Rediscovering Dimitrie Tușinschi, „One of the Best-Known Public Figures in Bukovina” of the Interwar Era
Rediscovering Dimitrie Tușinschi, „One of the Best-Known Public Figures in Bukovina” of the Interwar Era

Summary/Abstract: Dimitrie Tușinschi (*10 May 1870), first president of the Cernăuți Court of Appeal in the 1920s and 30s, held a key position during the incorporations of Bukovina into Greater Romania after World War I (WWI). He was considered „one of the best-known public figures in Bukovina”, his life being deeply interwoven with the region’s Romanian history and social circles. Despite many accolades, including major Romanian awards and honorary citizenship of various towns, Tușinschi is hardly known today. To date, no thorough research has been devoted specifically to his life. This paper, for the first time, presents a full overview of Tușinschi’s biography. As the author is his great-grandson, anecdotes recounted within the family are added where appropriate. As a child in Suceava, Dimitrie Tușinschi met Eminescu. As a student of law in Cernăuți, he became a member of the Junimea academic society and received accolades as first prosecutor in Austrian Cernăuți before WWI. As a captain in the reserve, Tușinschi became part of the Austrian-Hungarian military secret service (Nachrichtendienst) in Cernăuți from 1917–1918, and was later appointed prosecutor general of the Romanian Curtea de Apel upon its creation in 1919. From 1918–1938, Austrian law largely still applied in Bukovina. The legal journal Pagini Juridice, which Tușinschi founded, played an important part in analyzing and discussing Bukovina’s legal status. The unification of Bukovina’s legal system with the Romanian one was finalized shortly after he had to retire in 1938. When Northern Bukovina got annexed by the Soviet Union in 1940, Tușinschi and his wife Leontine escaped, together with many ethnic Germans and their families, by being briefly relocated to German-run Lager 98 Mittelsteine. As they did not wish to settle in Germany, the couple left for Suceava in 1941. Tușinschi’s post-WWII fate and date of death remain unknown and require further research.

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