Avram Iancu

Iancu, Avram 

Born 1824 in Vidra; died Sept. 10, 1872, in the Western Rumanian Mountains; buried in the village of Tebea. One of the leaders of the Rumanian national movement in Transylvania.

The son of a peasant, Iancu favored the abolition of feudal obligations and the awarding of land to peasants without redemption. He also called for the seizure of estates. During the Revolution of 1848–49 in Hungary, the errors of the Hungarian revolutionary government regarding agrarian and national iss.ues led to a rift between the Rumanian and Hungarian revolutionary forces; in the fall of 1848, Iancu became the leader of a Rumanian uprising against revolutionary Hungary. Iancu’s detachment, which was based in the Carpathian region, offered stubborn resistance to the army of J. Bern. In the summer of 1849, after the revolutionary government’s recognition of the national rights of the Rumanians, Iancu supported the efforts of N. Bălcescu to unify the Hungarian and Rumanian national movements.

In the early 1860’s, Iancu helped found the Transylvanian Association for Rumanian Literature and the Education of the Rumanian People.