MONSIEUR FICHEUX

In 1988, on the day he turned 90, Dr. Robert Ficheux (1898 – 2005), a well-known French geographer and honorary member of Romanian Academy, gave an interview to Dan Er. Grigorescu explaining the reasons why his Oeuvre was entirely dedicated to Romania. Robert Ficheux begun the research for his three-part volume The Phisycal Geography of the Apuseni Mountains” in 1921, and continued working on it for the next 67 years. Before the Second Word War, he learned Romanian, taught Geography at the University of Cluj, and traveled extensively through the country, correcting and drawing maps for far away regions. In his main work, Phisycal Geography of the Apuseni Mountains,” he used some old Austro-Hungarian maps, drawn by Austro-Hungarian military officers, and dated around 1890. In the current interview, Robert Ficheux was pinpointing the fact that on these maps nearly all the names of localities, rivers and mountains bore Romanian names. As he was just a geographer, Robert Ficheux leaves the future historians to muse about the significance of his discoveries.