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Elite of month – de Pușcariu, Ioan Cavaler (1824–1912), County Commissioner, Captain General, MP, Judge at the Royal Curia


One of the leading Romanians of the 19th century in Transylvania, Visarion Roman (1833–1885), wrote at one point, with annoyance, to one of his friends: “Perhaps we, this kind of people, are destined to be everything” (Netea, Noi contribuții, p. 34–35). His dissatisfaction was due to the fact that, in the mid-19th century, there were so few Romanians in Transylvania whose training would allowed them to hold public office or lead the institutions of civil society that multipositionality was ubiquitous and forced them into an often undesirably high pace and amount of work.

One of these people who was “destined to be everything” was Ioan Ritter von Pușcariu (1824–1912).

The Pușcașu family settled in the village of Sohodolul Branului, in Southern Transylvania in the early 1700s, and in the second half of the century its members were already mentioned as priests and merchants, as well as writers of petitions to the authorities, which underlines an elite status within the community. From this line of priests, some of whom one can still see today immortalized in the painted porch of the churches they built, was born in 1824 Ioan, the first of the ten children of the priest Ioan (1878–1871) and of his wife Stana (1801–1886), and also the first of those who would change the name of Pușcașu to Pușcariu.

Ioan Pușcariu attended primary school in Sohodolul Branului and then in the city of Brașov / Kronstadt / Brassó, where he also attended the local Catholic secondary school. He graduated in 1842 at the Catholic gymnasium in Sibiu / Hermannstadt / Nagyszeben, after which he attended an Orthodox theological course of six months. However, the following year he changed his mind and began studying Law at the Academic Lyceum of the Piarists in Cluj / Kolozsvár, then in 1846 at the Academy of Law in Sibiu. The family's priestly tradition was continued by his brother Ilarion (Bucur) Pușcariu (1842–1922).

In the spring of 1848, freshly graduated from legal studies, Ioan Pușcariu got actively involved in the revolutionary events, as steward of the national assembly of Romanians in Blaj / Balázsfalva, military tribune, and later revolutionary propaganda commissioner in Walachia. During the Neo-Absolutist period, like many Romanian graduates of legal studies, he pursued a career as a civil servant in the administrative apparatus of the province, most probably on the recommendation and with the support of the Orthodox bishop Andrei Șaguna (1809–1873), whose ecclesiastical, cultural and political initiatives he would constantly support throughout his life. After changing several minor offices in Hunyad/Hunedoara County, he became in 1854 sheriff (szolgabíró/pretor) of sub-district Scharken/Sárkány /Șercaia, in Făgăraș. Concurrently, he published books of legal commentaries and legal popularization in Romanian, and a dictionary of bureaucratic terms in Romanian and German.

After 1860, amidst the political changes brought about by the liberal regime, the former local civil servant became in 1861 drafter at the Royal Chancellery of Transylvania in Vienna, another position to which Șaguna’s recommendation contributed greatly. In January 1862, amidst the Viennese government’s attempts to reduce the political opposition of the Hungarians in Transylvania, Ioan Pușcariu was appointed to an important position in the provincial administration: county-commissioner (alispán) of Kükülő/Târnava (Cetatea de Baltă) County, a position he held until August 1865. During these four years he was also elected deputy to the provincial diet in Sibiu (1863–1864), deputy to the Imperial Council (1864–1865), and deputy to the provincial Diet in Cluj (1865). His upstanding career was crowned by his ennoblement by imperial decree on 10 July 1864 with the Order of the Iron Crown third class, and the rank of knight (Ritter von).

The esteem he enjoyed among the authorities and the support of Bishop Șaguna were manifested even when the political regime began to change and the diet of Sibiu was dissolved by imperial decree. Pușcariu was among the few Romanians who did not lose their offices, instead he was only relocated from Kükülő County to the position of Captain General of the Fogaras/Făgăraș District (August 1865). It is illustrative of the expectations that the administrative leader of a county had to fulfil at the time the words of Count György Haller (1818–1892), who explained to Pușcariu in 1865 that he had refused to take up the leading office of  Kükülő County because he would not be able to satisfy “a couple of hundred hungry aspirants for 20 years (i.e., since 1849). It would have been woe to me if I could not have given them all bread” (Pușcariu, Notițe..., 1913, p. 84).

In 1866 Ioan Pușcariu was elected deputy to the Hungarian Parliament in one of the constituencies of the Fogaras/Făgăraș District, and until 1869 he was among the so called “activists” – those Romanian political leaders who tried to obtain as many political concessions as possible from the Hungarian political elite, and at the same time to motivate both the rest of the Romanian elite and the voters to continue their involvement in political life. His position as a mediator was also recognised and rewarded by the Hungarian government when he was appointed as a section councillor in the Ministry of Religious Affairs and Public Instruction in December 1867. By 1869, however, his star was already fading. After three years of successive political failures from the part of the “actvists”, the newly founded Romanian National Party of Transylvania (March 1869) decided to adopt the policy of electoral passivity, thereby refusing to recognise the legal effects of the Settlement of 1867. Ioan Ritter von Pușcariu was among the four participants in the party’s conference (from ca. 400) who voted against passivity and stood by his position in the years that followed. Indeed, the fact that he had been appointed in May 1869 as a judge of the highest court in Hungary, the Royal Curia, must have contributed considerably to him maintaining his political option both in the 1870s and in the 1880s, until his retirement as a judge in 1890.

At the same time, he remained close to the circles of the Orthodox Metropolitan See of Sibiu, where his brother Ilarion became an archimandrite. In 1884 he was one of the supporters of the newly-founded, short-lived Romanian Moderate Party, which promoted collaboration with Hungarian governments, but ultimately failed to secure the support of the Romanian voters. This was the last important moment of his political career, after which, as an old man, he only concerned himself with his judicial office and with scholarly activities.

As early as 1861, Ion Pușcariu was one of the initiators of the Romanian cultural association in Transylvania: Astra. He remained a member all his life, but from 1873 he also held leading positions in the Society for the Romanian Theatre Fund until 1889. He was also among the promoters of the national costume among the Romanian elite. Finally, he was one of the leading members of the Gojdu Foundation, which supported the studies of numerous Romanian Orthodox pupils and students in Hungary. In 1877 Ioan Pușcariu was elected honorary member of the Romanian Academy in Bucharest, to whose work he contributed historical, genealogical, and philological writings. He excelled less in the field of literary creation, where his poetic attempts, although consistent, never rose to a quality that would ensure his recognition. On the other hand, he carried on a constant scholarly activity as a member of Astra until the last years of his life: “Even in his old age, the much-missed deceased, at whose coffin we lie, did not hesitate for many years to take part in the work of our historical section, often enriching it and giving it wise advice” (Necrologuri, p. 153).

The life and career of Ioan Pușcariu illustrates the opportunities for social mobility among the Romanians in Transylvania offered by education and the favourable context of the 1850s and 1860s, but also the important role played by the church in the formation of the national political elite. An important number of Romanian politicians and civil servants came from clerical families in the early and mid-nineteenth century, and for those who reached important positions in the provincial apparatus or sometimes even in the capital city of the Monarchy, the support of churches of both denominations (in the case of Pușcariu the Orthodox one) was always a mandatory requirement.

 

Bibliography

Necrologuri, in Transilvania 43, 1912, nr. 1–2, p. 152–154.

Keith Hitchins, A Nation Affirmed: The Romanian National Movement in Transylvania, 1860–1914,  Bucharest, 1999.

Nicolae Josan, Ioan Pușcariu (1824–1912). Viața și activitatea, Alba Iulia, 1997.

Ioan cavaler de Pușcariu, Notițe despre întâmplările contemporane, Sibiu, 1913.

Ioan cavaler de Pușcariu, Notițe despre întâmplările contemporane. Partea a II-a. Despre pasivitatea politică a românilor și urmările ei, ediție îngrijită de N. Josan, București, 2004.

Sextil Pușcariu, Spița unui neam din Ardeal, ediție, note și glosar de Magdalena Vulpe, Cluj, 1998.