Titus Panaitescu-Vifor

Titus Panaitescu-Vifor (22 July 1893 – ?) was a Romanian fascist politician, journalist, businessman, playwright, and co-founder of the National Romanian Fascio. He served as a commercial attaché of Romania to Belgium (1920-?), and as a cultural attaché and head of the propaganda service of Romania to Italy in the early 1940s.

Early life and career Titus Panaitescu-Vifor was born on 22 July 1893 in Focșani, to Dimitrie and Hélène (née David). He had one brother, Constantin Panaitescu.

Panaitescu-Vifor studied business in Thessaloniki, Greece, and later earned a doctorate in social sciences. In 1915, he co-founded a literary magazine, Făclia, with F. Hotin, to which writer Tudor Arghezi and painter Leon Biju also contributed. He published a series of plays, including Veneticul (1915) and Stând de vorbă cu moartea (1918).

The group was short-lived, suffering from conflicts of leadership and police raids. In particular, a split within the FNR between Pădeanu and Panaitescu-Vifor, allegedly over an attempted merger with Elena Bacaloglu's similar National Italo-Romanian Fascist Movement (MNFIR), and a related violent attack on the Jewish editor of Adevărul, Iacob Rosenthal, (for which Panaitescu-Vifor was arrested), caused the quick disintegration of most of the FNR.

Later career Panaitescu-Vifor married an Italian woman, Leda Ponzanelli, in January 1923 or 1924, with whom he had a daughter, Rodica, and possibly a son, Titus Dumitru.

During and following his political involvement with the FNR, Panaitescu-Vifor began a number of business ventures in Romania, Italy, and Belgium, with a focus on agricultural and chemical imports and exports. He relocated to Venice in 1925, and worked there as an honorific commercial attaché. The same year, a pharmaceutical import business he ran from Bucharest was the subject of a scandal involving false advertising for syphilis medications. During this time, Panaitescu-Vifor also became a regular contributor to the Romanian economic newspaper Argus, publishing nationalist and pro-fascist articles with economic themes. Beginning in 1929, Panaitescu-Vifor also began to establish business ventures in Spain and Bulgaria. Vifor succeeded Isopescu as head of the propaganda service in May 1941.

Panaitescu-Vifor died at some point after 1967.