---
title: "Francisc Rainer"
chunk: 6/6
source: "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Francisc_Rainer"
category: "reference"
tags: "science, encyclopedia"
date_saved: "2026-05-05T04:03:18.807273+00:00"
instance: "kb-cron"
---

== Legacy ==
Rainer was generally well regarded by the communist regime, which existed in Romania until the 1989 Revolution. His texts on science and society were collected and preserved, against Rainer's final wish that they should all be burned.  Some were carried in the first issues of Contemporanul review, from September 1946. In 1948, the corpus was published by the academy as four volumes, together with critical essays and memoirs edited by Marta Rainer and Mihail Sevastos. However, his anthropological museum, assigned to Popa and later to Milcu, was poorly staffed by the communist supervisors and faced closure. Communist supervisors such as Mihail Roller suspected that Rainer had created the anthropology research center to promote racism, but Milcu was able to convince them otherwise, and even obtained funds for an anthropological study of Romanian ethnogenesis. Despite other political obstacles and the communist rejection of anthropology as an "abstract intellectual game", cultural anthropologist Vasile Caramelea was able to obtain approval for further research, and expanded the institute's contribution to social science.
A biography of Rainer was published by Ilie Th. Riga, in 1966, at Editura Științifică. It revealed to the public glimpses of Rainer's diaries, which had been preserved by Marta Rainer. Another encomium, signed by Th. Enăchescu, saw print in the academic journal Studii și Cercetări Antropologice in 1970. In 1979, at Editura Eminescu, Brătescu and Mihai Neagu Basarab published Rainer's diaries and letters, which were received with great interest by the intellectual community, including Geo Bogza, Constantin Noica, and Nicolae Steinhardt, but less enthusiastically by the general public. As later noted by Brătescu, regular readers found Rainer's thoughts on "the coherence of the Cosmos" to be "pretentious banalities".
Rainer continued to be held in high regard after the Revolution, when light was shed on various other aspects of his work. A 2001 exhibit of his skulls collection at Galeria Catacomba made a point of reintroducing his work to the cultural circles of the day. The anthropological center that Rainer helped established was renamed in his honor in 2007. A street in the Cotroceni neighborhood of Bucharest is also named after him.

== Notes ==

== References ==
Constantin Bălăceanu-Stolnici, "Ștefan Milcu, un model", in Andrei Kozma, Cristiana Glavce, Constantin Bălăceanu-Stolnici (eds.), Antropologie și interdisciplinaritate. Editura Niculescu, Bucharest, 2014, p. 7 ff., ISBN 978-973-748-855-8
Gheorghe Brătescu, Ce-a fost să fie. Notații autobiografice. Humanitas, Bucharest, 2003, ISBN 973-50-0425-9OCLC 54985202
Maria Bucur, Eugenie și modernizare în România interbelică. Polirom, Iași, 2005, ISBN 973-681-806-3
M. Hînganu, "Francisc Iosef Rainer", in Eugen Târcoveanu, Constantin Romanescu, Mihai Lițu (eds.), 125 de ani de învăţământ medical superior la Iași. Ed. Gr. T. Popa, Iași, 2004, ISBN 978-973790-670-0
Adrian Majuru, "Rainer. Biografia unei personalități universale", in Revista Medicală Română, n.4/2013, p. 281 ff.
Vintilă Mihăilescu, "The Legacies of a 'Nation-Building Ethnology': Romania", in Dorle Dracklé, Iain R. Edgar, Thomas K. Schippers (eds.), Educational Histories of European Social Anthropology. Berghahn Books, New York City & Oxford, 2003, p. 208 ff., ISBN 1-57181-905-3
Grigore T. Popa, "Note. Asupra descoperirii sistemului portal hipofizar", in Revista Fundațiilor Regale, n.1/1945, p. 229 ff.
Ilie Th. Riga, Gheorghe Călin, Dr. Fr. I. Rainer. Editura Științifică, Bucharest, 1966
Henri H. Stahl, Amintiri și gînduri din vechea școală a monografiilor sociologice. Editura Minerva, Bucharest, 1981
Florentina Țone, "Exercițiu de recuperare: Portretul sanitar al comunei Fundul Moldovei în vara anului 1928", in Transilvania, n.11–12/2012, p. 64 ff.
Ion Vitner, "Filosofia științifică a Prof. Francisc J. Rainer", in Studii. Revistă de Științe-Filosofie-Arte, I, n.1/1948, p. 100 ff.
Ion Zamfirescu, "Fr. J. Reiner (1874–1944)", in Revista Română de Sociologie, IX, n.1–2/1998, p. 155 ff.