Emanuil Grigorovitza

Emanuil Grigorovitza (February 15, 1857–December 6, 1915) was an Austro-Hungarian-born Romanian writer and philologist.

Born in Rădăuți, in the Duchy of Bukovina, his parents were Vasile, a teacher, and Alexandra (née Pintilie); He attended primary school in Storojineț.

In 1891, he took the baccalaureate examination at Bern. He obtained a doctorate in philosophy from Bern University in 1893, firing a revolver into his mouth, which killed him instantly.

He made important contributions in journalism, literature and German philology, becoming one of Romania's first significant Germanists. He wrote ten textbooks, mainly about the German language; dictionaries and numerous studies of philology, literary criticism and history, translations and anthologies. His first academic article, from 1892, was about the role of myths and historical tradition in German folk poetry. His work appeared in Romänische Revue, Vatra, Familia, Literatură și artă română, Patria, Conservatorul, Rumänischer Lloyd, Junimea literară, Die Karpathen, Luceafărul and Flacăra. This consisted of studies, articles, sketches, tales, translations into German (mainly poems by Eminescu) and Romanian (stories by Nikolai Gogol and Henryk Sienkiewicz). His first book of prose fiction, Chipuri și graiuri din vesela grădină…, appeared at Berlin in 1900. Seven more books followed, largely collections of writings previously published in magazines. Schitul Cerebucului (1908) and Piatra muierii (1911), are historical novellas, “banal” and “insubstantial”. Grigorovitza was much more successful when, clearly influenced by Ion Creangă’s Childhood Memories, he tried recreating his early years or the faces and journeys that had left an impression. In sketches such as “Cum era să mă fac catolic”, “Jupânul Toiba” and “Badea Huștiuluc”, and in the 1911 volume Cum a fost odată, he recreates the multiethnic space of northern Bukovina, imparting a fairytale-like ambience to the villages, the picturesque market towns and the city of Cernăuți. With warmth and sensibility, he recalls his parents, his teachers and schoolmates, the friends he made in Vienna and Iași. He sketches the world of the răzeși (peasants owning small plots of land), in particular the women, creatures of habit dwelling among memories, forgotten by time; and compassionately recounts the daily existence of humble characters.