Take or Tache Ionescu (; born Dumitru Ghiță Ioan and also known as Demetriu G. Ionnescu; – 21 June 1922) was a Romanian centrist politician, journalist, lawyer and diplomat, who also enjoyed reputation as a short story author. Starting his political career as a radical member of the National Liberal Party (PNL), he joined the Conservative Party in 1891, and became noted as a social conservative expressing support for several progressive and nationalist tenets. Ionescu is generally viewed as embodying the rise of middle-class politics inside the early 20th century Kingdom of Romania (occasionally described as Takism), and, throughout the period, promoted a project of Balkan alliances while calling for measures to incorporate the Romanian-inhabited Austro-Hungarian regions of Transylvania, Banat and Bukovina. Representing his own faction inside the Conservative Party, he clashed with the group's leadership in 1907–1908, and consequently created and led his own Conservative-Democratic Party.
An Anglophile promoting an alliance with the Triple Entente, he rallied politicians and intellectuals in support for the idea of Romania entering World War I. When this was accomplished through the 1916–1918 campaign, Ionescu joined the Ion I. C. Brătianu government in Iași as Minister without portfolio. After his country was defeated by the Central Powers and signed the Treaty of Bucharest, he left for Paris and London, organizing a Romanian National Committee to campaign for Greater Romania during the Peace Conference. In 1919, his Conservative-Democrats formed an alliance with the People's League, and Ionescu became Foreign Affairs Minister in the second Alexandru Averescu executive, before briefly holding the office of Premier in 1921–1922. During the period, he successfully campaigned in favor of the Little Entente.
He was the brother of renowned surgeon and political activist Thoma Ionescu, who was his collaborator on several political projects. Take Ionescu is also remembered for promoting Nicolae Titulescu, who went on to have a successful career as a diplomat and politician, and for his friendships with the dramatist Ion Luca Caragiale and the Greek politician Eleftherios Venizelos.
Biography
Early life and politics
Born in Ploiești into a family of lower middle class origins, the eldest of four male children, he was the son of Ghiță Ioan, an entrepreneur who was facing insolvency, and his wife Eufrosina (or Frosa). Eufrosina was the descendant of Aromanian immigrants, and related to the Wallachian writer Ion Heliade Rădulescu.
While in Paris, Ionescu fell in love with an Englishwoman named Bessie Richards, whom he met a charity event, and to whom he dedicated his PhD thesis (La recherche de la paternité naturelle, "Research into Natural Parenthood"). He became President of the Bar association in Ilfov County (at a time when it included Bucharest), in which capacity he welcomed the first-ever Romanian woman lawyer, Sarmiza Bilcescu (1891).
Originally a member of the National Liberal Party (PNL), he was attracted to its Radical wing (led by C. A. Rosetti), One year later, while still in office, he left the PNL — this came at a time when opposition forces rallied against the policies of Premier Ion Brătianu, whom Ionescu had originally supported. In 1899, Ionescu took the side of Jewish scientist Lazăr Şăineanu, endorsing his naturalization in front of opposition from the antisemitic faction among the National Liberals, and helped bring the matter for renewed discussion in the Senate. He also helped the scholar earn credentials by overseeing his conversion from Judaism to the Romanian Orthodox Church, and serving as his godfather. However, by the end of the same year, Ionescu had mysteriously changed in mind: he voted in favor of complicating naturalization procedures for Jews and, as Education Minister, stripped Şăineanu of his honorary teaching position within the University of Bucharest.
From 1898, he began issuing the French-language newspaper La Roumanie, through which he publicized his own program, commonly referred to as Takism. but eventually came to oppose it; in a conversation with the PNL's Constantin Stere, who continued to support the idea, Ionescu declared: "instead of a foreign minister in Vienna, if Romania should join the Habsburgs, I would rather become a waiter in Chicago!". Additionally, Ionescu supported the Vlach cause in the Ottoman-ruled regions of the Balkans, and supported the recognition of a "Kutzovlach ethnicity". In this last instance, he caused a diplomatic incident when, during a 1905 official trip to Istanbul, he attempted to present Sultan Abdul Hamid II with such a project and was denied an audience — consequently refusing to be presented with an Ottoman decoration, he was ultimately received and his report was reviewed by the Porte. — the latter represented the party's Junimea faction, which had just re-entered the main Conservative Party after an independent existence under the name of Constitutional Party; Ionescu also repeatedly clashed with the other Constitutional leader, the influential literary critic Titu Maiorescu. Constantin Xeni, his future collaborator, argued that "the boyar wing of [the Conservative Party] had made life impossible for this son of an obscure bourgeois from Ploieşti". He held up estate leaseholders as a productive social class (arguing that, unlike peasants, "[they] do not consume their own income"), This followed a move by mainstream Conservatives to marginalize the pro-Ionescu faction. by the doctor Constantin Istrati, the writer Barbu Ştefănescu-Delavrancea, the journalist Nicolae Xenopol, the former mayor of Iaşi Gheorghe Lascăr, the landowners Constantin Cantacuzino Paşcanu and Alexandru Bădărău, He ultimately promised Luzzatti that all Jewish veterans of the Second Balkan War were going to be awarded Romanian citizenship, but the policy was overturned by the PNL's Ion I. C. Brătianu executive, coming to power in January 1914. Nevertheless, unlike the main Conservative group, his PCD soon began intense advocacy of joining the war effort against the Central Powers, calling for Romania to incorporate the Austro-Hungarian-ruled regions of Transylvania, Banat, and Bukovina Contending that Take Ionescu aimed to be "on all occasions, on the winning side, courting people in power", Rakovsky believed that his support for the Entente was conjectural: "Until yesterday, [he] was the man who continuously tied friendships with the Germans [...]. Anticipating victory for the Allies, [he] has now become their man, and, finding it difficult to return to his old sympathies, he threatens that, in case Russia were to fail, he would expatriate himself to America, the Romanian people having lost, in the eyes of such a "patriot", all interest once he would no longer have the hope of returning to power". Their adversary Christian Rakovsky accused Mille, a former socialist, of using his two dailies, Adevărul and Dimineaţa, as venues for Takist propaganda, and claimed that this was accomplished "under the mask of independence" (additionally, he stated: "[Ionescu] thus compensated for the weakness of his party, both in men and ideas, through corrupting the press"). In contrast, Ionescu's attitude, as paraphrased by Stephen Bonsal, was: "Our role is that of an unconditional ally of the democracies. We must not drive a bargain. We should and can rely on the appreciation of our allies when the victory is won". Being advised to maintain secrecy over the proceedings, he hid the reasons for his return by starting a rumor that the outbreak of typhoid fever in Sinaia had gotten out of control. According to Take Ionescu himself, his lodging had been destroyed on special orders from August von Mackensen in December 1916 In December 1919, answering to concerns that he was leading a risky path, Brătianu spoke out in Parliament against what he saw as demeaning "the role [the Romanian people] should have in the world". According to journalist Noti Constantinide, who visited him during his stay in Aix-les-Bains (March 1921), Ionescu, whom he called "the most intelligent person I ever met", was actively promoting the Romanian and Little Entente causes, seeking to sway public opinion in Allied countries. This came as the project for land reform provoked a standoff in Parliament, after the PNL persuaded King Ferdinand that Averescu had to resign, and Ionescu agreed to induce an artificial crisis for the general to hand over his mandate. The final diagnosis was "typhic ulcerous aortitis and internal abdominal angina". Expanding on this issue, he noted that both the derisive tone in Caragiale's works and Ionescu's career reflected, each in its own way, the growth in importance of a single social class, the "national bourgeoisie". Undergoing a name change during the Communist period, a section of the former Atena Street was assigned the name Take Ionescu in the wake of the 1989 Revolution.