1411, 3357 ROMANIA (Botoşani) - Mihai Eminescu (1850-1889)

1411 Mihai Eminescu at 19 year, in Prague, in 1869

Posted on 17.01.2015, 15.01.2020
On 15 January 1850 was born in the village of Ipoteşti, near of Botoşani (then located in the Principality of Moldavia), Mihail Eminovici, the seventh of eleven children of George and Raluca Eminovici. He spent his childhood in Botoşani and Ipoteşti, then he attended school in Cernăuţi, in Bucovina (then in  Austria-Hungary). The first evidence of Eminescu as a writer is from 1866, when he published the poem La mormântul lui Aron Pumnul (At the Grave of Aron Pumnul) in a booklet issued by the students on the occasion of the death of their teacher.

3357 The cover of the only volume
printed during Eminescu's life (1883)

Another poem was published in Iosif Vulcan's literary magazine Familia in Pest, and this began a steady series of published poems. Iosif Vulcan, who disliked the Slavic suffix "-ici" of the poet's last name, chose for him the more Romanian "nom de plume" Mihai Eminescu. Since 1867 he joined to some theatrical troupes as a clerk and prompter, and at long last he settled in  Bucharest, where became a clerk and copyist for the National Theater. He continued to write and publish poems, and began his novel Geniu pustiu (Wasted Genius), published posthumously in 1904.

2452 ROMANIA (Botoşani) - Images of Botoşani

2452 Botoşani: 1. Mihai Eminescu Park; 2. The historic center;
3. Uspenia Church; 4. The City Hall.

Located in northern Moldavia, at the junction of several commercial roads, Botoşani was between the 14th century and the 70s of the 19th century, a thriving center of trade and handicraft production, so in 1861 it was the third city of the United Principalities being surpassed only by Bucharest and Iaşi. After 1870 the city lost its importance, becoming an end of a secondary railway line. Between 1968 and 1992 experienced a new period of development, accompanied by a rapid population growth to the historical maximum of 126,145 inhabitants recorded in 1992.