyer’s house. His wife played at the casino in Sinaia and lost the house. The house was sold at an auction, following this unfortunate event for the lawyer’s family. Silvia Kerim also says that the lawyer loved his wife so much that even though it was his favorite house, he did not get angry with her. Silvia Kerim’s father bought the house at that auction. Silvia was born here, and so was her brother. Their father died, unfortunately, very early, so she stayed with her mother and after that with Mircea Veroiu, with whom she had a relationship for nine years.”   Currently, the Kerim House or the Perfumery is managed by the Hearth Association which organizes various cultural projects here, such as experimental theater performances, reading evenings and film screenings.

  • The house with arched windows

    The house with arched windows

     

     

    In the eastern part of Bucharest, in the area that used to be called Bariera Vergului and that marked one of the city’s outskirts, now lies one of the capital’s historical districts, a merchant district of the petty bourgeoisie, which has already entered urban mythology. There is also the House with arched windows, named so due to the novelty of concave windows, at the time. Its celebrity has endured to this day and was perhaps one of the reasons for its recent restoration. The architect Andrei Atanasiu, the coordinator of the restauration works, shares with us the history of the house with arched windows: ”We have not been able to find out who designed the original house. We only know that the person who built it was called Petrache Dancovici and that he was a merchant who had a shop on the Lipscani commercial street, selling construction materials.

     

     

    Legend has it that this is where the name the house with arched windows comes from. He is believed to had chosen the arched windows and had ordered them in Leipzig. We know precisely the year when it was finished, 1861. It was a time when many merchants built their houses in this area of Bucharest called Mahalaua Vergului. And after the great fire that took place in Bucharest around 1840, the area was systematized and cleaned up a bit, because it initially was an unsanitary slum. In the end, a neighborhood was built in this area, inhabited mostly by merchants. Most of the children of these merchants were educated and so it became a neighborhood of doctors because the children, mostly doctors, inherited the houses from the merchants, that is, from their parents.”

     

     

    What happened afterwards with the heirs of merchant Dancovici, we learn from architect Andrei Atanasiu: “The merchant Dancovici had no children and left the house as an inheritance to the sons of his younger sister, who was married to another merchant, Constantin Paulescu. One of the children was scholar Nicolae Paulescu, who also lived in this house together with his sister and her children. During the communist period, however, the house underwent further changes. It also had a smaller house attached to it. They most likely had the same style initially, but in the interwar period the small house was transformed and a block of flats was built in its place.  The big house with arched windows was also transformed during the communist period. The facade to Hristo Botev Street was completely devoid of ornaments. It was difficult for us because we had to rebuilt all those ornaments. But, thank God, we had preserved the original ornaments on the other facades and were able to make molds after them and reset them in their original position.”

     

     

    Following the restoration, the exterior decorative wrought iron elements were redone, as were the stained glass windows at the main entrance. The chimneys have been restored to their original form and kept for decorative purposes only. The scientist and physiologist Nicolae Paulescu lived until the year of his death, 1931, in the house with arched windows, which covers an area of 237 square meters, has only a ground floor and an attic. Who designed it? Andrei Atanasiu explains: “The house cannot be included in a precise style so we say that it is eclecticism, meaning a combination of classic styles from all historical periods. Most of the houses in Bucharest are eclectic, that is, they combine the classical style with the baroque and others. There is no clean style, but a mixture of elements. It was a fashion back then, that’s for sure. Even today we can consider the house to be slightly kitsch, given that it has those arched windows and is multi-colored. But that was the fashion of the time. That was the fashion back then, that’s how people valued beauty.”

     

    Today, the house with arched windows helps us recreate the past atmosphere of the neighborhood, and is an example of successful restoration works.

  • Constantin Brâncuși’s journey from Romania to Paris

    Constantin Brâncuși’s journey from Romania to Paris

    Constantin Brâncuși’s journey from the humble beginnings as the son of a poor carpenter to the artistic heights he achieved in Paris as a sculptor began in Hobița, a village in the northern part of historical Oltenia, where Brâncuși was born on 19th February 1876. It was from here that he set off, at the start of the 20th century, to Western Europe, which was more welcoming than his native Romania to his art, one that was nevertheless imbued with the traditions of his kin, and a closeness to nature. Before he left for Paris, Brâncuși attended primary school in his village and then went to the School of Arts and Crafts in Craiova, before enrolling at the Academy of Fine Arts in Bucharest, which he graduated in 1902. It was about that time that he decided to leave Romania, but nothing is certain when it comes to the artist’s personal biography. Very little is also known about his personality and way of thinking, so the man behind the artist is difficult to reconstruct. However, any endeavor to understand him has to include the journey that led to his achieving fame abroad, a journey Sorin Trâncă recreated recently and described in a book entitled ‘Constantin’s Journey, Brâncuși’s Escape from Romania, a Reconstruction’. Sorin Trâncă noticed from the start that there is very little actual information about Brâncuși’s journey:

    “I began with the assumption that he left in 1903 and arrived in 1904. The writer Alexandru Vlahuta wrote in 1910 that this journey lasted four months. Some said it took eight months, others 14 or 16 months, even two years. There are many things that are not clear. My intention was to try to put forward a valid theory. After doing a lot of reading and carefully considering all the arguments and sources, I concluded that he must have left in 1903, sometime in late spring or early summer, and that he most likely arrived in Paris the next summer, around Bastille Day, on 14th July 1904. The journey would have taken him more than a year, but it’s still not certain if he indeed left in 1903, and not perhaps a year earlier, in 1902.”

    According to Sorin Trâncă, Brâncuși most probably left from Hobița to Petroșani, in the Romanian Kingdom, and then he went to Transylvania, which at the time was part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire. Via Hațeg, he entered Hungary via Nădlac, passed through Budapest, entered Austria through Heidentor im Carnutum, travelled through Vienna, Linz, and Salzburg, and then into Germany, to Munich, Konstanz and further to Switzerland, where he seemingly fell ill, more precisely in Basel. After entering France, he traveled by train from Langres to Paris, where he is believed to have arrived on 14th July, for, as the artist wrote, ‘France welcomed me with a brass band and a military salute’. But how did Brâncuși travel and how did he finance his trip? Sorin Trâncă says the answers to these questions are still not clear:

    “We know some important points that are validated by exegetes, by people who also knew him personally, like the lawyer and publicist Petre Pandrea. Basically, we know that he passed through Vienna, through Budapest, through Munich, through Basel, through Zurich and through Langres, on his way to France. And from here on I simply started to complete a map and make an itinerary starting from the hypothesis that Brâncusi made this journey in some way, on foot. This is another discussion. Many support this theory: that he walked like Badea Cârțan. I don’t think he did that, I think he rather went out into the world, like peasants or journeymen. (…) After finishing their apprenticeship, a journeyman is charged with taking this path to maturity, in which they must travel from one craftsman to another to learn new secrets of the trade. So, our peasant, Brâncusi, went out into the world, but he left as a journeyman, after finishing his apprenticeship in Bucharest, at the school of fine arts , a very good school by the way.”

    What is known for sure, however, is that, after graduating the school, Constantin Brâncusi participated in various competitions for the creation of public monuments, all his proposals being rejected. Perhaps this rejection led Brâncusi to leave the country, but this too is only an assumption in the absence of direct testimony. Here is Sorin Trâncă.

    “All the public works Brâncuși ever made were rejected. But there are also exceptions. One is related to the Târgu Jiu complex, but there we are talking about a person who was already almost 60 years old. (…) So, in Brâncuși’s old age, few people could correct his works. But, until then, all his public works were rejected. Other exceptions are public monuments, but commissioned by private individuals, such as those in the Buzău cemetery, so a funerary monument. (…) Although I refuse for the moment the categorical statements that Brâncusi really left Bucharest angry before arriving in Paris, it is possible that he left angry because of the spirit of mediocrity. (…) He is not a traveler in the modern sense, let’s say. I mean, in general, he left for work. He didn’t go out to have fun. (…) And, returning to childhood, Brâncuși’s departure from Hobita to Paris, on foot, I think, it is his fifth departure from home, if not even the sixth, because he ran away several times between 7 and 11 years of age. But there are also his departures from home, the sheepfold, around the age of 5. He is a child of the sheepfold, being poor and coming from a family with many children. From a young age he is sent elsewhere to build a life for himself. First time he was sent to a sheepfold in the Parâng Mountains. It’s the reason why Brâncusi didn’t really do serious school studies as a child, and almost misses primary school.”

    Eager to be himself, following his original path for this purpose, Brâncusi would succeed, in Paris, in forging the much-sought-after forms in sculpture and, in addition, in making them admired by the entire world.

  • Jean Pangal

    Jean Pangal

    Any human community has its picturesque, nonconformist, more or less inventive characters. In the history of Romania, such a character was the lawyer Jean Pangal, a politician and diplomat, considered by those who studied his life as one of the great artists of machinations. Sociologists consider him the creator of social networks where such individuals mobilize and energize the energies of others.

     

    Jean Pangal was born in 1895 in Nice, France and died in 1950 in Lisbon, Portugal at the age of 55. His family had its origins in the small and middle nobility. During the First World War, he did legal studies at the University of Iași and was a supporter of Romania’s entry into the war alongside France, Great Britain and Russia. At the end of the Great War, when Romania unites with Bessarabia, Bukovina, Banat and Transylvania and goes through profound reforms, a new generation of Romanians enters the political arena. Universal suffrage and agrarian reform are the two new open horizons. Pangal, a journalist during the war years, adheres to the doctrine of peasantry and from the second half of the 1920s occupies political positions in the state bureaucracy.

     

    He was a deputy in the Romanian Parliament between 1927-1928 and 1931-1932, undersecretary of state for press and information between 1931-1932. He joined the diplomatic corps and was sent as minister plenipotentiary of Romania to Spain, between 1938-1939, and to Portugal, between 1939-1940. His political maestro was Constantin Argetoianu, president, among others, of the Agrarian Union party. Like many public figures of his time, Jean Pangal was a member of the Romanian Freemasonry, which he controlled to a large extent.

     

    The sociologist Bogdan Bucur is the biographer of Jean Pangal and in the archives he discovered 474 informative notes to the intelligence services given by Pangal’s secretary, Gheorghe Chintescu, notes that he published: “They are extraordinary in the sense that we get to know them at the level of detail, of current life, in relation to what Pangal was doing, in relation to the discussions he had and their content. We have no other source of information regarding the content of the discussions between Jean Pangal and King Carol II, between Jean Pangal and Mrs. Elena Lupescu, the king’s mistress. There was no other way of finding about an important and significant part of the political, diplomatic, Romanian and foreign Masonic elite, who had arrived in Bucharest or passed through Bucharest, there was no other way of knowing what they did. This Mephistophelian act of the Special Intelligence Service led by Moruzov, to recruit Chintescu, a morally questionable thing, is actually extremely valuable, it produces valuable consequences for us today.”

     

    The amazing thing about Pangal was his great ability to socialize, in any environment and to have power without having actual power. Bogdan Bucur analyzed the meaning of Jean Pangal’s behavior with the tools of sociological research: “Based on these details regarding Pangal’s interactions, we have made, with the help of specialized software, an analysis of the social networks that he developed. We had a personal network, details about who he met with, and we measured the frequency with which Pangal interacted with certain people at political meetings. The notes are so detailed that we can retrace his power network, his influence network. Many of Pangal’s visits to the king are not there because they were informal. We have, for example, the frequency with which Pangal met various people at the masonic meetings. He could have a talk about the king with Gheorghe Bibescu, the Grand Master of the National Lodge, an important mason, but not as important as Pangal. He could also talk about the development of aeronautics, as Prince Bibescu was an aviation pioneer. He could also discuss topics like noble origin with him. So with the same person, he could have three different types of dialogue.”

     

    Entering the entourage of King Carol II, Pangal became the author of the draft 1938 Constitution that instated the sovereign’s authoritarian regime. A monarchist with the king, an anti-monarchist with the legionnaires, a liberal with the liberals, Pangal told everyone what they wanted to hear. Bogdan Bucur tells us about one of his most eccentric ideas: “Pangal had an unimaginable project and a diabolical, inventive mind, a term that includes intelligence. He planned to reunite masonry with one of the fascist organizations, namely the Christian National Defense League. It was nonsense. He claimed to be the leader of a national masonry lodge. Predictably, he took advantage of the historical moment to accuse the competition of being an international, anti-Romanian and unpatriotic masonry. He didn’t kick them out of the freemasonry, but he tried to do that with the Romanian citizens of Jewish nationality. The Romanian freemasonry led by Jean Pangal tried to present itself as purely Romanian, which in itself was an aberration.”

     

    The end of the war made Jean Pangal take one of the few honorable decisions of his life, namely, go into self-exile in Portugal, refusing to be an accomplice to the establishment of communism. (LS/EE)

  • The recent history of Romanian wine

    The recent history of Romanian wine

    Wine
    enjoys a long tradition in Romanian space, with viticulture being attested as
    an activity of the ancient Dacians. The Greek historian Strabo, who lived over
    the 1st century BC and 1st century AD, writes that the
    Dacian king Burebista had ordered vineyards to be burned in order to discourage
    wine consumption. Beyond Strabo’s frivolous remark, historical sources
    frequently mentions the presence of wine-making in the area north of the Danube
    river.

     

     

     

    The
    history of wine over 1945-1989 was marked by centralized economic measures
    affecting the production and trading of wine. Marian Timofti is the president
    of the Organization of Sommeliers from Romania. He told us more about the
    guiding principles of wine-making.

     

     

     

    Wines
    produced in Romania back then were meant to cover export-related debt, in the
    sense that harvests had large volumes. The larger the quantity of grapes, the
    lower the quality of wine. As the minerals the vine draws from the ground are
    divided to a larger or smaller number of grapes, the larger or smaller their
    presence. Therefore, the body of the wine, its flavor, its scent, the anthocyanins,
    which also affect the pigments, will have a lower presence. But this was the
    practice back then, as 80-90% of the wine was export-bound. The wine sold would
    cover large quantities of Romania’s debt. The number one importer was the
    Soviet Union, which wanted wines with residual sugar – semi-dry or semi-sweet
    wines, because the cold in the USSR demanded a high energy consumption rate in
    individuals. Secondly, the alcohol of wines was not supposed to exceed 12.5%,
    and we would laugh back then that it didn’t have to compete with the vodka.
    Romania’s viticulture was doomed by Nicolae Ceaușescu. We’re talking about quality viticulture,
    because heads of farms and vineyards were paid depending on the production per
    hectare. Whether it was wheat, corn, grapes or other harvests, they were paid
    depending on volume. Both the reports and harvests had to be high.

     

     

     

    Nevertheless,
    Romania used to have quality wines that few people had access to. These were
    exceptional wines that took part in international competitions.

     

     

     

    Romania
    was known worldwide as a maker of quality wines in limited edition, made from
    selected parcels. These were selected from every vineyard before the
    wine-making process, which we would call the small barrel. The wine itself
    was reserved for special social categories. They were sent to international
    contests, which Romania won quite often. In terms of imports, Westerners
    refrained from importing from Romania, since the wines available were made from
    large volumes, they were not medal-winning wines.

     

     

     

    One
    of the fabrications of Romanian oenology back then was the so-called Ceaușescu’s wine. An avid wine lover, the
    communist leader got sick with diabetes in his final years. One vineyard in Huși, eastern Romania, came up with a solution to allow the
    dictator to relish a glass of wine.

     

     

     

    Everyone
    knew what was Nicolae Ceaușescu’s
    favorite wine, zghihara de Huși, a grape
    varietal that amassed very little residual sugar and a higher acidity rate.
    Hence the wine was ideal as an appetizer, since that acidity stimulated the
    gastric acid that helped the digestion process. This type of wine made Ceaușescu adopt him, under the council of his doctors, who
    told him this wine had a low sugar concentration and wouldn’t
    hurt his diabetes. Thus hundreds of bottles would be sent to the Central
    Committee and it was hence known as Ceaușescu’s wine. Elena Ceaușescu, on the other hand, would also drink Cabernet
    Sauvignion, she particularly enjoyed wines from Dealul Bujorului. The wine had
    to be semi-dry, with residual sugar that left a sweet taste at the end. Funds
    were invested to plant 40 hectares of zghihară in Huși. The original vineyard had a smaller surface, so the money from the
    Central Committee helped popularize this particular varietal and increase its
    production. In every cocktail party Ceaușescu organized, he would serve his
    wine and, whether they liked it or not, people would smile and always praise
    its merits because it was the polite thing to do.

     

     

     

    The
    history of Romanian wine after World War II also includes a number of social
    elements that affected the production of this elixir of life. And its history
    is bound to extend many years in the future as well. (VP)

     

  • The poet Tudor Arghezi (1880-1967)

    The poet Tudor Arghezi (1880-1967)


    Born Ion Nae Theodorescu and using the pen name Tudor Arghezi, the 20th Century writer approached all literary genres, from poetry to short stories, novels, theatre and journalism, although he excelled in poetry. He was also passionate about painting and drawing.



    Arghezi was born in 1880 in Bucharest and died in 1967 in the Romanian capital city. He made his debut in 1896, and in his early years he was close to Symbolism and the Vienna Secession movement. As a young artist, he became friends with the journalist and priest Gala Galaction and the left-wing writer Vasile Demetrius. During the 1907 uprising, he stood up for the oppressed peasantry, and became close to the Socialist-leaning writer and journalist N. D. Cocea. But during the same period he also wrote art criticism articles and he became close to Liberal-leaning personalities like Eugen Lovinescu and Ion Minulescu, as well as to art collectors like Krikor Zambaccian and Alexandru Bogdan-Pitești.



    During the Great War, he expressed pro-German views in the “Gazeta Bucureștilor” (Bucharest Gazette), put out by the German occupation authorities between 1916 and 1918. At the end of the war, he was sentenced to 5 years in prison for collaborationism, but was pardoned by the king after only serving one year.



    After the war, he worked extensively as a journalist and a writer. In 1928 he became the director of a literary publication called “Bilete de papagal”, which ran in 4 series, in 1928-1929, June-October 1930, 1937-1938 and 1944-1945, with well-known Romanian poets like Otilia Cazimir, George Topârceanu, Felix Aderca and Urmuz seeing their works published in it.



    In the inter-war period, he wrote childrens literature, and during WWII, in 1943, because of a parody targeting the German ambassador to Bucharest, he was arrested for a year. The Radio Romania archive preserves an audio recording of Tudor Arghezi reading the 1931 poem “Flori de mucigai” (“Flowers of Mildew”), which dwells on his prison time.



    After the war, Arghezis work was banned during 1948-1952 by the communist censorship. But thanks to Mihai Ralea, a cultural personality who had joined the ranks of the communist nomenklatura, his name was cleared and he took full advantage of his new position. He wrote poetry acceptable to the regime, and saw his 80th anniversary celebrated by the Academy of the Peoples Republic of Romania in 1960. On that occasion, Arghezi gave a speech exuding false modesty, duplicity and self-victimisation, in which he made a point of slandering pre-war democratic Romania:



    Tudor Arghezi: “Although in the Socialist era my writing enjoys almost undeserved appreciation, a recital for me is overwhelming. It was my fate to experience the great chasm between two ages, both for literature and for my insignificant self. What was, in the old times, a writer, a composer, a painter or an actor? A lesser or a bigger shame, depending on the family in which they had been born. Personally, over the years I had to fight, during my creative years, against all the related cultural authorities: the academia, the Academy, poetry, prose, print media, the police, the judiciary, the censorship, the gendarmes and even my fellow writers. I was isolated, with my pen and my notebooks, on an ice bloc as large as the country, I was ridiculed, spit at, insulted. The only right and the only duty of a writer were to die on a mat in hospital or in a mental institution. Save for some patriotic poems, sung in the army and in primary school and written by Alecsandri, and for the works of Carmen Sylva, with their royal atmosphere, anyone else was irrelevant, almost loathsome.”



    Tudor Arghezis home on Mărțișor street in Bucharest is now a museum, preserving the poets legacy. (AMP)


  • Cățelu District, an urban and architectural exercise on the outskirts of Bucharest

    Cățelu District, an urban and architectural exercise on the outskirts of Bucharest

    Fully installed as of 1947, after the abolition of monarchy, the communist regime that wanted to completely change the Romanian society by imprisoning its elites, had problems reaching one of its main goals, namely, that of improving the life of the working class. In 1953, a housing crisis started to be felt in Bucharest. Very few new blocks of flats had been erected to provide a decent living for the new proletarian class, brought to the cities from the countryside, to contribute to building socialism.



    Historian Andrei Răzvan Voinea explains: “In 1953, a plenary meeting of the Romanian Communist Party (PCR) took place. It was decided that financing would be granted for the construction of housing units in Bucharest. In 1954, the construction of blocks of flats started in neighborhoods such as Vatra Luminoasă, Bucureștii Noi and Piaţa Muncii. However, no apartment was inaugurated that year because construction works take time. In the winter of 1954-1955, more precisely in January 1955, a rather alarming crisis was under way. It had been quite a severe winter, and the party decided it needed housing units urgently.


    And so the story of the Cățelu neighborhood begins. It was located on the eastern outskirts of Bucharest, close to the rural area and the commune with the same name – Cățelu. There, on an initial area of approximately 6,000 square meters, around 800 apartments were built in a first stage, in the second half of the 1950s. The housing units reminded of the rural vernacular architecture or the old urban slum that is terrace houses surrounded by gardens and open to a common space that encouraged community spirit.



    It all started from some improvised barracks where the workers employed at the factories in the area used to live, as historian Andrei Răzvan Voinea tells us: “They were basically shacks put there to temporarily house Bucharest workers. They were insufficient. However, in the summer of 1955, construction works began in Cățelu, as the party had ordered the construction of some minimalist houses that would be erected very quickly and thus play down the housing crisis. The area next to the Mihai Bravu road, which in the interwar period belonged to the Affordable Housing Society, was picked as a construction site. That was the context until July 1955, when the actual design projects and construction started.



    He also told us about the results: “Truth is the communists were very unprepared. They did not know what exactly the new socialist city they wanted to build was about to look like. They didnt have the slightest idea, because they did not have on their side the Romanian architectural and artistic avant-garde of the 1930s-1940s, that was definitely leftist, but was not from within the party. Consequently, influences came directly from Moscow and that’s how these neighborhoods appeared. Besides them, various functionalist experiments were carried out in the Rahova and Ferentari districts, also in the 1950s, the blocks of flats in the Piaţa Muncii area were built, with a somewhat more elaborate, different block. And then the Cățelu Experiment emerged, the architect of the project being Tiberiu Niga, a well-known architect, of course, with extraordinary projects in the 30s – 40s, one of the great Romanian architects. He received this task from the party: we want many homes in a very short time, preferably as small as possible to accommodate as many people as possible and to be as cheap as possible. And Niga came up with the idea of ​​this vernacular rural dwelling, in which you have a main room and a hall, as it was called in traditional Romanian architecture. To also compensate for the lack of materials, he improvised enormously. Inside, the living space had a maximum of 30-40 square meters. Then there was a very large veranda and those extraordinary public spaces. People basically occupied 30-40 square meters, but they went out, they had a terrace that everyone used to keep their bike, cart, pickles, a table, chairs and so on. And there was also a huge green space, practically a garden.



    According to any standard of decent living, those apartments were uncomfortable, but the communists knew well that the workers they were intended for came from the countryside where the conditions were even worse, explains historian Andrei Răzvan Voinea: “The apartments had 30 or so square meters, practically a studio where a family with children lived. Cramming 3-4 people into a home like that is difficult. But, again, let’s think about the context. These were workers who lived on the outskirts of the city in worse conditions than those. At least, in Cățelu there was electricity, hot water, a refrigerator, absolutely all this modern comfort. Moreover, a lot of restaurants, convenience stores, bookstores had been built. And Cățelu didnt just mean the apartment buildings, it meant a school, because two schools and a kindergarten were built there, there were green spaces almost everywhere and the workers were very close to work. And they didn’t have all those things before.



    In time, other blocks of flats were built around the Cățelu neighborhood as the communist regime systematized and modified the city’s infrastructure, as well as its social structure. But the homes imagined by Tiberiu Niga to create a bridge to the rural world from which the workers of the old times came are still there. (EE, LS)

  • The City of Sebeș

    The territory between the Mureș and Olt rivers and the Carpathian Mountains, started being inhabited, as of the 12th century, also by Germans colonized by the kings of Hungary. One of the seven seats or urban communities that had the right to be a judicial residence was the current city of Sebeș. Called Melnbach in local German or Mühlbach, Sebeș today has approximately 26,000 inhabitants, of whom almost 80% are Romanian. Traditionally, the city has always had more religious denominations, boasting Roman Catholic, Lutheran, Orthodox and Greek Catholic communities and churches.




    We asked museographer Radu Totoianu from the Ioan Raica Municipal Museum in Sebeș about the history of the place. He described the beginnings of the settlement: Sebeș is mentioned in documents in 1245, shortly after the Mongol invasion. Priest Theodoric of Malenbach, the Latinized German name, asks Pope Innocent IV for the right to collect taxes from other neighboring parishes as well, as his parish had been greatly affected by the Mongol invasion. The Pope allows his request. This is actually the birth certificate of our city. It is an important city, it is the city that preserves the oldest privilege of surrounding itself with stone walls, a privilege given in 1387. It is surrounded by a fortification with an enclosure wall totaling over 1,800 meters, several towers that are still preserved, of which perhaps the most famous are the Student’s Tower or the Tailors’ Tower.



    It is this fortification work that gives part of the town’s small reputation. The story of the monk Georg Captivus Septemcastrensis, who lived in the 15th -16th centuries and wrote the first treatise on the Turks, is important and it was summarized for us by Radu Totoianu: The tower was maintained and defended by the tailors’ guild and is related to the Turkish attack of 1438, when a Turkish army besiege the city. After resisting for several days, a truce is reached, the Turks are allowed to enter the city on condition that they did not cause any destruction. However, this did not happen. Capitulation was not something everyone liked, some citizens barricaded themselves in that Tailors Tower. Among them was a young student at the school within the Dominican monastery. The tower is set on fire, the vast majority of those in the tower die, but among the survivors is this young man, a 13-14-year-old child. He has the fate of many of the people of Sebeș. He is sold as a slave, and he is kept in captivity for 20 years. He is sold several times, eventually finding a more humane master who treats him more like a family member than a slave. The master frees him, he wanted very much to be freed, he told his master, to see his native places. He promised to come back, but he never did. He didn’t even go to Transylvania, he went to Cyprus, and then moved on to Italy. He arrives in Rome, joins the order of Dominican monks and writes a work considered the first European treatise on Orientalism which has seen over 25 editions. One of them, from 1511, was edited by the reformer of the German church, Martin Luther, who also prefaced it.

    We have asked Radu Totoianu which are the buildings most representative for the small town
    founded by the Transylvanian Germans.


    Radu Totoianu: The most
    important ecclesiastical building in the town is the Evangelical Church. The
    first construction stages in the Roman architectural style kicked off after
    1241. But after a while, the town, which enjoyed certain economic prosperity at
    that time, wanted something more sumptuous. The Gothic style had already
    appeared in Transylvania and parts of the church were built in this style.
    Experts believe that if the church had been finished in this style, it would
    have been the second largest in Transylvania after the Black Church in Brasov.
    However, as the town numbered only 500 families at that time, they didn’t have
    the financial strength to complete the church in the Gothic style. So, they
    resorted to a compromise, a mixture of two styles. It is very beautiful though
    as it also has elements of the Renaissance style.


    Another architectural
    landmark is the building housing the city museum.


    Radu Totoianu: The most
    important lay building in the Sebes town is the Zapolya House, which presently
    houses the museum. It is related to the name of the Transylvanian ruler Ioan
    Zapolya who eventually became king of Hungary after the death of Vladislav 2nd
    in battle. However, the move failed to satisfy everybody and a part of the
    Hungarians came with another candidate, Ferdinand of Habsburg, of the Austrian
    royal family. A civil war broke out and king Zapolya and his army withdrew to
    Transylvania, conquered Sebes and established his headquarters in this
    building, which is presently housing the museum. He even died in this building
    around 1540.


    Although small, the town
    of Sebes played a major role in the history of Transylvania. Its well defined
    personality has been preserved along the centuries.

    (LS, bill)

  • Mathematician Gheorghe Țițeica

    Mathematician Gheorghe Țițeica

    The history of the Romanian school of mathematics begins somewhere in the late 1810s, with the establishment, in 1818, of the Polytechnic University of Bucharest under the name of the Higher Technical School. Here and in other higher education institutions established later, entire generations of Romanian engineers and mathematicians were trained. One of the names that made history in the development of mathematics in Romania is Gheorghe Țițeica.

     

    He was born in 1873, in Turnu Severin, a city on the Romanian bank of the Danube Gorge, and passed away in Bucharest in 1939, at the age of 66. From an early age, he showed a great interest in mathematics and the so-called “hard sciences”, that is, the formal sciences and the natural sciences that are based on methodological rigor, accuracy and objectivity. He was the first to be admitted to the Bucharest Normal School, the future PolytechnicUniversity, and studied mathematics at the Faculty of Sciences in Bucharest. Among the professors at the University of Bucharest, he was closest to mathematician and astronomer Spiru Haret, the most important reformer of the Romanian education system.

     

    In 1895 he graduated in mathematics and the following year he went to study in Paris. He specialized in differential geometry. Țițeica wrote about networks in a space with “n” dimensions and introduced new classes of surfaces, curves and networks. He issued the “five-lei piece problem” or “Țițeica’s theorem”, and the concepts of “Țițeica surface” and “Țițeica curve”. He also dedicated himself to popularizing science and raising the level of mathematical education in Romania. One of his great passions was the “Gazeta Matematica” magazine and he was among the founders of the publication “Mathematics”.

     

    Bogdan Suceavă is a mathematician and writer and an expert in the history of mathematics in Romania. He defines Țițeica’s study period in the West as decisive for his career and and the development of scientific education in Romania: “The first decades of “Gazeta Matematica” are linked to Gheorghe Țițeica’s name. He benefited from scholarships all his life. He grew up without a father. He graduated from the school in Bucharest and in 1896, and, when he arrived in Paris, the first thing he was recommended to do was study at the Ecole Préparatoire. On that first year, he met Henri Lebesgue, who six years later would become the author of a very important chapter in mathematical analysis. Țițeica, being of the human quality we know, followed two sets of courses, those at the École Préparatoire and those at the École Normale. The first year was hell. He coped at the highest level and the question is why was he recommended to take more courses? Between Bucharest and Paris there was a certain difference. In July 1897, he quickly passed the certification exams in differential and integral calculus, mechanics and astronomy, all in a single year. He was first in an extraordinary generation, occasion on which he received a scholarship, plus a fee exemption. This experience would be important at a formative level. He understood very quickly how things were, how he had to prepare, what level the French school was at and where the Romanian school was at, during that time. This was happening before 1900.”

     

    Romania was moving at full speed towards the West and Romanian mathematics was one of the sciences in great expansion. And Țițeica’s generation sought to reduce the huge differences between Western society, the French one being the great model, and the Romanian one. As Bogdan Suceavă also noted, Țițeica met top mathematicians in France and learned from them everything that he brought to Romania: “Who did Gheorghe Țițeica work with? He worked with Gaston Darboux, who at that time was not only dean of the Faculty of Mathematics at the Sorbonne, he was also the author of a four-volume treatise on differential geometry in which the unifying theme is the following: how to choose the most appropriate benchmarks for various problems of differential geometry? The subject he studied was a whole philosophy, he was a very influential author who had many talented students, Țițeica being one of the best. He also studied with Henri Poincaré, Edouard Goursat, Charles Hermite, Émile Picard, Jules Tannery, Paul Émile Appell, the best mathematicians. After which, in 1899, he returned to Bucharest. He would write until 1937, over 100 works. In the last two years he did not work at all. He started collaborating with “Gazeta Matematica” while he was in Paris. The mathematics competition with the same name owes a lot to him. The editorials he wrote during that period described everything, including how the candidates behaved in the oral exams. It’s the kind of comments that no one would publish today, but which Țițeica, did.”

     

    Gheorghe Țițeica could not have become anything other than a university professor, a member of some academies and an honorary doctor of some universities. He was also among the ranks of the Romanian Society of Mathematical Sciences, whose president he was.