1. Alexandru Papadopol-Calimah was a Moldavian-born Romanian historian, jurist, and journalist, who served as the Minister of Foreign Affairs and Minister of Culture of the Principality of Romania.
53 Facts About Alexandru Papadopol-Calimah
1. 2.
Alexandru Papadopol-Calimah joined the Moldavian civil service in 1855, as a Spatharios in service to Prince Grigore Alexandru Ghica, and participated in applying Ghica's reforms.
3.
Alexandru Papadopol-Calimah first served in the unified administration established by Domnitor Alexandru Ioan Cuza, rising from Prefect to State Council member, then to cabinet minister.
4.
Alexandru Papadopol-Calimah opposed the "monstrous coalition" which deposed Cuza in February 1866, and considered withdrawing from politics altogether.
5.
Alexandru Papadopol-Calimah was fully reconciled with Domnitor Carol I in the 1870s, endorsing his establishment of a Romanian Kingdom, and following Junimea into the larger Conservative Party.
6.
Alexandru Papadopol-Calimah was a biographer, genealogist, medievalist, social historian, philologist and classical scholar, with pioneering contributions such as a sourcebook on the Dacians and their history.
7.
Alexandru Papadopol-Calimah's promised work of political history explaining Cuza's reign never materialized, but he left manuscript memoirs covering that same period.
8.
Alexandru Papadopol-Calimah was born in Tecuci, Moldavia, which was at the time a tributary state of the Ottoman Empire.
9.
Alexandru Papadopol-Calimah belonged to the fully Hellenized mainline of that clan, the more junior Callimachis having endured as Moldavian and Romanian; his grandfather was Scarlat Callimachi, who was thrice the Prince of Moldavia, between 1806 and 1819, serving briefly as Prince of Wallachia in 1821.
10.
Scarlat's wife, and Alexandru Papadopol-Calimah's grandmother, was the daughter of Wallachian Prince Nicholas Mavrogenes.
11.
Such records show that Alexandru Papadopol-Calimah had a sister, Smaranda Panu-Calimah, as well as two living brothers, Scarlat and Aristide.
12.
Necula notes that Alexandru Papadopol-Calimah never emphasized his own "princely origin".
13.
Alexandru Papadopol-Calimah owned a "modern villa" in Tecuci, locally famous for being decked in morning glory and Chinese wisteria.
14.
Alexandru Papadopol-Calimah was becoming noted as a critic of slavery and a champion of its Romani victims; in February 1856, Kogalniceanu's almanac featured his condemnation of slave-holding peoples as unworthy of contact with civilized ones.
15.
In 1857, after Ghica's ouster, Alexandru Papadopol-Calimah joined the opposition to Nicolae Vogoride's conservative regime.
16.
Alexandru Papadopol-Calimah signaled his continued insubordination by once leaving for Barlad, where he convinced a taraf orchestra to perform the banned unionist anthem, Hora Unirii.
17.
Alexandru Papadopol-Calimah served as such between May 12 and August 18,1859.
18.
Alexandru Papadopol-Calimah's job included overseeing the Moldavian army's passage across the Siret, on its way to the unified camp of Floresti.
19.
Alexandru Papadopol-Calimah later confessed that this was a diversionary maneuver intended to help the French Empire in its Italian war with Austria.
20.
Two years after his marriage, Alexandru Papadopol-Calimah was traveling through the Kingdom of Bavaria alongside Alecsandri and journalist Abdolonyme Ubicini.
21.
The period saw Alexandru Papadopol-Calimah being attracted into debates about Cuza's land reform project, which included setting up a land reserve from nationalized monastic estates.
22.
Alexandru Papadopol-Calimah adopted a conservative position during the debates of August 1864: with Gheorghe Apostoleanu, he voted against the immediate abolition of tithes and corvees.
23.
Alexandru Papadopol-Calimah had an ancillary role in the passage of land-reform legislation, which, though limited in scope, had revolutionary clauses, describing the peasants as natural co-owners of the land they toiled.
24.
In 1866, Bogdan Petriceicu Hasdeu argued that Alexandru Papadopol-Calimah had been one of only three authors to have theorized "on the origin of our public law"; the other two were Ferdinand Neigebaur and George Missail.
25.
Alexandru Papadopol-Calimah was to be Cuza's final Minister of Foreign Affairs, serving under Prime Minister Nicolae Cretulescu from October 17,1865.
26.
Alexandru Papadopol-Calimah took office while Cuza had taken a medical leave at Bad Ems.
27.
Alexandru Papadopol-Calimah made a point of signing Romania to the International Telegraph Convention and the Prut River Convention, both separately from the Ottoman Empire.
28.
Alexandru Papadopol-Calimah later reported that he had been informed of a looming coup, specifically during a casual meeting with Annibale Strambio, the Italian Consul: "Sir, your country sits atop a volcano".
29.
Alexandru Papadopol-Calimah maintained a steady correspondence with the exiled Cuza, informing him on the political developments in Romania.
30.
The exact dating of his first presence there is disputed, and hinges on the accuracy of claims advanced by Junimea co-founder Vasile Pogor; Pogor argues that Alexandru Papadopol-Calimah was there for the first-ever meeting, which he dates to autumn 1863.
31.
Alexandru Papadopol-Calimah only served for eight days, from November 16 to November 24,1868.
32.
The acceptance of a ministerial office implied that Alexandru Papadopol-Calimah was no longer a fully committed champion of the Cuzist cause, being charmed into compliance by a new Domnitor, the Prussian-born Carol of Hohenzollern.
33.
Alexandru Papadopol-Calimah now rallied more closely with Junimea, which now doubled as a right-wing political faction, and which he followed in and out of the Conservative Party.
34.
Alexandru Papadopol-Calimah donated this item to the Academy in 1879, alongside a Greek drachma from the finds at Histria.
35.
Alexandru Papadopol-Calimah remained a regular at Columna to at least 1876, while publishing in Revista Contimporana.
36.
Alexandru Papadopol-Calimah's other focus was the 18th-century Moldavian polymath, Dimitrie Cantemir.
37.
The event was poorly welcomed even by Junimea: in one of his columns, Junimist Mihai Eminescu argued that Papadopol-Calimah was only an academician because the institution had already inducted Sion and V A Urechia.
38.
Around that time, Alexandru Papadopol-Calimah's wife was running a literary club in Tecuci, whose only confirmed members were Ollanescu-Ascanio and Theodor Serbanescu.
39.
Alexandru Papadopol-Calimah supplemented his output as a historian with Notite istorice despre orasul Tecuci, which became a standard feature of Romanian geographical textbooks.
40.
Alexandru Papadopol-Calimah returned in Analele Academiei in 1878 with a philological essay about Dacian botany, which he read through Pedanius Dioscorides and Apuleius, proposing Dacian etymologies of Romanian plant names.
41.
Also in 1883, Alexandru Papadopol-Calimah found and published in the Junimist magazine Convorbiri Literare the original proces-verbal of 1859, whereby all National Party factions declared Cuza as their preferred candidate.
42.
In December 1884 and January 1885, the journal hosted his recollections of life at the princely court of Iasi; it drew much praise from Samson Bodnarescu, who claimed that Alexandru Papadopol-Calimah had ushered in a "new era", in which historical notices merged with the "aesthetic pleasure" of well-structured narratives.
43.
Alexandru Papadopol-Calimah was working on a book of memoirs covering 1853 to 1888, which is kept as a manuscript by the Academy Library.
44.
Alexandru Papadopol-Calimah spent middle age as a perennial deputy for Tecuci.
45.
The Papadopol-Calimah family supported the national cause during the Romanian War of Independence : Alexandru's wife Amelia and his mother-in-law Elena Plitos ran the military fundraising effort in Tecuci, assisted by brother-in-law Coton Plitos, who was serving as Prefect of Cahul.
46.
Alexandru Papadopol-Calimah's activities included running as an independent in the elections of May 1879, taking a seat in the legislature which was tasked with revising the 1866 Constitution of Romania.
47.
Alexandru Papadopol-Calimah was by then included in the royals' circle: in February 1879, he reported to Alecsandri about having had a "very pleasant and endearing conversation" with Carol.
48.
Under Carol's consolidated monarchy, Alexandru Papadopol-Calimah remained a relatively popular figure in politics as well.
49.
The other focus of Alexandru Papadopol-Calimah activity was on archival research in the Russian Empire.
50.
Alexandru Papadopol-Calimah used these sources in his work on Pavel Kiselyov and the Regulamentul Organic regime, which had functioned in Moldavia and Wallachia during his childhood.
51.
From March 18,1885 to April 5,1886, Alexandru Papadopol-Calimah was the Academy Vice President.
52.
Alexandru Papadopol-Calimah himself died on June 18,1898, after a long illness, in his native town of Tecuci.
53.
The Alexandru Papadopol-Calimah line died out within three generations, but the name was revived by Eufrosina's niece, American photojournalist Rukmini Callimachi.