Petre P. Panaitescu
| Petre P. Panaitescu | |
|---|---|
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| Born | March 11, 1900 Iași, Kingdom of Romania |
| Died | November 14, 1967 (aged 67) |
| Nationality | Romanian |
| Occupation | literary historian, university professor, researcher |
| Years active | 1923–1965 |
Petre P. Panaitescu (March 11, 1900 – November 14, 1967) was a Romanian literary historian. A native of Iași, he spent most of his adult life in the national capital Bucharest, where he rose to become a professor at its main university. As such, he challenged various aspects of the dominant nationalist historiography. However, he also joined the ultra-nationalist Iron Guard, and headed the university during the movement's brief time in power. After the Guard was violently suppressed at the beginning of 1941, he lost his professorial position. When a communist-dominated government entered office in early 1945, he was arrested and imprisoned. Panaitescu was freed by the end of the year, the new authorities finding useful his theories of Slavic influence on Romania's national trajectory. He worked as a researcher in the latter part of his career, retiring in 1965, two years before his death.
Born in Iași to engineer Panait Panaitescu and his wife Leonia (née Greceanu), he attended primary school in his native city, followed by high school in Bucharest. He attended the literature and philosophy faculty of the University of Bucharest from 1918 to 1922, and took specialty courses at Jagiellonian University in Kraków from 1923 to 1924. From 1924 to 1926, he was a member of the Romanian school at Fontenay-aux-Roses. His first published work appeared in Revista istorică in 1917; the article dealt with a court case in the Danubian Principalities. Other magazines to which he contributed include Convorbiri Literare, Studii, Arhiva românească, Buletinul Comisiei Istorice a României, Romanoslavica, Studii și cercetări de istorie medie, Revista Fundațiilor Regale, Memoriile Secției Istorice a Academiei, Mélanges de l’École Roumaine en France and Viața Românească, as well as Polish and Soviet reviews. His first book, from 1923, was a biographical study of Nicolae Bălcescu.
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