Victor Tufescu or the Perfect Elegance of Man and Spirit

Abstract

In the 1950s and 1960s, the Department of Economic Geography at the Bucharest University of Economic Studies (BUES, in Romanian known as “ASE”) was part of the Faculty of Commerce (now the Faculty of Business and Tourism). Also, after 2011, the geography collective became part of the newly established Department of Tourism and Geography. Given the esteem in which geography was regarded in ASE, for a long time, until 2013, it was an admission discipline, either compulsory or optional. For example, in 1963, there were even two exams – written and oral – for the Geography of the People's Republic of Romania. Between 1941 and 1968, the most prominent personality of geography taught at ASE was Professor Victor Tufescu. Between 1951 and 1956 he was abusively removed from university teaching and at one point arrested. Before his university career, he taught geography at the secondary school level. Since 1958, he has been the author of Geography of the RPR / RSR / Romania textbooks for the final grades of general school and high school, respectively, most often in collaboration with Claudiu Giurcăneanu and Gheorghe Ghica. For at least 40 years, students have learnt the geography of the country from successive editions of these books. The observation is that the attribution of the textbooks would have been done directly, possibly as moral reparation for the three authors, colleagues at the former Commercial Academy, who had also previously suffered obvious professional restrictions. Professor Victor Tufescu has been awarded the Romanian Academy Prizes twice, under different political regimes: for A region of living circulation: Poarta Târgului-Frumos (published in 1940), the “George Vâlsan” Prize, and for Natural relief modelling and accelerated erosion (published in 1966), the “Gheorghe Munteanu-Murgoci” Prize.

Keywords

• personality
• essay