[1] Both branches descended from prominent Jewish community leaders—Leon's father was a Rabbi of Craiova Jews, in southern Romania, while Rebeca was the daughter of Botoşani's own Rabbi—whose ancestors had settled in the Danubian Principalities to escape pogroms in the Russian Empire.

[1] Together with Simion, who was Technical University student, he attended the Marxist society of Bucharest's Sotir Hall, led by Constantin Dobrogeanu-Gherea, and joined the militant Romanian Social-Democratic Workers' Party (PSDMR).

Late in the 20th century, cultural historian Z. Ornea described how Sanielevici, Garabet Ibrăileanu, Traian Demetrescu, Anton Bacalbaşa, Emil Fagure and other "young socialists" took up the combat when Gherea remained silent, and responded with an "offensive" to the Junimist jibes.

[30] At the time, the other Poporanists were beginning to protest against the Curentul Nou branch: publicist Spiridon Popescu, who was Ibrăileanu's companion, threatened to quit if the "insane" Sanielevici and "the Jewish critic" Gherea were ever on board.

[34] Initially, Ibrăileanu attempted to mediate between the two rivals, advising moderation: Sadoveanu wrote to him to explain that "every bit of my soul" had been wounded, while Sanielevici announced that he was ready to defend himself with a revolver, should the "bandit" novelist come after him.

[43] The period however brought success to the other Sanielevici brothers: Simion took over the Chair of Mathematics at Bucharest University;[44] Maximilian, turning to medical sociology, pioneered social epidemiology in Moldavia,[45] and was later administrator of the insurance company Generala.

[4] According to historian Lucian Boia, the literary critic did not follow his Poporanist colleagues in political debates: while they remained firmly on the "Germanophile" side, which advocated an alliance with the Central Powers, Sanielevici was "more interested in his own projects than in the course of events.

[68] Sanielevici also contributed to the Adevărul publishing company, translating, from the Spanish, Vicente Blasco Ibáñez's Vuelta del mundo de un novelista (as Călătoria unui romancier în jurul lumii).

[4] Deploring the general state of affairs, the author complained that his tracts, although widely circulated among students, were not enough to earn him an academic promotion, and that he and his family were "starving" (Sanielevici also boasted that his books had sold over 35,000 copies in 15 years).

According to Sanielevici's rival Călinescu, the Încercări critice author always remained committed to Gherea's dialectical materialism and "excessively ethical" Marxist humanism, which had shaped the Romanian socialists' didactic literature even before his time.

[4] In his profile of Sanielevici, Eugen Lovinescu mentions a "lampoonist's deformation and stylistic violence", "lucidity in expression" and many other talents, as well as a "noble", but misguided and distorted, passion for turning "crude material" into science.

His belief, described by political scientist Victor Rizescu as "interesting" and "intriguing", was that the Romanian liberals had not been responsible for modernization, but, quite the contrary, had dedicated themselves to imposing an oligarchy over the economy and obscurantism over the national ideology.

[104] He described the liberal program of modernization as "the bitter fruits" of 1848, and suggested that Romanian conservatism was a complex, sometimes positive, phenomenon,[105] "the harsh chiding of a parent saddened to see his child taking the wrong path".

[105] In his account, which became a standard of Romanian scholarship, Junimea happened because a portion of Romania's young intellectuals were exasperated by the continuous revolutionary mood of French politics, and looked into the steadier evolutionism proposed by German teachers.

[103] In the early years, his sympathy went to the humanism, literary realism and economic determinism of young novelists coming in from Transylvania, primarily Ioan Slavici—whose books show Romanian peasants holding their ground against feudalism, then capitalism.

[5][108] Writing from within this trend, Simionescu-Râmniceanu ridiculed Sanielevici's moral agenda, and especially the advocacy of universal suffrage by literary means: "why not also for reforming municipal services in provincial towns, or for introducing soybean cultures in the villages?

[8] Călinescu also notes the controversy sparked once Sanielevici's exposed some leading voices of Romanian nationalism, beginning with Vasile Alecsandri, as secret Jews: "[His] denunciation of various writers' foreignness shows subtle humor, pointing at the rickety nature of claims about one's ethnic novelty.

"[8] Călinescu's younger colleague Dumitru Micu issued a similar objection, arguing that the "megalomaniac" Sanielevici displayed a "cosmopolitan hatred for the nation's past" (an opinion in turn criticized by Jicu).

[17] Ibrăileanu himself acknowledged, in 1910, that Sanielevici was "an intelligent man, with a clear mind, an original way of thinking, [...] a subtle spirit and an elegant form", who helped Poporanism in its fight against "decadence", and who discovered the talents of Brătescu-Voineşti.

Mr. Sanielevici's proclamation regarding Istrati came with the immolation of one hundred and fifty writers published in contemporary reviews, and this enormous sanguinary drive gave us the surprise of noting that classical moderation does not always keep company with the practice of temperance.

[116] The nationalist reviewer Ion Gorun reacted strongly against "heimatlos" Istrati's promotion from the left, denouncing Sanielevici as one of "our recent guests", the purveyor of "spiritual anarchy" and of "trumped-up critical nonsense".

[1] Sanielevici accuses C. Stere of senility, judges Ibrăileanu a "weak critic", and dismisses Viaţa Românească columnist Mihai Ralea, who "is very bad at coordinating"; he also describes the post-Poporanist National Peasants' Party as laughable when in government.

[121][122] In addition to criticizing Anton Nyström, the Romanian anthropologist reacted strongly against the anatomical theories put forth by Australia's Grafton Elliot Smith, whom he "damned to hell",[1] and derided the phrenological collections of Johann Friedrich Blumenbach and Franz Joseph Gall.

[121][129] The Romanian author distinguished five basic racial and dietary types, based on the archeological cultures and each created by its own foodstuff: Aurignacian (allium plants, beans), Chellean (nuts), Magdalenian (fish), Mousterian (snails, fruit) and Solutrean (meat, horses).

[76] Although he defines Sanielevici as a "pro-racist", researcher Lucian Butaru notes that his ideas questioned the racist mindset of his contemporaries, in the same vein as the Adevărul columnist Doctor Ygrec (Glicsman) and the conservative anti-fascism of philosopher P. P.

[8] La Vie des mammifères... postulated that the Moldavians were Mousterian-Magdalenians originally feeding on fruit, fish and snails, whereas Wallachians (or, more restrictively, Muntenians) represented the Aurignacian-Solutrean mixture—horses in summer, and mainly onions in winter.

[146] Sanielevici further argued that the fertility rites and chthonic traditions shared between these religious cultures were polar opposites of "Nordic" beliefs in the sky gods, and came from the intoxicating properties of the Aurignacian diet.

The Inochentists allegedly preached mortification and sacred prostitution, reminding Sanielevici of the Orthodox sectarian activity depicted by Dmitry Merezhkovsky in his philosophical novels, and reviewed by him as a northernmost afterthought of Semitic-Dionysian religions.

He traced a continuous "Dionysian"-type religious practice leading back to the Cucuteni-Trypillian culture (30th century BC), and suggested that there was a connection between Cucuteni pottery markings and the geometric abstraction of modern folk art.

Marxist sociologist Henri H. Stahl reports: "Sanielevici is an isolated dissident, read for only as long as a momentary interest lasted for his paradoxical polemics, then forgotten and in any case unable to group around him either disciples or offspring.