Alexander C.° Cuza

CUZA, ALEXANDER C.° (1857–1946), Romanian nationalist and antisemitic leader. Cuza taught political economy at Jassy University (1900). From 1890, he combined law teaching with a political career devoted to the propagation of racial antisemitism and xenophobia. In 1895, he founded the Alliance antisémitique universelle in Bucharest, with N. Iorga and J. de Biez. In 1910, together with Iorga, he formed the proto-fascist National Democratic Party (NDP), based on the "National Christian" idea. The main points of the party's program were the elimination of the Jews from professional life, the prohibition against Jews settling in the villages, and their removal from the army. Between the two world wars, Cuza was the principal promoter of "*numerus clausus" and of racialism in academic circles and students' organizations, particularly at Jassy University, which became a focal point of antisemitism in Romania. In 1923, Cuza created out of the NDP the National Christian Defense League, a fascist formation which later gave birth to *Codreanu's *Iron Guard formed in 1930. In 1925 he was among the organizers of a secret European antisemitic conference which convened in Budapest. On Hitler's rise to power in Germany, the German Nazi Party supported Cuza's party, which united with O. Goga's agrarian national party in 1935 and became the National Christian Party (Partidul naţional-Creştin). In December 1937 Cuza helped Goga to set up a government which paved the way for Ion *Antonescu's dictatorship. Among Cuza's works are Naţionalitatea în art aˇ ("Nationality in Art," 1908); Scaderea Proporaţiei Creştine şi înmulţirea Jidanilor ("Decrease of the Christian Population and Increase of the Jews," 1910); Jidanii în Raˇsboiu ("The Jews in the War," 1919); Numerus Clausus (1923).

Sources: Encyclopaedia Judaica. © 2007 The Gale Group. All Rights Reserved.