Neagu Bunea Djuvara (; 18 August 1916 – 25 January 2018) was a Romanian historian, essayist, philosopher, journalist, novelist, and diplomat. Biography Early life A native of Bucharest, he was descended from an aristocratic Aromanian family. His father, Marcel, a graduate of the Technical University of Berlin and a captain in the Romanian Royal Army's Engineer Corps, died of the Spanish flu in 1918; his mother, Tinca, was the last descendant of the Grădișteanu family of boyar origins (according to Djuvara, she was related to all boyar families in Wallachia). Djuvara's uncles Trandafir and Alexandru Djuvara were notable public figures. Djuvara was born during World War I; as an infant, he was taken by his family into refuge in Iași after the occupation of southern Romania by the Central Powers, and then, through Imperial Russia, into Belgium, where Trandafir Djuvara was Minister Plenipotentiary. He attended lycée in Nice, France, and graduated in Letters (1937) and Law (1940) from the University of Paris (his Law thesis dealt with the antisemitic legislation passed by the governments of King Carol II in Romania). Djuvara later stated that, at the time, his political sympathies veered towards the far right: he became a supporter of the Romanian fascist movement, the Iron Guard, and took part in the February 1934 riot against the French Radical-Socialist government of Édouard Daladier. During World War II, he returned to Romania, where he married and fathered a daughter. He joined the Romanian Armed Forces and was stationed in Ploiești under the Iron Guard's National Legionary government. Following the establishment of Ion Antonescu's dictatorship and the start of Operation Barbarossa (see Romania during World War II), as an officer cadet, he fought on the Eastern Front, saw action in Bassarabia and Transnistria, before being wounded in the arm during the Battle of Odessa (1941). He stated that he gave up his interest in the far right after a 1943 dialog with fellow diplomat Victor Rădulescu-Pogoneanu, who convinced Djuvara to become "a supporter of parliamentary democracy". Diplomat Subsequently, Djuvara decided to apply for office in the diplomatic corps, won the competition, and was sent by Foreign Minister Mihai Antonescu as a diplomatic courier to Sweden, on the very day Ion Antonescu was toppled by a coup d'état and Romania pulled out of the Axis Powers to join the Allies (August 23, 1944). In this capacity, he was instructed to communicate to the