Grigore Gafencu
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Grigore Gafencu | |
---|---|
Minister of Foreign Affairs of Romania | |
In office February 1, 1939 – July 3, 1940 | |
Monarch | Carol II of Romania |
Prime Minister | Miron Cristea Armand Călinescu Gheorghe Argeșanu Constantin Argetoianu Gheorghe Tătărescu |
Preceded by | Nicolae Petrescu-Comnen |
Succeeded by | Mihail Manoilescu |
Personal details | |
Born | Bârlad, Kingdom of Romania | January 30, 1892
Died | January 30, 1957 Paris, France | (aged 65)
Awards | Order of Michael the Brave Order of the White Eagle (Serbia) |
Grigore Gafencu (Romanian pronunciation: [ɡriˈɡore ɡaˈfeŋku]; January 30, 1892 – January 30, 1957) was a Romanian politician, diplomat and journalist.
Political career[]
Gafencu was born in Bârlad. He studied law and received his Ph.D. in law from the University of Bucharest. During World War I, he participated as a lieutenant and received the Mihai Viteazul Order for courage in battle. After the war, he became a journalist and founded the Timpul Familiei newspaper, which was translated in French and distributed in many countries. At the age of 32, he became a National Peasants' Party deputy in the Romanian Chamber of Deputies (lower house of the Romanian Parliament) and was the assistant of the Minister of Foreign Affairs during the Iuliu Maniu government of 1928.
In 1939, he became a Minister of Foreign Affairs. For the next two years, he tried to assure the neutrality of Romania, which was caught up between Germany and the Soviet Union. His efforts obtained guarantees from France and Great Britain, which were nevertheless not respected. After Northern Transylvania was annexed by Hungary as a result of the Second Vienna Award, and Bessarabia, Northern Bukovina, and the Hertza region were annexed by the Soviet Union in 1940, he was sent as ambassador to Moscow, where he remained until the beginning of the war against the Soviet Union on 21 June 1941. He then settled in Geneva, Switzerland.
Exile[]
During World War II, he collaborated with the Tribune de Genève and other newspapers across Europe. In 1944, his book Préliminaires de la guerre à l'Est (Preliminaries of the War in the East) was published under the author name of Grégoire Gafenco by the Egloff publishing house in Fribourg.
After the war, Gafencu moved to Paris. He then published his second book, Last Days of Europe (Derniers jours de l'Europe, Egloff, Fribourg, 1946), in which he described his voyages across Europe in 1939 and 1940. In the preface he claimed that "the world made a war to kill zone's of influence and we must make a peace to kill them for a second time".
In 1947, he was invited by Yale University Press to the United States for a series of conferences; he then lectured at New York University. He began to form groups that would militate for a European Movement, a federation of European states in which Romania would be included. He participated at the founding of the Free Europe Committee and organized each Tuesday evening in his apartment on Park Avenue, New York City, a series of meetings called Tuesday Panels in which current events were discussed.
He was a member of the Romanian National Committee (1949–1952) and was one of the founders of the Free Romanian League. Gafencu was awarded Order of the White Eagle and other decorations.[1] He died in 1957 of a heart attack at his home in Paris.[2]
A street in Sector 1 of Bucharest is named after him.
References[]
- ^ Acović, Dragomir (2012). Slava i čast: Odlikovanja među Srbima, Srbi među odlikovanjima. Belgrade: Službeni Glasnik. p. 615.
- ^ "Grigore Gafencu, Ex-Diplomat, Dies; Rumanian Foreign Minister, 1938-40, Was Pro-West--Fought Reds From Exile Lectured in U.S." The New York Times. January 31, 1957. p. 27. Retrieved January 8, 2021.
External links[]
- 1892 births
- 1957 deaths
- People from Bârlad
- University of Bucharest alumni
- Romanian military personnel of World War I
- Romanian people of World War II
- National Peasants' Party politicians
- 20th-century Romanian politicians
- Members of the Chamber of Deputies (Romania)
- Recipients of the Order of Michael the Brave
- Politicians from Bucharest
- Diplomats from Bucharest
- Romanian Ministers of Foreign Affairs
- Romanian newspaper editors
- Romanian newspaper founders
- Romanian exiles
- Deaths in Paris
- Camarilla (Carol II of Romania)