GEOGRAFI ROMÂNI TRANSILVĂNENI ÎN ATENUAREA „NELINIŞTII SPAŢIILOR”1: LAURIAN SOMEŞAN
ALEXANDRU PĂCURAR2
1 Sintagma aparţine lui Victor Jinga (1995, op. cit. p. 7).
2 Babeş-Bolyai University, Faculty of Geography, Clinicilor Street, no. 5-7, Cluj-Napoca-400006, Romania, e-mail: alexandru.pacurar@ubbcluj.ro
ABSTRACT. – Transylvanian Romanian Geographers Mitigating “Restless
Spaces”: Laurian Someşan. Professor Laurian Someşan, one of the foremost
representatives of Cluj School of Geography, was born in a numerous family in Monor, a village in the former border area of Năsăud. School and education were highly praised in his family. The child, then the young man Laurian proved to be receptive and diligent at school, succeeding by his own means to graduate the high school and then the university studies in Geography and History at ”King Ferdinand I” University of Cluj. In the third year of his university studies he was employed as an instructor at the Institute of Geography belonging to the Cluj University. He was exceptionally prepared professionally but he also had a vivid national and civic awareness, proven since he was a teenager and wholheartedly participated to the Great National Assembly in Alba Iulia on the 1st of December 1918. Faithful to George Vâlsan, his schoolmaster, Laurian
Someşan proved to be one of the most active supporters of Romanian realities, in Transylvania and nation-wide. Blocked at a certain moment in his professional upswing, he chose to fill a position at the Department of Economic Geography at the Cluj Academy of High Commercial and Industrial Studies. As a result of the Second Vienna Diktat, he followed the Cluj University in its refuge at Sibiu and Timișoara, as well as the Commercial Academy at Brașov. At the Commercial Academy in Brașov he was employed as a result of a contest and succeeded to become associate professor (1943) and full professor (12 March 1947). Due to his qualities, he was chosen Rector of the Commercial Academy in Brașov, a position which he had for 1947-1948. In the meantime, Romania was in full process of becoming a communist country under the Soviet occupation, and the Commercial Academy became fully ”fixed” in Brașov by act of law. Due to the acceleration of the Stalinization process of Romania, he was removed from university educational institutions, and was even imprisoned by the communists (1952-1954). He was marginalized for a period of time, but
later he was cleared and reintegrated as a… lecturer at the Pedagogical
Institute of Suceava.
Keywords: „Upper Dacia” (since 1927 „King Ferdinand I”) University of Cluj,
George Vâlsan, Institute of Geography, geopolitics, Cluj Academy of High Commercial and Industrial Studies, parental family universe, Great National Assembly in Alba Iulia on the 1st of December 1918, Second