Traian Brăileanu or BrăileanAndrei Corbea-Hoișie, "'Wie die Juden Gewalt schreien': Aurel Onciul und die antisemitische Wende in der Bukowiner Öffentlichkeit nach 1907", in East Central Europe, Vol. 39, Issue 1, 2012, p. 22 (September 14, 1882 – October 3, 1947) was an Austro-Hungarian-born Romanian sociologist and politician. A native of the Bukovina region, he attended Czernowitz University, where he studied philosophy and classical languages, subsequently earning a doctorate. Ending up as a translator in Vienna, he fought for Austria during World War I. At the conclusion of hostilities, returned to the renamed Cernăuți, now part of Greater Romania. There, he soon became a professor of sociology, leading a "Cernăuți School" of academics during the interwar period.
Meanwhile, he was involved in nationalist politics, supporting Alexandru Averescu, Nicolae Iorga and, ultimately, the extremist Iron Guard, of which he was among the most prominent intellectual backers. A theoretician of organicism, corporatism, and antisemitism, he inspired the creation of Iconar, a literary society, and founded the review Însemnări Sociologice. He was elected to the Romanian Senate in 1937, and reached the apex of his political career during the short-lived National Legionary State of 1940–1941. He served as Education and Arts Minister under this regime, targeting the country's Jewish community and his various political opponents. In the wake of the Legionnaires' rebellion, he was arrested, tried and acquitted, but later arrested again and interned.
Freed yet again in 1944, he was placed under house arrest following the coup d'état of 23 August 1944, and, increasingly ill with ulcers, was tried before one of the Romanian People's Tribunals in 1946. Given a twenty-year sentence for war crimes, he died the following autumn at Aiud Prison, shortly before the establishment of a communist regime that suppressed his publications for the more than four decades of its existence.
Biography
Origins and education Born in Bilca, Suceava County, a village located in Austrian-ruled Bukovina not far from Rădăuți, Brăileanu was the ninth of twelve siblings. His father Gheorghe (1839–1902) was the director of the local primary school for at least forty years.Trebici, p. 385; Vintilă (2010), pp. 511–512. See also Nastasă (2007), p. 141 Gheorghe's father Ioan, born in 1807, had been a simple peasant, but two of his sons became teachers, and the third a Romanian Orthodox priest.Vintilă (2010), p. 511 Traian's mother, Maria (née Polonic) was the daughter of a shoemaker from Suceava, and married his father in 1865. The first serious tragedy in his life came when his sister Ilenuța died, leaving the entire family despondent.Vintilă (2010), p. 512 Another two beloved siblings died of diphtheria in late 1893, leaving him a mature individual at an early age.Vintilă (2010), p. 513 His mother predeceased his father, so that both parents had died by the time he was twenty.Vintilă (2010), p. 514 The young Traian was a voracious reader, his interests including classical literature, German literature, other European literatures in German translation, Romanian literature and Romanian history, including Alexandru Dimitrie Xenopol's Istoria românilor. He was attached to his brother Constantin, who settled in the Romanian Old Kingdom, which he represented as consul at Bitola and Thessaloniki; an employee of the Romanian Foreign Ministry, his son was killed in action during World War I.Trebici, p. 385
Brăileanu attended three grades of primary school in his native village, followed by a fourth grade in 1892–1893 at Rădăuți, where he and a number of Romanian classmates spent the year perfecting their German and preparing for admission to the local German High School.Vintilă (2010), pp. 514–515 He passed the entrance examination easily, entering the school in the autumn of 1893.Vintilă (2010), p. 515 German was the language of instruction; Latin and Greek the principal subjects. Upon graduation in 1901, he was fluent in all three. Entering Czernowitz University, he took courses in philosophy and classical philology, the subjects of his degree.Trebici, p. 385. See also Bruja (2006), p. 223 His professors included Richard Wahle and Ion G. Sbiera.Bruja (2006), p. 223; Vintilă (2010), pp. 516–517 Initially, he shared a rented room with two older sisters of his, who were attending a normal school.Vintilă (2010), p. 516 In late 1902, after starting his second year of university, he went to the Romanian capital Bucharest to bury his father, who had sought medical treatment there.Vintilă (2010), p. 519
As a student, he was associated with Societatea Academică Junimea, a Romanian youth movement. In December 1901, already a member of the local chapter, he was selected as editor-in-chief of its satirical-humorous newsletter. Under his aegis it appeared bimonthly, and some issues were written entirely by Brăileanu.Vintilă (2010), pp. 518–519 In 1904, he was named president of the society's literary section. In this capacity, together with Ion Nistor and George Tofan, he founded Junimea Literară, a literary journal. There, he published a short story, a series of humorous sketches and several poems.Bruja (2006), p. 223; Trebici, p. 385; Vintilă (2010), p. 520. See also Cândea, p. 47 The magazine had a nationalist and Sămănătorist agenda, and, according to Nistor, sought to counterbalance Austria's "hatred and contempt for all things [Romanian]".Filipovici, pp. 259–260 Another member, Romulus Cândea, described the society and its magazine as preservers of "the nationalist flame" and "the Romanianist line".Cândea, pp. 46–47
Upon graduation, Brăileanu became a teacher at a German-language high school in Czernowitz, but, not finding the daily routine suitable to his studies, left after completing the 1905–1906 academic year.Vintilă (2010), p. 521 He then performed his military service in the Austrian Army, first at Czernowitz and then at the officers' school in Lemberg.Vintilă (2010), pp. 521–522 For a time, he held a series of low-paid jobs, including that of journalist.Vintilă (2010), p. 522 Around 1908, he was penning articles for various newspapers secretly run by Aurel Onciul, a controversial leader of the Democratic Peasants' Party. In November 1909, Brăileanu obtained a doctorate in philosophy magna cum laude, his adviser being Wahle. The same year, he became engaged to Emilia Silion, of an old Bukovina family; the couple, who married in 1910, had three sons and a daughter.Trebici, p. 385; Vintilă (2010), p. 522
Academic beginnings Thanks to his elder brother, in 1909 he obtained a position as translator at the Romanian Legation in Vienna, where he remained until 1914. During this period, he took courses at the University of Vienna and undertook research at its library. In 1912, he published a work of epistemology, followed by one on ethics (Die Grundlegung zu einer Wissenschaft der Ethik) in 1919.Herseni, p. 560; Trebici, p. 386 During that interval, he became especially interested in the work of Vasile Conta, a 19th-century metaphyisician and political thinker. Writing in 1915, Ana Conta Kernbach identified Brăileanu as one of "the few young men who are researching [Conta's] work".Ana Conta Kernbach, "Biografia lui B. Conta (urmare)", in Viața Românească, Issues 10–11–12/1915, p. 49
Upon the outbreak of World War I, Brăileanu was drafted into the Austrian Army. Wounded, he was hospitalized in Bohemia, then moved to Lemberg with his regiment, after which he returned to Vienna. Meanwhile, his wife and the two children had taken refuge in Siret and then in Suceava, later returning to Austria. The union of Bukovina with Romania occurred at the end of World War I, and he immediately left Vienna for his native province, upon his older brother's urging.Vintilă (2010), p. 523
Beginning in 1919, Brăileanu was a librarian at his alma mater in what was now Cernăuți. He occupied this role until 1921, while in 1920, he became a lecturer. In 1924, he was named full professor at the department of sociology, ethics and politics.Bruja (2006), pp. 223, 224–226; Nastasă (2007), pp. 117–118, 259; (2010), p. 367; Trebici, p. 386 As an academic, his objective was to write survey texts of sociology, then ethics and finally politics. His introduction to sociology, published in 1923,Trebici, p. 386 was noted for on the sociological work of Conta, whom he identified as the founder of Romanian philosophy, and also as a personal guide. Following Conta, Brăileanu described a holistic social system of organic unity, grouping "social tissues", for which he eventually coined the term "human community". While ethics dealt with individual behavior, the community was the inextricable object of sociology.Herseni, pp. 560–562 His first major success, this work drew positive reviews from, among others, Nicolae Iorga. Nicknamed "Socrates" by his admiring students, he was known to appreciate the term, considering the Greek philosopher a model.
Politically, he was, after 1919, involved in nationalist movements within the nascent Greater Romania. Brăileanu was at first a follower of Alexandru Averescu and his People's League, the Bukovina wing of which he led. He was involved in a lengthy dispute with a Nicolai Mitenco, after deposing him as editor of Țărănimea newspaper and "purging" the party of undesirables.Bruja (2006), pp. 228–230 In September 1924, with an article he published in Societatea de Mâine, Brăileanu sought to identify the political problems of Greater Romania as they affected Bukovina's society. It suggested that, in the new political climate, "entirely stunted by the supremacy of timely politics, or what we call politicking", Romanian intellectuals were "caving in to a despotic domination by the bankers".Brăileanu, pp. 480, 481 He claimed that the Bukovina Jews were a parasitical class, 90% of whom "made a living from the stupidity of the native population", and justified economic antisemitism as a reaction to historical "imbalance". Nonetheless, he argued in favor of complete Jewish assimilation, including "long processes of interbreeding" with Romanians and a renewed social organization, based on the "division of labor" (with references to Conta and Émile Durkheim).Brăileanu, p. 480
Joining the Iron Guard Brăileanu eventually quit the People's League due to internal maneuvers that displeased him. Then, he entered Iorga's Democratic Nationalist Party, helping it to merge with remnants of the local National People's Party, under Constantin Isopescu-Grecul."Desăvârșirea fuziunii în Bucovina. O entuziastă ședință. Discursurile rostite. Hotărîrile luate", in Neamul Românesc, April 3, 1925, p. 3 Though he sincerely respected Iorga, and organized the party's Bukovina chapter from 1922 to 1925, he was unhappy with certain mergers the group had undergone, and again opted to leave.Bruja (2006), p. 224; Trebici, p. 387; Vintilă (2010), p. 525 His decision, effected in November 1925, was censured by Glasul Bucovinei newspaper, which called him "the most egotistical and least reasonable among the tiny bosses in Cernăuți"; as noted therein, his departure had established two newspapers called Gazeta Poporului, one of which was under his own direction."Dihonia din partidul național", in Glasul Bucovinei, November 13, 1925, p. 1 Progressively, Brăileanu identified with the extreme right, claiming that the political mainstream took a "soft attitude" toward ethnic minorities.Bruja (2006), p. 224; Heinen, p. 168 He migrated to the antisemitic National-Christian Defense League (LANC), which he left following a disagreement with its leader A. C. Cuza.Bruja (2006), p. 224; Heinen, p. 116