Henri Stahl

Henri Joseph Stahl (also known as Henric, Enric, or Henry Stahl; April 29, 1877 – February 18, 1942) was a Romanian stenographer, graphologist, historian and fiction writer. Born to educated immigrant parents, he was a friend and disciple of Nicolae Iorga, doyen of modern Romanian historiography. Much of his work in the field resulted in a monographic and conservationist study of his native Bucharest, which was published by Iorga in 1910.

Stahl created an original system of a stenography, which worked as one of the basic Romanian stenography standards, and, as resident expert at the National Archives, set up the Romanian school of graphology and paleography. The author of humorous stories and memoirs, he also contributed the novel Un român în lună ("A Romanian on the Moon"), seen as one of the pioneering works in Romanian science fiction.

In addition to his scholarly and literary work, Stahl worked as a stenographer for public institutions, which allowed him to witness significant events in Romanian political history, and was a distinguished veteran of World War I. Stahl was the father of sociologist Henri H. Stahl and of novelist Henriette Yvonne Stahl, as well as the stepfather of Șerban Voinea, a political thinker and militant of the Romanian Social Democratic Party.

Henri Stahl was the son of an Orientalist and lexicographer, Joseph "Iosif" Stahl (1820–1890), described in sources as "a cross between an Alsatian man and a Swiss woman", or, in the Stahls' genealogy, as a Bavarian baron. According to Henriette Yvonne Stahl, her grandfather was originally active in the Kingdom of Greece, in service to King Otto, before being taken prisoner by the Ottoman Empire. He owed his relocation to Wallachia (an autonomous subject of the Ottomans) to the intercession of Prince Barbu Dimitrie Știrbei, who employed him as a Dragoman of the court. Reportedly, his second wife, Irma Niard, known in Romanian as Irina Stahl, was from a Normand family, the orphaned daughter of a prize-winning painter. From Joseph's earlier marriage, Henri had a half-sister, Ana "Nety" Stahl (1853–1929).

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