Frédéric Damé

Born in France in 1849, Frédéric Damé lived in Romania in the 19th century.

Steliu Lambru, 12.04.2026, 14:00

Frédéric Damé, born in 1849 in Tonnerre, in northern France, was one of the Frenchmen living in Romania in the 19th century. He was a journalist, historian, philologist and translator who came to Romania in 1872, after the collapse of the Second French Empire, at the age of 23 and he ended up living the rest of his life in his new country. He was a prolific author of books and especially journalistic texts. One of Damé’s important books is “Bucharest in 1906”, republished recently. From it we learn about a capital city in full expansion and a country that had embarked on the path to modernization. Doina Ruști is an author of historical fiction inspired by the history of Bucharest:

“My generation only learned about Damé because of his debate with Iorga, that’s how Damé came to us. He wrote books about Romania, the city of Bucharest, and is the author of a splendid Romanian-French dictionary. Iorga kept reducing him to just this piece, but it is not at all negligible. It expresses very well the didactic spirit of this teacher, Frédéric Damé being a teacher at Sfântu Sava, being involved in a series of newspapers of his time, from the end of the 19th century and the beginning of the 20th century. In all these undertakings, he proves first and foremost a pedagogical spirit, which we see throughout all the works he wrote.”

Frédéric Damé fully integrated into Romania and made many friends. One of his closest friends was the historian Gheorghe Ionescu-Gion, who inspired Damé to write the volume. Doina Ruști.

“This book begins beautifully with a dedication to Ionescu-Gion. Damé writes in memory of his friend and in continuation of Ionescu-Gion’s book, The History of Bucharest. What he does further, what makes this French teacher extraordinary, is the fact that he brings a lot of very valuable and current information for the moment when the book was written in 1906. We are already in an era of great effervescence, of cosmopolitanism, I will not say, but also of nationalism that the polemic with Iorga will illustrate later.”

Every piece of writing provides the reader with information about the time in which it was produced, and Damé’s volume is no exception. Doina Ruști:

“From this book we learn what was happening at the moment when Damé was writing. We learn a lot of extremely precious information about shopping lists, about entire price lists, we see clearly what was eaten, what was bought in Bucharest at the beginning of the 20th century. There is also information related to numerous events that took place at that time, and they are so vivid that we see them in a way through Damé’s eyes. He is very organized, he is a didactic person, and then his entire book is based on information, on argument. And this is the main value of this book about Bucharest.”

Historian Adrian Majuru meticulously edited the book “Bucharest in 1906”. He also clarified the circumstances that led Damé to settle in Romania:

“What made Damé come to Romania, to Bucharest? After the Romanian War of Independence in 1877, while there was enough employment in France, Western Europe or Central Europe, some urban professionals from those parts started to emigrate to cities across Romania, not only to Bucharest. Damé himself probably did better here than in France, being probably better paid than there, in journalism and publishing. So, he also ran a newspaper, taught French, he did a lot. He was a public figure, he gave conferences at the Romanian Athenaeum. He probably found it very convenient that his language was spoken in this completely foreign country, at the beginning of his journey, so it was like in France, why go back?”

The fact that we have a description of Bucharest at the beginning of the 20th century is in no small part thanks to the city’s mayor at the time. Historian Adrian Majuru:

“At some point, he meets the mayor of the city of Bucharest, Mihail Cantacuzino, who asks him to write a work about Bucharest. It was not to be a historical work but about the city during his term and he asked Damé to also present Cantacuzino was planning to do. This is what the book is about. It is a journalistic investigation, documented with information provided by the municipality and, obviously, with a lot of field research. The French were angry with Damé after the book appeared in French, saying that we, for Paris, did not have such a monographic work in 1906, while a Frenchman did it for Bucharest. Unfortunately, the author did not live to see his work published, and the proofreading final version were done by his family.”

French-born Frédéric Damé lived in Romania for 35 years, from 1872 to 1907, but legacy lives on.