Despre Memorandul românilor de la 1871 – românii şi constituţiunile Transilvaniei
About the Memorandum of the Romanians from 1871 – Romanians and the Transilvanian constitutions
Autor: Marcel Morar
The petitioner movement of the Romanians from Transylvania represented for a long time the way the Romanian political leaders tried to advertise to the state institutions their political, social and national desideratum. The desideratum includes the idea of the integration in the Transylvanian constitution of the its self determination, as an independent nation, in the frame of the federal state. An important role in the history of the Romanian petitions plays the memorandum signed by Iosif Hodoş, appearing in Pest in 1871.
This act is successfully integrated in the ascending way of the petition movement of the Romanians from Transylvania, in the second half of the 19th century. The common denominator of the petitions, protests and Romanian memoirs presented so far, was the claim to have the Romanian language as the official language of the principality, along with the Hungarian, and the representatives of the Romanians to be present, on the principle of the majority, in administration and justice.
Redacted at the end of 1870, three years after the achievement of the Austro-Hungarian dualism, The Romanians and the Transylvanian Constitutions demonstrate the illegality of the union of Transylvania with Hungary. Not last, by a series of similitude with the Memorandum from 1892 – same recipient, the public opinion from the country and abroad, the translation in several languages, the wish to have it presented to the emperor by a delegation – the memorandum authored by Iosif Hodoş, can be considered as its precursor.