Bogdan Petriceicu Hasdeu
Linguist, historian and playwright from northern Bessarabia
1838-1907
Photo: Andrei Stroe, CC BY 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons
Photo: Lilikanici at Romanian Wikipedia., Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons
Bogdan Petriceicu Hasdeu was a linguist, historian, journalist and writer, and a member of the Romanian Academy. He was born in Bessarabia, then part of the Russian Empire, and later worked in Iași, Bucharest and Câmpina. His unfinished dictionary, the Etymologicum Magnum Romaniae, is a milestone of Romanian linguistics.
Link with MoldovaHasdeu was born in 1838 in Cristinești, in the north of Bessarabia, the historical region most of which now forms the Republic of Moldova, and Chișinău's municipal library bears his name.
Hasdeu was born on 26 February 1838 in Cristinești, in Hotin district in northern Bessarabia, then a governorate of the Russian Empire. The village is now called Kerstentsi and lies in Ukraine's Chernivtsi oblast. His father, Alexandru Hâjdeu, was a writer himself. Bogdan studied law at the University of Kharkiv.
The link with Moldova
In 1858 he settled in Iași as a teacher and librarian; the city was then still the capital of the Principality of Moldavia. In 1863 he moved to Bucharest. There he built up a remarkably varied body of work: a monograph on Prince Ioan Vodă cel Cumplit (1865), the historical drama Răzvan și Vidra, the directorship of the State Archives (1876) and a chair in philology at the University of Bucharest (1878). In 1886 the first volume of the Etymologicum Magnum Romaniae appeared, an encyclopaedic dictionary of Romanian that never got beyond the letter B. He became a member of the Romanian Academy in 1877 and a foreign member of the Russian Academy of Sciences in 1883.
After the death of his only daughter, Iulia, in 1888, he fell under the spell of spiritualism. He withdrew to Câmpina, where he fitted out a manor house as a temple to his beliefs and to her memory. He died there in 1907 and was buried in Bellu Cemetery in Bucharest.
Where you will find him
In Chișinău the municipal library bears his name: the Biblioteca Municipală B.P. Hasdeu goes back to the public city library that mayor Carol Schmidt founded in 1877. The library also publishes its own academic journal, Bibliopolis.
Key facts
- 1838: born in Cristinești (Bessarabia)
- 1858: teacher and librarian in Iași
- 1877: member of the Romanian Academy
- 1886: first volume of the Etymologicum Magnum Romaniae
- 1907: died in Câmpina
