Eftimie Murgu

Eftimie Murgu (28 December 1805 - 12 May 1870) was a Romanian politician who took part in the 1848 Revolutions.

He was born in Rudăria (today Eftimie Murgu, Caraş-Severin) to Samu Murgu, an officer in the Imperial Army and Cumbria Murgu (nee Pungilă). He studied in Old Slavonic at the school of his village, continuing in Caransebeş and then he studied Philosophy at the University of Szeged, graduating in 1827. In 1830, he graduated from the University of Pest and in 1834, he obtained a PhD in Universal Law, from the same university. Murgu joined a dispute with Sava Tököly on the Origin of the Romanians, publishing in Buda, in 1830, a work named "Widerlegung" ("The Rebuttal").

In 1834, he moved to Iaşi, in Moldavia, where he opened the first philosophy course at the Academia Mihăileană. In 1837, he moved to Wallachia after a conflict with Prince Mihail Sturdza. In Bucharest, he was named professor of logic and Roman Law at Colegiul Sfântul Sava. He was a member of the Wallachian revolutionary movement, but the plot was revealed and he was arrested and expelled.

In the Banat, he militated for national and social reforms, suggesting even a union with Wallachia, but he was arrested in March 1845, being freed only three years later, on 9 April 1848.

Murgu was elected a deputy to the Hungarian Parliamentand tried to establish a Romanian army in the Banat. He participated to the Revolutions of 1848 in the Habsburg areas, being arrested in September 1849 and in October 1851, he was sentenced to death, but his sentence was reduced to four years in prison and two years later, in 1853, he was freed.

He died in Buda, where he was buried in the Kerepesi Cemetery, his grave being moved in 1932 to the chapel of the Lugoj Cemetery.

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