Interview with Prof. Ernest Latham by Dan Dimancescu

Prof. Ernest Latham – Historian and Retired Foreign Service Officer. He served at the U.S. Embassy in Romanian early in the 1980s and developed a strong academic interest in Romanian history and culture. In more recent years he taught at the Babes-Bolyai Univ in Romania. The interview by Dan Dimancescu in Bran, Romania, is divided into seven segments.

Filmed by Nicholas Dimancescu – Copyright © Kogainon Films, Cambridge, MA

Latham points out quite persuasively that Romanian, unlike most other European nation-states, never enjoyed a long and pervasive urban-legacy. The first true ‘Romanian’ city (Bucharest) dates as an large urban center only in the middle 1850s though founded several centuries earlier. The absence of such a tradition is manifest in cultural and political behavior.

Lft: Atheneul Roman Concert Hall (Bucharest) – Click on photo to enlarge

5: A ‘Non-Urban’ Legacy– 6:10 mn