LE PROJET D’UNE UNIVERSITÉ ROUMAINE À SIBIU EN 1864
THE PROJECT OF A ROMANIAN UNIVERSITY AT SIBIU IN 1864

Summary/Abstract: The establishment of a Romanian university in Habsburg Transylvania was demanded on the 3rd / 15th of May 1848 on the Liberty Plain at Blaj. The 13th Point of the National Petition addressed to the emperor expressed this demand, further resumed on the 1st of September 1849, when a delegation of the Romanian nation representatives requested the Ministry of Cults and Instruction from Vienna to open a juridical faculty for the Romanians, alongside the existing philosophy and theology faculties. The demands of the Romanians had multiple causes. Although Hungarian superior schools already existed and a Law Academy in German had been established at Sibiu since 1844, for the Romanians, the province's majority population, with all the promises from the Habsburg authorities, the establishment of a higher education institution was slow in coming. The repeated failures of the Romanians in the matter of their own university in Transylvania convinced some of their leaders that a solution may be found beyond the Carpathians. Bărnuţiu, Laurian, Aron, Maiorescu and others had reached in the Romanian Principalities. Bărnuţiu was elected rector of the University in Iaşi, Laurian was dean of the Faculty of Letters at the University of Bucharest, a post he held for 18 years without interruption, and both Aron and Maiorescu became history professors at the same faculty. The Austrian authorities have not complied with the promises made after the revolution, in the years 1849-1852. Subsequently, until the establishment of the dualist regime in 1867, specialized studies do not record other Romanian initiatives for the organization of higher education in Transylvania. However, the Romanians have not dropped the idea. Their hopes found understanding and material support at the Romanians across the Carpathians. Nonetheless, even if the first Romanian university could not be established under the Habsburg Monarchy, the year 1864 represents an important moment of Romanian solidarity, determined both by the liberal regime of the empire and the reforming regime under the patronage of Al. I. Cuza in Romania.

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