86 Facts About Grigore Filipescu

Grigore N Filipescu was a Romanian politician, journalist and engineer, the chief editor of Epoca daily between 1918 and 1938.

Grigore Filipescu was the scion of an aristocratic conservative family, son of the statesman Nicolae Filipescu and a collateral descendant of Alexandru II Ghica.

Grigore Filipescu had a stint in the Labor Party, merged into Averescu's own People's Party.

Grigore Filipescu served as the latter group's tactician and campaigner, but had irreconcilable differences with Averescu.

Grigore Filipescu served terms in Parliament and held several other public commissions as an affiliate of the Romanian National Party, the Conservative-Democratic Party, and the National Peasants' Party.

Grigore Filipescu came from an old boyar family on his father's side: the Filipescus had founded the eponymous town Filipestii de Targ, ca.

Grigore Filipescu's great-grandparents were Hatman Nicolae Filipescu and Safta Hrisoscoleu, who were the maternal grandparents of Ion G Duca, Grigore's later rival in politics.

Grigore Filipescu witnessed Rakovsky's disputes with Romanian nationalists, which, as he wrote in 1912, gave him the certainty that socialism would eventually win.

Grigore Filipescu himself was a great lover of fencing, both as spectator and as participant.

Grigore Filipescu was passionate about horse racing, operating the Filipescu Stables, which won him the Peril Jaune Award at Baneasa Racecourse.

Grigore Filipescu was reportedly incensed by these accusations, as well as by PNL-mounted attacks on his father.

Days later, Filipescu pounced upon Viitorul editor M D Berlescu, their scuffle ending only when passers-by intervened.

Alongside Constantin Argetoianu, Grigore Filipescu Jr attended the Ententist gatherings in Sinaia, where, in July 1916, they greeted Charles de Saint-Aulaire as the new French Ambassador.

Around that time, Grigore Filipescu identified General Alexandru Averescu, his direct superior, as an ideal leader for a new anti-establishment, anti-PNL, political movement: popular and easily manipulated.

Marzescu, it was Grigore Filipescu who organized the torchlight parade of January 1918, in which Averescu was hailed as "tomorrow's government leader".

An LP tactician, Grigore Filipescu allegedly founded the main party organ, Indreptarea.

Grigore Filipescu was included on the team of negotiators under Take Ionescu, but his presence there was vetoed by the Austro-Hungarian delegation.

Grigore Filipescu was as invested and as cowardly as his father had been courageous.

The PNL press accused Grigore Filipescu of being a draft-avoider; Grigore Filipescu reacted with a virulent letter to PNL's Duca, his relative.

Grigore Filipescu remained an ardent practitioner of dueling and a habitual litigator.

Grigore Filipescu was again in Bucharest during the resumption of war and the period leading up to Germany's surrender.

Grigore Filipescu's father had founded Epoca newspaper in 1885, and in September 1918, the son decided to revive the moribund outfit, buying the trademark from its nominal owner, Timoleon Pisani.

At Epoca, Grigore Filipescu relied on work by various journalists, including Anestin, Pisani, and Mircea Stefanescu.

Grigore Filipescu had a rivalry with Titulescu, the Minister of Finance, whom he accused of irresponsibility and, later, of extravagance.

Grigore Filipescu, still seen as an "ardent Averescan", tried to negotiate the LP's arrival to power by talking directly to Romania's Queen Marie.

Epoca served as Ionescu's mouthpiece; within a few months, as Ionescu took to supporting the PP, Grigore Filipescu's paper drew attention with its attacks on the PNR leadership, whom it accused of disloyalty toward Greater Romania.

Grigore Filipescu then ran as an Averescu favorite in the by-election for the Assembly of Deputies in Maramures County, which was held in September 1920.

Grigore Filipescu initially lost by over 300 votes to a socialist, Ioan Flueras, finding himself ridiculed over this in the PNR's own organ, Patria.

Grigore Filipescu was given a chance to take the supplementary seat after ballotage, which he won.

In December 1921, after Averescu's departure as Prime Minister, Ionescu was charged with forming a new government, and Grigore Filipescu, who assured him of having a parliamentary majority, persuaded him to accept.

Grigore Filipescu's hope was to form a new party comprising elements of the two conservative parties plus dissidents from the People's Party and the PNR.

Grigore Filipescu ceded one of them to Ionescu, who in turn handed it to Filipescu.

Grigore Filipescu was persuaded to do the same, helping with negotiations between the two sides in Dolj County and in Bucharest, where he sponsored a reconciliation banquet.

Grigore Filipescu spent the period circulating leaks from Marzescu and other PNL whistle-blowers, who informed him about Bratianu's sale of Romanian passports, and, in the Assembly, initiated a motion of no confidence.

Grigore Filipescu's stances resulted in him being expelled from the Assembly for a ten-day interval, on March 13,1923, and collided with the policies of Romanian King, Ferdinand I, who had a preference for Bratianu and the PNL.

The "Ighiu recipe" was again alleged in the March 1924 election at Bals, in Romanati County, when Grigore Filipescu had another row with the Gendarmes: while his party colleague Ilie Lazar was arrested, Grigore Filipescu was reportedly threatened and had his tires slashed.

Later that year, during local elections at Dej, Grigore Filipescu slapped the supervisor, Teodor Herman.

Grigore Filipescu openly admitted to his deed and asked to be tried by a jury, but stated that he did not recognize the Assembly's legitimacy, deeming it fraudulent.

On October 9,1923, Grigore Filipescu had been voted in as honorary president for the PNR section in Dolj.

Grigore Filipescu sat on a 150-member executive committee and headed the PNR's Bucharest chapter, but did not hold a leading position within the party.

Grigore Filipescu did not get along very well with the Transylvanian colleagues, a sentiment that deepened in him and other former Ionescu partisans when negotiations for a merger with the left-wing Peasants' Party began.

Valeriu Braniste, a political diarist and confidant of the PNR leaders, writes that Iuliu Maniu and Grigore Filipescu first clashed when the latter tried to impose Xeni as the party president.

The legislative elections of May 1926 saw Grigore Filipescu announced as the winner of an Assembly seat in Tutova.

Grigore Filipescu is traveling to Paris in the next few days.

Grigore Filipescu was assigned first places on the list for Dambovita, and less eligible positions in Caliacra and Ilfov.

Grigore Filipescu founded the Vlad Tepes League in June 1929, amidst a campaign he supported to place Prince Carol, Stirbey's enemy, on the throne.

Grigore Filipescu debated with the more radical Carlist Nae Ionescu, who had been harshly critical of the Romanian Regency regime.

In May 1930, Grigore Filipescu aired "controversial matter regarding Prince Carol", which resulted in his newspaper being temporarily banned by Maniu; there followed a scuffle, during which Grigore Filipescu had to be restrained by the Romanian Police.

In late 1930, Grigore Filipescu intercepted and published a letter from the German Ambassador Gerhard von Mutius, in which the latter excoriated Epoca and defended Stirbey.

Grigore Filipescu, who demanded a duel, accused von Mutius of being the agent of German revisionism.

However, a keen observer of foreign politics, Grigore Filipescu was a frequent critic of Benito Mussolini's Italy, which caused him to decline the post of Foreign Minister.

Reconciling with Titulescu, who supported similar views at the League of Nations, Grigore Filipescu became the first president of the Romanian Telephone Company, partly privatized in 1929, serving from 1930 until his death.

Grigore Filipescu presided over the Tobacco Monopoly and a number of other commercial enterprises.

In return, Grigore Filipescu asked and obtained for himself the prefecture of Ilfov.

Again turning his attention to the West, Grigore Filipescu repeatedly asked Prime Minister Iorga to make him Ambassador to Switzerland, and sought high offices for LVT figures.

At a League congress in November 1931, Grigore Filipescu announced that the LVT was primarily a replica of Britain's Conservative and Unionist Party, and a direct successor to his father's own Conservative Party.

Grigore Filipescu had already taken a stand against far-right violence when, in July 1930, he asked that Gheorghe Beza, a former Epoca reporter who had tried to kill the PNL's Constantin Angelescu, be put to death.

That "extreme" approach was criticized at the time by the left-wing paper Adevarul, which noted that Grigore Filipescu had little in the way of practical solutions against fascist agitation.

On October 23,1932, supported by Maniu and the PNT as "government's only candidate", Filipescu won a Senate seat for Vlasca County, taking 147 mayoral votes; his main rival, D Noica of the Agrarian Union Party, only had 69.

Grigore Filipescu gave a speech on "common sense in politics", presenting his group as Romania's only truthful party, and the only one which addressed the worldwide perils engulfing Romania.

Grigore Filipescu viewed government credit policies as "economic Bolshevism"; with Aurel Vlad, he established an "Anti-Bolshevik Front", which toured Romanian cities to explain why relief was disastrous.

Grigore Filipescu tried out for a deputy seat in Braila County, but was soundly defeated, assuring public opinion that he would still return.

The PC managed to win three senatorial seats, with Grigore Filipescu elected in Durostor.

Grigore Filipescu ran, unsuccessfully, for a deputy seat in Ilfov during the by-elections of 1934.

Grigore Filipescu was critical of Premier Duca's order to ban the Iron Guard, arguining that the movement was largely harmless, and that its ranks included at least some "enthusiastic, clear-minded youths".

At the Telephone Palace, Grigore Filipescu switched from spying on behalf of the king to intercepting the royal court itself, obtaining information which made its way Maniu and Titulescu.

At the time, Grigore Filipescu was still highly critical of peace with the Soviets: Petre Constantinescu-Iasi, of the underground communists and the pro-Soviet Amicii URSS, accused Grigore Filipescu of being a "reactionary" enemy of his antifascist initiative.

On February 18,1936, Grigore Filipescu reiterated his opposition to Nazism with a public conference in Bucharest's Sala Dalles.

The Grigore Filipescu plan was inoperable by November 1936, when Italy openly expressed support for a revision of borders in Central Europe; this prompted Grigore Filipescu to present evidence of Mussolini's collusion with Regency Hungary, leading back to 1928.

In that context, Grigore Filipescu began challenging the Romanian far-right's claim to an intellectual monopoly on anti-communism, arguing that war and fascism carried the added risk of making the world ripe for a communist takeover.

Grigore Filipescu later argued that agitation by fascist groups would only strengthen the left, citing the French riots of 1934 being followed by the consolidated Popular Front.

Grigore Filipescu noted that Romanian far-right groups were farcical, in that they had no respect for property rights, proposing instead a nationalism that was both "civilized" and "generous".

Grigore Filipescu earned accolades from the Crusade of Romanianism, which was a leftist dissidence of the Iron Guard.

Also in 1937, Grigore Filipescu joined the Crown Council and took part in the meeting that removed Prince Nicholas from the royal family, reluctantly voting with the majority.

Grigore Filipescu demanded that the state allocate its resources to combating fascism and defending the Jews.

Together with Maniu, Grigore Filipescu welcomed back to the country the self-exiled Titulescu, and tightened cooperation against Carol.

Grigore Filipescu was elected, beginning his last term in parliament.

In January 1938, Patria newspaper, engaging in a polemic with the Conservative Costin G Sturdza, published allegations according to which Filipescu was acting on behalf of industrialist Oskar Kaufmann, and that he had practiced blackmail throughout his career.

The piece alleged that Grigore Filipescu was no longer welcomed in his family's original demesne, Filipestii de Targ, after having sold it to the local peasants at an exorbitant sum.

Grigore Filipescu opted instead for selling it to the peasants at a much reduced price.

In March 1938, Grigore Filipescu indefinitely suspended party activities, noting that the group was rendered irrelevant by the "great upheavals facing our continent"; his open letter "liberated his friends from all obligation toward either him or his politics".

Grigore Filipescu's continued weakness required a blood transfusion, which was again accepted by his organism.

Grigore Filipescu's body was cremated in Geneva, and the ashes were initially due to be buried on the spot, in accordance with his reported last wish.

Grigore Filipescu's death was mourned in central newspapers such as Dreptatea and Timpul as the demise of a "cavalier", "the last authentic boyar".

Grigore Filipescu was survived by his mother until 1954, and by his widow until 1971.

Epocas Alexandru Visan, a Conservative Party member who had once been Grigore Filipescu's secretary, escaped Romania and settled in the West, where he emerged as a critic of the regime.