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Mircea Vulcănescu | |
|---|---|
| Born | (1904-03-03)March 3, 1904 |
| Died | October 28, 1952(1952-10-28) (aged 48) |
| Alma mater | University of Bucharest |
| Occupation(s) | Philosopher, economist, politician |
| Spouses | |
| Awards | Order of the Star of Romania, Grand Officer rank |
Mircea Aurel Vulcănescu (3 March 1904 – 28 October 1952) was aRomanian philosopher, economist, ethics teacher, sociologist, and politician. Undersecretary at the Ministry of Finance from 1941 to 1944 in theNazi-aligned government ofIon Antonescu, he was arrested in 1946 and convicted as awar criminal.[1][2]
He was born inBucharest on March 3, 1904, the second child of Mihail Vulcănescu, a financial controller with theMinistry of Finance, and Maria, the descendant of a family of landowners from the Olt area.[3][4] After theGerman Army occupied Bucharest inWorld War I, the family took refuge in 1917 inZvoriștea, a village in northernMoldavia.[3] Mircea Vulcănescu attended gymnasium inIași andTecuci, and went to high school inGalați before returning to Bucharest at the end of the war. He completed his secondary education atGheorghe Lazăr High School andMihai Viteazul High School, defending his baccalaureate in 1921.[3] He studied philosophy and law at theUniversity of Bucharest, graduating in 1925 withlicentiate thesisIndivid și societate în sociologia contemporană, written under the direction ofDimitrie Gusti.[5] He was then more attracted tosociology, due to his field experiences (monograph campaigns) under the coordination of Gusti, who became one of his most admired mentors, alongsideNae Ionescu. Vulcănescu was also Gusti's assistant at the Faculty of Sociology inBucharest. He then went toParis, where he pursued doctoral research at the Faculty of Law of theUniversity of Paris; in November 1928, he earned a degree in economics and political science,[4] but later dropped out, without completing his Ph.D. degree. While in France, he wrote several "Letters from Paris", two of which were published in Romania inGândirea magazine.[4]
Between 1924 and 1932, he took part in several monographic research campaigns, inGoicea Mare,Fundu Moldovei,Runcu,Cornova, andDrăguș. From 1932 to 1933, alongsideConstantin Noica,Petru Comarnescu,Emil Cioran,Mircea Eliade, andDan Botta, he gained a high profile through publishing and the intense activity of theCriterion association. In January 1934 he was invited byAlexandru Tzigara-Samurcaș, the director ofConvorbiri Literare, to join the editorial board of this prestigious literary magazine, which also included Eliade, Noica, andHenri H. Stahl.[4] Together withEugène Ionesco, Cioran, Eliade, and Noica, Vulcănescu was one of the most prominent members of the so-called "golden generation" of the 1930s Romania.[6]: 68, 71
From June 1935 to September 1937, Vulcănescu was director of the Customs Service, while in 1940 he was director of the Public Debt Department. From January 27, 1941 to August 23, 1944, he was undersecretary at the Ministry of Finance, in theIon Antonescu government.[7][8] In November 1941, he was awarded theOrder of the Star of Romania, Grand Officer rank.[9] During the war, he was one of Romania's best negotiators withNazi Germany, managing to obtain for theNational Bank of Romania eight wagons of gold (confiscated by theSoviet Union after 1944), and the endowment of theRomanian 4th Army with new military equipment.[3] According toDeutsche Welle, he was "rhinocerized by the Legionary Movement and pro-Nazism".[10] According toRadio France Internationale, "he participated in dozens of councils of ministers in which aspects related to preparation and decision-making as practical as possible for the extermination of the Jewish and Roma population were discussed."[11]
After thecoup d'état of August 1944 he returned to his job as director of the Public Debt Department.[8] He was arrested on August 30, 1946, tried as a war criminal.[7][8] The prosecutor of his case, Alexandru Ionescu-Lungu, issued a finding on September 4, stating that there was no case of criminal prosecution against Vulcănescu, for any criminal act that he would have committed as undersecretary of state at the Ministry of Finance in the Antonescu government.[12] The Appeals Court ignored the finding, and ordered his prosecution through an indictment not signed by the general prosecutor, but approved by the Council of Ministers in the meeting of September 24 chaired byPrime MinisterPetru Groza.[12] On October 9, 1946, Vulcănescu was sentenced to 8 years in prison.[7][8] However, the trial was in itself a controversial one, since the judiciary regime suffered from the influence of theCommunist Party and, consequently, from theSoviet occupation.[13] Vulcănescu was convicted for "permitting the entry of the German army on the country's territory" and for "declaring or continuing the war against the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics and the United Nations".[14] He was not convicted (and, in the Court of Appeal trial not even accused) for the acts punished by law 312/1945 that fell within the scope of unjust anti-Jewish (or racial) laws or actions.[15]
Nicolae Mărgineanu, an academic at theKing Ferdinand I University ofCluj and a post-mortemmember of the Romanian Academy, claimed that the accusations that were brought against Vulcănescu were false and that he was a victim of theCommunist regime,[16] as part of a larger scheme of the authorities whose aim was to slowly kill off Romanian intellectuals, especially those who opposed the regime.[citation needed] The political character of his conviction was confirmed by the Bucharest Tribunal in 2017.[8]
From his arrest to his conviction, Vulcănescu was held at the prisons inVăcărești andJilava, where he was subjected to torture.[8] After his conviction, he was sent to the notoriousAiud Prison, where he was held in isolation at the "Zarca".[17] In December 1951, together with Mărgineanu (who was also detained at Aiud), he planned a mass escape of the prisoners, so that, once they were free, they would contact theanti-communist resistance in the mountains. However, not all the detainees agreed, and in the end only three of them (aviatorsTudor Greceanu [ro] andGheorghe Spulbatu [ro], and journalist Valeriu Șirianu) managed to escape.[18] Suffering fromtuberculosis and denied medical care, he died on October 28, 1952.[8] His last words are said to have been: "Do not avenge us, but do not forget us!".[17]
He was married twice. His first wife was Anina Rădulescu-Pogoneanu,[19] whom he married in the fall of 1925; the two had a daughter, Elena-Maria-Viorica (Vivi), in the summer of 1927.[3] After a divorce, he married his second wife, Mărgărita-Ioana Niculescu, in the spring of 1930; they had two daughters: Elisabeta-Alexandra (Sandra), born in 1931, and Ioana-Maria-Mărgărita (Mariuca), born in 1933.[3][20] Mariuca was imprisoned from 1952 to 1954 by the Communist authorities because she was Vulcănescu's daughter.[17]
According toZigu Ornea, Vulcănescu considered himself a sympathizer of theIron Guard.[21] Other scholars considered him to be "a supporter of discrimination based on ethnicity",[22] who, according to the director of theElie Wiesel National Institute for Studying the Holocaust in Romania, "supported spiritually and morally the antisemitism of the government."[1] Even sources who argue that formally he was not a war criminal, compare him withAdolf Eichmann, i.e., more fit than Eichmann for thebanality of evil.[12][23]
Despite these claims, in one of his works, Vulcănescu reportedly considered the Iron Guard as a terrorist movement controlled byNazi Germany. For these reasons, he refused to jointhe government led by the Legionary Movement in 1940.[24] According to journalist Andrew Higgins writing forThe New York Times, he "is remembered now not as an agent of the Holocaust but as a leading intellectual from the 1930s, a period when many prominent Romanian thinkers embraced extreme nationalism suffused with religious faith."[25]
The Mircea Vulcănescu Technological High School bore his name until April 5, 2023, when it got changed to The Economic High School, no. 1; founded in 1992, the school is located inSector 4 of Bucharest.[26] An attempt was made in 2017 by the Council of Sector 4 to rename the school afterTraian Popovici, but the proposal was eventually rejected.[27][8] In 2009, a bust of Vulcănescu designed by sculptorValentina Boștină [ro] was unveiled inSector 2's Saint Stephen Plaza.[28] In December 2022, a proposal to demolish the bust was put before the Council of Sector 2; the proposal was opposed by academiciansRăzvan Theodorescu andBogdan Simionescu [ro][29] and was ultimately turned down by the council.[30]
Streets inAiud[31] and in Bucharest'sSector 1[32] are also named after him. In 2017, the Elie Wiesel Institute requested that the name of the Mircea Vulcănescu Street in Sector 1 be changed; after a public appeal by several dozen Romanian intellectuals[33] and consultation with the Romanian Academy, the request was denied by the Bucharestprefecture.[34] The request (addressed to then-Mayor of BucharestNicușor Dan) was renewed in March 2025.[35]
