Vasile Pogor

​

​

Vasile Pogor was born in Iași on August 20, 1833. He was recognized as a poet, translator, politician and one of the founders of the Junimea literary society.

 

Vasile Pogor senior, the politician's father, was from a noble family and owned estates both in Romania and in Bessarabia country where he met Zoița Cerchez, the mother of Vasile Pogor junior. Vasile Pogor had 3 more sisters. (Antonia, Eleonora and Smaranda)

 

Coming from an environment of high Moldovan society, the young Vasile Pogor has the best forms of education and studies at the French Malgouverne Institute, and at the age of 16 he is sent to Paris to continue his secondary education. He also travels to the German Confederation to enrich his studies and to broaden his views on German philosophy compared to the French one. He returned to France to pursue his doctorate at the University of Paris.

 

When he returned to Romania in 1857, he worked at the Iași Tribunal, and 2 years later at the Court of Appeal in the municipality where he was elected first president in 1869.

 

Junimea, the most famous literary society in Romania, was co-founded with 4 other writers of the time (Theodor Rosetti, Petre P. Carp, Iacob Negruzzi and Titu Maiorescu). The year of its establishment was 1863, and the headquarters were in Vasile Pogor's house, today the headquarters of the "Vasile Pogor" Museum. Convorbiri Literare being a literary magazine detached from the Junimea Society, it was a good medium through which Vasile Pogor distinguished himself with his own poems or translations of the great writers of the time.

 

Vasile Pogor's political career has risen since 1866, when he plotted to dethrone Alexandru Ioan Cuza. Immediately after Cuza's abdication, Pogor was appointed prefect of Iași and received a month later in the Masonic lodge of Iași "Steaua României".

In 1870 he was appointed Minister of Cults for a short time, and 10 years later he was elected mayor of Iasi. Between 1880 and 1894 he was voted 3 times the head of the municipal administration and held the position of mayor for 6 years. During this period, Pogor moved the mayor's office to the Roznovanu Palace, started the construction works for the National Theater in Iași, created 10 primary schools, paved the city streets and started the sewerage project for the city.

 

He died at the age of 72 in the spring of 1906 near Iași, on an estate of his family, in the village of Bucium.