Talk:Magda Lupescu

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[edit] Limerick

Does the recently added limerick really belong in an encyclopedia article? -- Jmabel | Talk 01:35, May 7, 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Name, Childhood

Is there any evidence that she was ever "Elena Wolff"? I know her father was born "Wolff", but he apparently changed it to "Lupescu". Does anyone have a decent citation on this either way? I'm rather inclined to move this to Magda Lupescu, which I believe is how she is almost universally known.

Also, I gather that a lot about her childhood is shrouded in mystery and controversy (for example, she went to a very elite Roman Catholic school, quite unusual for the daughter of a Jew, and there is a lot of speculation about how she was admitted, whether she or her father had a patron of some sort). Does anyone have anything citable on any of this? -- Jmabel | Talk 07:09, 3 November 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Easterman Is Problematic

There are several problems with Easterman, from whom most of the material for the article comes.

(1) Name: Her name was Elena Lupescu. Calling her "Wolff" was a propaganda device, analogous to calling Hitler "Schicklgruber". "Elena", of course, was the Romanian form of Helen.

(2) Father's surname: The original surname may have been "Wolff", or it may have been "Grünberg" or "Grunsberg". It's even possible that "Wolff" was an invention of Elena Lupescu's adversaries. In 19th cent. Romania, some baptised Jews took surnames which, rather than being translations of their Jewish surnames, were connected to the place of baptism (town or church) or to the officiating priest.

(3) Father's religion: Other sources state he converted to Christianity (probably at the same time he changed his name to "Lupescu"); his wife was already a convert. This is the most parsimonious assumption, and removes any mystery about his owning a drugstore. Given Romania's circumstances, it's not surprising that no record of his conversion survived.

Morever, Easterman misunderstands the issue. It's not that Jews were not considered "Romanian"; rather, it was an issue of citizenship: at the time, a Jew could not become a Romanian citizen except by an act of Parliament. However, as in other countries in Eastern Europe, there was a great deal of corruption, and a big gap between the law as enacted in the capital, and the way it was put in practice in the rest of the country.

Some time ago, a Romanian newspaper (Ziua, Bucharest, 2003/02/15) published a police report about Elena Lupescu, dated 1935/06/29, in which her father was described as "Nuham Grunsberg, baptised Nicolae Lupescu" [1]. However, the document's authenticity may be doubtful.

(4) Elena Lupescu's education: First, there was no "second-rank nobility" in Romania. There were great landowners, some of whom could trace their ancestry back to the 18th cent., but there was no nobility in Western sense, and there was no "gentry" in the Hungarian or Polish sense. Second, anti-Semitism in Romania at that time was closer to medieval anti-Semitism rather than to the modern, racial type. So Elena Lupescu would have found no problem in being accepted as a student at a school run by German nuns; on the contrary, as the German-speaking Catholic daughter of an Austrian-born mother, she would have been precisely the kind of pupil "Diaconesele" were looking for.

(5) Her first marriage: I can find no source confirming Tampeanu's "high-born parentage". At any rate, the regulation prohibiting army officers from marrying Jews would not have been applicable in this instance, because Lupescu was the Christian daughter of Christian parents.

So, once again, nothing unusual and no real mystery.

(6) "Magda": According to a different story (I believe it's in Robert St John's reminiscences), "Magda" was Bucharest slang for a prostitute, and it was yet another invention of her enemies. Aleksis 03:07, 19 August 2006 (UTC)

I think Easterman may be problematic on several of these points, and I would welcome other bettter sources.
  • On point 1, you are simply agreeing with Easterman.
  • On point 2, I've heard the "Grünberg" / "Grunsberg" claims elsewhere, and they could well be true. But I've never seen anything particularly citable on it. Do you have something?
  • On point 3, if you have a source for this, great. Yes, I agree that it is "the most parsimonious assumption".
  • On your comment that begins "Morever, Easterman misunderstands the issue…" I don't see where you are disagreeing with Easterman. He discusses the citizenship issue at some length and, as far as I can tell, accurately. But clearly "Romanian" in the sense of the 1874 law applied precisely to citizenship. If you think this is unclear in the article and want to reword, feel free.
  • It looks like there is quite a bit of information in that linked article from Ziua. We should probably see what we can mine from that.
  • On point 4: I have no independent knowledge of the "Diaconesele" school other than what I read in Easterman. Your "parsimonious assumption" in point 3 woud go a certain distance to explain things. I agree that in the time of Lupescu's childhood anti-Semitism in Romania would have been more against people of Jewish faith than of Jewish blood. Still, Easterman seemed pretty confident that the "taint" of even Jewish ancestry would have been an issue at that particular school unless something outweighed it. I'd love to have a citation more recent and scholarly on this. Do you have anything?
  • On point 5, agreed, the "parsimonious assumption" is looking quite good; again, is there a citable source for it?
  • On point 6, yes, for obvious reasons, in most of the Christian world a "Magdalene" can mean a prostitute—nothing specific to Bucharest about that—but I'll admit to doubting its relevance here. If you have something citable on this being a possible origin of her nickname, I'll probably continue to be skeptical, but I won't object to adding it to the article as another theory.
I'm at a bit of a liability here: I'm on the West Coast of the U.S., not exactly a great place to find books on interbellum Romanian history, so except for what my own book collection and the paltry few things I've found in the public library or the University of Washington Library, I've been largely at a loss for sources. I agree that Easterman has a few weird theories on Lupescu; elsewhere, on more public figures, he seems more reliable. Most of what I've seen on the Internet about Carol II and Lupescu seems to me even less reliable than Easterman: the contempt for both of them practically drips off the page (well, screen), and much of what is said is so clearly so wrong (or oblivious to context) that I hesitate to assume they got anything right. -- Jmabel | Talk 03:58, 20 August 2006 (UTC)

I do plan to edit the article, but I haven't had time yet, and there are a few other references I want to check first.

Regarding Easterman, I am at a disadvantage: I read it some time ago, and I don't have it at hand now, so I can't verify what it actually says. So, instead of "Easterman" I should have said, "Easterman as quoted in this article". For instance, on (1) the article says that Elena's father changed his name from Grünberg to Wolff, and the source for this appears to be Easterman. That's what I'm disagreeing with.

On (3), most sources I know are in agreement, but they are either general references (e.g., Ionescu), or mention the subject tangentially (e.g., Pakula).

Regarding Easterman's misunderstanding, I can only judge on his views as reflected in the article; that's why I posted to the discussion rather than editing the article.

Regarding the police report in the "Ziua" article, it is very interesting, but I have some doubts regarding its authenticity.

On (4), I'm afraid I have no quotable source. Regarding Romanian conditions in general, Easterman (in common with many other Western, and particularly Anglophone, authors) simply doesn't understand them, or interprets the situation at the turn of the century in terms of developments of the 1930s and '40s. Sources which would help understand this would not be suitable for this article. On the specifics of the "Diaconesele" I have only a personal communication. Some time ago I met an elderly Jewish lady, born in Romania of Austrian Jewish parents. She was 10 or 15 years younger than Lupescu, but she was educated at the "Diaconesele", of which she had fond recollections. Unfortunately, the lady has passed away. At any rate, such a source is clearly unsuitable for Wikipedia.

On (5), I'm not sure what source is needed. Lupescu wasn't Jewish, therefore the regulation wasn't relevant in her case.

On (6), apparently, the usage of "Magda" as synonym of "prostitute" was specific to that time (much like "John" is in US slang a the client of a prostitute). Aleksis 14:55, 20 August 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Lycée “Gheorghe Lazăr”

Comparing to the Lycée “Gheorghe Lazăr” seems quite arbitrary. I don't know a ton about the "Diaconesele", but I know the Lycée “Gheorghe Lazăr” well, and it is not a religious institution, for starters. To the best of my knowledge it never concerned itself any more with the ethnicity of its students than would have been almost universal at the time (which is to say, like most European and American universities of the time, it would have had some restrictive quotas), and its elitism was always more based on academic strength than the familial connections of its students. - Jmabel | Talk 05:08, 29 August 2006 (UTC)

Re Lazar "is not a religious institution", two issues. First, keep in mind the enormous changes which have occurred over the years in Romania. What a school in Bucharest is today is entirely different to what it was before WWI, even if it has the same name and it is housed in the same building. Second, the "Diaconeselor" and the other schools run by the Institutul Sf Maria were not religious institutions! So I think the comparison is quite valid. I suggest consulting Livezeanu for more details, it's a very instructive study. Of course, data about the "Diaconeselor" would be preferable, but I haven't found any so far. Aleksis 15:38, 29 August 2006 (UTC)

Really? With that name it wasn't a religious school? So it had a lay faculty? - Jmabel | Talk 01:20, 31 August 2006 (UTC)

The school was on Str. Diaconeselor, later Spiru Haret. (Making assumptions based on the school's name is unsafe -- e.g., I don't think that any saint ever graduated from Sf. Sava.) I don't have data on the faculty, but, since the school was run by nuns, I'd assume the school was staffed mostly, if not exclusively, by nuns. How is that relevant? Aleksis 20:00, 3 September 2006 (UTC)

OK, didn't know the name came from a street, just knew the name and thought I was right in recollecting that it was staffed by nuns. That didn't exactly suggest a secular institution. Indeed, it can't have been all that secular if it was staffed by nuns. But there's really no point to pursuing this further till someone can track down a decent reference. I don't have a lot of chance to do that from Seattle (not exactly a trove of works on Romania). - Jmabel | Talk 06:41, 4 September 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Birthdate

The claim of a birthdate down to a particular day is simply absurd. Yes, one normally good source gives this date. And other normally good sources give other dates. The article used to say, accurately, "Her birth year is variously given as 1895, 1896, 1899, or 1902". It now, absolutely misleadingly, gives the single date 15 September 1895. - Jmabel | Talk 08:26, 2 March 2007 (UTC)

Time magazine wrote "In 1947, the ex-King was 53 years old. Magda never told anyone her age, but it was at least 50." [2] Britannica says "1896?" [3], as does the Columbia Encyclopedia. [4] I think we should do the same: we can indicate these various possibilities (including the one currently in the article and any others we may encounter in usually acceptable sources) in a footnote. - Jmabel | Talk 08:44, 2 March 2007 (UTC)

Given lack of response (and another arbitrary, uncited change of birthdate in the meanwhile), I have edited accordingly. - Jmabel | Talk 08:01, 21 March 2007 (UTC)

[edit] POV Footnotes

Several of the footnotes are rather POV. For example:

Many sources give her name as “Elizei”. That is an obvious misunderstanding, caused probably by an original author who did not speak Romanian. In Romanian, “Elizei” is the genitive case of “Eliza”; thus, the phrase “Eliza’s daughter” is in Romanian “fiica Elizei”, just as “Mary’s son” is in Romanian “fiul Mariei”. “Eliza” is, of course, the Romanian form of “Elise”.

Doubtless largely true (although "Romanian form of “Elise”" is a bit odd: "Eliza" is probably a more common name in English than "Elise", which is more French, and all are variants of "Elisabeth" / "Elisabeta" / etc. But who are the "many sources" and whose voice is saying "obvious misunderstanding"?

No author has ever explained why Elena Lupescu’s father should have changed his name from “Grünberg” to “Wolff”. It appears more likely that the name Wolff, which is the approximate German or Yiddish equivalent of Lupescu, was an invention of Elena Lupescu’s detractors.

"No author": that's audacious. Who is speaking, who claims a comprehensive knowledge of the relevant literature? And, above all, "It appears more likely" to whom?

It's really hard to get decent sources on anything about her birth and childhood. Britannica clearly gets a lot wrong: they give her birthname as "Magda Wolff". They are almost certainly wrong on "Wolff" and absolutely certainly wrong on "Magda", a nickname she acquired no earlier than the 1920s. So this does call for judicious handling of sources, and it is hard to avoid falling into some original research here, but we should still be circumspect.

This is by no means an exhaustive list of problems. Several other footnotes (and some parts of the article proper) have similar problems. - Jmabel | Talk 07:58, 21 March 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Limerick

She is also the subject of a bit of doggerel:
Have you heard about Magda Lupescu
Who came to Romania’s rescue?
It’s a wonderful thing
To be under a king —
Is democracy better, I esk you?

In: The Limerick, 1700 examples, with notes variants and index, by Gershon Legman (ed.) ISBN 8148-0699-6

The above piece is removed from the "Trivia" secion, until clarification: the title of the book does not match the author. ISBN is invalid. Please reinsert only after checking with the book (not with some stupid website.) `'Míkka 01:49, 7 August 2007 (UTC)