Constantin C. Arion (also known as Costică Arion; June 18, 1855 – June 27, 1923) was a Romanian politician, affiliated with the National Liberal Party, the Conservative Party and, after 1918, the People's Party. He served two terms as Minister of Religion and Public Instruction, one term as Minister of Agriculture, and another one as Interior Minister before World War I. His career peaked in 1918, when he was Minister of Foreign Affairs.
A young lawyer who supported political reform, Arion moved progressively to the right, and, ca. 1885, became involved with the political club Junimea. As a Conservative policymaker and disciple of Alexandru Marghiloman, he rewrote legislation on education reform and brought the Romanian Orthodox Church under the control of its high clergy. Like Marghiloman, Arion supported the Central Powers during most of World War I, a position which seemed to carry most weight during the 1918 armistice. His participation in the Marghiloman government recovered for Romania the region of Bessarabia, but the subsequent return of Ententist forces made him a political suspect. He spent the remainder of his life as a marginal.
In addition to his presence in political life, Arion was an art patron, university professor, and philanthropist. He was the brother of Virgil Arion, and the father of Dinu C. Arion.
Biography
Early life and career
The Arions were an old Wallachian family, first attested in Brăila ca. 1696, and integrated into the boyar aristocracy in the mid-18th century. Its reputation was stained by two members: Constantin Eracle Arion and Anton I. Arion, who had committed massive bank fraud throughout the early 1870s.
Constantin (born in Bucharest on June 18, 1855) and Virgil C. Arion were the sons of Appellate Judge Constantin Arion and Sevastița, née Urlățeanu. Constantin C. followed in his father's footsteps, graduating in Law from the University of Paris (Doctorate in 1876) and in Political Science from Sciences Po. Upon his return to Romania, he was made Cabinet Secretary of Foreign Minister Vasile Boerescu, then head of Political Affairs, but left in 1881 to set up legal practice.
Two years later, he was also employed by the University of Bucharest Faculty of Law, where he lectured in business and admiralty law. He received tenure in 1913, and became editor of the academic journal, Revista Critică de Drept, Legislație și Jurisprudență ("Critical Review of Law, Legislation and Jurisprudence"). Virgil had a similar career in law and academia, while a third brother, Scarlat Arion, was a landowner and a Romanian consul in Bitola.
C. C. Arion made his debut in politics as a National Liberal, ran in the elections of 1884, and was elected to the Assembly of Deputies in Ilfov County. At the time, he was dedicated to the cause of representative democracy, and paid homage to the leadership of Romanian radicalism.
By the mid-1880s, C. C. Arion had become jaded with the ideals of liberalism, and was hostile toward National Liberal Premier, Ion Brătianu. During 1886, Arion, Take Ionescu and Nicolae Fleva were the main "United Opposition" agitators who tried to seal a pact with the Junimea conservatives, in an effort to topple the National Liberals. He first attended Junimea club meetings around 1885, when he met and befriended the Junimist leader, Titu Maiorescu. The group had past its prime, and, as Maiorescu recorded in his private notes, the sessions attended by Arion were "rather dull". The conservative association had been traditionally hostile toward Arion's "unproductive" and "lawyerly" liberalism. As Junimist poet-critic Mihai Eminescu once wrote, the Arion brothers were "the runts, the intellectual and moral plebs, ... everything basest and most degraded that one can expect to find in the cities of the Romanian nation".
In later years, Arion focused on his cultural projects. From 1896, he was president of the national school and public libraries board (Casa Şcoalelor), where he employed the services of poet George Coșbuc. His legal expertise was demanded in Romania v. Nicolae Georgescu, a cause célèbre for honor crime in Romania. Arion represented the civil party, Aurelia Stelorian, whom Georgescu had vitriolaged; his adversary in court was another famous lawyer, Barbu Ștefănescu Delavrancea. Arion and Delavrancea both were celebrity guests at the Bucharest lecture tour of Joséphin Péladan, the French mystic and novelist (1898).