Carl and his first teacher, Stanca Scholz-Cionca

Although much has been written about the controversial King Carol II, both specialized studies and those aimed at a wider audience usually only briefly mention the prince’s formal education. Various authors recall the nannies and governesses or the tutors who came and went at the palace, but they are reserved when it comes to the teachers who guided him from learning to write and read through his high school years. Nevertheless, all portray the child Carol as a passionate reader, capable of immersing himself in books for entire nights. This work does not fill that gap but allows a quick glimpse over the shoulder of student Carol, revealing fragments of the educational program applied to him.

We present two notebooks belonging to the prince, kept by his first teacher, the Transylvanian Ion Cionca (1850–1910), who guided him for ten years, taught him all the elementary school subjects, and later, during high school, was his Romanian language teacher. From this teacher, the son of a Romanian peasant from the Sibiu area, the Hohenzollern heir learned not only the Romanian language but also writing and reading in his paternal language, German.

The two notebooks lay hidden for over a century in a chest, concealed during turbulent times by the descendants of Professor Cionca. They were written seven years apart: the first, bound in a blue cover with the royal monogram, contains calligraphy exercises from the first school year (1900–1901), progressing from pencil to ink pen. The student carefully copies, letter by letter, maxims and selected sayings chosen by the teacher ad usum delphini, intended to serve the future sovereign as an ethical guide.

The second—a pocket-sized notebook—contains a text written at the urging of the same teacher in July 1907 (when Carol was thirteen and a half), entitled “The Journey to Oltenia,” which recounts in journal form an official one-week trip made by the crown princes, Ferdinand and Maria, together with their heir, through Oltenia, with small excursions into southern Transylvania. This brief travel journal, actually a homework assignment corrected by the teacher in red ink, is reproduced in facsimile, with transcription and footnotes.

The work also includes photographs from the prince’s childhood and of members of the royal family, as well as previously unknown photographs of Ion Cionca and his wife.