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.
Biography
Origins and early life 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). The Stahls lived in Wallachia, and later in unified Romania, as pedagogues and owners of a boarding school (although Irma never learned Romanian). By the time of Henri's birth, Joseph had had a lengthy career in publishing, with phrasebooks for German, French or Romanian, beginning with the 1853 Kleine Walachische Sprachlehre. Born in Bucharest, Henri was himself a polyglot and a student of history. He enlisted at the city's university, where he became one of Iorga's star students and fervent followers. According to sociologist Mircea Ioanid, "he made himself famous with his modest but fruitful activities in the public sphere, but most of all through his cultural pioneering". A graduate of the Faculty of Letters, Stahl invented a method for Romanian stenography, which was based on Duployan shorthand. He outlined its rules in a 1900 textbook: Metoda pentru a stenografia cu alfabetul latin pentru uzul studenților, ziariștilor și tuturor celor care au de scris repede ("A Method for Stenography in the Latin Alphabet, Useful to Students, Journalists and All Those Who Have to Write Fast"). By then, Stahl had been employed as a reviewer-stenographer by the Parliament of Romania. Around 1900, Stahl was in France, where he published a guide to the Duployan method and a stenotype how-to: La machine à écrire—machine à stenographier. He fell deeply in love with a Blanche-Alexandrine Francis Boeuve, who taught at her mother's school in Bucharest. She was three years his senior, had worked as a seamstress, and had French Jewish origins. From a previous relationship, Blanche had a six-year-old son, Gaston. The affair angered Irma Stahl, who sacked Blanche after she let known that she carried Stahl's child. Moving in with her sister in Saint-Avold, Lorraine, she gave birth to a daughter, Henriette. The forceful separation and Henriette's health problems as an infant led Stahl to contemplate suicide; Irma Stahl eventually yielded to his threats, allowing mother and daughter to return and live with her in Bucharest. Henri legally married Blanche in 1901. The couple soon had another son, Henri H. Stahl. Blanche became an expert in touch typing, and, after her move to Romania, wrote several textbooks of her own. By then, Henri was experimenting with political and humorous writing. In 1901, he became a contributor to Ion Luca Caragiale's satirical sheet, Moftul Român. He was an imitator of Caragiale, and, according to Iorga, was one of the best, fitted with a "tender understanding of things". Having acquired a first-hand understanding of the emerging Romanian trends in public speaking, Stahl also published a September 1906 notice on the "style of Romanian orators" in the Blaj review Revista Politică și Literară.
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