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Transylvanian Memorandum
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
The Transylvanian Memorandum was a petition sent in 1892 by the leaders of the Romanians of Transylvania to the Austro-Hungarian Emperor-King Franz Joseph, asking for equal ethnic rights with the Hungarians, and demanding an end to persecutions and Magyarization attempts.
After the Ausgleich of 1867, although Romanians formed the majority of Transylvania's population, they had not been awarded legal status as a nation.
The Memorandum itself was written by the leaders of the Romanian National Party of Transylvania and Banat (PNR) - among others, Ioan Raţiu, Gheorghe Pop de Băseşti, Eugen Brote, Aurel Popovici, and Vasile Lucaciu. It asked for political rights to be awarded to Romanians, as well as raising a debate on the Kingdom of Hungary's policies of intolerance towards Romanians.
Franz Josef forwarded the memorandum to Budapest, and the authors were tried for "homeland betrayal" in Kolozsvár/Cluj during May 1894, being sentenced to long prison terms. The outcome contributed to a decrease in loyalism to the Crown, with many leaders of the PNR turning towards the goal of a union of Transylvania and the Romanian Old Kingdom.
However, activism for union per se was largely held off until after World War I and the Treaty of Trianon, with Romania itself oscillating between alliances with the Central Powers and the Entente, and with the parallel offer made by Archduke Franz Ferdinand of Austria (the heir apparent) to negotiate for a United States of Greater Austria.