George Bariţ

George Bariţ, often rendered as George Bariţiu (1812—May 2, 1893), was a Romanian historian, philologist, dramatist, and journalist, the founder of the Romanian language press in Transylvania.

Biography

Born in Jucu de Jos, Cluj County, he was the son of the Greek-Catholic priest Ioan Pop Bariţ, and of Ana Rafila. He attended school in Trascău (today Remetea, Alba County), and then highschool in Blaj and Cluj. Originally trained for priesthood, he decided instead to become a teacher at the Romanian language commercial school in Braşov. In 1838 he founded in Braşov the first Romanian newspaper in his native region, and named it "Gazeta de Transilvania". Politically active, he was an important personality in the revolution of 1848 in Transylvania, establishing connections with Romanian nationalists and radicals in Wallachia and Moldavia, and using "Gazeta" as one of the main political voices demanding equal rights for Romanians and Transylvanian Hungarians after the Hungarian revolutionary government began pressing for Transylvania to be removed from direct Austrian supervision.

After the revolutionary episode, in the period between the creation of an Austrian military government for the region and the "Ausgleich", Bariţ returned to cultural activities. In 1861, alongside Andrei Şaguna, Timotei Cipariu, he founded "Asociaţia Transilvană pentru Literatura Română şi Cultura Poporului Român" (ASTRA). He was its first secretary, and subsequently became its president. Between 1884 and 1888, Bariţ served as president of the Romanian National Party in Transylvania and Banat.

When ASTRA began publishing the review "Transilvania", Bariţ was the main person involved in its editorial ventures, and became one of the authors of the very first Romanian-language Encyclopaedia (published in Sibiu after his death, between 1898 and 1904). His main personal work, published between 889 and 1891, was "Părţi alese din Istoria Transilvaniei pre două sute de ani în urmă" ("Selected Episodes of the Past Two Hundred Years in Transylvania's History").

A founding member of the "Societatea Literară Română" (1866), a precursor to the Romanian Academy, he was the president of the latter in the year of his death. He died in Sibiu.

Works

*"Cuvântare scolasticească la ecsamenul de vară în Şcoala românească din Braşov şi Cetate", 1837
*"Deutsch-Rumänisches Wörtebuch, Dicţionariu român-german", 1853-1854
*"Dicţionariu românesc-unguresc, Magyar-román szótar", 1869
*"Părţi alese din istoria Transilvaniei pre două sute de ani în urmă", I-III, Sibiu, 1889-1891
*"Două drame familare", drama, 1891

References

* Ştefan Pascu, Dumitru Suciu etc., "George Bariţ şi contemporanii săi", 10 vols., Editura Minerva, Bucarest, 1983-2003
* Cristian Romano, "Iosif Romanov, librar, editor şi tipograf din Bucureşti secolul al XIX-lea", "Anuarul Arhivelor Municipiului Bucureşti", 1/1996
* Entry in Mircea Zaciu, Marian Papahagi, Aurel Sasu (coord.), "Dicţionarul scriitorilor români", Editura Fundaţiei Culturale Române, 1995

External links

* [http://www.history-cluj.ro/indexg.htm George Bariţ Institute of History]