61 Facts About Francisc Rainer

Francisc Iosif Rainer was an Austro-Hungarian-born Romanian pathologist, physiologist and anthropologist.

Francisc Rainer spent much of his youth training himself in anatomical pathology and the various areas of natural science, gaining direct experience as a microbiologist, surgeon, and military physician.

Francisc Rainer notably favored and introduced the anatomical study of "functional structures", and was in particular preoccupied with issues pertaining to ontogenesis and kinesiology.

Francisc Rainer was notably involved with Dimitrie Gusti's project of rural sociology, contributing an anthropological record of several isolated villages on the Carpathian slopes.

Francisc Rainer was a native of Rohozna town, near Czernowitz, in Austrian-ruled Bukovina.

Francisc Rainer's parents were Lutheran, but baptized their son Roman Catholic.

Francisc Rainer's mother Maria came from a clerical family, and was a housewife.

Francisc Rainer read extensively, teaching himself Latin and Ancient Greek, and becoming passionate about the literary works of Goethe and the philosophy of Arthur Schopenhauer.

Francisc Rainer slowly discarded the latter's influence when he discovered Heraclitus, Ernst Haeckel, and classical materialistic thought.

Francisc Rainer attended Anghel Saligny's lectures in chemistry at the School of Bridges, worked as a chemist in Constantin Istrati's lab, then as a pathologist at the Veterinary School.

Francisc Rainer moved between Coltea, Filaret, and the school of assistant surgeons, taking part in the campaign against tuberculosis.

Francisc Rainer completed his doctorate in 1903, the topic being a particular form of cirrhosis.

Also in 1903, Francisc Rainer, recently naturalized Romanian, married Marta Trancu, an Armenian Romanian doctor who had worked with him at Coltea.

Francisc Rainer barely escaped with his life when his automobile fell off the pontoon bridge at Nikopol.

Francisc Rainer befriended the group's doyen, Garabet Ibraileanu, whom he treated for his lung problems.

Francisc Rainer persuaded Ibraileanu, who was Marta's cousin, to hold courses in Romanian language and literature two evenings a week for medical students.

Francisc Rainer's intention was to develop cultured doctors, and the students heard lectures by Mihail Sadoveanu, George Topirceanu and Titu Maiorescu.

Francisc Rainer took them for nature excursions so they could observe biological phenomena outside the laboratory.

Francisc Rainer himself traveled extensively after 1914: among his earliest trips was a working visit to Odon de Buen's oceanographic institute in Palma de Mallorca.

In 1916, following Romania's entry into World War I, Francisc Rainer returned to Bucharest and rejoined Marta, being called up for medical service as a colonel.

Later, during Bucharest's occupation by the Central Powers, Francisc Rainer established temporary hospitals in schools.

Francisc Rainer continued teaching under the German administration, so that his students would not miss a year, but was obliged to teach separate courses for German students.

Francisc Rainer managed to prevent the occupying authorities from requisitioning the faculty's possessions.

Francisc Rainer's ideas were received with skepticism by the physiologist Ioan Athanasiu, who stood for the classical approach.

Francisc Rainer himself vouched for his colleague Ecaterina Arbore, arrested for her revolutionary socialist militancy.

In 1920, Francisc Rainer was employed by the new anatomy and embryology department set up at Bucharest University.

Francisc Rainer was seconded by his devoted disciple and godson, the endocrinologist Stefan Milcu.

In particular, Francisc Rainer rejected the intuitionism of Henri Bergson, which had enjoyed a surge in popularity.

Francisc Rainer centered his attention on correlating the activities of various organs and their understanding as "functional structures".

Francisc Rainer taught kinesiology at the Physical Education Institute, and artistic anatomy at the School of Fine Arts.

Also that year, Francisc Rainer made a noted contribution to biological anthropology, publishing his finds on the medieval princely remains dug up in Curtea de Arges.

Francisc Rainer pursued other such investigations into the Romanian past, including the craniometry of Michael the Brave and the description of ancient tombs dug up at Turnu Severin.

Vitner recalls that Francisc Rainer was even shot at by far-right affiliates, so that he would no longer popularize his "democratic convictions".

Nevertheless, Francisc Rainer was himself an active proponent of "hereditary determinism" and eugenics, which he understood as the cornerstone of social welfare policy.

Nevertheless, as readers of his work suggests, Francisc Rainer helped preserve a balance in anthropology by looking into environmental factors, thus questioning the ideological supremacy of scientific racism.

Francisc Rainer was upset that various of his disciples, including Daniel Danielopolu, no longer acknowledged him in their own tracts about the "science of life", which seemed to him a case of plagiarism.

Francisc Rainer was dividing his time between Bucharest and the resort of Cheia, where he owned a small piece of property.

Subsequently, Francisc Rainer mainly focused on anthropological work and the popularization of anthropological science.

Between 1928 and 1932, Francisc Rainer was involved in Gusti's rural sociology project in the Carpathians.

Francisc Rainer made frequent trips to Western Europe and the Balkans.

Francisc Rainer was in Sweden during 1930, attending the Physiological Congress as a Physical Education Institute delegate, and paying a visit to the Racial Biology Institute.

Francisc Rainer kept his depression under control by taking trips to Turkey, and again to Greece, where he dedicated himself to the study of customs and classical art.

Francisc Rainer was opposed to the fascist youth, whose members instigated in favor of academic censorship in his university curriculum.

At one such incident in early 1938, Francisc Rainer stood unmoved at his desk as some of his fascist students, including the son of painter Nicolae Tonitza, lit firecrackers and threw eggs in his direction.

Francisc Rainer's publicized texts, deemed "courageous" by historian Adrian Majuru, accepted the idea of race, but denied the concept of a "pure race", rejected the scientific claims of Aryanism, and argued that European civilization owed its existence to Semitic peoples.

In 1940, at the height of World War II, Francisc Rainer helped establish an anthropological research center of which he was honorary director until his death.

In 1941, following Romania's entry, alongside Germany, in the war against the Soviet Union, Francisc Rainer obtained that his team of doctors be spared conscription.

Later that year, Francisc Rainer retired from teaching, having reached the age limit.

In May 1943, Francisc Rainer was made an honorary member of the Romanian Academy.

Francisc Rainer contributed a chapter on "the living substance" to Victor Valcovici's 1943 synthesis, Materia si viata.

Francisc Rainer was still an outspoken adversary of the Nazi regime.

Francisc Rainer was among the signers of a letter of protest, addressed to dictator Ion Antonescu, which questioned Romania's participation in the anti-Soviet war.

Francisc Rainer tried to hide this from his wife and his friends, claiming his problem was a mere case of paresis.

Francisc Rainer's house was narrowly missed by the April 1944 bombardment, and he had to move into the house of a former assistant, Ion Turai.

Francisc Rainer was later moved to Hospital No 303, where he developed metastasis in the brain.

Francisc Rainer asked to be relocated to his townhouse, where he died on the morning of August 4,1944.

Francisc Rainer had predicted the exact time of his death, and written precise instructions for his body's embalming.

Francisc Rainer was generally well regarded by the communist regime, which existed in Romania until the 1989 Revolution.

Communist supervisors such as Mihail Roller suspected that Francisc Rainer had created the anthropology research center to promote racism, but Milcu was able to convince them otherwise, and even obtained funds for an anthropological study of Romanian ethnogenesis.

Francisc Rainer continued to be held in high regard after the Revolution, when light was shed on various other aspects of his work.

The anthropological center that Francisc Rainer helped established was renamed in his honor in 2007.