Onisifor Ghibu și Nicolae Colan, promotori ai Marii Uniri din 1918

Abstract

Among the Transylvanian personalities who made an important contribution to the realization of Greater Romania, O. Ghibu and N. Colan stand out for their particular activity in preparing the union of Bessarabia with the Motherland, and in organizing the country.

The first, O. Ghibu (1883-1972), was then 35 years old and had a rich didactic activity, being school inspector for Transylvanian schools (1910-1914) and professor of pedagogy at the Sibiu Theological Institute (1910-1912). After the outbreak of the First World Conflict, he took refuge in Bucharest, where, between 1914 and 1916, he led an intense campaign for Romania's entry into the war alongside Antantanian against Austria-Hungary, which brought him a death sentence in absentia from the Hungarian Military Court in Cluj in 1915. In autumn 1916, after the occupation of Bucharest, O. Ghibu with his wife and three children (the eldest was only 4 years old) took refuge in Iasi, from where in March 1917, he settled in Chişinău, becoming the soul of the Besserabian revolution of 1917-1918. He was intensely active there, succeeding in opening Romanian schools throughout Besserabia from 1917 onwards. He also succeeded, with other Besserabian patriots, in founding the Moldavian National Party, within which he campaigned for the union of Besserabia with Romania. As an organ of unionist propaganda, on Oct. 1, 1917 he published "Ardealul", the first "sheet" printed in Latin letters in the entire Russian Empire. On Jan. 24, 1918, this became "New Romania" (România Nouă), publishing in its first issue the great "Declaration of Union with Romania". In 1918 he was appointed secretary to the Sibiu Governing Council, being elected to the Grand Council of Transylvania, achieving the takeover of the University of Cluj by organizing it on Romanian bases. He became a university professor and corresponding member of the Romanian Academy (1919). The second, N. Colan, was ten years his junior, but also imbued with strong national sentiments. He too came from the Sibiu Theological Institute, where his colleagues included L. Blaga, A. Oţetea, D.D.Roşca, H. Teculescu and others. Because of the war, he took refuge in Bucharest, then in Moldavia and Ucraine, arriving in October 1917 in Chişinău where alongside O. Ghibu, A. Oţetea, Ion Mateiu and others participated in the revival of the national feeling of Romanians everywhere. After the war he became bishop of Cluj, metropolitan of Transylvania and member of the Romanian Academy.