Alexandru I. Lapedatu (14 September 1876 – 30 August 1950) was Cults and Arts and State minister of Romania, President of the Senate of Romania, member of the Romanian Academy, its president and general secretary.
Family
Alexandru Lapedatu was the son of Ioan Alexandru Lapedatu, with a Ph.D. from the University of Brussels, Romanian poet, writer, journalist and professor for classical languages at the Higher Greek-Orthodox Romanian College in Brașov (today, Andrei Şaguna National College).
Alexandru Lapedatu had a twin brother, Ion Lapedatu, economist, politician and Governor of the National Bank of Romania. The twins became orphans when they were one and a half years old. Their mother could only rely on a modest social help from the Brașov municipality and some support from her family.
Alexandru Lapedatu married Victoria Pană (1878–1965) on 1 June 1911; a widow with two children from her first marriage, Mircea and Maria Lipăneanu. They had a daughter, Ana Victoria, also known as Mica (1914–1999).
Education
Alexandru Lapedatu started 1883 the primary school in the village in which he was born, then he continued school in Brașov, moved from Austria-Hungary to the Kingdom of Romania, in Iași, came back to Brașov to start his college, but then returned to Iași and received his bachelor's degree from the Central College in Iași. He studied at the Faculty of Philology and Philosophy of the University of Bucharest, graduating in 1904 and getting a Diploma in Geography and History in 1910.
Professional career
Alexandru Lapedatu sustained himself financially during his studies by giving private lessons or getting various jobs, like night corrector, then as columnist with the journal "România Jună (Young Romania)" (1899) and as a teacher for the Romanian language at the French College and the Lolliot College (1901–1903).
He started publishing national history studies already as a student, winning prizes set by University Foundation "Carol I" for his work on the Romanian princes Radu cel Frumos and Vlad-Vodă Călugărul, as well as being the university laureate and winner of the important "Hillel" price for his work "Istoria breslelor la români" ("The History of the Romanian Guilds").
Upon his graduation in 1903, Alexandru Lapedatu was offered an entry position as a clerk at the Library of the Romanian Academy, section for manuscripts, where he worked between 1903 and 1908; at the same time, he became a substitute professor at the Saint Sava National College in Bucharest.
He was appointed Secretary of the Historic Monuments Commission in 1904, becoming a member on 12 August 1919, being then nominated President of its Transylvania section (1921–1941) and elected President of the Historic Monuments Commission on 15 October 1941, performing this function until the commission has been disbanded by the communist regime in 1948.
Alexandru Lapedatu was active in a great number of commissions and associations. He was nominated secretary of the Romanian Historical Commission in 1909, and became member from 1911 to 1919, re-confirmed by royal decree in 1924.
He was the secretary of the Committee of the "Steaua" Association established by Spiru Haret, editing its last 27 monographs, from No. 20 to No. 47, mostly with historical content. He was elected in the Society "Arta Românească" in 1909, was an active member of the Romanian Royal Geographical Society (1915), was elected honorific member of the Romanian Numismatic Society (1920), held the Presidency of the Commission for Museum Reform in Transylvania (1921), was appointed by the Ministry of Public Education as President of the Commission for the Organization of the State Archives in Transylvania, was nominated in the Commission for Introducing National Toponyms in Transylvania, Banat and Partium, in the Commission for the Verification of the Valuable Assets and Public Goods of the Previous Hungarian Monarchy and from the other territories united with the Romanian State (1922). On 9 November 1922 he was proclaimed honorific member of the Religious Historical-Archaeological Society in Chișinău and he was a permanent delegate in the Committee of the Transylvanian Museum Society () (1925).