TIRANA, Jan. 24 – One of Albania’s most renowned chemical engineers, professor Genc Luarasi, has unexpectedly passed away at the age of 74. Genc Luarasi, a successor to the renowned Luarasi family with a huge contribution to the National Awakening Movement that led to Albania’s independence from Turkey in 1912, was also a passionate researcher of the patriotic activity of the Luarasi family and dedicated much time and effort to the collection and republication of the Luarasi works, especially those of his grandfather, Kristo Luarasi, an early 20th century nationalist figure and publisher.
Under communism, he worked as a chief chemical engineer at the plant in Laৠtown, northern Albania, before moving to the Tirana wood processing factory, in duties that affected his lung function due to the constant presence of dust, smoke, as well as calcium and phosphorus vapors, leading to a premature death on Jan. 17, a significant day in Albania’s history, commemorating the death of Albania’s 15th century national hero, Skanderbeg.
Genc Luarasi also served as a lecturer at the Agriculture University of Tirana and several private universities. He dedicated much of his time to republishing and researching into the Luarasi family contribution to the national awakening and recently published the Kombiar Calendar, a work originally published by Kristo Luarasi, a late publisher of the Albanian National Renaissance. The original format of the work included 22 books that were printed during the 1897-1928 period.
“Born and raised at a patriotic family and with a rich legacy (his mother was a Polish design artist), Genc Luarasi never wasted time even after retirement. He was an energetic man, always on the move and exploring new things and his premature departure left a lot of other collected stuff unpublished,” his friend Zylyftar Hoxha says in an obituary.
During the past two decades, Genc Luarasi struggled to have back his property, his grandparents’ house and the famous Luarasi printing house set up in Tirana in the 1930s by his grandfather Kristo Luarasi after moving from Sofia where he initially operated it for more than two decades after Albania’s independence, publishing Albanian language newspapers and magazines.
The prolonged trials that failed to produce a final verdict for about two decades were his biggest regret.
