Neagu Djuvara to be decorated by French state

Historian Neagu Djuvara will be awarded today the rank of Officer in the National Order of Arts and Letters by France’s ambassador to Bucharest, Henri Paul. Agerpres quoted a French Embassy press release saying the Romanian historian will be handed the distinction during a ceremony at the French ambassador’s residence. The French state decorates Djuvara for his contribution to making Romanians’ history known and for his activity as a writer and historian. An intellectual, diplomat and historian, the 94-year-old Djuvara is held as one of the most outstanding figures of contemporary Romanian culture. He was born in 1916 in Bucharest, into an Aromanian family. He earned a Letters degree and a Law degree from the Paris-Sorbonne University, in 1937 and 1940 respectively. He joined the Foreign Ministry by contest in May 1943 and was sent as a diplomatic courier to Sweden on August 23, 1944, over peace negotiations with Soviet Union. Having been implicated in absentia in a series of political trials in the autumn of 1947, he decided to remain abroad, being involved, until 1961, with various Romanian Diaspora organisations.