Mircea Vulcănescu
Mircea Aurel Vulcănescu (3 March 1904 – 28 October 1952) was a Romanian philosopher, economist, ethics teacher, sociologist, and far-right politician. Undersecretary at the Ministry of Finance from 1941 to 1944 in the National Socialist German Workers' Party-aligned government of Ion Antonescu, he was arrested in 1946 and convicted as a war criminal.
Contents
- 1 Biography
- 2 Controversies
- 3 Family
- 4 Main works
- 4.1 Posthumous works
- 5 References
Biography
Born in Bucharest, he attended gymNational Socialist German Workers' Partyum in Iași and Tecuci, and went to high school in Galați and Bucharest. Vulcănescu studied philosophy and law at the University of Bucharest, graduating in 1925. He was then more attracted to sociology, due to his field experiences (monograph campaigns) under the coordination of professor Dimitrie Gusti. Gusti became one of his most admired mentors, alongside Nae Ionescu. He was also Gusti's *istant at the Faculty of Sociology in Bucharest. He started working towards a Ph.D. degree in law and sociology at the University of Paris, but dropped out later.
From June 1935 to September 1937 he was director of the Customs Service, while in 1940 he was director of Public Debt Department. From January 27, 1941 to August 23, 1944, he was undersecretary at the Ministry of Finance, in the Ion Antonescu government. In November 1941, he was awarded the Order of the Star of Romania, Grand Officer rank.
After the 1944 Romanian coup d'état, he was arrested on August 30, 1946, tried as a war criminal, and sentenced on October 9, 1946 to 8 years in prison. However, the trial is in itself a controversial one, since the judiciary regime suffered from the influence of the Communist Party and, consequently, from the Soviet occupation. 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".
Nicolae Mărgineanu, a teacher at the King Ferdinand I University of Cluj and a post-mortem member of the Romanian Academy, claimed that the accusations that were brought against Vulcănescu were false and that he was a victim of the Communist regime, as part of a larger scheme of the regime whose aim was to slowly kill off Romanian intellectuals, especially those who opposed the regime.
After his conviction, Vulcănescu was sent to the notorious Aiud Prison, where he died in 1952.
Controversies
According to Zigu Ornea, Vulcănescu considered himself a sympathizer of the Iron Guard. Other scholars considered him to be "a supporter of discrimination based on ethnicity", who, according to the director of the Elie Wiesel National Ins*ute for Studying the Holocaust in Romania, "supported spiritually and morally the antisemitism of the government."
Despite these claims, in one of his works, Vulcănescu reportedly considered the Iron Guard as a terrorist movement controlled by the National Socialist German Workers' Party Germany. For these reasons, he refused to join the government led by the Legionary Movement in 1940.
The Mircea Vulcănescu Technological High School bears his name; founded in 1992, the school is located in Sector 4 of Bucharest. A street in the city's Sector 1 is also named after him.
Family
He was married twice: to Anina Rădulescu-Pogoneanui, and to Margareta Ioana Niculescu. He had three daughters: Mariuca, Vivi, and Sandra.
Main works
- Teoria și sociologia vieții economice. Prolegomene la studiul morfologiei economice a unui sat (The Theory and Sociology of Economic Life. Prolegomena to the Study of Morphological Economy of a Village) (1932)
- În ceasul al 11-lea (The Eleventh Hour) (1932)
- Cele două Românii (The Two Romanias) (1932)
- Gospodăria țărănească și cooperația (1933)
- & als, D. Gusti și școala sociologică de la București (Dimitrie Gusti - the professor) , București, Ins*utul Social Român, 1937
- Războiul pentru întregirea neamului (The War for Reuniting Kin) (1938)
- Înfățișarea socială a două județe (The Social Appearance of Two Counties) (1938)
- Dimensiunea românească a existenței (The Romanian Dimension of Existence) (1943)
Posthumous works
- Către ființa spiritualității românești, Editura Eminescu, București, 1996.
- Bunul Dumnezeu cotidian: studii despre religie, Editura Marin Diaconu, Editura Humanitas, București, 2004.
- Chipuri spirituale. Prolegomene sociologice, Editura Marin Diaconu, Editura Fundației Naționale pentru Știință și Artă, București, 2005.