Radio România Internațional

Category: RRI Encyclopaedia

  • David Mitrany and the theory of functionalism

    David Mitrany and the theory of functionalism


    At
    the start and middle of the 20th century, an intellectual
    of Romanian origin was close to the international centres of power
    and decision-making that decided the fate of the international
    relations at the time and drew the map of Europe. His name was David
    Mitrany and was born in January 1888 in Bucharest into a Jewish
    family. In 1908 he graduated from the High School of Commerce in
    Bucharest and after his military service he emigrated. He first went
    to Hamburg, where he studied for three years, and then travelled to
    the capital of the United Kingdom, the home of what was to become the
    famous London School of Economics. Apart from economics, Mitrany also
    studied there sociology and social sciences. In 1918, he got his
    degree, followed by his PhD in 1929. At the time Mitrany was focused
    on the study of nationalism and social reform. The outbreak of WWI
    would make him change his view on these themes.

    Professor Paul Dragoș
    Aligică tells us more about Mitrany’s professional trajectory:

    He emerged sometime during the First World War, in association
    with the British intelligence services, operating in south-eastern
    Europe, and then reappears in the context of the Versailles Peace
    Conference and his support for Romania during the peace talks, after
    which he is associated with The Manchester Guardian. When the
    Institute for Advanced Study was created at Princeton, he was the
    social sciences’ counterpart of Einstein, with whom he was friends
    and had intense conversations. […] We later find him associated
    with the Foreign Office. Moreover, he worked for the special entity
    created by Churchill during WWII at Oxford to channel the Empire’s
    strategic thinking effort. So, there was this entity in Oxford of
    which he was a part and which was working directly with the war
    cabinet, not with the ministry and not with the government.

    David Mtrany worked at Princeton University
    from 1933 until 1958, but also collaborated during this time with British
    universities, especially during the war. From 1944 until 1960 he was advisor to
    Unilever on international affairs. In 1957 he contributed to the creation in
    the British political system of a new institution specific to the Scandinavian
    system, that of Ombudsman. In the post-war years, he was involved in efforts to
    devise and create a new pan-European alliance that would later become the
    European Union. Professor Paul Dragoș Aligică explains:


    He was involved in the creation of a
    new post-war European system, contributing directly together with the founding
    figures of the European Union. His functional theory in politics provided the
    structure and the conceptual and theoretical framework that shows us there is
    an alternative idea to how economies, societies and institutions can become
    integrated within a European context. […] He lost, however, to the federalist
    theory with respect to the European Union.



    David Mitrany came up with the
    alternative to federalism, which was functionalism, an idea that was already
    circulating at the time, but which he saw in relation to the new European
    system of international relations. Although he was a supporter of a global
    community, he did not believe that federalism was the solution, but the
    creation of international agencies that would cooperate in specific areas. His
    functional approach aimed to go beyond borders through a natural growth of
    common activities and common administrative agencies and implied the transfer
    of part of economic sovereignty to these agencies. The federalist approach won,
    but David Mitrany remained an important voice in international relations until
    his death. While he was around 80, for example, he made a tour of three big
    American universities, Harvard, Yale and Columbia, and around the same time he
    gave conferences and talks and televised interviews. He died on 25th
    July 1975, having published one last book on the functionalist alternative.

  • Defense and Public Safety Towers in Oltenia

    Defense and Public Safety Towers in Oltenia

    Before the 19th century, when there was no modern state with its bureaucracy and institutions, the safety of the people was in the hands of noble courts or monasteries. Especially when the neighborhood was one that resorted to terrorist practices, as was the case with the Romanian Principalities, nothing was safe. The Ottoman rule for centuries north of the Danube, on Romanian territory, especially in Oltenia, was often present with savagery through raids of sacking and destruction. And the solution chosen by the Romanian noblemen, the boyars, was that of building kulas, or tower houses, to defend themselves, their families, service personnel, and wealth.



    Built on an oriental model, the kula can also be found in Bulgaria, Serbia, Montenegro, Albania, Greece, throughout the Balkan area controlled by the Ottomans. In Oltenia, there are 20 attested kulas, of which only five still exist today. The story of the towers of Oltenia was told to us by Liana Tătăranu, the president of the Heart of Oltenia Association.



    At the moment, it is said that the oldest kula would be one of the kulas from Măldărăști, namely the Greceanu kula, dated somewhere around 1547. I could not say with certainty that this information is very correct, because it could not be dated even dendrologically. Those who have studied this kula in more detail say that, indeed, there was a core in the present building, let’s call it that. So, some expansions were made to the original construction, which are somewhere from the end of the 16th century or the beginning of the 17th century. The Buzești brothers’ kula was built somewhere before the year 1600, and existed on their estate at Vlădaia in what is now Mehedinți county.


    After the 16th century, after the conquest of Hungary by the Ottoman army, the Crescent establishes itself with authority in Central and South-East Europe, and the Romanian Principalities are cut off from European civilization. Although not under the direct control of the empire, the Wallachian state was a vassal of the Ottomans, which treat it brutally in every way. Thus, the kulas become a pressing necessity. Here is Liana Tataranu:


    They basically were supposed to protect the boyars, and less so the villagers, from the invasions of the Turks, but we are not talking about the large invasions of the Turkish army. If we think about the entire period when the Romanian Principalities were under Ottoman rule, nothing could be done in the country without the sultan’s approval. And, from the time when Mircea the Elder was ruler, in the 14th-15th centuries, and the fortress of Giurgiu was lost, Wallachia no longer had any fortresses along the Danube. The Romanian rulers were no longer allowed to build any kind of fortresses, and then the first step was, starting with Mircea the Elder, to strengthen the monasteries. Most of the fortified monasteries were built by Matei Basarab, in the 17th century, where, let’s say, the villagers could also take refuge. But the boyars had nowhere to go. And then, they tried to take their own defensive measures, especially against the bandit attacks of Osman Pasvantoglu, Pasha of Vidin, and the Adalais, Turks from the island of Ada Kaleh. So this could be the explanation for why here, in Oltenia, we have the most kulas, because this was the area they were preying on.



    The Oltenian kula was a prismatic building, consisting of a ground floor and several upper floors. The plan was square or rectangular, and the stone or brick walls were about a meter thick. The walls were provided with barbicans, and the connection between the floors was made by an internal wooden staircase. Architects Iancu Atanasescu and Valeriu Grama noted in the book ‘The Kulas of Oltenia’, quote ‘The forms of the Oltenian kula have evolved in accordance with the social-historical realities, reaching their peak in the second half of the 18th century. These architectural forms, the richness of the arches, the decorative elements, make the kula one of the most interesting and characteristic examples of Oltenian architecture’. Liana Tătăranu also wanted to point out the fact that the purpose of the Oltenian kula evolved over time.


    In the first stage, the kulas were for guard, signaling and alarm, and some of them were the bell towers in the monasteries. We must say that all these kulas are located on definite lines. If we look at the map, it is very clear that they are on very well established routes, with a distance between them somewhere between 20 and 30 kilometers. They are placed in some strategic points, generally placed on top of a hill, somewhere higher up, so that they have the largest possible field of view, the largest possible visibility area. They had to be in line of sight of each other to signal possible attacks. Then there were the refuge kulas, for defense or temporary housing. Near them we always find the mansion where the boyar lived permanently with his family.



    After 1821, and especially after 1829, after the Principality of Wallachia begins to secure its border, the practical importance of the kula decreases. However, it remains part of the architectural heritage of Oltenia.


  • Entertainment and leisure in the old town of Ploiesti

    Entertainment and leisure in the old town of Ploiesti

    An oil-extraction town, the seat of a mountainous county, therefore a town with a remarkable tourist potential, Ploiesti, in the inter-war years, was a thriving town, with lots of entertaining opportunities. Some of these entertaining opportunities were even imported from Bucharest by the Ploiesti town dwellers, who were eager to compete with the Bucharest city dwellers on an equal footing. One such important entertaining habits was the big flower fight, which in Bucharest was staged at the Promenade, that is on the then northern outskirts of Romania’s capital city. In the Prahova town, the flower fight started before World War One and was resumed when the war ended. It was a spring entertainment that came to a close in late June, once the holidays began. When and how the flower fight was staged in Ploiesti, we will find out all about that from the author of a book entitled Once Upon a Time in Ploiesti. Flower Fights, football and beauty contests, Lucian Vasile.



    The flower fight was an imported habit, to Ploiesti from the Capital city, before World War One. The Promenade in Bucharest was replaced by the Ploiesti boulevard, on a smaller scale, by all means, yet with the same passion, the same verve and the same popular revolt. Perhaps in Ploiesti it was more intense since it was a smaller town, the green areas were a lot fewer, so cutting the boulevard off from the community circuit at the weekend caused the revolt of those who were unable to afford taking part in that kind of entertainment. That is why, in the 1920s or thereabouts, several newspaper articles were issued, writing that, anyway, the green spaces around town were scarce, which simply deprived the town’s downtrodden and ostracized people of one of their very few recreation areas. Everything came to a standstill on the Saint Peter and Paul’s Feast, when the school year also came to a close in the town’s most important high-school. It had Peter and Paul as patron saints. And it was the time when the town fell asleep. The scorcher back then was, if you will, quite similar with the scorcher we have these days, so the posh people left town, leaving for various resorts abroad, or retiring to their residences in the region, usually lying around Ploiesti.



    The flower fight was mostly affordable for the rank and fashion, yet the more modest town dwellers amused themselves in funfairs, which gained their momentum in early autumn, when the crops were harvested, especially when the grapes were harvested.



    Historian Lucian Vasile:



    If the flower fight was the sign that the life of the town in early summer came to an end, three months later, in early autumn, a funfair was mounted, At the Cannons, that’s how it was called, it opened the new school year as well as a new season of the highlife. Then the town’s posh people returned to their residences in Ploiesti. But, rather, that was how the rank and file amused themselves. The grape juice ignored the social status, so having fun like that was extremely affordable, since at that funfair all sorts of vendors arrived, offering very cheap and simple entertainment: from the Merry-go-round to target shooting, to the boxer punch machines where you could test your force. It was the entertainment for commoners, it lasted for about between 4 and 6 weeks and could have lasted longer had the cold weather not set in, forcing people to retire in beerhouses, restaurants and taverns.



    However, Ploiesti town dwellers were also into football. With details on that, here is historian Lucian Vasile again.



    This sports discipline saw a spectacular rise. Around 1907, 1908 it barely had any fans in Ploiesti and people thought it was a waste of time, they even thought it was a weird kind of sports discipline. Well, 20-30 years later, not only was Ploiesti a hub of national football, but also it had two teams that used to duel each other, yet also competing on the country’s central football stage. It was, on one hand, Prahova, which was the traditional team subsidized the Dutch industry tycoon Jacob Kopes and there was Tricolorul, the Tricolor, the team of the Ploiesti-Valeni Railway Society. It was a very profitable society which of course had tremendous sums of money at its fingertips, sums it splashed here and there, yet with a hardly encouraging outcome. They were unable to win the championship, nay, they even were relegated. Yet they were famous in the late 1930s, for the bonuses and the salaries they paid. But at that time as well, football ended up in brawls, in fights. There was a time, in the late 1920s or thereabouts, when the police prefect himself entered the pitch and started punching people and kicking them with his legs, because he was mad the local team had been defeated.



    A multi-ethnic town, Ploiesti also witnessed ways of spending leisure time through habits and customs imported by the foreigners who settled in the city. A telling example of that is the German community, which was quite numerous. Here is the historian Lucian Vasile, with more on that.



    They built a hall for their community, a hall on the foundation of which today’s Philharmonics Building in town was erected. As early as the late 19th century, the members of the German community convened there, they had a choir and organized all sorts of games: bowling and snooker. What was really new in the town’s life was the fact that here women rubbed shoulders with men, being allowed to play, they were not discriminated against. For the then patriarchal world, that came as a curiosity, how was it possible that, with the Germans, women played snooker alongside men, with no discrimination. Otherwise, the other communities were rather well integrated, and not that anxious to preserve their separate identity. They were trying to integrate.



    Unfortunately, once with the paucity and the restrictions the communist regime brought with it from 1947 onwards, many of these entertainment and leisure opportunities disappeared, just as people’s good humor disappeared.




  • Politician Barbu Alexandru Știrbei

    Politician Barbu Alexandru Știrbei

    The Știrbei family was one of the most important boyar families in the principality of Wallachia in the 19th century. Its most prominent members were prince Barbu Dimitrie Știrbei, who ruled Wallachia between 1849 and 1853 and again between 1854 and 1856, and his grandson, Barbu Alexandru Știrbei, a diplomat and politician who enjoyed a successful career at the highest level during the rule of King Ferdinand I.



    Prince Știrbei was born in 1872 in Buftea, north-west of Bucharest. He was a rich man, owning, apart from the estate in Buftea, three other large properties in the counties of Olt, Teleorman and Iași. He sat on the boards of many banks and factories, such as Steaua Română, the Reșita factories and Astra. He died in Bucharest in 1946, aged 73.



    Brought up and schooled in France, he left a good impression on those who met him. He was presentable, articulate and was always dressed after the English fashion. He became close friends with prince and heir to the throne Ferdinand, and in 1914, when Ferdinand became king, he became his personal advisor. Prince Știrbei also became close to queen Marie, and historical records show they were more than just friends.



    Cătălin Strat edited a book entitled I love you, my Marie. Scrisorile lui Barbu Știrbei către Regina Maria [“I love you, my Marie. Barbu Știrbeis letters to Queen Marie”]. He says beyond his love relationship with Marie, Știrbei was a true pillar of the Romanian state:



    “I think he was a kind of guardian angel of the dynasty and the Crown. On the one hand, he was accused of embezzlement, on the other he did everything he could to protect the king and the queen. He was a very interesting figure and knew how to cultivate ties that were useful for Romanian politics and Romanian interests. He was the grey eminence who in the first world war masterminded all the big projects of the war and after the union of 1918. He made a good team with Ionel Brătianu, who was his brother-in-law.”





    A prince by birth, Știrbei was aware of his position and of the times he lived in. During World War One, jointly with Ion I. C. Brătianu, arguably Romanias greatest politician, Stirbey had the intuition of the direction history was taking, that of opening towards political life and to the peasant class. Accordingly, he would mastermind the new agrarian reform he himself would feel the pinch of, a reform King Ferdinand presented to the Romanian soldiers who were in trenches in front of enemy lines.



    Catalin Strat once again:



    “He was a smart man and knew he could not go against the direction history was taking. Even though he was a conservative politician, and that, not through political commitment, even though he used to be a deputy of the conservatives, but rather as a personal option, he had democratic ideas about agriculture, about industry, about finance. He knew a perpetuation of the outmoded social, political and economic model was not something good for the country. Therefore, he consented to that kind of sacrifice his and those of his class made, that of putting World War One soldiers in possession of land. It was a move everyone praised him for. They say the speech in Racaciuni, given by King Ferdinand but created and written by Barbu Stirbei and Ionel Bratianu gave a fresh impetus to the Romanian troops on the Moldavian front.”



    The history-made-easy books mentioned Barbu Stirbei mainly to highlight the love affair he had with Queen Marie. Cătălin Strat was keen on touching upon that :



    “Princess Marie, at the age of 17, found herself somehow exiled in a country that had barely emerged from a Oriental universe and which was rapidly trying to become European, and modernize itself .Destined to her was a prince who was not necessarily handsome, who was not necessarily strong, personality-wise. She was getting bored and, being very young, she set her eyes on someone else as well. It seems that the affair with Barbu Stirbei was the most important of the affairs she had. The Romanian society tolerated the queens extra-conjugal affairs, also tolerating the affair she had with Barbu Stirbei. No one had anything against it, actually, mention was never made, save for Argetoianu, that the two had a love affair. There were only innuendos, hints and notes in memoirs and diaries, especially in the diaries of the ladies-in-waiting, who were anything but discreet, or in the notes of the court servants, who, again, were anything but discreet. “



    The volume “I love you, my Marie” is much more than the title can encompass. Apparently, it includes part of the correspondence of two lovers, who belonged to the high-ranking power circles in Bucharest. The volume gives a landmark of Romanian politics the place he fully deserves.

  • Physician Iuliu Barasch

    Physician Iuliu Barasch

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


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


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


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


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





  • Bucharest’s stone crosses and their history

    Bucharest’s stone crosses and their history

    The man of the past, from time immemorial, felt the
    need to bequeath to the future generations signs of his presence in this world.
    Until writing was discovered, man expressed his thoughts through rupestrian
    drawings, or through several objects, adorned or painted. When writing proper
    appeared, messages and thoughts for posterity became more elaborated, enabling
    us to know more about the perceptions of the past. As for the messages carved
    in stone, they were among the most perennial ones, standing the test of time to
    this day. When we speak about the messages carved in stone, what mainly comes
    to mind is the ancient period, with its spectacular temples, statues, and
    tombs. However, apart from the ancient period, in timeframes closer to our
    times, texts carved in stone are quite a few and no less important, at that.


    In 19th century Romanian
    society, the force of the messages carved in stone was impressive, especially
    when we speak about the messages engraved on crosses. In the city of Bucharest
    two centuries ago, stone immortalized what then the Bucharesters thought it was
    worth reminiscing.


    Cezar Buiumaci is a museographer
    with the museum of Bucharest Municipality. Also, he is a hunter of the city’s
    stone crosses and of the messages engraved on them.

    Cezar Buiumaci:


    In the present research I found two crosses we seem to have lost track
    of. We’re speaking about Ioan
    Pometcovici’s cross, a fountain cross in the Ferentari neighborhood and which
    today can be found in the Bellu cemetery, at the tomb of general Gheorghe Brătianu.
    It was a fountain cross that changed its purpose, becoming a funeral cross.
    That is the model, a matrix, just as it happens with all crosses around
    Bucharest. The other cross is Miloradovici’s cross, another cross which is a reminder
    of Russian troops’ win over the Turks. General Miloradovici was the one who
    succeeded to have the battle sidestep Bucharest and was thus dubbed the savior
    of Bucharest. A cross was erected in remembrance of that, it was a cross that
    can be found on the Patriarchate Hill, close to the belfry.


    The
    strongest messages carved in the stones of 19th century Bucharest are
    those carved on crosses. The cross is one of the oldest universal symbols that existed
    before Christianity. However, it was Christianity that brought the cross center-stage.
    The four arms of the cross signify the great axes of the world and the physical
    coordinates underlying man’s endeavor to build hid own material world. So the
    cross was the basic element on which messages for eternity could be drawn or
    written in a concise manner. For instance, on Tanase the Shoemaker’s Cross which
    today can be found in Ferentari neighborhood, located in the south-west of
    Bucharest, the Biblical scene of the Annunciation can be seen. The profile of kneeling
    Virgin Mary is to the right, while to the left, Archangel Gabriel can be seen
    standing. A bunch of rays signifying the presence of the Holy Ghost is drawn
    above. The inscription is in Romanian, but it is written in the Cyrillic
    alphabet, still in use in 1829, the year when the cross and the water fountain were built. The inscription runs as follows: With the mercy and help of the one who in
    Trinity is most glorified, God, this cross was erected, to the glory of the
    Annunciation of the Purest Mother, and this water fountain was also built.


    A key aspect of the messages carved
    in stone is made not only by the abstract side of life, but also by its
    material side, a fountain, in our case. Cezar Buiumaci emphasizes the bond
    between spirit and matter in the messages he found on Bucharest’s stone crosses, which he studied. One such cross is that in the Putul cu Tei street, which
    can be found in Bucharest’s present-day neighborhood, Berceni.


    Cezar Buiumaci:


    The cross in the Bellu district was placed, according to
    various authors, in the time of the pandours, in 1821, or in the time of the eighteen
    forty-eight revolutionaries. The truth lies somewhere in between, it was
    commissioned in 1831. It is a fountain cross, erected on a greenfield land on the Putul cu Tei street, lying a couple of meters away. It was
    customary for a tree to be planted and for a cross to be erected, whenever a
    fountain was dug. It was a gesture of great humaneness to offer water to the thirsty
    traveler, at a time when water supply networks did not exist. Concurrently, the fountains
    had the economic function of providing water to the livestock or for irrigation.
    There where this cross was found, the vineyards site began, on the Vineyards
    Hill. The story usually went like this: the traveler would arrive, he would
    quench his thirst and sit in the shade. That is how he took the time to read the diptych
    those who erected the cross had inscribed on it. Thus they organized their own
    alms when they were still alive.


    The messages found on stone crosses
    are messages of gratitude, yet they are also message of triumph, such as the
    one on the cross erected by Wallachian ruling prince Leon Voda, in 1631, by
    means of which he marked his win over the enemy. There are also messages inscribed
    as a lament for the departed ones whom someone held most dear, such as the
    message on the cross of the great boyar Papa Brâncoveanu, who was killed in
    1655 during an uprising. Such an example is one of the many examples available.
    We can thus view diversity as a stone-carved chronicle of Bucharest history.

  • Prince Nicolae of Romania

    Prince Nicolae of Romania

    120 years ago, on August 5, 1903, Prince Nicolae, the only male sibling of King Carol II, besides his three sisters, was born in Sinaia. The destinies of the two brothers were very different, but there were similarities between them in terms of behavior and private life, some even due to the way they were raised. Their mother, Queen Marie, wrote in her memoirs that she let her children grow up free, less concerned with the restrictions imposed by royal protocol.



    Ștefania Dinu, head of the Cotroceni National Museum, continues the story of Prince Nicolae:


    “He was christened on October 3, 1903 and named after Czar Nicholas II, who was first cousin to his mother, Princess and later Queen Marie. He was the second son of the couple formed by the future monarchs Ferdinand and Marie and the fourth child of the royal family. This placed him rather far from the throne. Since he was not going to be, in terms of succession to the throne, in a dominant position, Prince Nicolae had an as happy childhood as possible at the Royal Court. Because he was very naughty, all those who tried to educate him failed in their attempt. But they also ended up loving the little prince very much, and one of the people he was very close to was his father, King Carol I.”



    Nicknamed Nicky, the young prince was King Carol I’s favorite and, after a carefree childhood in Romania, he was sent to Britain to attend Eton College. Prince Nicolaes passion for sports and cars is also rooted in his adolescence and early youth. During WWI, when the Royal Court withdrew to Iași in 1916, he used to take his mother for a ride in a small car called Bambino, to help her relax during that difficult time.



    Ștefania Dinu tells us what happened with Prince Nicolae after the war and after the Great Union of 1918:


    “He continued to attend Eton College, where he did fairly well, without being brilliant. He was a dreamy fellow, leaning more towards humanities, but at Eton he took military courses, as it was Queen Maries ambition that her boy should become a navy officer. This was also the career he pursued at Eton, and, after finishing college, he was an officer cadet with the British Royal Navy, planning to attend the Royal Naval War College in Britain as well. He did not get to do it because King Ferdinand died prematurely, in July 1927, so Prince Nicolae had to return to the country to take over the position of high regent. It is known that in 1925, Crown Prince Carol abdicated for the second time and went into exile in France, with Elena Lupescu, so King Ferdinand had to announce the establishment of a regency for the child king Mihai. When King Ferdinand passed away, the regency took over, the high regent being Prince Nicolae, aged 24 at the time. King Mihai was only 6 years old. So this regency had to take charge of the affairs of the state. Prince Nicolae was also the legal guardian of the child king Mihai.”



    During the regency period, the prince fulfilled his duties well until 1930 when King Carol II claimed his throne and took over the leadership of the state. The two brothers, raised in the same unrestricted spirit, were also alike in their tumultuous love lives. Just like the king, the prince started an affair with a married woman, Ioana Doletti, whom, once divorced, he married against royal customs. The king, however, did not accept the situation, although he himself had been in almost identical ones.



    Here is Stefania Dinu about the private life of Prince Nicolae:


    “Meanwhile, his passion for automobiles, for aviation, for sports in general continued. Skiing was his favorite sport, but he also participated in motor racing. One of the races was Paris-Nice, in 1933, and the Le Mans race. He accompanied Queen Maria in 1926 on a visit to America and there he had meetings with several American car manufacturers, including Henry Ford, after which, coming to the country, he even purchased some American cars with which participated in those races. In 1931, on October 28, he married Ioana Doletti, without the permission of the king. King Carol II was a bit of a hypocrite when he asked his brother to give up Ioana Doletti and their marriage, concluded secretly in Tohani. This, of course, led to his exclusion. First he was sent abroad for six months, and the six months turned into six years, during which time Prince Nicolae would come to Romania to participate in a series of events together with King Carol II. “



    It was only in 1937 that the prince renounced his royal title and went permanently into exile with Ioana Doletti, under the name of Nicolae Brana. The title of Prince of Hohenzollern was to be reassigned to him in 1942 by King Mihai, who also recognized his marriage. However, he would not receive the title of “prince of Romania”. In exile he lived in Italy and Switzerland, being followed by the inter-war and post-war secret services. When the communists grabbed the power, Prince Nicolae became one of the most dynamic representatives of the Romanian exile, trying to unite the Romanian diaspora around several projects, inaugurating Romanian libraries, such as the one in Freiburg, and cultural centers such as those in Madrid and Rome . He died in 1978 in Madrid, and was buried in Lausanne, Switzerland. (EE/MI)

  • Romanian Diplomatic Representation in the Turkish Space

    Romanian Diplomatic Representation in the Turkish Space

    Starting in the 19th century, gradually, the Romanian Principalities began to break away from Ottomanism through the massive import of civilization and culture from the West. Thus, the diplomatic relations between Romania and the Ottoman Empire and its successor Turkey would also experience a resizing. As Romania gained its right to independent statehood, the diplomatic missions to host those who represented Romanian interests in the Ottoman and Turkish worlds were being rethought. A history of Romanias diplomatic missions is the newest project that a group of Romanian historians is working on. The star of the project is, by far, the Romanian representation in Paris. But the representations from the Ottoman Empire and Turkey also have a lot to say. Silvana Rachieru teaches Ottoman history at the University of Bucharest and she presented an outline for a history of Romanias diplomatic residences in Turkish space. This history starts from a building near Taksim Square, the legation, then consulate of Romania, now headquarters of the Romanian Cultural Institute. Silvana Rachieru began her research by listening to the buildings stories.


    “The most thrilling of them tells the tale of how a lover of Princess Martha Bibescu had lost the building at poker or other games of chance, and after that the Romanian state acquired it and managed to recover it. Everything was very romantic, very beautiful, it fit the space we were in. But the information that the building had belonged to Marthea Bibescu appeared in the archives very clearly.” The diplomatic quarter was the European quarter of Istanbul. On La Grand Rue de Pera hosted, starting from the 17th century, the diplomatic residences of the Great Powers. In the 19th century, the new Romanian state sent its diplomatic representatives to gravitate around the great decision-makers of the time, but the possibilities of maintenance in that area were too small for the Romanian state. Here is Silvana Rachieru.


    “The Romanian diplomatic agency that operated between 1859 and 1878 had rented space. In fact, it was the diplomatic agents apartment which also functioned as the headquarters of the diplomatic agency. This fact is mentioned in 1878 by Dimitrie Brătianu, the first representative of Romania in Constantinople after independence. He transmits, a few weeks after he arrives in the Ottoman capital, that the headquarters of the legation was in a stone house in the Çukurcuma neighborhood, also in the Pera area, where his home also was. Brătianu wrote that it was not the most appropriate headquarters to mark the opening of a legation, and that the ministry should make a nice gesture and provide funding for renting a more generous space, adapted to the new requirements.”




    It was only in 1887 that the first headquarters was rented, separate from the personal residence of the diplomatic representative. And, since 1903, Romania has shown its serious intention to buy a building as a permanent residence. Silvana Rachieru.


    “The final destination of the Romanian diplomatic mission in the capital of the empire, and in the most important city of the Turkish Republic, came to be in Sıraselviler street, which in Turkish means “Row of cypresses”. Here, in 1903, Romania rents a space. Behind this action is the then plenipotentiary minister Alexandru Lahovary. In the lease it is mentioned that when the owner decides to sell, the Romanian state would be the first to make an offer and purchase the space, which would start to be discussed much more seriously from 1905, and would be completed in 1907. From 1907 onward, we have a landmark near Taksim Square that is associated with Romania nowadays.”




    The building was known as the “Musurus Pasha mansion”, after the name of its owner, an Ottoman diplomat of Greek origin. The neighborhood was a Greek one, which began to develop after the great fire of 1870. It was an active, energetic commercial area, where French-style apartments were built and offices operated. Nearby stands the most important Greek Orthodox church since the conquest of Constantinople in 1453. Until 1927, the headquarters of the Romanian legation would be there. The consequences of the First World War on the Ottoman Empire were to be tragic. Since 1923, after the proclamation of the Republic of Turkey, the foundation of the new capital in Ankara meant moving the center of gravity of the new state. And the diplomatic missions went to him, albeit after a delay. Romania also hesitated to take this step for a long time, and Silvana Rachieru told us why.


    “They hesitated because Ankara, in 1923, was more rural than urban. The first diplomatic missions receive from Mustafa Kemal train cars in which to operate. It was hard to leave the Bosphorus, especially when you had an imposing residence. It took a long time to get to Ankara. The other powers were in no hurry to move either, but they were gradually moving. Romania lost an opportunity at that moment, because in the first years they were giving out plots of land in an area that Mustafa Kemal wanted to transform into the new diplomatic quarter. Romanias hesitation mean that, at the time of the move, there were no more plots available in that neighborhood.” Romania returns to renting premises for the legation in the residential district of Çankaya. And in the 1950s, they would buy a plot of land and build a building for the embassy on the street called Bucharest.


  • Ion Ghica and his manor in Ghergani

    Ion Ghica and his manor in Ghergani

    A well-known place in the cultural history of Romania, Ghergani reentered the public attention relatively recently, with its retrocession to the descendants of the Ghica family, after having been nationalized during communism. It was the home of Ion Ghica, a politician, diplomat, scholar and writer, one of the most important members of the generation of the 1848 Revolution, the generation responsible for the modernization of the Romanian principalities. Born in 1816, Ion Ghica died in 1897 in Ghergani, where where he was buried next to that of his wife, Alexandrina.



    Their successor, Irina Ghica Bossy, tells us more about the history of the manor, intertwined with that of the family: “The mansion you see today dates back to 1869 because Ion Ghica inherited it from his father, Ban Dumitrache Ghica, and wanted to restore it so as not to continue the Balkan architectural tradition still popular in the country at that time. He wanted to give it a Western look, influenced by the French architecture that he would have liked to see implemented all across Romania. He is one of the main modernizers of Romania, whom he wanted oriented towards the West and not towards the Balkans and the Ottoman Empire or, even worse, towards Russia. He wanted to put these principles into practice at his own home. That is why today we no longer see here the old mansion built in the 17th century. That had been a mansion that the Văcărescu family had built and which in the 18th century was given to a member of the Ghica femily. From that moment on, the Ghergani estate was a Ghica estate, which different generations tried to improve, enlarge and give a neat and welcoming appearance. But Ion Ghica was the one who broke the tradition of a Balkan mansion and made this small Western palace instead, which looks amazing in the middle of a village in the south of Wallachia.



    Irina Ghica Bossy also tells us who gave the building its western aspect: “There were two architects who worked on it, because Dimitrie Berindei initially took the job, but after his death, another architect, Gheorghe Mandrea, took over the project. Both were architects educated in the West. Berindei had studied in Paris, and Mandrea in Vienna, so they understood Ion Ghica when he told them that he would like a mansion with western architecture. Another western influence was the addition of a chapel, located close to the main building. This is also a Western custom that had not existed in Romania until then. Although he was inspired by these Western traditions and styles, the Ghergani chapel is a purely Byzantine chapel, in the traditional style of Orthodox churches, because he did not want his Romanian Orthodox faith to be questioned. That is why the chapel has a in a purely Orthodox and neo-Romanian style. It is a private chapel where the mass was held, probably on Sundays from time to time and especially on Easter. People from the village would also join the Ghica family. We have pictures of the whole village that came to the property on special occasions. The grave of Ion Ghica and his wife, Alexandrina is also here, in this chapel.




    Known as a man of letters, especially due to his the volume Letters to Vasile Alecsandri, written and sent from London, Ion Ghica worked on a number of pioneering academic projects in Romania at that time, in fields such as mathematics, political economy and pedagogy, many of his works being written in Ghergani. Irina Ghica Bossy: “All Ion Ghica’s manuscripts were in the mansion and my father handed them over to the Romanian Academy a few days before nationalization, because he didn’t want them to be lost or burned. His entire political activity, his writings and economic and administrative treaties were documented here, on this property. He wrote all his works throughout a very long period, because he lived long, until he was 81. At first he probably wrote his works in his parents’ house. Then, he wrote letters to Vasile Alecsandri from London, when he was a diplomat at the court of Queen Victoria. Ghergani was the place where he was happiest. He wrote to his wife, Alexandrina, that wherever he finds himself in Europe, he likes to return to Ghergani. He wanted Ghergani to be a place where everyone was welcome. His wish came true, because many personalities came to Ghergani. In one of Ion Ghica’s letters to his wife, we read how proud he was that the guests liked Ghergani and that they congratulated him on how beautiful the building and the park were.



    The Ghergani mansion started deteriorating after the 1940 earthquake when its floor collapsed. It was never repaired. Then, in 1948, the house and land were nationalized and the communist state first installed there a farm and then a children’s hospital. Until 1990, no more repairing works were conducted. Only a tin roof was put on it. Later, the descendants of Ion Ghica recovered their property and the mansion is currently going through a restoration process. The rest of the domain, including the chapel, is open to visitors. (EE)

  • The stone crosses of Bucharest

    The stone crosses of Bucharest

    Crosses have been a constant presence in the urban
    habitat of Romania’s capital city, Bucharest. Throughout the years, no less
    than fifty such crosses have been placed in various points, with some of them
    marking military or social events, while others marked the border between properties.
    Some of the crosses had the role of cenotaph or diptych. There were also crosses
    that were displaced and placed again in the lapidary of such monasteries as
    Antim of the Brancoveanu palaces in Mogosoaia.


    The oldest such monument in Ruler Leon’s Cross, made
    of wood. Leon was the ruling prince of Wallachia between 1629 and 1632. Leon raised the cross to mark his win in
    the battle against Matei Basarab on August 23rd, 1631. The wooden cross
    deteriorated; Leon’s son, Radu Leon, had it rebuilt, this time using stone as construction
    material.


    Another cross, initially made of wood and rebuilt of stone, later, is the cross of Papa Brâncoveanu, Wallachian ruling
    prince Constantin Brâncoveanu’s father. The former ruled between 1688 and 1714.
    Papa Brancoveanu was killed in 1655 during the uprising of the mercenary corps
    armed with muskets, seimeni, in Romanian, and the corps of foot soldiers,
    dorobanti, in Romanian.


    Cezar-Petre Buiumaci is a museographer
    with the Bucharest Municipality Museum. Dr Buiumaci is also a coordinator of a project
    t dedicated to the stone crosses from Romania’s capital city Bucharest. We first
    asked him what the explanation was, for the emergence of the crosses as public monuments
    in Bucharest, prior to the modern period.


    The predicament
    people at that time had been going though prompted them to erect monuments with
    a twofold significance: first, to protect them from any misfortune, at once
    reminding them of the plight that befell them. A case in point is the stone
    cross erected by the commander of mounted troops (serdar, in Romanian) Matei Mogoș
    (Mogoșescu) on his estate in the early 18th century, in the hopes
    that the plague pandemic that ravished the city would come to an end. The cross
    became so important in the community’s mindset that Bishop Grigore II a had a
    church built around the cross. Placed in the altar of the Old Obor Church, the
    cross, meant to remind people of plague and famine, can be seen with difficulty,
    today, as it became a worship object. We can find this kind of reminiscing again,
    in Vienna, where the emperor, in late 17th century, had a column
    built, dedicated to the divine charity when the plague epidemic came to an end.
    In Arad, in the mid-18th century, the plague column was erected, having
    the Holy Trinity as its main representation. We can also find similar monuments
    in other cities in Banat, Hungary or Germany, built in the wake of the pledge
    that was made, when the plague was eradicated. The power the public crosses had
    over Bucharest city dwellers’ lifestyle and collective psyche was impressive.


    Here is museographer Cezar-Petre
    Buiumaci once again, this time summing up the story of one of those crosses.


    One of
    the crosses with a special relevance in the history of Bucharest is Neophit’s
    Cross, a cross which is as visible as it is unknown. It was erected by Ungrovlahia’s
    bishop, Neophit the Cretan, with the purpose of being a border stone. What
    prompted the bishop to do that were the repeated trespassings of the plots of
    land and vineyards by the Greek priors of the Mihai Voda monastery. In the wake
    of the inquest he carried on the ground, the bishop decided that the cross should
    be placed where the Paupers’ Fountain was found on Barracks Street. It’s just
    that the inquest he conducted on the ground did not take the course he thought
    it would take, because the father superiors in Mihai Voda talked the slum dwellers
    into clamming up, with respect to the old borders of the metropolitan church’s
    plots of land. He noticed he received no info at all, capable of helping him in
    his endeavor, so Neophit had no choice other than placing a curse on the slum dwellers,
    with the purpose of finding out the truth. The Great curse or the Most
    terrible anathema were read out in the Albă-Postăvari, Abbot, Gorgani and Golescu
    churches in the first three Lent Sundays, targeting the people who knew about
    the measuring marks for those plots of land but who wouldn’t speak up. The
    action turned out to be successful because, as soon as the commission tasked
    with solving the case showed up, the slum dwellers identified the measuring
    marks.


    At the
    heart of the capital city, in the University Square, lies one of Bucharest’s
    most recent public crosses. Near the roadside crosses commemorating the December
    1989 Revolution, the Cross of Bessarabia can be found. Cezar-Petre Buiumaci also briefed us up
    on the story of the entire ensemble there.


    The Cross of Bessarabia Cross is a wooden cross brought from Chisinau by a group
    of students from Republic of Moldova as part of the Union March, and placed
    there on March 27, 1992, on the very day Bessarabia’s Union with Romania is
    celebrated. The wooden cross is the symbol of people’s unity and is actually
    the first cross of today’s ensemble that was placed on the very spot where a couple of
    roadside crosses used to stand, erected in December 1989. There were other eight
    stone crosses placed here, brought from Alexeni, Ialomita County, and which,
    together, make the December 1989 Revolution Heroes’ Ensemble which, as of that
    year, has become the main place for the commemoration of the 1989 Revolution
    martyrs. It is a salient example of the change in significance of a monument,
    from a border stone into a public monument, with relevance for the
    recent history.


    Bucharest’s stone crosses, with strong and artistically
    expressive messages, are part and parcel of today’s urbanscape. Bucharesters may
    have got used to passing them by every day, yet the stone crosses still
    maintain their symbolic significance intact.

  • Bucharest’s inns

    Bucharest’s inns


    Massive structures built like citadels, with surrounding walls into which the guest rooms were built and inner courtyards for carriages and horses, inns increased in number in Bucharest in the 16th and 17th centuries. A market town, the capital of Wallachia was also an important transit place for the commercial routes going from the East to western Europe. Inns also feature in the records of the foreign travellers of the day, explains Gabriel Constantin, a curator with the Bucharest City Museum:



    “The oldest historical mention of an inn is 1673. Earlier, in 1672, a foreign traveller noted the presence in Bucharest of Turkish, Greek, Italian, French and even English merchants who were coming here to sell their wares. So, the emergence of inns was connected to trade. There were different types of inns: princely, for merchants, and those related to the churches. Its a well-known fact that there used to be many inns in Bucharest. Each district had its own inn, but we must note that these were small inns used mainly for merchants coming from the countryside and who had only small businesses. But there were also big inns located close to the markets and which provided Romanian and foreign merchants with the best conditions for storing and selling their products. Inns begin to go out of fashion as transport routes were modernised. There was no longer any need to make provisions well in advance given that trains and ships would bring in goods within a relatively short period of time. At the same time, travellers and merchants begin to prefer new, modern buildings that were more comfortable and provided better conditions for the sale of goods. Thats how the history of Bucharests inns came to an end as engines of urban development, but those that kept up with the times and survived the more recent danger of demolition have preserved their charm intact.”



    1828 is the official date for the decline of inns because thats when the first hotel to European standards opened in Bucharest. The modernisation of transport routes, river transport and railways, led to the gradual disappearance of this form of accommodation. Some of them were more famous than others, and are still remembered today: The Inn with Linden Trees, Manucs Inn, Hagi Tudoraches Inn, the Serban Voda Inn. What remains of the cellars of the Serban Voda Inn is still visible today next to the building housing the National Bank of Romania, which was built on the site of the former inn. Most inns were located within what is today the historical centre and where most of the capitals trading activities were taking place. Curator Gabriel Constantin explains:



    “Inns hide remarkable stories. One such story is that of Emanuel Mîrzăian, better known as Manuc Bei. We might actually say that what we know about his life is half true, half legend. He inherited a fortune from his father, but was very good at multiplying it. He cultivated links with the Ottoman world and also made many friends in Wallachia. He possessed remarkable qualities, mastered 12 languages, was tactful, diplomatic, and, above all, had a vision. He was friends with both the Russians and the Ottomans. He was a rich merchant who lent money right and left, including to important people in the Ottoman world and in Wallachia. It was in this context that he ended up mediating peace between the Russians and the Ottomans, with the peace treaty itself being signed in one of the rooms of Manucs Inn in 1812. Because he betrayed the Ottomans, however, he had to move to his estate in Bassarabia where he remained until his death. He was most probably poisoned by one of his aides, although the official version is that he fell off the horse while riding.”



    Manucs Inn is today the only building of its kind still preserved in Bucharest, housing a hotel and restaurant. Hagi Tudorache was another well-known inn-keeper. Curator Gabriel Constantin tells us his story:



    “He started from very low. He was born in the countryside. His name was Tudor Tudoran and was taken by his father to Bucharest to learn trade. He worked in the shop of St Georges Inn owned by Hagi Tudorache, who grew to like him and appreciate him for his qualities, so he left him his fortune provided he bore his name. So the young Tudoran became Hagi Tudorache. He focused on retail trade. He also invented travelling trade by covered carts, inside which there were shelves full of goods. They were travelling all over the country, providing the local population with almost everything they needed. Another thing that must be said about Hagi Tudorache is that he couldnt read or write and could barely even write his name. But he had an incredible memory and could remember every transaction he ever made and every sum he was owed. His sons learned the trade working alongside the other shop boys, as his father wanted them to know every detail about how a business is organised and also to teach them to appreciate the work the other employees were putting in and to be fair to them.”



    To celebrate this part of the citys history, the Bucharest City Museum staged a temporary exhibition about inns, showcasing not only their history but also objects such vessels, coffers and vintage clothes that recreate the atmosphere of those times.


  •  Ulysse de Marsillac 

     Ulysse de Marsillac 


    The East
    European space has been discovered and rediscovered by the West in several
    waves in the history of the last millennium. Starting in the 18th century, the
    European West has invented Eastern Europe as we know it today, and in the
    process of invention the French had a crucial role due to the impact of the
    revolution between 1789-1795 and the project of the modern state proposed by
    it. The Romanian space, part of the Eastern world, was also discovered by
    several generations of French, the first being that of the French consuls in Bucharest
    and Iași. The international events that took place in the first half of the
    19th century and that led to the emergence of the modern Romanian state caused
    other generations of French to migrate to the mouths of the Danube and describe
    the new world in which they arrived. One of the French who left us the most
    attractive pages about 19th-century Bucharest was the teacher and journalist
    Ulysse de Marsillac, the man whose name is associated with the Francophonie of
    the Romanian generation from the mid-19th century.






    De
    Marsillac was French, but he was equally Romanian. He identified so much with
    the Romanian spirit that he chose to stay in Bucharest until the end of his
    56-year-old life. Born in 1821 in Montpellier, de Marsillac arrived in
    Bucharest in 1845, at the age of 24. In Bucharest he was a teacher at the
    Military School, at the Saint Sava National College and at the
    University. As a journalist, he wrote for the biweekly La Voix de la
    Roumanie, founded by him in 1861, which appeared until 1866. Between 1866
    and 1870 he was editor-in-chief of Le Moniteur Roumain, and between
    1870 and 1876 he edited and published in Le Journal de Bucarest. He
    wrote several volumes, the most popular being Guide du Voyageur a
    Bucarest, published in Bucharest in 1872.




    Twenty
    years after coming to Romania, Ulysse de Marsillac remembered what the new
    world was like in which he probably didn’t know he would spend the rest of his
    life: In Giurgiu, I get into a cart. It is a trapezoidal wooden crate, with
    no nails or iron pieces, just wooden wedges. This box is placed on four
    polygonal wheels and is filled with hay. The great luxury is to have plenty of
    hay. The passenger lays down in the hay, holds on to the sides of the box and
    four small, ugly, but tireless horses pull the light carriage that jumps over
    the cobblestones in the streets, the potholes in the road, the logs in the
    forest. At first, you are shocked, your head is spinning, your whole body is
    looking for a balance that it cannot find; after an hour, a great pain is
    gripping you in the saddle, your guts are twisted; after two hours start
    thinking of the Inquisition and its tortures, not all of which let you die. And then the moment comes when the executioner
    – driver approaches you with a sweet smile, informing you that you have arrived
    and asking for a tip.








    The
    accounts of Ulysse de Marsillac were in synchronicity with the times. The author
    was noticing the changes Bucharest and Romanian society were going through and
    was enthusiastic about that. Sandra Ecobescu, president of the Calea Victoriei
    Foundation, noticed how Ulysse de Marisllac understood Bucharest and Romanians
    deeper than we would be tempted to believe :






    This French gentleman, so in love with Bucharest, has a chapter he named ‘the
    fiddlers’. In fact, it’s not just about fiddlers. There are many pages about
    their costumes, their music, their traditions. Actually, he talks about
    folklore. And this is interesting because
    there’s been talk about the Orient, about the Byzantine line or this
    tradition that defines Romanians and which must be embraed as such. Romanians
    are not just the descendants of Rome,
    they are a mix of so many things. And the foreigner travelling here can
    find all these traditional elements.




    Gheorghe Crutzescu,
    the author of the very popular « Mogosoaia Bridge – the story of a
    street », from 1943, characterized Ulysse de Marsillac, who actually lived
    on Victoria Boulevard, the current name of the street he was writing
    about : « I don’t think that our city has had a more honest and and
    more understanding chronicler than this foreigner. He hasn’t missed any change,
    any progress, no matter how little it may be. And at the same time, he has
    shown so much love for our past, which he knows so well.


    So, Romanians had
    among them a foreigner who cared about their world and who wanted to see
    getting better. Crutzescu was also the one who wrote about the death of the
    French with a Romanian soul, in 1877, the year when the Romanian army started
    the war that would bring its independence : « In 1877, tormented by a
    terrible diseases, Ulysse de Marsillac died. But he still had time to wish good
    luck the Romanian troops that were crossing the Danube. » (MI)











  • Humorist Cilibi Moise

    Humorist Cilibi Moise


    Humor is a human trait, in its very essence. Humor has for long been described and analyzed by literary theorists, philosophers, moralists, psychologists, theologians, sociologists, anthropologists. Being admittedly universal, humor is at once something typical for certain groups of people, larger or smaller, for certain nations or countries. Humor is, just as those who studied it would put it, a cultural characteristic of a certain space.



    Practically, in the Romanian space, humor could be traced ever since this space has been inhabited by human beings. Notwithstanding, the written history of Romanian humor, with documents conveying the spirit of the age to posterity, can only be read from the second half of the 19th century, being closely connected to the publication of satire and humor magazines. In the history of Romanian humor, we can also find names of people who made the others laugh, people who would be remembered by their contemporaries by their funny words, gestures and attitudes.



    One such name of Romanian humor in the 19th century was that of the legendary Cilibi Moise, whose personality is better known from what the others said about him, rather than from his own personal notes or archive documents.



    Eugen Istodor specializes in the history of humor press. Istodor himself was a columnist for the Catavencu Academy humor magazine, issued in 1991. In his articles and studies, Istodor also wrote about Cilibi Moise, our hero today.



    How are we to understand humor ? How can we perceive it in the Romanian space ? So here I am in front of Cilibi Moise, the humblest of our great humorists. Why humble? A string of questions arises here as well. What do we know about Cilibi Moise? My honest answer is that we do not know nothing indeed. ‘Man cannot be something unless he feels he is nothing’ that is in fact his creed, and it is also my creed as well. We know nothing about him. We only have a photograph of him, we have some testimonials, we have several literary episodes, a couple of clippings. We can place him in an equation which belongs to literary history rather than literary theory, even to a less extent to literary criticism.



    Cilibi Moise was born Moise Froim in Focsani, in 1812 and died in Bucharest, in 1870, at the age of 58. He hailed from an underprivileged Jewish family from Vrancea, in eastern Romania. Information sources abut Cilibi Moisse are scarce, telling us that ever since he was a child, he had no choice other than work or be into trading. They say Cilibi Moise came to be known among the traders thanks to his ludic spirit, strong enough in him to draw his clients. They also say Moise was illiterate and dictated to a type setter the proverbs, the aphorisms and the quotations that are attributed to him. We also understand that the great playwright Ion Luca Caragiale’ s father befriended Moise and that the latter dictated part of his creations to Caragiale himself. Despite the age gap, Cilibi Moise was quite close to rabbi, philologist, historian and journalist Moses Gaster. In his memoirs, Gaster names Moise cilibi, a word meaning the friendly one but also the smart one in Turkish. Philologist and literary historian Stefan Cazimir wrote that Moise got other nicknames as well, such as twicer, jester, sage, philosopher, but also the distinguished one, the noble one, the dapper. Cilibi Moise was the way he was also because, in his time, the people and the ways of the world were those of the century, just as Eugen Istodor told us.



    He is the way he is because the Romanian society was in a certain way. He got his name included in literary history because he wanted to. Yet that was rather something pertaining to the instinct, to the social animal in him, than a trader. He would rather be a trader, or that’s what I suspect. He would have liked to be something else; he would have liked to be rich and live his life to the fullest. He remained somewhere on the margin, instead. Moise Froim Schwartz did not tell that many things about himself. His irony was self-inflicting, it’s true, but he told nothing about him. He didn’t tell who he was or how he was. That speaks volumes about how we structure the literary and social hierarchies and about how we relate to them ourselves. Moise, as compared to Caragiale, for instance, to Macedonski, Ranetti and Geo Bogza, told nothing about him. He stole himself into and lived his life behind some proverbs where his irony was self-inflicting. Cilibi Moise lives only through the way the others perceived him, through the way the others resorted to a certain kind of rhetoric.



    Some of Cilibi Moise’s witticisms can be understood because their message is universal. For instance, it is Cilibi Moise who gave us this quotation about poverty: One day, Cilibi Moise ran into some kind of great shame. Thieves broke into his place at night and found nothing.



    Politics and affluence can also be understood by today’s people, all the more so as at that time things were different. As for Moise, his comments on politics went something like : for 30 years since poverty has been living with me and for 14 years since I have been living with politics, I got tired of doing politics, but poverty did not get tired of living with me. These are just two examples of the 15-volume thesaurus Cilibi Moise left behind him, a thesaurus made of aphorisms, proverbs, thoughts, anecdotes and pieces of advice.




  • Marcel Iancu’s modernist Bucharest

    Marcel Iancu’s modernist Bucharest

    The Romanian artist of Jewish descent, Marcel Iancu, was part of the group of artists who in 1916, at the Voltaire cabaret in Zurich, launched the avant-garde Dada movement. Born in Bucharest in 1895, Marcel Iancu studied architecture in Switzerland, but within Dadaism he was more active as a fine artist. He illustrated articles in Contimporanul magazine, but Marcel Iancus true passion was architecture, obviously modernist, in keeping with his reformist principles. Thanks to this passion, lots of modernist houses were built in the interwar Bucharest, adding to the eclectic charm of the capital of Romania. Architect Ana-Maria Zahariade tells us more about Marcel Iancu and his influence on Bucharest.



    “He returned to Romania filled with the avant-garde spirit, of the Dada movement in particular, which had a very special vitality, a huge vitality, a corrosive vitality, sometimes even humorous. So he came back and presented himself to Romanian society, trying to imbue it with that spirit of modernity. Its beginning of the century, in fact in the first quarter of the century, and the desire for renewal, the renewal movement after the First World War in Romanian society was very strong. Everything was dominated by the personality of Marcel Iancu, and I believe we can talk about a modern Bucharest back then thanks to him. Marcel Iancu was the missionary of modernism in Romania. It is a period when, in fact, architectural modernism was very much in its infancy.”



    In Bucharest, Marcel Iancu did architecture for a living. He also kept illustrating articles in the Contimporanul magazine, which was not an architecture magazine, but did use to reflect the modern trends in architecture, which Marcel Iancu would very fast implement. Ana-Maria Zahariade:



    “As soon as he returned to the country, he set up a firm together with his brother, Iuliu, who was also an architect. Hes always Marcels shadow character. Neither he nor Marcel got their license in Switzerland. They graduated from the architecture school there, but without getting their degree. When they came to the country, they founded this workshop where they worked together on many projects. Many times they signed Marcel Iuliu Iancu as if they were one and the same person and in fact, we dont really know what each ones role was. It is most likely that Marcel contributed with new ideas, composition solutions, the creative part, while Iuliu was mostly focused on the technical part. It is certain that they worked together on many projects, though not all of them. The firm had a problem though, as neither of them had a degree, therefore they could not draw up the necessary documentation for the projects to get authorized. So, they used a friend to sign them, and that happened until 1934, when Marcel Iancu joined the artchitects corp, based on his experience as a designer.



    In the 1920s, few Bucharest customers would appreciate modernist architecture, so for a long time Marcel Iancu received orders in general from friends and family acquaintances, people who in the vast majority belonged to the middle or above middle class. Many of them were Jews, so the buildings designed by Iancu are grouped either in the area of ​​the old Jewish neighborhood of Bucharest, or in the northern part, by the boulevard, where luxury villas were being built. The vast majority were private orders, and Marcel Iancu did not work on any public project. Ana-Maria Zahariade:



    “To him, the first modernist house was the one known as Villa Fuchs, which appeared in several magazines. What is interesting is that he used a rather banal type of construction. Talking about Villa Fuchs, he once recalled: “I built it for a wine merchant, who had read foreign art magazines and who probably liked the new type of architecture. So, he said to me that he had one million lei and a plot of land and he would give them to me, to build whatever I wanted, but modernist”. But that modernism was completely atypical. Then, in 1929, we dont know how it happened, but he was commissioned to build the Youth Pool, which obviously is a totally different thing. Actually, those years were rather rich in projects, for villas and small apartment buildings in particular. The latter was extremely popular in modernizing Bucharest, and was very much used in interwar Bucharest. The second building built by Marcel Iancu that was not a housing building was the Popper Sanatorium, which was and extremely modern thing back then.”



    Marcel Iancu had an effervescent personality and in 20 years of activity he worked a lot. The capital itself, reluctant at first, started accepting an ever-increasing number of modernist buildings, although many of them, as Iancu believed, where not created out of a genuine vanguard drive and did not fully observe the modernist canon. He would say: ” never believed in the value of popularized ideas, that get devoid of any virulence, get barren. In this world of new art, where values are yet unclassified, the errors are grotesque. Those who are exploiting modernity today must explore the entire chain of evolution”.



    Ana-Maria Zahariade tells us what happened next:


    “His revolt was understandable. Adding to that was probably the fact that the political situation was increasingly difficult for the Jewish architects. Im, not sure, but he talked about anti-Semitism and how it eventually forced him to take his family and emigrate. He worked in administration there, and its quite strange. I dont know if he couldnt work there as an architect, because other had come before him. What we know is that he worked in administration and that he saved Jaffa from being demolished. A paradoxical life.”



    Marcel Iancu left Romania for good in 1941 and went to Palestine. There, after the establishment of the State of Israel, he asserted himself as a teacher and a prominent figure of Israels cultural life and in 1967, he received the Israeli State Prize. He died in 1984 in Haifa. (MI)

  • Warsaw and Bucharest – two cities called the ‘Paris of Eastern Europe’

    Warsaw and Bucharest – two cities called the ‘Paris of Eastern Europe’

    Bucharest is seen today as an Eastern European city that took the model of a Western European city for its development. And what other model could be chosen if not Paris, the capital of France? In sign of appreciation for Bucharest people’s dedication to modernizing their city after the model of the capital of France, the capital of Romania received the nickname ‘Little Paris back in the 19th century, a flattering nickname that was kept for a long time. But Bucharest was not the only city that took Paris as a model for urban expansion. The capital of Poland, Warsaw, also received the same nickname, before Bucharest, and this same name for two cities that ardently sought to imitate Paris made the Polish historian Błažej Brzostek write the volume ‘The Paris of another Europe. Warsaw and Bucharest in the 19th and 20th centuries’.



    The Polish historian wrote that there were differences, given the history of the two eastern capitals, although they shared the same nickname: We have differences in both spaces, in the Romanian and Polish cultural spaces. The first visible difference is the presence in Romania of a pattern or a concept of Balkanism, which does not exist in Poland. It is very important in Southern Europe in particular, and it is a negative one. On the other hand, we have the historical concept of Central Europe, which is positive, and very rarely is it negative. The historical concept of Central Europe is very urban, like the Balkan one, urban too, but in a different way. In urban planning, both concepts are extremely visible and extremely clear.



    Poland and Romania were neighbors for a long time in history, and the relations between them were marked by the interests of the times. But, in the last hundred years, relations between the two countries have been excellent. A memorable episode took place in September 1939, at the outbreak of the Second World War. The then Romanian government led by Armand Călinescu allowed the passage of the authorities from Warsaw and of the Polish treasure through Romania to the West, so as not to fall into the hands of Germany. But even in the 19thcentury, when Poland no longer existed on the political map of Europe, the Polish presence in Romania had not been forgotten.



    The nickname Little Paris was given to Warsaw before it was given to Bucharest. The ideas of revolutionary France entered Poland at the end of the 18th century, but the name Little Paris given to Warsaw had a negative connotation for the conservative Polish nobility. They opposed Western modernist ideas, and a long dispute began between the traditional and modernizing camps. The same separation of ideas will also produce in Bucharest, 30 years later, around 1830, two opposing camps, similar to the Polish ones.



    Błažej Brzostek told us what role the French capital played here: Paris is a symbolic point, a point of reference for both cultures, in opposition to what was brought from the Orient, and to what was domestic. It was a modern problem of self-definition, and getting to know oneself. The question was: who are we truly? To be a Parisian was positive in many texts, especially in the 19th century, as was the case in the whole of Europe in general, or something negative. It was never neutral. The discussion was mostly related to elites, the ‘superimposed layer’, as Titu Maiorescu wrote, in a pre-modern society which aimed to modernize the masses in order to bring in civilization.



    Little Paris meant, at first sight, urban organization and atmosphere, but not only. It was a type of social attitude, of clothing, of spoken language. Warsaw and Bucharest were called Little Paris, even though they were different, both in cultural heritage, and in imitating the French metropolis. As opposed to Warsaw, a city with aristocratic mansions, in Bucharest the transformation was more visible. In late 19th century, Bucharest was still an Oriental city, but the homes of the elites were Parisian houses. The young people who had been studying in France were bring Paris to Warsaw and Bucharest.



    Here is Błažej Brzostek: In building the concept of Little Paris, when we seek the first moments it was used, or the essential moments in the evolution of this concept, the first impression is that there is a gap between Warsaw and Bucharest. This gap between Poland and Romania was large in the 18th century. Warsaw was the capital of a very large state, considered to be a major state on the map of Europe. Warsaw, along with Poland, gradually disappeared, and Romania gradually appeared. Warsaw has the major trauma of a lost function, and is the biggest source of written texts and ideas. In Romania it is the reverse. There is no trauma of a lost state, but there is another trauma, that produced by the construction of a modern state, and of a modern capital city. This trauma is highly visible especially in interwar texts, when Bucharest was remodeled and remade, with blockhauses, with high rises, with new boulevards, and this seemed to be a destruction of the patriarchal city.



    We still remember with nostalgia nowadays the moniker Little Paris. Both capitals suffered tremendously from an urbanistic point of view during WWII and communism, and this trauma is something they still have in common to this day. (LS, CC)