Gheorghe Panu

George Panu (March 9, 1848 – November 6, 1910) was a Moldavian, later Romanian memoirist, literary critic, journalist and politician. A native of Iași, educated there as well as in Paris and Brussels, he worked as a schoolteacher and lawyer, but made a name for himself in politics and journalism. His outlook was a radical one that shared common goals with the socialist movement. Noted for his bitter polemics, he served several terms in parliament, alternating between the main parties as well as heading his own small faction for nearly a decade. In the last years of his life, Panu wrote a valuable memoir detailing his experiences in the Junimea literary society, of which he had become an implacable adversary.

Biography

Origins and education Born in Iași, his parents were the army officer Vasile Panu and his wife Ana (née Gugora), He subsequently studied at the Literature faculty of Iași University from 1868 to 1870.

For some years beginning in 1869, he taught French at a gymnasium in his native city.

Political and journalistic career

Working as a lawyer, he became a magistrate in 1881, He also pursued a political career, becoming cabinet chief to Interior Minister Rosetti in 1880. Sued for lèse-majesté, he was sentenced to two years' imprisonment and a fine of 5000 lei. Over the following year, Panu moved away from the Radicals while clarifying his differences with the socialists, and in 1895 formally joined the Conservatives, whose Junimea faction was in dissidence. The monarch's solution was to name two successive cabinets, led by Gheorghe Grigore Cantacuzino and Carp respectively. By the time the Carp government fell in early 1901 (an act to which Panu contributed), the PC was deeply split between what Panu saw as the "Cantacuzino continent", the "Carp peninsula" and a little island which could only fit him, "a political Robinson".

Panu expressed a reserved attitude toward the 1907 peasants' revolt and did not approve of it. and was eulogized by Garabet Ibrăileanu in hallowed terms in the pages of Viața Românească: "with a proud awkwardness, with the admirable and manly ugliness of a robust person, with those eyes that watched with a sort of painful hatred, with his clipped tones and voice hoarse from passion, G. Panu approached the podium as if from amidst the oppressed and those living in the shadows, as an avenger of theirs". The sculpture is listed as a historic monument by Romania's Ministry of Culture and Religious Affairs.