Gheorghe Asachi

Who was Gheorghe Asachi?

Gheorghe Asachi was a Moldavian-born Romanian prose writer, poet, painter, historian, dramatist and translator. An Enlightenment-educated polymath and polyglot, he was one of the most influential people of his generation. Asachi was a respected journalist and political figure, as well as active in technical fields such as civil engineering and pedagogy, and, for long, the civil servant charged with overseeing all Moldavian schools. Among his leading achievements were the issuing of Albina Românească, a highly influential magazine, and the creation of Academia Mihăileană, which replaced Greek-language education with teaching in Romanian. His literary works combined a taste for Classicism with Romantic tenets, while his version of the literary language relied on archaisms and borrowings from the Moldavian dialect.

A controversial political figure, Asachi endorsed the Imperial Russian presence in Moldavia and played a major part in establishing the Regulamentul Organic regime, while supporting the rule of Prince Mihail Sturdza. He thus came to clash with representatives of the liberal current, and opposed both the Moldavian revolution of 1848 and the country's union with Wallachia. Engaged in a long polemic with the liberal leader Mihail Kogălniceanu, he was, together with Nicolae Vogoride, involved in the unsuccessful attempt to block the unionist project through the means of an electoral fraud. Asachi was noted for his deep connections with the Western culture, which led him to support the employment of foreign experts in various fields and educational institutions. He cultivated a relationship with the French historian Edgar Quinet, whose father-in-law he became in 1852.