Constantin Argetoianu

Constantin Argetoianu

Constantin Argetoianu (born March 15, 1871 in Craiova , † February 6, 1955 in Sighetu Marmației ) was a Romanian diplomat and politician who was Prime Minister of Romania in 1939 .

Beginnings

Constantin Argetoianu was born in Craiova in 1871. He was the son of Ion Argetoianu , an officer in the Romanian army who took part in the war against the Turks in 1877 .

Constantin Argetoianu attended elementary school in Craiova in his early years . After graduating, he studied law and medicine at the Universities of Bucharest and Paris between 1888 and 1896 . In the latter area he even received a doctorate after completing his studies .

First World War

Constantin Argetoianu was elected to the Senate for the first time in 1914, ie in the first year of the First World War , the so-called “ great catastrophe of the 20th century ”. There he represented the Conservative Party. In the Senate he found a powerful advocate in Take Ionescu after Argetoianu proposed Romania's entry into World War I on the side of the Entente .

In 1918, the last year of the five-year conflict, Constantin Argetoianu was appointed Minister of Justice in the government of Alexandru Averescu . At that time Romania, which had been involved in the war since 1916, was partially occupied by troops from Germany , Austria-Hungary and Bulgaria . For this reason, the government had withdrawn to Iași in the north of the country , as the south was occupied.

People's Party

After Alexandru Averescu and his party were voted out in the first parliamentary elections after the war, Constantin Argetoianu followed this into the opposition. Both joined the People's Party of Romania, which wanted to stand in the next election of the ruling Liberal Party led by Ion IC Brătianu . This party is growing above all from the common people, since the People's Party represented their wishes in the government.

In the parliamentary elections in 1920, the party won a majority, so that Alexandru Averescu was again Prime Minister of Romania. Constantin Argetoianu was both Justice and Finance Minister during Averescu's second term . In March 1921 it became known that Aron Schuller, an employee of the Treasury, was trying to sign a loan agreement for Lire 20 million Romanian war bonds in an Italian bank. Schuller received a lot of support from the Treasury. As a result, Argetoianu became the target of the opposition, which was formed from the Romanian National Party and the Peasant Party. A vote of no confidence drawn up by Virgil Madgearu and Grigore Iunian was drawn up against him.

Interwar period

After he had to give up the office of finance minister and justice minister, Constantin Argetoianu became known primarily for his anti-communist stance. Since he supported the social democratic demonstrations against the ever more widespread communism , his friendship with Alexandru Averescu ended , who was also against communism as a form of government in Romania , but was also not taken with the social democrats. Averescu, for example, arranged for the arrest of 1,000 striking Social Democrats, after which the general strike collapsed. In 1922, Alexandru Averescu, together with Constantin Argetoianu, with whom he got along again after the cabinet voted for Argetoianus to return, decided to kill numerous Communist activists who were imprisoned in prisons across Romania.

In 1924 Ion IC Brătianu again took power in Romania after Alexandru Averescu was voted out. During this time Constantin Argetoianu joined the Democratic National Party (PND). There, however, he did not like their ties to the national party and he joined the PNL. After Brătianu's sudden death in 1930 and the assumption of office of the new Prime Minister Dinu Brătianu and the new King Charles II , Argetoianu broke away from the PND and became non-party , but continued to participate in politics. When Nicolae Iorga won the 1931 elections, he became Minister of the Interior and Finance. As finance minister , Argetoianu had to deal with the problems of farmers and small businesses , which often went bankrupt as a result of the global economic crisis . In order to alleviate the plight of the peasants, Argetoianu made an amendment to the constitution of 1923, after which he was dismissed from his offices in 1932. During the brief government of Ion G. Ducas in 1933, Argetoianu was again Minister of Finance and Interior.

World War II and the end

After his time as minister in the Duca government, Constantin Argetoianu campaigned for Romania's rapprochement with the Soviet Union . However, when Ion Antonescu began his dictatorship in 1940 and turned strongly away from the Soviet Union, Argetoianu disappeared from the political scene for a few years. Antonescu, meanwhile, found a powerful partner in National Socialist Germany in the fight against Russia. From then on Romania was one of the most important allies of the German Empire and was also involved with many soldiers on the Eastern Front , for example in the fighting over Stalingrad . Ion Antonescu was overthrown in 1944 after the Red Army had conquered Romania. During this time, Constantin Argetoianu reported back from his Swiss exile and wanted to promote cooperation between the Romanian and Russian authorities. He saw his chance to return to higher offices in Romania's government by showing himself to be Soviet-friendly. In the population, however, he was almost exclusively ridiculed for his pro-Russian attitude.

His plan to work his way up through the new rulers failed. To this end he founded a new party in 1947, a Union for National Labor and Reconstruction . But the members of this party were monitored and spied on by the communist government, which is why the party was disbanded after a short time. Argetoianu has now retired from political life again after undergoing an operation for prostate cancer . On March 6, 1950, he was arrested by the Soviet authorities for no stated reason and imprisoned in the notorious Sighet Prison, where he died on February 6, 1955 without being tried.

literature

• Stelian Neagoe (2012). Politică și destin: Constantin Argetoianu [German: Politics and fate. Constantin Argetoianu], Bucharest: Machiavelli Verlag.

Web links

Commons : Constantin Argetoianu  - collection of images, videos and audio files

• detailed biography (Romanian)