Alexandru Leca Morariu

Alexandru Leca Morariu (July 25, 1888–December 15, 1963) was an Austro-Hungarian-born Romanian philologist, linguist, literary critic and historian, ethnologist, folklorist and musicologist.

Life Morariu was born in Cernăuți on July 25, 1888, to Orthodox priest Constantin Morariu and his wife Elena (née Popescu). From 1898 to 1906, he attended Suceava High School. From 1906 to 1911, he studied at the letters and philosophy faculty of Czernowitz University. He obtained a doctorate in letters from Cluj University in 1921, with a thesis on the morphology of Romanian predicate verbs. He taught at Gura Humorului in 1913-1914 and at Aron Pumnul High School in Cernăuți in 1919. He was an officer in the Austrian Army in World War I. In 1940, the Soviet occupation of Northern Bukovina forced him to flee to Bucharest. He returned to Cernăuți after Operation Barbarossa, but the reimposition of Soviet rule in 1944 led him to a self-imposed isolation in Râmnicu Vâlcea, where he died. He did not have a pension, and in 1947, the Romanian Communist Party-dominated government banned him from publishing. He incurred the authorities’ displeasure both as the son of a priest and the impassioned defender of his native region's Romanians.

Interests Morariu was interested in linguistics, philology, ethnology, dialectology, literary history and criticism, folklore, memoirs and musicology. He sometimes used the pen names L. M., L. Mărin and Al. Lupu. He promoted the idea of a national literature with the same aesthetic principles developed by critic Garabet Ibrăileanu, and highlighted the picturesque aspect of the Romanian language. He passionately conducted biographical research about Mihai Eminescu, Ion Creangă, Ciprian and Iraclie Porumbescu. He had a long-running interest in folklore, treating it as an autonomous discipline and demonstrating its organic links with erudite learning. He explored these ideas in the bulletin of the institute he founded.

Morariu studied the Istro-Romanian language, publishing articles about the life and customs of its speakers. He also wrote works of literary history and criticism, and published courses for students in these domains. In 1928, he won the Romanian Academy’s Prize for the works “Războiul Troadei” după Codicele C. Popovici, Institutorul Creangă and Drumuri moldovene. He won its Adamachi Prize in 1930. A great supporter of Romanian culture in Bukovina, he made sacrifices in order to ensure the prosperity of the societies he led. He could play several musical instruments, wrote music reviews and organized classical concerts. He was a knight of the Order of the Crown of Romania.