Radu R. Rosetti

Radu R. Rosetti (April 1 [O.S. March 20] 1877–June 2, 1949) was a Romanian general and military historian.

Biography

Born in Căiuți, Bacău County, he was part of the old boyar Rosetti family;[1] his father, Radu Rosetti, was a writer.[2] He attended primary school in his native village and then studied at the National College in Iași. After taking classes at the school for bridges and roads, Rosetti graduated from the military school for artillery and engineering in 1899, and in 1906 completed the Higher War School. During World War I, he was chief of the operations bureau for the general staff.[1] In this position, he objected to the numerous promotions made two days before the fall of Bucharest to the Central Powers, ostensibly to raise officer morale. He believed promotions for their own sake cheapened the meaning of rank and eroded respect for the hierarchy. Although he too was promoted, he noted in his diary that he was not at all pleased with the honor.[3] Rosetti later commanded an infantry regiment. Wounded in August 1917 during the Battle of Mărășești, he was awarded the Order of Michael the Brave, third class.[1]

After the war, he was successively named military attaché in London, brigadier commander and head of training courses for high-level officers. In 1924, he was advanced to the rank of general.[1] Continuing to deplore the large number of promotions made in the triumphant mood that followed the creation of Greater Romania, Rosetti soon resigned from the army.[3] He authored books on military history and theory,[1] some of them works of pioneering research.[3] He headed the National Military Museum, an institution he had said from 1914 should be established. Elected a corresponding member of the Romanian Academy in 1927,[1] he advanced to titular status in 1934[4] before being stripped of membership in 1948 by the new communist regime.[1] He headed the Romanian Academy Library between 1931 and 1940, assuming the role at the suggestion of his retiring predecessor Ioan Bianu.[1] As director, he oversaw construction of a new headquarters, completed in 1938.[5]

In January 1941, immediately after the Legionnaires' rebellion was crushed, Conducător Ion Antonescu asked Rosetti to join a new government as Education Minister. A longtime opponent of totalitarianism, he reluctantly accepted, but resigned in November after ten months in office. He invoked health reasons, but the real cause of his departure was aggravation at the tension that had arisen between him and part of the ministerial staff, who found his inflexibility and integrity an inconvenience to their various arrangements.[5][3] While in office in March 1941, he explained the motivation behind a decree banning Romanian Jews from converting away from their faith: "thwarting any Jewish attempt to hide their ethnic origin, which among the Jews is confused with their Mosaic religion; blocking Jewish infiltration into the Romanian national community; protecting the ethnic character of the Romanian people from the admixture of Jewish blood".[6]

He subsequently returned as library director, where he continued researching military history and presented his findings in speeches before the Academy or in published articles.[5] Due to his participation in the Antonescu government, he was arrested in August 1948 upon orders from the Bucharest People's Tribunal.[7] Under the principle of collective responsibility, he was sentenced to two years' imprisonment in January 1949,[8] and died that June in Văcărești prison.[7]

Notes

  1. 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 Secrieru, p. 31
  2. ↑ Lucian Boia, "Germanofilii". Elita intelectuală românească în anii Primului Război Mondial, p. 292. Bucharest: Humanitas, 2010. ISBN ISBN 978-973-50-2635-6
  3. 1 2 3 4 Magazin istoric, August 2001, p. 124-25
  4. ↑ (Romanian) Membrii Academiei Române din 1866 până în prezent at the Romanian Academy site
  5. 1 2 3 Secrieru, p. 32
  6. ↑ Lya Benjamin, "Dreptul al convertire şi statutul evreilor convertiţi în perioada regimului antonescian", in Studia et acta historiae Iudaeorum Romaniae, vol. 3/1998, p. 247
  7. 1 2 Secrieru, p. 33
  8. ↑ Final Report of the International Commission on the Holocaust in Romania, p. 318. Iași: Polirom, 2004. ISBN 973-681-989-2

References

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