Avram Iancu, a remarkable figure of the Revolution of 1848 in Transylvania, was born in the Apuseni Mountains at Vidra de Sus, in a family of former serfs. By becoming a judge, Avram Iancu”™s father managed to rise above his social status and offer his son a promising future. Thus, Avram Iancu was able to study at the primary schools of Poiana Vadului and Abrud, and later at the middle school of Zlatna. Between 1841 and 1843 he lived in Cluj where he attended the Piarist Highschool”™s human studies and philosophy section. At that time, attending a Hungarian Catholic high school was common among young Romanians from well-to-do families. Many Romanian intellectuals were educated by Catholic monks at the same high school of Cluj, such as Gheorghe șincai, Petru Maior or Alexandru Papiu-Ilarian, who later became important millitants for the national rights of Transylvanian Romanians. Avram Iancu continued his studies in Cluj and graduated from Law School in 1847. Determined to pursue a career as a lawyer, he came to Tîrgu-Mureș to complete an internship with the Royal Table. This institution, that drew many young Romanians aspiring to become lawyers, had been moved to Tîrgu Mureș from Mediaș in 1754 by Queen Maria Tereza. Alongside Alexandru Papiu Ilarian, a probationist with the Royal Table himself, Avram Iancu became a leader of young Romanian intellectuals in Tîrgu Mureș, inspired by profound patriotism and willing to get involved in the political and social issues of the Romanians of Transylvania. During his years in Tîrgu-Mureș, Avram Iancu lived in a house on the street that today bears his name, at number 23. The memorial plaque on the building”™s façade states: “In this house lived between 1847-1848 Avram Iancu, bold and fearless fighter for the social and national rights of the Romanian people” As the 1848 revolution broke out, Avram Iancu was among its organizers. For the second National Assembly of Blaj, he mustered 10,000 Romanians from his native Apuseni Mountains and joined them on Câmpia Libertății (Field of Freedom). During 1848 and 1849, he led the armies of peasants in the Apuseni Mountains, creating a core of Romanian resistance against anti-revolutionary Austrian armies. In 1849 Nicolae Bălcescu assumed the difficult task to mediate an understanding between the leader of the Hungarian revolution, Kossuth Lajos and Avram Iancu, so that the two armies would join forces against the common enemy. Thus, Kossuth and Bălcescu prepared a “pacification project” in July 1849. However, Romanian and Hungarian revolutionaries were not able to reach an agreement, and so the Austrian army, with help from the tsar of Russia, finally defeated the revolutionaries in August 1849. Avram Iancu”™s fight for the rights of the Romanians of Transylvania continued after 1849 by other means. He was a member of the Transylvanian delegation that went to Vienna in 1851 to present the claims of Romanians. In 1852, during the visit of Emperor Franz Joseph in Transylvania, Avram Iancu was extremely offended by the emperor”™s refusal to receive him, so that he later refused a decoration from the same emperor for not having joined the Hungarian revolution of 1848. Avram Iancu”™s life after 1852 was marked by illness and the disappointment caused by his inability to accomplish his great plans. He passed away on September 10, 1872 in Baia de Criș and was buried in Å¢ebea, Hunedoara County, near the “Oaktree of Horea”. Bibliography: Silviu Dragomir- Avram Iancu