Category: RRI Encyclopaedia

We owe the birth of the Dada movement at Zurich’s Cabaret Voltaire in 1916 to the Romanian poet Tristan Tzara and the architect and fine artist Marcel Iancu. Professor Cristian Robert Velescu tells us more about the combination between literature and the fine arts, which characterised the avant-garde movement, both in Romania and Western Europe.

Professor Cristian Robert Velescu: ”An important Romanian avant-garde name in the area of fine arts is that of Victor Brauner, who is closely linked to leading avant-garde magazines in Romania, such as 75 HP, Integral and UNU, which was founded by Sasa Pana and was the only Romanian publication open to surrealism, the founding trend for the European avant-garde movement. The fine arts component of the avant-garde goes hand in hand with its literary component, as artistic synthesis is typical of the avant-garde movement worldwide. I’ll give you the well-known example related to the birth of the 75 HP magazine, which was very open towards dadaism. In the pages of the magazine, its two founders, the painter Victor Brauner and the poet Ilarie Voronca, created a particular phenomenon known as pictopoetry. This is neither painting, nor poetry, but a synthetic phenomenon.”

Dadaism came to an end in 1922, as its very founder Tristan Tzara bluntly put it at the time. Tthe avant-garde movement, however, continued in the form of surrealism and constructivism. In Romania, the avant-garde movement flourished following the appearance of a great number of magazines, such as Contimporanul, a magazine founded by the poet Ion Vinea and the architect Marcel Iancu, who had returned to Bucharest from the West. In the first issue of this magazine, dated May 1924, Ion Vinea published an inflammatory article in which he urged artists to abandon the outmoded means of expression they had been indulging in until then and try something new. Titled Activist Manifesto for the Youth, Vinea’s text may be viewed as the platform of the Romanian avant-garde. A number of likeminded artists clustered around Marcel Iancu and the Contimporanul magazine. One such artist was one of Constantin Brancusi’s former students, Milita Petrascu, who would go on to become one of Romania’s leading sculptors, as well as an accomplished graphic artist. Here is Professor Cristian Robert Velescu again, speaking about Milita Petrascu’s artistic affiliations”

Professor Cristian Robert Velescu: “Milita Petrascu is a phenomenon in itself, as she is placed at the crossroads of two leading trends of her time: modernity and the avant-garde movement. Modernity was a wider phenomenon that also had close ties with the artistic tradition, while the avant-garde movement was an iconoclastic trend. Constantin Brancusi, in whose studio Milita Petrascu worked for a while is, in my opinion, a representative of modernity that embraces a classical vein. Milita Petrascu left Brancusi’s studio, remaining on friendly terms with her mentor, and she returned to Bucharest where she joined the avant-garde movement. She became an important representative of the fine arts activity of the Contimporanul magazine and fully complied with the ideological programme laid out by Ion Vinea and Marcel Iancu. After her avant-garde experience, Milita Petrascu became more balanced in her works, which is not to say that she betrayed her creed, but that she found in portrait art an area of expression to which she lent a special dimension. Hers is not a conventional form of art, but a kind of art that feeds on creativity. Traces of her avant-garde endeavour can also be found in her new works created in the inter-war and post-war years. It may, perhaps, be worth noting that Milita Petrascu lived in a house designed by Marcel Iancu, in a very avant-garde environment.”

Born in 1892, Milita Petrascu died in Bucharest in 1976. Marcel Iancu, who was born in 1895 and became settled in Palestine in 1940, died in Israel, in 1984.

Miorita Fountain is one of the symbols of the city, even though it doesn’t have as long a history as some of the other representative monuments. One such monument is the Minovici Villa, or the Bell Villa, as it is known, built in 1905 right across from the fountain. It was built in 1936 for the exhibition entitled ‘Bucharest Month’, an exhibition placed between what is now the Press House and the present location of the fountain, an area which back then was not incorporated in the city.

A young architect was contracted to build it, Octav Doicescu, who was to go on to build Zodiac Fountain in Carol Park, and to design Herastrau Park, flanking the main northern avenue in Bucharest, Jianu Roadway, now called Airmen’s Boulevard, which is also close to Miorita Fountain. Doicescu imprinted a modernist look on the area, as architect Cristian Mihu told us:

Cristian Mihu “Those were the peak years of the modernist style, when good quality modernist architecture started cropping up all over the country, especially in Bucharest. The fountain is part of this style, and Octav Doicescu was one of the foremost Romanian architects after the war. Miorita Fountain is one of his early creations. He had not yet turned 40, and had not designed many buildings before that. Basically, we are dealing with a modernist monumental fountain, which is a rarity in Bucharest. It has two walls made of granite cut from Dobrogea, and water spouts out of them in a basin 50 m by 20 m. On the sides of the walls we have the two rectangular mosaics made by Milita Petrascu, which feature the famous traditional ballad ‘Miorita’ — “The Ewe Lamb”. On the east side of the fountain we have the three shepherds with their flocks, and on the other side, facing Minovici Villa, are the Moldavian shepherd’s betrothal and death. The friezes are in simple black and white mosaic, straight into the stone.”

Under the mosaics, small streams of water spring out of the mouths of fantastic beasts. The babbling of the water blended with the bell chimes from the nearby villa in a sort of water music enjoyed by passers by in quieter times. Today, when the villa no longer chimes, and traffic is stifling, the music is gone.

The creator of the mosaic, Milita Petrascu, who was born in Chisinau, the present-day Republic of Moldova, in 1892 and passed away in Bucharest in 1974, is considered to be one of the leading Romanian sculptors, and was also a painter. Her artistic roots are in the avant-garde of the early 20th century, being also linked to Constantin Brancusi, whose student she was in Paris in the 1920s. In designing the Miorita Fountain mosaic, she had some invaluable help, and architect Cristian Mihu told us about it:

Cristian Mihu: “There was a third person, less known, a ceramist called Gheorghe Mogos-Niculescu, who made the mosaic based on Milita Petrascu’s drawings. She was the graphic designer, helped with the graphic work by Mogos-Niculescu. This work was given to a team of young artists, that gave it its special look, totally different from that which fountains used to have. It was in the spirit of those times to seek something new, in line with the explorations that occurred all over Europe at that time. It was not, however, an avant-garde work of art. Romanian modernism in architecture is characterized by the fact that it did not wish to revolutionize art radically, it was simply a novel movement put in the service of a national ideal, we may say.”

Restored in 2005, after many years of neglect, Miorita Fountain now stands as an impressive fountain, just as its creators imagined it 78 years ago.

It was named after the Dacian king Koson and it is the only golden coin known to have been minted in ancient Dacia. Koson succeeded king Burebista, who reigned over a large territory between the years 82 and 44 BC. After Burebista’s death, apparently following a conspiracy, his kingdom was divided into 5 smaller ones. One of them was allegedly ruled by Koson, one of those who had actually planned Burebista’s assassination.

Historical information about the Koson is scarce and contradictory, the very name being a source of controversy. There are documents mentioning the name “Cotiso”, which historians identified with “Koson”. Roman historian Lucius Annaeus Florus, who lived between 74 and 130 wrote “the Dacians cannot be taken away from their mountains. From there, under the rule of king Cotiso, they used to go down and ravage the neighboring lands, whenever the River Danube, frozen in winter, would make access from one shore to another possible. Augustus decided to remove that population, which was very hard to approach. So he sent Lentulus and he set up garrisons and drove them away to the other shore. So the Dacians could not be defeated, only pushed away and scattered.”

Koson got involved in the civil conflict in Rome, between Brutus and members of the second triumvirate (Octavian, Marcus Antonius, Marcus Aemilius Lepidus), as an ally of the first. He then became an ally of Octavian Augustus against Marcus Antonius, whom Roman historian Suetonius spoke about in one of his writings, quote “Marcus Antonius writes that Octavian first promised his daughter Iulia to his son Antonious, then to Cotiso, king of the Getaes.” Cotiso’s identification with Koson is based on a version of Suetoniu’s writing in which it is written “Koson, king of the Getaes”. Other historians reject the idea of Cotiso and Koson being the same person, and they claim they were actually two kings.

As for the koson coin, historians and archeologists say that those that were engraved with the Greek letters making the word KOSON, discovered in the Dacian fortresses in the Sebes Mountains, southwestern Romania, were issued during the reign of that king. The first such coin was discovered back in 1543, and since then thousands of coins have been discovered. The classical coin is an imitation of the Roman one, and has on one side a vulture sitting on a royal scepter, holding bay leaves in its claws. On the other side of the coin there are three men wearing togae, one of them a consul, accompanied by two lectors with pole axes on their shoulders.

The Dacian Koson coins also attracted treasure hunters, not only researchers or aficionados. The area of the Sarmizegetusa Regia site, located in the Southern Carpathians’ western part, has become a place where smugglers, fitted with metal detectors, unearthed precious Koson coins that were later illegally sold in the West. Of late, 26 Koson-type golden Dacian coins have been returned to Romania by Italy, thanks to the joint work carried out by Romanian and Italian authorities. Ernest Oberländer-Târnoveanu is the director of Romania’s National History Museum. He has made an inventory of archaeological items unearthed from Romanian sites that have been repatriated since 2007.

Among them, the Koson coins are a very important retrieval: ” This has been the 11th repatriation operation initiated since the winter of 2007, when important assets of Romania’s national cultural heritage have been unearthed as part of an illegal archeological detection operation carried out at the Sarmizegetuss site and its surroundings. These assets were illegally exported from Romania and are now being repatriated. So far, 13 royal Dacian bracelets were repatriated, as well as 1,024 Koson golden coins, 204 Koson silver coins, 32 Lysimachos coins, minted in Tomis and Callatis, 2 royal Dacian iron shields, and with them, lots of other archaeological and numismatic items. Retrieved so far have been items from the USA, Germany, Switzerland, France, Spain, Ireland and Great Britain. We’re now fortunate enough to see that 27 coins have been returned to Romania, which had been put up for sale in Italy”.

Apart from the 26 Koson coins being returned from Italy, specialists have also announced other 138 Dacian coins of the same type have been scientifically examined. The coins have been discovered by a group of children around Ocolisul Mare village in Hunedoara County.

An undisputed center of regional trade, Bucharest has developed into the city of today mostly thanks the various ethnic groups that settled here. For them, Bucharest was the ideal place to practice their traditional crafts. One such example is the large Jewish community, whose first documented presence in Bucharest was in 1550, nearly a century after the city had been mentioned by documents. At the time, Bucharest was undergoing a period of sustained economic development. In their book “Histories and Images of Jewish Bucharest”, brought out by ‘Noi Media Print’ Publishers, Felicia Waldman and Acna Tudorancea tried to retrace the history of the Jewish community in Bucharest. Felicia Waldman:

“The Jewish community in Bucharest was first mentioned by documents in 1550, so it’s quite an old community. There are earlier mentions of a Jewish presence in the area, but the Jews became a stable community here only in 1550, although the authorities wouldn’t recognize the first Jewish guilds until later. Jewish merchants settled here in 1550, in spite of the fact that they enjoyed no protection from the state. Most Jews came to this region from the Ottoman Empire, even prior to 1550. Most of them were Romaniot Jews who came from the Byzantine Empire. After the expulsion of the Jews from Spain, a lot of Sephardi Jews came to this region, via the Ottoman Empire where they found shelter, for trade with countries in Eastern and Western Europe”.

As they settled in Bucharest, the Jews brought with them new crafts, which had been hitherto unknown to the locals, and which prove the wide professional diversity within the Jewish community.

“Economy-wise, the Jewish community had its own contribution to the progress of the city, as they intermediated trade between Eastern and Western Europe, which is very important since it put Bucharest on the map. The Jews also brought with them crafts that had been unknown to the locals. In the late 19th century, when the first tin and tile roofs were made in Bucharest, which came to replace the wooden roofs – Jews were the only ones who could build them. They were the only ones who had the courage to go on top of a roof. Moreover, around 1897, many of the churches in Bucharest were painted by Jews for the same reason.”

In Bucharest, the Jewish community lived mostly in the suburbs, where they also did their work. The Vacaresti and Dudesti neighborhoods, where the poor used to live, as well as the Popescu neighborhood, hosting the community’s most important synagogue, are still famous today. Anca Tudorancea will be redesigning the map of the Jewish communities in the old Bucharest.

”All these trades and crafts were actually adjusted to Bucharest’s social and professional structure. The districts they lived tell a lot about their living standards and their occupation. The commercial elite, for instance, could be found on Victoria Boulevard and its surroundings, while the Old City Center with the Lipscani Street was the place where the trade with textiles flourished. We slowly get close to the outskirts, on the Dudesti Road and the Vacaresti Road, where access was much more difficult and where well-to-do people did not go shopping. “

Except for the Old City Center, most of Bucharest’s historical neighborhoods no longer look as they used to. Unfortunately, they were significantly changed by the communist regime’s different urban planning.

Transylvania is home to many such railway tracks, most of which were used to take people to their places of work. Woodcarving and mining as well as the related tools and equipment are today mere tourist attractions. One of the few narrow gauge trains still in circulation today runs through the Vaser Valley in Maramures, northern Romania. Built in the 1930s, these tracks measuring 760 mm and running along 57 km were mainly used to carry logs. In the old times, the people who worked with wood used to build rafts, which they filled with logs and then send them down the mountain rivers.

Another narrow gauge railway crosses the Apuseni Mountains, the wildest and most beautiful mountains in Romania. The approximately 94 km long railway links the town of Turda to Abrud and was built between 1910 and 1912. It had operated uninterruptedly until 1998, when it was closed due to low traffic and high costs. A speed train covered the 94 km route in approximately 5 hours and 30 minutes, whereas a slow train in 6 hours and 30 minutes.

Another narrow gauge train was running between the towns of Sibiu and Agnita, covering a 59 km distance, but it was abandoned in 2001. Originally, a 105-km long narrow gauge railway linked the town of Sibiu to Sighisoara, but trains stopped running between Agnita and Sighisoara in 1965.

These trains were not used exclusively in the wood industry, but also in the mining industry. They took workers and carried ore along the so-called Transylvanian Mining Railway, up to Hunedoara, one of the iron and steel centres boasting a long tradition in Romania. After 12 km and many bridges, viaducts and tunnels, it reached the famous furnace of Govajdia, the first blast furnace in Europe, built between 1806 and 1810. In 2008, the circulation of these trains was also brought to a halt, for economic reasons.

The story of the narrow gauge railway in Hunedoara is even more saddening than that of others, because it has been cut to pieces and sold as iron bars, although it had a 150-year-old history and an itinerary with huge tourist potential.

Another narrow gauge railway is the one linking Targu Mures and Praid, 66 km long, a line used mostly by peasants who came to town to peddle their farming products. It was built in 1912, but has not been used since 1997. Fortunately, in 2011, on a stretch of 17 km, between Sovata and Campu Cetatii, the narrow gauge train started circulating as a strictly tourist attraction.

However, the most spectacular narrow gauge railway in Romania is that in Comandau, Covasna County. A timber mill was built here in 1888, and the narrow gauge line was put in place to bring raw material to the factory. It was 118 km long, with a high incline, designed by Austrian engineer Emil Lux to negotiate very steep terrain.

The principle was very simple: the carriages were brought up to a platform at the top of the slope, tied by cables and a system of pulleys to another platform at the bottom. While the full carriage descended, its energy moved the platform at the top. Lifting the carriages to the top and unloading them at the bottom was powered by two horses.

In 1995, after celebrating its centennial, the two-platform system was destroyed by a powerful storm, which uprooted trees. The collapse was facilitated by years of neglect, and the dramatic decline of the wood harvesting operations in the area.

April 10 marked 100 years from the birth of poetess Maria Banus, a politically controversial writer, but whose talent is appreciated by the public and critics alike. Born in 1914 into a Jewish family in Bucharest, she made her debut in a major literary magazine run by poet Tudor Arghezi. Her first volume of poetry, the 1937 book ‘Girls’ Country’, revealed her as one of the most original writers of her generation. Unfortunately, when the communist regime was installed after the war, Maria Banus became one of the major voices of proletkultism, the official ideology extolling the achievements of the communist regime.

After 1965, however, she had a change of mind, and took a major turn in her lyrical register. The change proved beneficial, as in 1989 she was granted the Herder international award. The intense inner creative life of the poet, though controversial, is finally revealed to the reading public with the recent issue of her massive two volume diary ‘My Notes’. Covering 1927 to 1999, her diary is a fresco of the 20th century in Romania, according to writer Adriana Bittel:

Adriana Bittel: “Her confessional style of writing cuts deep, and does not shirk feelings and thoughts that are usually repressed, therefore the more shocking. The same ruthless treatment is applied to all, even the people she loves the most: her mother, the man she loves passionately, the kind and caring husband, her children and friends. The same sincerity is applied throughout her ideological route, which makes it easily understood, nuanced for whoever is inclined towards nuance, not for viscerally anti-communist people.

To this day, the name Maria Banus is associated unfairly with Stalinist and proletkultist lyrics. In fact, the books from the ‘50s, tailored for state propaganda, are only one stage in a very valuable writing career that starts in 1937 with ‘Girls’ Country’, continued three decades later with volumes in which she recovers her lyrical vein, nurtured from great modern poetry. By putting together fragments over seven decades, we compound a destiny with other destinies and history itself. It is a complete novel, erotic, political, a novel of marginalization and ethnic persecution, of the meanders of friendship, of disappointment and idealism of relations between parents and children, of suffering out of envy or vanity.

Also, at the end we find some heart- rending pages about the mental and physical suffering of advanced age, of decay and isolation. There is a biological aging and a social one, and the harder to bear for her is the social aging.

Literary historian Geo Serban, the writer’s editor, believes that these notes shed a surprising light on the poet that was marginalized by the regime she had trusted at its beginnings:

Geo Serban: “Her greatest suffering was that she compromised on her talent, and risked losing her streak of originality because of the circumstances. That is why her diary becomes a re-examination of the past, and an explanation as to what happened. She was not an opportunist who embraced a political cause thinking of the material advantages. She risked her life in 1941-42. She was putting up posters at night. She sheltered in her house for several months a high ranking communist party member who had been condemned to death, and was wanted by state security services. By doing that, she put her own life in danger, hers and her family’s. I was surprised by the intellectual tension of these notes. You don’t usually expect a poet to put reading before his own talent. She may have believed in talent or not, but she thought that her talent was dulled by the life she led, but she was extremely thirsty for culture.”

Maria Banus passed away in 1999, leaving behind two children, and a poetic opus that is worthy of a rereading.

In western Romania there is a place where the Danube cuts a beautiful gorge into the mountains as it crosses into the country. The area is called Cazane, which means The Cauldrons, and it is the site of the huge hydroelectric plant called The Iron Gates I. The plant was built in the 1960s, and is right now the biggest hydro power plant on the Danube. Building it has taken a lot of sacrifices: the geography was changed and many communities wiped out.

The best-known example is Ada Kaleh, an island surrounded by the waters of the river, inhabited by a flourishing Turkish community, which was forcibly evacuated from the now underwater island. Another building which was swallowed by the rising waters was an old monastery called Mracunia. Now a new monastery stands not very far from the original site bearing a variation of this name, Mraconia. It lies 15 km away from the town of Orsova. Father Viorel Vladucu, a spokesman for the Severin and Strehaia Bishopric, told us about the history of the place and the new monastery.

Father Viorel Vladucu: “Mraconia, or Mraciunea, means ‘secret place’. It has had a troubled history, being plundered by invaders and having to pay tribute to foreign rulers before its final demise when it was covered by the water. It was destroyed during the Russian-Turkish-Austrian war of 1787-1792, rebuilt, and once again razed in 1968. Even though this place of worship has been destroyed several times along the centuries, we now find it once again, and it is beautiful. In 1967, as the Iron Gates hydro plant started being built, the old place was demolished, and its ruins are now covered by the Danube. As the monastery could not be built in the same place, after 1989 the Metropolitan Bishopric of Oltenia took the initiative of restoring it in a new location.”

The old monastery was first mentioned in historical records in 1452, the year of the fall of Constantinople, when the monks of Mracunia took refuge in Orsova, as mentioned in a chronicle of the time. The church was subordinated to the bishopric of Varset in 1523 by Nicola Garlisteanu, the governor of the border region of Caransebes and Lugoj.

Father Viorel Vladucu: “The church at that time was dedicated to St. Elijah and chronicler Nicolae Stoica of Hateg wrote in a chronicle dated 1829 that fleeing Turks, after the unsuccessful battle in Varna and after the fall of Constantinople, the monks of Mraconia had taken refuge in Orsova. The monastery decayed in time, but it was still inhabited in 1788 and its interior plaster was still visible around 1800. In 1823 they found among its ruins the stamp seal of the old church with an interesting inscription in Slavonic. Another interesting discovery was made in 1835 when an icon of the Virgin Mary was found, which was later displayed in an exhibition in Vienna by a painter from Munich. The first plans to rebuild the monastery date back to 1931, but the works did not start until 1947.”

This time, the new monastery only lasted for 20 years. However, in 1995, the Bishopric of Oltenia made the decision to rebuild the monastery close to its original site. Located on a cliff close to the Cazane gorges on the Danube, the church was very difficult to reach in the past. Things have changed in recent years, as father Viorel Vladucu explains.

Father Viorel Vladucu: “While access to the church was very difficult in the past, now there is a road linking Orsova to Moldova Noua, a picturesque road running along the Danube, so many pilgrims can now visit this place easily. A large number of pilgrims have been coming to the church in recent years, also because the Cazane gorges is one of the most beautiful places in Romania. Besides, Mraconia Monastery today lies on the site of a former observation and guiding post, from where navigation on the Danube used to be monitored. The strait is very narrow allowing for the passing of only one ship at a time.”

Several tourist sites are close to Mraconia Monastery, such as the statue of Dacian king Decebalus carved in stone, as well as an inscription reading TABULA TRAIANA, which is actually on the Serbian bank of the river, reminding of a time in ancient history when the invading Roman troops crossed the Danube on their way to the former kingdom of Dacia.

The revival of Antiquity’s Olympic spirit was one of the ambitions of a modern Europe that wanted to build a society in which everyone should have the benefit of equality and fair competition. Antiquity was the age to which Europeans returned time and again, whenever they realised that the world they were living in was heading in the wrong direction, and that everything that had once been good was lost. The spirit of Ancient Greece also dominated the Renaissance. Looking back at the ancient Olympiads helped see man as a universal being, beyond political, economic, social, racial and cultural divides.

The father of the modern Olympic spirit, actually the founder of the International Olympic Committee is the French historian and educator Pierre de Fredy, baron of Coubertin (1863-1937). His philosophy was an inspiration to all those who committed to bringing the Olympic spirit back to the attention of the modern world based on what is now a very popular and undeniable belief: namely that the most important thing in life is not triumph, but the struggle itself, it’s more important to struggle fairly rather than to win. The fair play spirit that had once animated the Antiquity’s Olympiads was supposed to help people overcome their selfish interests and embrace mankind’s universal, long-lasting values.

Since central and Eastern European societies were quick to adopt any western trend, the Olympic spirit also came to animate Romanians. But we should be aware that south-eastern Europe had its own Olympic history, its pre-Olympic age, so to say. An outstanding personality of this pre-Olympic age was the Greek landowner and merchant Evanghelie Zappa (1800-1865) who owned property around Bucharest and in the Baragan plain, in the south, which is Romania’s most fertile farming land. An active participant in the Greek national liberation movement, in 1856 Zappa came up with the idea of drafting a memorandum according to which Athens should organise a series of sports competitions in 1857, to be called Olympiads.

Furthermore, the Greek tycoon, who was also a generous financier, committed himself to paying all expenses for the event. Evanghelie even donated money for the construction of the Athens Zappeion, a building compound including a stadium, amphitheatres for conferences and gymnastics halls. Unfortunately Zappa died in Brosteni, in Romania’s Ialomita County, in the south, before the Zappeion compound was finished. Evanghelie’s cousin, Constantin, later monitored the completion of works on the compound. Evanghelie Zappa also remained in Romania’s history as a contributor to the setting up of the Romanian Academy and as a donor for the reconstruction of Bucharest, which was seriously damaged by the devastating fire of 1847.

The Olympic spirit turned into an important cultural trend in the newly founded Romanian state after 1877. It was embraced by what was then Romania’s society personalities and elites, as a sign of the country’s speedy Westernisation. On March 27, 1914 the Romanian Olympic Committee was founded, as a natural consequence of the actions supporting sports competitions and fair play. The first chairman of the Committee was Prince Carol, the future King Carol II. He was twice elected to chair the body promoting the Olympic spirit, between 1914 and 1920 and between 1923 and 1930. After becoming King of Romania in 1930, Carol II remained a promoter of the Romanian Olympic spirit until he abdicated in 1940. Among the first members of the Romanian Olympic Committee were Prince George Valentin Bibescu, a promoter of aviation in Romania, medical doctor Ion Costinescu, a minister in the Liberal governments and mayor of Bucharest, medical doctor Carol Davila, the founder of Romania’s medical school, lawyer Ion Camarasescu, a deputy and minister, art historian Alexandru Tzigara Samurcas, and geologist and professor Gheorghe Murgoci.

The promotion of the Olympic spirit in Romania did bear fruit. In 1924, Romania officially participated for the first time in the 8th edition of the Olympic Games in Paris. It was also in 1924 that an absolute first occurred: the first Olympic medal won by the Romanian rugby team, which was ranked 3rd. Ever since the Romanian sports delegation has taken part in all the editions of the Olympic games, except for the summer Olympics of 1932 and 1948, and the winter Olympics of 1960. Next here is Romania’s medal record before the 2012 London Summer Olympics: 301 medals, 88 of which were gold, 94 silver and 119 bronze, all in the summer editions of the Olympic Games. In the winter Olympic Games Romania won one single medal, bronze in Grenoble, in 1968. The winners of this medal were Ion Panturu and Nicolae Neagoe in the two-man bobsleigh event.

Alexandrina Cantacuzino stands out as one of the best organizers of the feminist movement in Romania, having a strong bearing on the entire feminist movement in the early 20th century. Alexandrina Cantacuzino was born in Ciocanesti village in 1881; she was the daughter of army officer Theodor Pallady and joined the old and aristocratic Cantacuzino family by marrying conservative politician Grigore Cantacuzino. Yet her own political views were not conservative at all as Stefania Mihailescu, a researcher of the history of the feminist movement in Romania explains.

” She furthered her education at the Sorbonne, then she returned to Romania, dedicating herself to charity works and activities that were particularly aimed at the education of the young girls. Back home Alexandrina Cantacuzino found here hundreds of women’s organizations pursuing that goal. A group of educated women, who believed women should have a role other than the traditional one in modern society, got themselves organized, so that the women’s elite could make a more substantial contribution to the education of ordinary people. It was to that end that Alexandrina Cantacuzino jointly with several other women from the Romanian aristocracy initiated “The National Romanian Women’s Orthodox Society.”

Under Alexandrina Cantacuzino’s presidency, the aforementioned organization undertook a series of activities that, before the First World War, mainly targeted women’s emancipation through as wide an access to education as possible. Researcher Stefania Mihailescu:

“Before World War I, the organization founded 8 high-schools, hundreds of kindergartens, school canteens and libraries for poor girls. During World War I women took over the activities of men who had gone to the front, jointly with the Red Cross implementing healthcare and social assistance projects in which women had not been involved until then.”

After the war, women wanted to get involved in finding solutions to the country’s cultural, political and social problems. But the legislation granted women no political rights and no social role. Women did not even have the right to vote. At that point, Alexandrina Cantacuzino used her influence again, organizing the feminist movement even better, just as Stefania Mihailescu says.

” In the summer of 1921 Alexandrina Cantacuzino initiated the establishment of the National Council of Romanian Women, with a view to channeling all energies towards changing women’s public status. More than 32 associations joined that council, many associations from Transylvania joining the council through the 1918 Union of Transylvania with Romania. When the new Constitution was voted in 1923, the existing paragraphs stipulating women’s lower status were not eliminated Then Alexandrina Cantacuzino suggested that the Romanian Council should be affiliated to the International Women’s Council, an organization with over 40 million members, that mainly fought for granting women the right to vote. In May 1923, she suggested that the Little Feminine Entente be set up, including women’s organizations from Poland, Czechoslovakia, Romania, Yugoslavia and Greece. Romania thus hoped to get support for women to be granted the right to vote. Alexandrina Cantacuzino was elected leader of the Little Entente.“

Alexandrina Cantacuzino had died in 1944 before the communist regime came to power in Romania. Here is Stefania Mihailescu again, this time speaking about what Alexandrina Cantacuzino managed to achieve for the Romanian women’s political emancipation.

”As a result of the persistent efforts made by the National Council of Romanian Women, in 1929 a new administration law was passed, stipulating women’ right to run for local and county elections, not all of them, but only those who had a certain social and professional status. In 1930, for the first time ever, women took part in the local elections and more than one hundred women were elected in local and county councils. And there women proved their extraordinary capacity to organize social assistance, they institutionalized it, they set up social assistance schools, they published magazines, so that all women could contribute to the change of women’ s status, at least in that respect. In 1938 the royal dictatorship was instated and the Constitution was changed again, while in 1939 a new election law was passed, based on the new Constitution. Then women were entitled to run for parliamentary elections. But that was to no avail, since back then elections were not held. It was not until 1945, when women had the right to vote, that a new dictatorial Parliament emerged, which formally recognized women’s rights, but in effect it deprived women from their right to organize, disbanding their organizations.”

All in all, the results the feminist movement in Romania obtained in the interwar period disappeared in the post-war period.

The fortress is on UNESCO’s world heritage list. As it was inhabited by Saxons for years, Prejmer has a fortified church, which is typical of Saxon settlements in Transylvania. The church was very well prepared to protect the community, all through the Middle Ages, against Tartar and Turkish attacks, which left the village burnt and pillaged no less than 50 times. Adriana Stroe, an art historian with the National Heritage Institute, will revisit for us the history of the village of Prejmer.

Adriana Stroe: “According to tradition, the village was set up by the Teutonic Knights summoned by the Hungarian King to Barsa Land in 1211 to organize the defense of that area. The settlement was first documented in 1240. That year, King Bela the 4th offered Prejmer, Feldioara, Sanpetru and Harman to the Cistercian Monks’ Order in Cartza, who owned the area until the early 15th century. In 1454, Prejmer earned the right to hold an annual fair. That right was not just a privilege granted by authorities whenever they saw it fit, but it was only granted if the town was believed to have reached a certain level of economic development. In fact, Prejmer was, after Brasov and Codlea, one of the largest villages in Barsa Land. For instance, in 1510 it had 210 inhabited households, in 1556 it had 233 households divided into four neighborhoods and in 1584, when Prejmer earned the right to hold a weekly fair, the village had 328 houses made of stone and 210 wooden houses.”

For the lives of the inhabitants and their possessions to be well protected, the church in Prejmer was built and fortified to that end, so it has been well preserved to this very day. Here is Adriana Stroe with details: “What defines this compound is that, unlike other fortified churches, in Prejmer the defensive facilities are only located around the building, and the exterior of the church itself is not fortified. It was built in the early Gothic style by members of the Cistercian Order living in Cartza. What makes the church unique is its layout, originally a Greek cross bordered on the north and south by secondary areas. The most important changes in the original layout were operated in the first quarter of the 16th Century, after the church became property of the local community. The cross with all arms of equal length was altered into a so-called Latin cross. In the eastern arm of the cross, which hosts the choir, there is one of the oldest altarpieces in the country, dating back to the mid-15th Century. Under a royal order of 1427 regarding fortification works in Barsa County, in the mid-15th Century the church was enclosed in a roughly circular fortification wall, with a tower gate on the south and overlooked by four semicircular towers on the south-east, north-east, south-west and north-west. Access to the fortress was through a drawbridge over the moats, and within the walls halls were built on several levels, in order to keep the harvest and assets of each family during sieges or plunder raids.”

During sieges, people would leave the village and gather in the fortress, where they needed supplies to ensure survival over extended periods. This is why, apart from the storage rooms and the living quarters, the fortress also included wells, a mill, a bread oven and even a school. It was the strongest of the Saxon fortifications in Transylvania. The walls were reinforced over time, until the mid-18th Century. Since then, as the frequency of sieges gradually decreased, the areas within the fortification lost their importance and started being used for other purposes. Between 1963 and 1970, the Prejmer fortified Evangelical church compound was subject to large-scale restoration works, and today it is one of the best-preserved citadel-churches in Transylvania.