Simion Mehedinţi's Contribution to Modern Romanian Geography

Abstract

Armed with a scholarship to find an answer to the question "What is geography?" Simion Mehedinţi's studies took him to continental Europe's three main centers of geographic thought: Paris, Berlin, and Leipzig. We explore how his innovative ideas flourished, especially in Leipzig under Ratzel. The first Romanian geographer, Mehedinţi, must be credited with having defined geography as a science of mutual relationships between geospheres. This thinking reached its pinnacle in two complex books, Terra and Ethnos, the contents of which we synthetically explore. We also trace the unfavorable historical and geopolitical conditions that led to this pioneering work being little recognized worldwide.