Mircea Vulcănescu

Mircea Aurel Vulcănescu (3 March 1904 – 28 October 1952) was a Romanian philosopher, economist, ethics teacher, sociologist, and politician.

[1][2] He was born in Bucharest on March 3, 1904, the second child of Mihail Vulcănescu, a financial controller with the Ministry of Finance, and Maria, the descendant of a family of landowners from the Olt area.

[3] Mircea Vulcănescu attended gymnasium in Iași and Tecuci, and went to high school in Galați before returning to Bucharest at the end of the war.

[3] He studied philosophy and law at the University of Bucharest, graduating in 1925 with licentiate thesis Individ și societate în sociologia contemporană, written under the direction of Dimitrie Gusti.

[5] He was then more attracted to sociology, due to his field experiences (monograph campaigns) under the coordination of Gusti, who became one of his most admired mentors, alongside Nae Ionescu.

From 1932 to 1933, alongside Constantin Noica, Petru Comarnescu, Emil Cioran, Mircea Eliade, and Dan Botta, he gained a high profile through publishing and the intense activity of the Criterion association.

In January 1934 he was invited by Alexandru Tzigara-Samurcaș, the director of Convorbiri Literare, to join the editorial board of this prestigious literary magazine, which also included Eliade, Noica, and Henri H.

[10] According to Radio 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.

[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".

[15] Nicolae Mărgineanu, an academic 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,[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.

[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 the anti-communist resistance in the mountains.