Petrache Poenaru

Petrache Poenaru

Petrache Poenaru (born January 10, 1799 in Băneşti , Vâlcea district , † October 2, 1875 in Bucharest ), Romanian revolutionary and confidante of Tudor Vladimirescu , engineer, mathematician, responsible for the development of the Romanian education system and founder of the national colleges in Bucharest and Craiova , full member of the Romanian Academy from 1870.

Youth and Studies

Petrache Poenaru was born on January 10, 1799 in the municipality of Băneşti , Vâlcea County. In 1818 he graduated from the secondary school of the Obedeanu Church in Craiova. At the age of 19 he moved to Bucharest to work as a teacher of Greek at the Metropolitan School. Seized by the revolutionary spirit of the modern age, he became a supporter of the Romanian revolutionary leader Tudor Vladimirescu and his secretary, then his closest adviser. Thanks to Poenaru's initiative, the first Romanian newspaper was founded. He published "Das Propagandablatt" which promoted the ideas of the resistance fighters.

On the promise of Vladimirescu, he moved to Vienna to study in 1824 and thus escaped death. In 1826 he went to Paris , where, in addition to studying cartography under the direction of L. Puissant, he was involved in creating the topographic map of France .

He invented a fountain pen with a quill as an ink reservoir. On May 25, 1827, the manufacture of the French Ministry of the Interior registered the invention under the number 3208 with the attribute French: "Plume portable sans fin, qui s'alimente elle-meme avec de l'ancre" translates as "portable pen, endless (writing) that supplies itself with ink ”.

Later life and teaching

In 1831 he went to Great Britain, where he was the first Romanian to travel by train on the first modern railway line between Liverpool and Manchester. He wrote about this experience on October 27, 1831: “I made this trip with a new mode of transport that is one of the wonders of industry of the century ... twenty interconnected carriages, loaded with 240 travelers, are suddenly driven by a steam engine drawn".

Back in Romania, he began a didactic career in 1832 as a teacher at the Sfântul Sava School , of which he became the principal . Shortly afterwards he became head of the Romanian education system. He made a significant contribution to its development by setting up numerous primary schools that teach in Romanian. Poenaru also wrote several textbooks.

Political, revolutionary and cultural activity

In 1848 he took an active part in the revolution. He was a member of the commission for the liberation of the Roma held in serfdom on the property of the boyars and monasteries . After the revolution he held an office at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs (Postelnicia) and in 1864 became an employee of the technical commission for public works.

On a cultural level, Poenaru was particularly keen. He was a co-founder of the Philharmonic Society, the Agronomic Society and the School of Agriculture. Poenaru initiated, together with others, the establishment of the Botanical Garden in Bucharest and the National Museum of Antiques. He published numerous articles in the press and edited the paper of the National Museum and the magazine “Der Landeslehrer”. On September 10, 1870, he became a full member of the Romanian Academy . He gave his inaugural address on September 8, 187, in which he emphasized that his five months as a resistance fighter under Tudor Vladimirescu had changed his whole life. His fame led to his becoming a member of the Academy of Science in Paris. Poenaru died on October 2, 1875 at the age of 76.

Works

• (with Florian Aaron and Georg Hill ) Vocabulaire français-valaque d'après la dernière édition du dictionnaire de l'Académie Française , augmenté de plusieurs autres mots par P. Poyenar, Directeur des écoles nationales, F. Aaron et G. Hill, Professeurs du Collège St Sava, 2 vols., Imprimerie du Collège St. Sava, Bucharest, 1840–41

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Scan of the patent application. (PDF) In: fountainpen.it. Retrieved August 19, 2020 .