Barbu Constantinescu, the First Romanian Scholar of Romani Studies

What is it about?

Half a century after the first work on the Romanian Roma written by M. Kogălniceanu (1837) at the suggestion of the father of modern geography, Alexander von Humboldt, similarly, at the suggestion of a foreign scholar, the father of Romani dialectology, Franz Miklosich, one graduate of the Faculty of Theology, University of Leipzig, and Ph.D. of the same university, Barbu Constantinescu, started to learn Romani and became the first Romanian scholar in the emergent field. He was an acknowledged educationist, the first exponent of Herbatianism in Romania, and worked in many educational pioneering projects, such as the establishing of the first kindergarten as well as the reformation of the pedagogical and theological systems of education. In the field of Romani studies, unfortunately, he could not publish all his projected work, and posterity forgot his huge effort of traveling in all counties of Walachia and Moldavia in search for Romani settlements. He published in Bucharest, in 1877 and 1878, a dozen songs and tales in Romani of his own translation, which were dully acknowledged (e.g. by F.H. Groome in his 1899 anthology of Gypsy Folk songs). However, his work, comprising hundreds of documentation sheets, has not been included in a synthesis, yet, it is partially preserved in some unedited manuscripts at the Romanian Academy Library in Bucharest, which are described here for the first time, in sections § 2.1-6. The article displays the intellectual legacy left by Barbu Constantinescu in the field of Romani studies. Keywords: Barbu Constantinescu, Francis Hinde Groome, Franz Miklosich, Gaster Moses, Romani folklore, Romanian Roms, folklore diffusion

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