Ion Muşlea şi Arhiva de Folklor a Academiei Române

This article reconstructs the formative decades (1930–1948) of the Folklore Archive of the Romanian Academy (AFAR) through the biography and professional networks of its founder, Ion Mușlea (1899–1966), the most influential figure in the institution's history. Drawing on unpublished correspondence, institutional memoranda, field notebooks and early issues of Anuarul Arhivei de Folklor, the study traces how Mușlea's training in Cluj, doctoral work under George Vâlsan, and study sojourns at the Sorbonne, the Bibliothèque Nationale de France and northern-European folklore archives shaped the archive's organisation and scholarly agenda. The analysis shows that Mușlea combined French comparative-folklore approaches with Germanic principles of systematic documentation, creating an innovative system of thematic, geographic and typological indexing that brought the dispersed Romanian oral tradition into a coherent research corpus. By mobilising a nationwide network of teachers, priests and students via large-scale questionnaires – a form of early crowdsourcing – he assembled and meticulously catalogued 1,221 manuscripts, about 500 drawings and dozens of early photographs. Supported institutionally by Sextil Puşcariu and Ion Bianu, Mușlea also launched the archive's flagship journal (seven volumes, 1932–1945) and integrated Romanian folklore studies into international bibliographies and research exchanges. The article argues that Mușlea's dual career as university librarian and archive director was decisive for AFAR's modern information infrastructure and for the professionalisation of Romanian ethnology. Although post-war political reforms curtailed the archive's autonomy, Mușlea's methods and collections continued to underpin folklore scholarship in Romania. The study thus positions AFAR as both a national cultural repository and a node in the inter-war European network of ethnographic knowledge.