LEGĂTURILE ŞCOLII COMERCIALE DIN BUCUREŞTI CU INSTITUŢII EUROPENE DE ÎNVĂŢĂMÂNT ÎN SECOLUL AL XIX-LEA
CONNECTIONS OF THE BUCHAREST COMMERCIAL SCHOOL WITH EUROPEAN EDUCATIONAL INSTITUTIONS IN THE 19TH CENTURY

Summary/Abstract: This paper presents the first connections, consisting of correspondence, between Bucharest Commercial School and economic training institutes in Europe. Connections with Central and Western European education systems were established in the early times in various forms. Their initiator was the first principal of the school, namely Lucien Toussaint, born in Toulouse. The first intention of collaboration took shape on February 28, 1885, as a letter of the principal of L’École des Hautes études commerciales de Paris (HEC Paris) (founded in 1879 and still operating today) addressed to the head of Bucharest Commercial School. The sender confessed his intention to develop a monograph of the main academies and business schools in France and the rest of the world, with special attention paid to the presentation of the Bucharest school. To put in place this project, detailed information regarding the functioning of that institution was requested. The replies to questionnaires are not kept in the school archive. Instead, data on the school can be found in the monograph on the business education systems in the world. That paper was published in 1886 by the principal of HEC Paris and provided a useful documentary basis for the participants in the First International Congress of Technical, Commercial and Industrial Education (Paris, September 20-25, 1886). The interest in becoming familiar with the Romanian commercial education system also had much more pragmatic reasons. Being a school established just several years ago, HEC Paris aimed to attract more students from abroad. The intention emerges from the publicity inserted by the Parisian institution in the Bucharest press long before initiating the correspondence mentioned above. The next documentary piece examined in the paper is a letter dated June 6, 1885. The letter appears circular, in which the principal of the Commercial School asked his counterparts in Paris, Marseille, Antwerp, Vienna, Trieste, Venice and Leipzig to communicate the curricula of the courses taught in their schools. The request was justified by the Romanian government's decision to modernize the business schools. The reply from abroad is unknown, but one can assume that the principals honoured the request. Most likely, their replies were presented to the working group within the ministry to serve as a model for the new structure of the vocational education system. The last testimony discussed here dates from 1889 to 1890 and attests to the correspondence of the Commercial School with Handels- Lehranstalt vorm[als] Ignaz Pazelt in Vienna (founded in 1840). The exchange of messages is initiated from abroad to become as familiar as possible with the Romanian economic education system. The replies kept in the concept show the goodwill of the Romanian principal towards his Austrian colleague. The actual usefulness of the initiative remains unknown. One can admit that the initiator used the information to expand his student recruitment area and/or kept the references to write a monograph. The correspondence exchanged by the Commercial School between 1880 and 1890 attests to the foreign interest in becoming familiar with the economic education system in Romania, as well as the receptivity of the Bucharest school to establish professional connections with similar institutions in Europe. The institution also obtained a significant image advantage by being presented in a benchmark monograph published in Paris.

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