Ilie Torouțiu

Ilie E. Torouțiu (June 17, 1888 – November 24, 1953) was an Austro-Hungarian-born Romanian literary historian.

Born into a poor peasant family in Solca, then part of Austrian-ruled Bukovina, he did well in primary school, and a teacher advised him to leave for Suceava and learn a trade. He did so at age fourteen, finding work at a printing press, where the boss noticed his interest in books and helped him obtain a scholarship. He entered the local Greek Orthodox High School in the autumn of 1902. He excelled as a student, including in German language and literature, while having to spend his free time at the press so as not to lose his scholarship. After graduating in 1910, he enrolled at the literature and philosophy faculty of Czernowitz University. A gifted student, he drew notice from rector Matthias Friedwagner, who arranged a scholarship at the Academy for Social and Commercial Studies in Frankfurt. In 1913, he taught Romanian there. He then became a teacher at Cantemir High School in Bucharest, capital of the Romanian Old Kingdom. Additionally, due to the pro-Nazi Germany line Convorbiri Literare had taken during World War II, he was barred from publishing in 1945. Wracked by terminal illness, he died at his Bucharest home; his wife committed suicide the following day.

He translated works by Ludwig Anzengruber, John Bunyan, Otto Funcke, Franz Grillparzer, Christian Friedrich Hebbel, Plato and J. C. Ryle. He collected folklore from Bukovina and published studies about its economy, as well as writing literary criticism.