As a soldier in the Austro-Hungarian Army during World War I, Pușcariu embraced the creation of Greater Romania at its conclusion, heading the department of foreign affairs in the provisional government representing Bukovina Romanians.

Under Romanian rule, he led efforts to create a new university in Cluj, where he also set up a research institute in the same city dedicated to the study of his native language.

With the onset of World War II, he moved to Berlin, where he led a propaganda institute meant to promote Romanian culture in the German Reich, as well as counter Hungary's justifications for absorbing Northern Transylvania in the wake of the Second Vienna Award in 1940.

[1] He attended the Romanian high school in his native city, where he picked up Latin and history from teacher Vasile Goldiș,[8] before going to Germany and France for his undergraduate and doctoral degrees.

[18] He also became one of several Transylvanian affiliates of Sămănătorul, the Romanian traditionalist and ethnic nationalist review in Bucharest,[19] finding his ideas on linguistics and history challenged by Densusianu and Ion Aurel Candrea.

In September 1914, after a liturgical music concert in the Sibiu Lutheran Cathedral, he met Onisifor Ghibu, whom he had known since 1905, and who records the deep concern the ongoing conflict was causing Pușcariu.

[44] One day later, Pușcariu, who relinquished his General Congress seat,[45] was sworn in as secretary of state for foreign affairs, under President Iancu Flondor, serving in this capacity to 18 December, when the cabinet transferred powers to a regular Romanian administration.

[49] Pușcariu also met Romanian Premier Ion I. C. Brătianu, who advised him to push ahead with the union, noting that unification needed to be demanded and enacted without waiting on international arbitration.

In January 1919, writing in Glasul, Pușcariu penned a strongly positive review of Poemele luminii, the debut volume by Transylvania's Lucian Blaga, helping launch his career.

Chosen by the Directing Council, Transylvania's provisional government, the latter headed a twenty-man committee charged with the seemingly insurmountable task of setting up four faculties (Literature and Philosophy, Medicine, Science, Law) and recruiting professors within a few months.

[59] Despite pressures from the PNR, he announced a strictly apolitical hiring process, only making an exception for Maniu's brother Cassiu, a law professor he found "slightly ridiculous, but friendly and discreet".

It was Pușcariu's idea to bring in foreign academics, mainly from France, including geographer Emmanuel de Martonne, who drew Romania's expanded borders at the Paris Peace Conference; and Jules Guyart of the University of Lyon, who became the medical faculty's first head.

[62] Istoria literaturii..., "very popular with students and men of culture",[63] and heavily influenced by Iorga, made a point of discovering or reclaiming early contributions to fine writing in the medieval principalities.

[66] By 1922–1923, as a nationalist, anti-democratic and anti-Semitic student movement centered around Corneliu Zelea Codreanu gained ascendancy, he was not at the forefront of its radical promoters, but rather figured among a group of moderate, respectable academic supporters who countenanced the agitators and lent them an air of general acceptance.

[67] In March 1923, he wrote an article applauding the 15,000 student movement participants; praising the cohesion they showed, rare for Romania, he claimed they represented "a healthy and spontaneous reaction of the national preservation instinct".

[79] Despite remaining "enthralled by Latin elements" in onomastics, Pușcariu announced in Dacoromania his conclusion that no Romanian surname had been traced back to a Roman source, contradicting Philippide in this respect.

Encouraged by his Manoilescu in-laws, Pușcariu was briefly a sympathizer of Iorga's Democratic Nationalist Party, and spent some time as director of its regional mouthpiece, Drumul Nou.

[87] In keeping with his Orthodoxist agenda, Pușcariu also helped Nicolae Ivan set up the Romanian Orthodox Fraternity (FOR), which, as noted by historian Lucian Nastasă, was under the influence of far-right groups.

[101] The Nazi German consul in Cluj noted that Pușcariu's "decidedly right-wing orientation" may have prevented his obtaining the rectorate or even a post in the academic senate at the latest university elections.

[102] Grigore Manoilescu, who had returned to politics as an Iron Guard figure, became the institute's director;[108] Maximilian Hacman, former rector at Cernăuți, was an old friend; among the younger hires was Constantin Noica.

[109] Meanwhile, Pușcariu, as a symbol of continuity, was offered a renewed mandate as rector of the University of Cluj, which had moved to Sibiu due to the Vienna Award; he accepted and took office in October.

Pușcariu held forth on the topic of Romanians' continuous presence in the Danubian space, particularly in Transylvania, and according to an internal memorandum, the visit ended with "exceptionally cordial" remarks toward his country.

[113] He sought to have Romanian works staged in Germany, succeeding, for instance, in having Sabin Drăgoi's opera Năpasta and George Ciprian's play The Man and His Mule presented in Elbing in late 1942.

[116] He made similar arguments in Basarabia, an ample 1941 article in Revista Fundațiilor Regale journal that chronicled the province's history from antiquity until its return to Romania during Operation Barbarossa.

[118] By 1940, Pușcariu's public offices and various job benefits afforded him a comfortable lifestyle; he collected some 62,000 lei in regular payments from his work in Romania, and an "undisclosed" salary for his activities abroad.

As early as October 1940, the Education and Culture Ministries had noted Pușcariu's "dictatorial" powers in hiring personnel, but were overruled by General Ion Antonescu, the country's Conducător, in December.

According to philologist Pompiliu Constantinescu, the work exceeded "the narrow bounds of specialization", turning the historical development of language and into the ethnographic "mirror" of Romanian culture and civilization.

[125] Other parts of the book broke ground in the professional study of the Romanian lexis, with a phonaesthetic retrospective on the national poet Mihai Eminescu and a sociological analysis of neologisms.

[18] Challenging Communist censorship, Petrovici also attempted to obtain for the second volume of Limba română to be released for print, and earned endorsement from Alexandru Graur and Iorgu Iordan.

[16][146] Vulpe, drawing on manuscripts left in the family vault at Bran, published four volumes of his memoirs: Călare pe două veacuri (1968), Brașovul de altădată (1977), Memorii (1978) and Sextil Pușcariu.