Romanian banknotes 1000 Lei 1934 King Carol II of Romania, Banca Nationale a Romaniei
Obverse: Portrait of King Carol II in military uniform with gilt epaulettes together with his royal monogram (a crown, below the crown two entangled C's with Roman numeral II centrally) and Coat of arms of the Kingdom of Romania at upper right.
(King Carol II of Romania, wears the Order of Aeronautical Merit around his neck)
Reverse: Two women wearing Romanian traditional costume: a woman hand-spinning using a drop spindle and seated woman with child at right, industrial and agricultural items placed in the lower part of the banknote.
Romania banknotes - Romania paper money
Banca Naţională a României - National Bank of Romania
1934 Issue
1934 Issue
500 Lei 1000 Lei
King Carol II of Romania
Carol II (15 October 1893 – 4 April 1953) reigned as King of Romania from 8 June 1930 until 6 September 1940. He was the first member of the Romanian royal family to be raised in the Orthodox faith.
Returning to the country on 7 June 1930, in a coup d'état engineered by Prime Minister Iuliu Maniu, Carol reneged on the renunciation and was proclaimed King the following day, replacing his son Michael on the throne. For the next decade he sought to influence the course of Romanian political life, first through manipulation of the rival Peasant and Liberal parties and anti-Semitic factions, and subsequently (January 1938) through a ministry of his own choosing.
Carol also sought to build up his own personality cult against the growing influence of the Iron Guard, for instance by setting up a paramilitary youth organization known as Straja Țării in 1935.
He was made the 892nd Knight of the Order of the Garter in 1938 by his second cousin, George VI (King of the United Kingdom).
On 10 February 1938, Carol suspended the Constitution and seized emergency powers. Less than two weeks later, the constitution was recast into a severely authoritarian/corporatist document that concentrated virtually all governing power in his hands—turning his government into a de facto legal dictatorship. The new constitution was approved in a plebiscite held under far-from-secret conditions; voters were required to appear before an election bureau and verbally state whether they approved the constitution; silence was deemed as a "yes" vote. Under these conditions, an implausible 99.87 percent were reported as having approved the new charter. In December 1938, the National Renaissance Front was formed as the country's only legal party.
On September 5, 1940, Antonescu became Prime Minister, and Carol transferred most of his dictatorial powers to him.
Forced under Soviet and subsequently Hungarian, Bulgarian, and German pressure to surrender parts of his kingdom to foreign rule, he was finally outmaneuvered by the pro-German administration of Marshal Ion Antonescu, and abdicated in favour of Michael in September 1940. He went into exile, initially in Mexico, but ultimately settled in Portugal.