---
title: "Sextil Pușcariu"
chunk: 8/9
source: "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sextil_Pușcariu"
category: "reference"
tags: "science, encyclopedia"
date_saved: "2026-05-05T04:03:14.223615+00:00"
instance: "kb-cron"
---

=== Final years ===
A member of the Permanent Committee of Linguists, Pușcariu was admitted to the Saxonian Academy of Sciences and Humanities in 1936 and in 1939 became the second Romanian, after Dimitrie Cantemir, to join the Prussian Academy of Sciences. In addition to his activity as a propagandist, he worked on his definitive tract of sociolinguistics, Limba română ("The Romanian Language"), put out by Editura Fundațiilor Regale. According to philologist Pompiliu Constantinescu, the work exceeded "the narrow bounds of specialization", turning the historical development of language and into the ethnographic "mirror" of Romanian culture and civilization. Limba română, which saw print in 1940, investigated proto-Romanian (designated by Pușcariu under the name of străromână), and spoke of a large Sprachbund comprising all Eastern Romance languages; his theory identifying Istro-Romanian as a Western variety of the language was since corrected by his pupil Petrovici. His views on the topic were also being challenged from 1941 by Alexandru Rosetti, who noted that Aromanian was highly distinct from its point of origin. Other parts of the book broke ground in the professional study of the Romanian lexis, with a phonaesthetic retrospective on the national poet Mihai Eminescu and a sociological analysis of neologisms. It also featured Pușcariu's newer musings on onomastics, recording the influence of popular novels on baptismal names for Romanian girls.
Fleeing aerial bombardments, Pușcariu spent 1944 with his daughter and in-laws in Bran. In August, he heard news of the 1944 Romanian coup d'état and the country's changeover to the Allies. As noted by Maria Pușcariu, the entire family was silent and worried about the future, whereas people in the streets celebrated. In September, the left-leaning Romanian Writers' Society expelled Sextil from its ranks, thus signaling his marginalization. In October, a decree compelled Pușcariu to retire, including from the Museum he had led for a quarter century. The same month, the Communist Party press began targeting Pușcariu for his political affiliations: România Liberă published an article denouncing him as a traitor, while Contemporanul included him on a list of "war criminals not yet on trial", a category also including Ion Petrovici and Gheorghe I. Brătianu. This opened the way to further attacks in the Communist press, where terms such as "fascist" and "enemy of the people" were used to target the linguist.
In September, Leonora died, reportedly of shock from witnessing the arrival of Soviet occupiers and the deportation of German civilians. Deeply affected by this loss, Sextil remained isolated in Bran. In late December, he had a stroke that left him unable to use his right hand and forced him to learn to type with his left. He still found protection from Princess Ileana, who befriended his son Radu. As Ileana recalls in her memoirs, she and surgeon Cornel Cărpinișan managed to exaggerate Pușcariu's medical condition, which prevented the authorities from arresting him; Cărpinișan also obtained a reprieve from a personal friend, the Communist potentate Ion Gheorghe Maurer.
During his remaining three years, Pușcariu continued to be active in writing his memoirs and working on the dictionary project. In January 1948, as the Romanian royal family prepared to leave the country permanently, following the establishment of a Communist regime, he was sent an invitation to leave his residence in Bran and join them in exile. However, he refused, stating he wished to remain in his native country. He had been placed on trial by the new regime but not yet sentenced when he died in Bran on 5 May 1948, of heart failure. Two days later, he was buried in Brașov's Groaveri Cemetery. No special honors were on show, though Lapedatu attended and spoke on behalf of the Academy.
Later that year, Lapedatu was allowed to praising Pușcariu's memory at the Academy's general meeting. The vacant seat was taken up by literary historian George Călinescu, in May 1948. However, in June, Pușcariu was posthumously stripped of his Academy membership, as part of a larger purge of living anti-communists. In November, the self-exiled writer Mircea Eliade still eulogized the deceased, noting: "Almost all the work done in Romanian philology over the last twenty-five years is thanks to him. He organized the University of Cluj, with its admirable Museum of the Romanian Language; he founded Daco-Romania magazine and strove to establish the Folklore Archive. Sextil Pușcariu believed, as did Lucian Blaga's generation, in a major destiny for Romanian spirituality".