Photo by Chris Meyer

Queen Anne visits IUB campus
Home of leading Romanian studies program

Related Link: Info on Romania
Related Link: IU's Russian and East European Institute

By Jeff Austin and Jayne Spencer

Last week, Her Royal Highness Queen Anne of Romania visited with faculty at Indiana University's Bloomington campus, home to one of the United States' leading Romanian studies programs.

Her visit was a prelude to an appearance the next day in Indianapolis on behalf of the Children of the World Foundation.

Queen Anne visited the Hoosier capital as an honored guest at "Young Hearts Performing," a children's benefit, at Circle Centre Arts Garden last Saturday (Oct. 19). The program was presented by Children of the World, in cooperation with the Princess Margarita of Romania Foundation, to raise funds for children's relief efforts in Romania and elsewhere.

Romania is an important area of concentration within IU's program of Russian and East European studies which has one of the largest faculties of Romanian specialists in the country.

These include Christina Illias, Department of Slavic Languages and Literature, and Maria Bucur, Department of History, who joined the faculty this year as a specialist in Romanian and southeast European history. Well-known Romanian-American writer and critic Matei Calinescu is chair of the Department of Comparative Literature.

Bucur and David Ransel, director of IU's Russian and East European Institute, visited Romania this summer to work on exchanges with universities there. Following up on the initiative, the heads of the departments of history and political science at the Babes-Bolyai University in Cluj visited the IUB campus last month.

The rector of Babes-Bolyai University, Andrei Marga, will visit the Bloomington campus early next month to develop further plans for cooperation between his institution and IU, beginning with a program in oral history. He will be meeting with IU President Myles Brand.

While in Bloomington, Queen Anne visited with Patrick O'Meara, dean of International Programs, members of the IUB faculty involved in Romanian studies and other Hoosiers with ties to Romania.

Born in Paris, Queen Anne was the only daughter of Prince Rene de Burbon-Parme, son of Robert I, the last reigning Duke of Parme, and of Princess Marguerite of Denmark, granddaughter of King Christian IX of Denmark.

When World War II broke out, her family left Paris and moved to New York City where she studied at the Parsons School of Design and worked at a major department store as a salesgirl.

Several years later, she joined the French army as an ambulance driver, and was awarded the highest military honor in France, the Croix de Guerre.

She and her husband, King Michael of Romania, met at the wedding of Princess Elizabeth of England and Prince Philip of Greece in 1947. They were married the next year.

The queen has been devoting herself to participating in all possible ways to the trans-ition of Romania from a communist dictatorship to a free and democratic society.

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