Iuliu Barasch

Juliu Barasch, Lithography by Josef Kriehuber, 1863

Iuliu Barasch or Baraş (1815—1863) was a Galician-born Jewish physician and writer who made his career in Romania.

Biography

Born in Brody into a Hasidic family as Yehuda ben Mordehai Barasch. He studied Philosophy at the University of Leipzig and took his doctorate at the University of Berlin.

Barasch tried to settle in Moldavia, but the authorities refused to give him the right to practice medicine and as such he settled in Wallachia, being firstly, in 1842, a physician in Călăraşi, then in 1845, in Craiova and finally settling in Bucharest, starting teaching natural sciences at the Saint Sava Academy in 1852 and then a professor at Bucharest's School of Medicine and Pharmacy.

Beside working as a doctor, became a radical and ardent Romanian patriot. A friend of C.A. Rosetti and Ion Heliade Rădulescu.

He was a popularizer of medical science and of natural science in general, and the first Jewish Romanian journalist. In 1856—1859 he edited a journal Isis sau Natura (Isis or Nature), the first popular science magazine in Romania. The magazine published studies of astronomy, hypothetical articles about the plurality of worlds or about the most popular inventions of the time, such as aerostat and "submarine ships".

In 1857, he started work editing Israelitul Român, a magazine that was to remain in print for almost 100 years. Barasch was also the founder of the first children's hospital in Bucharest.

He is memorialized in Bucharest's historically Jewish Văcăreşti neighborhood: the Baraşeum Theater, now home to the State Jewish Theater; the adjoining Baraşeum clinic; and the street that runs in front of the theater, formerly Ionescu de la Brad, now str. Dr. Iuliu Barasch.

Publications

Books

• Minunile naturei (3 vol., 1852)
• Mineralogia, după Belez (1854)
• Asfixia sau leşinul (1854)
• Botanica, după Belez (1856)
• Higiena populară (1857)
• Zoologia (1857)
• Debora, melodrama (1858)
• Cărticica altoiului (1859)
• Manual de silvicultură (1861)

Journals

• Isis sau Natura (1856-1859)
• Natura (1861-1863)
• Israelitul Român (1857-)

References

• Bercovici, Israil, O sută de ani de teatru evreiesc în România ("One hundred years of Yiddish/Jewish theater in Romania"), 2nd Romanian-language edition, revised and augmented by Constantin Măciucă. Editura Integral (an imprint of Editurile Universala), Bucharest (1998), 185. ISBN 973-98272-2-5. See the article on the author for further publication information.
• Dimitrie R. Rosetti (1897) Dicţionarul contimporanilor, Editura Lito-Tipografiei "Populara"
• Florin Manolescu, Literatura S.F., Editura Univers, Bucharest, 1980