The Academia Purges in the Faculty of Architecture of Bucharest after 23 August 1944. The Case of Constantin Iotzu

Abstract

The meddling of politics into the Romanian academic life after Auguts 23rd 1944 was preeminently visible after the education reform in 1948, while the Faculty of Architecture in Bucharest was a singular case. One of its specifics is given by how fast the authorities attempted to turn this institution into a communism pillar – either by excluding the people regarded as royalists, students or academia, or bringing in an entire league of newly-established regime devotees even since 1945. Explanations are multifarious, but the main one consists in the presence of a handful of illegalist assistant lecturers who made the school`s communist cell official and resumed the class antagonism immediately after the change of the government. Two key-moments occured in April of the same year. One of them was the attempt to expel the reactionary students from the Faculty, a process ended in a mammoth investigation with over 20 arrests, most of them having been detained between a few days and several weeks, except for 6 students who were sent and kept in a political prisoner detention camp in Slobozia for almost a year. The other one was the removal and a later arrest of the Dean, Professor architect Constantin Iotzu, whose case is going to be featured in the text herein.