Mircea Zaciu

Mircea Zaciu (August 27, 1928–March 21, 2000) was a Romanian critic, literary historian and prose writer.

Born into a Greek-Catholic family in Oradea, his parents were Adrian Zaciu, a lawyer, and his wife Otilia (née Muth), a high school secretary. The family had peasant origins in the Coaș area, and was possibly Aromanian at its roots. He attended primary school in Satu Mare from 1935 to 1939, followed by one year at Miahi Eminescu High School in the same city. Following the Second Vienna Award, when the area was ceded to Hungary, the family took refuge in Arad. There, he took years two through six at Moise Nicoară High School. He attended the final two years and graduated from Emanuil Gojdu High School in Oradea, by then back under Romanian administration. From 1947 to 1951, he attended the Romanian language and literature section of the literature faculty at Cluj University, earning a degree in 1952. Meanwhile, he took up but abandoned the study of law. Beginning in his fourth year, Zaciu worked as an associate instructor at the Romanian literature department, under the supervision of Dumitru Popovici.

He rose to teaching assistant (1952), assistant professor (1952-1962), associate professor (1962-1972) and full professor (1972-1990). From 1990, he was consulting professor, abandoning this role in 1997; during this period, he was thesis adviser, having twice previously been denied the position. He served as dean of the Cluj philology faculty from 1962 to 1966, and earned a doctorate in Romanian philology in 1967. From 1967 to 1970, he lectured at the universities of Cologne, Bonn and Aachen, teaching Romanian language and literature. In 1970, his contract was not renewed and he was fired from the position of chairman within the contemporary Romanian literature and literary theory department, a post he had held since 1967. He was received into the Romanian Writers' Union in 1956, forming part of its leadership for three successive terms, and again from 1990 to 1995. Through this organization, he was able to take part in conferences and colloquia in Germany, Italy, Turkey, Iraq, Denmark and Finland. He moved to Germany in 1990, but spent lengthy periods in Romania, and from that time was honorary director of Vatra magazine, based in Târgu Mureș. In 1997, he was elected an honorary member of the Romanian Academy. He died in Cluj-Napoca.

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