Dimitrie Gusti

Dimitrie Gusti

Dimitrie Gusti (born February 13, 1880 in Iași ( Jassy , Romania); †  October 30, 1955 in Bucharest ) was a Romanian sociologist, historian, voluntarist philosopher, social reformer and cultural politician.

Life

As a child, Dimitrie Gusti lived on the estate of his parents (Stefan Gusti and Natalie, née Gatovski) in the village of Gronita and attended elementary and high school in Iași as a boarding school student from the age of six until 1898. He then studied history (with Alexandru Dimitrie Xenopol ), sociology and political economy at the University of Iași . In 1899 he moved to the Friedrich Wilhelm University in Berlin, and in 1900 to Leipzig , where Wilhelm Wundt , Paul Barth and Karl Bücher were his academic teachers. At books, Gusti was in 1904 with his dissertation Egoism and Altruism. For the sociological motivation of the practical desire to become a Dr. phil. PhD.

The young scientist with diverse interests returned to Berlin in 1905 and during his time in Germany also studied sociology with Georg Simmel , Ferdinand Tönnies , Leopold von Wiese and Max Weber , as well as philosophy with Friedrich Paulsen and jurisprudence with Franz von Liszt and Rudolf Stammler . In 1908 he went to the sociologist Émile Durkheim in Paris , where he also turned to English authors such as Herbert Spencer .

In Romania he was a professor in Iași and from 1920 in Bucharest . It attracted students greatly, and its listeners included both right and left (such as Mircea Vulcănescu , Miron Constantinescu and Henri H. Stahl ). He founded the empirically monographically oriented Bucharest School of Sociology. From 1925 to 1939 he presented an important series of village studies . These followed the central concern of Romanian sociology to expand knowledge about life in the villages because agriculture and cattle breeding formed the economic and cultural basis for Romanian society. Gusti therefore regularly carried out excursions to the countryside with groups of students, the results of which were later published in detail. Between 1934 and 1939 the number of student participants had multiplied compared to the first few years. The focus of the activities was now on the introduction of new methods to increase production in agriculture and forestry and on the creation of cultural centers in the villages. Gusti's national stance did not allow it to examine villages of ethnic minorities, but his nationalism was more moderate than that of his contemporary Sabin Manuilă (1894–1964), who is considered to be the most influential Romanian demographer before the Second World War.

In 1936 Gusti founded the Bucharest Muzeul Satului (village museum) with Stahl and Victor Ion Popa . In 1919 he was appointed a member of the Romanian Academy and was its president from 1944 to 1946.

Politically, he joined the Peasant Party and was Romanian Minister of Education from 1932 to 1933. He left her because of her tolerant policy towards the authoritarian turn of King Charles II and the fascist policies of the "Iron Guard", which then led to the Antonescu dictatorship in 1940 . After the Soviet troops marched in, the Communist Party tried in vain to win him over; but he became a member of the Society for Romanian-Soviet Friendship.

His grave is in the Bellu Cemetery in Bucharest.

Theoretical characterization

According to Gusti, society consists of social units with a connecting mentality, the central component of which is the social will, which consists of cosmic, biological, psychological and historical factors that determine social change and make it predictable to a certain extent . His methodology is characterized by interdisciplinary empiricism.

Honors

In 1934 the University of Leipzig awarded him an honorary doctorate , where he said in his acceptance speech: I experienced Germany in the years 1899–1910 at its height, in happy prosperity and on the triumphant path to industrial domination in the world, plus the greatest, most hard-working and most disciplined people in Europe, with geniuses who have crowned human civilization (...) but in 1934 I traveled to a defeated, tired and desperate Germany, one of the most disorganized nations in Europe.

Publications (selection)

• Egoism and Altruism , 1904
• The Sociological Aspirations in the New Ethics , 1908
• Cosmologia elenă , 1929
• Sociologia militans , (Vol. 1, 1935; Vol. 2-3, 1946)
• Enciclopedia României , Vols. I-IV, Bucharest, 1938, 1943
• Cunoaștere și acțiune în serviciul națiunii , (2 vols .., 1939)
• Problema sociologiei , 1940
• La science de la réalité sociale , 1941

literature

• Lucian Boia (ed.)., Miturile comunismului românesc (“The Myths of Romanian Communism”), Editura Nemira, Bucharest 1998; in particular:
  • Ovidiu Bozgan , Traiectorii universitare. De la stânga interbelică la comunism ("University transitions. From the interwar left to communism"), 1992, pp. 309–335.
  • Adrian Cioroianu , Lumina vine de la Răsărit. "Noua imagine" a Uniunii Sovietice în România postbelică, 1944-1947 ("The light comes from the east. The 'New Image' of the Soviet Union of post-war Romania, 1944-1947"), pp. 21–68.
• Wolf Oschlies :  Dimitrie Gusti. In: Biographisch-Bibliographisches Kirchenlexikon (BBKL). Volume 26, Bautz, Nordhausen 2006, ISBN 3-88309-354-8 , Sp. 572-600.
• Ioan Scurtu , PNL și PNȚ. Reserve, nemulțumiri, protests. Partidele istorice sub guvernarea antonesciano-legionară ("PNL and PNȚ: reservations, dissatisfactions, protests. Historical parties under the rule of Antonescu"), in: Dosarele Istoriei , 2000, no . 9.

Web links

Commons : Dimitrie Gusti  - collection of images, videos and audio files

• Şcoala sociologică a lui Dimitrie Gusti ("Dimitrie Gusti's sociological school")

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Vladimir Solonari: Purifying the Nation. Population Exchange and Ethnic Cleansing in Nazi-Allied Romania. The Johns Hopkins University Press, Baltimore 2010, pp. 82, 87
2. ↑ Ovidiu Bozgan: Traiectorii universitare. De la stânga interbelică la comunism ("University transitions. From the interwar left to communism"), 1992, p. 329
3. ^ Adrian Cioroianu: Lumina vine de la Răsărit. "Noua imagine" a Uniunii Sovietice în România postbelică, 1944-1947 ("The light comes from the east. The 'New Image' of the Soviet Union of post-war Romania , 1944-1947"), p. 24.
4. ↑ Cf. Ferdinand Tönnies ' concepts of velvet and especially its will axiomatics ( essence will , cure will).
5. ↑ Wolf Oschlies :  Dimitrie Gusti. In: Biographisch-Bibliographisches Kirchenlexikon (BBKL). Volume 26, Bautz, Nordhausen 2006, ISBN 3-88309-354-8 , Sp. 572-600.