130 years after the famous trial of the memorandaists from Cluj, an exhibition marking the event is opening in the Reduta building, right in the building where the trial took place.
The exhibition is organized by the National History Museum of Transylvania and the Ethnographic Museum of Transylvania, in the building of the latter, in the Reduta hall, where 130 years ago the trial of the memorandaists took place.
The exhibition will be open until July 16, being organized with the aim of marking the 130th anniversary of the memorandumist movement of the Romanians in Transylvania (1892-1894), concluded with the trial and conviction of the memorandumists in the trial that took place between 7-25 May 1894 in the Reduta Palace in Cluj, today the headquarters of the Ethnographic Museum of Transylvania. “The exhibition will present to the public a bundle of traces of the past related to the Romanian national movement in Transylvania, the personal items of Dr. Ioan Rațiu, the office kit, oil portraits of the memorist and his wife Emilia, vintage photographs, correspondence, lithographs, the copy printed copy of the Memorandum, the documents of the meeting of the Romanian National Party on March 25, 1892, where the date of sending the act to the emperor was decided and the composition of the delegation that was going to Vienna and others”, says the coordinator of the exhibition, Ovidiu Muntean, from MNIT.
Alongside these, the public can see the original documents of the memorandumists’ trial from 130 years ago: the indictments, the statement of reasons, the draft of the Final Statement, the prison sentence, the legal documents relating to the rejection of the appeal and the imprisonment of the memorandumists, telegrams regarding the demonstrations of solidarity from Romania, as well as the newspapers of the time that commented on the debates in the Reduta Palace in Cluj, where the memorable words spoken by Dr. Ioan Rațiu were recorded: “What is being discussed here, gentlemen, is the very existence of the Romanian people. The existence of a people is not discussed, it is affirmed!”.
“Through its content, and especially through the movement generated by it, the Memorandum remains the most important political action of the Romanians from the second half of the 19th century. The memorandumist movement brought the mass of the Romanian people to the stage of political action – a fact proven by the large audience of the Memorandum in its ranks and validated in the political plane a new generation significantly named the Great Union (Iuliu Maniu, Alexandru Vaida Voevod, Vasile Goldiș, Teodor Mihali, Ștefan Cicio Pop, Amos Frâncu et al.). The example of the memorists and the devotion with which the entire people supported them write a bright page in the history of the Romanians that must be cherished and appreciated as it should be by the generations of our days”, show the organizers of the exhibition.
The exhibition is accompanied by a bilingual catalog in Romanian and English, which contains the description of the exhibited pieces as well as the full text of the Memorandum submitted to the Imperial Chancellery in Vienna on May 28, 1892.
Read also:
The truth about the Memorandum of 1892 from Cluj and why you have a monument and a street named after him
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Tags: years famous trial memorists Cluj exhibition marking event opens Reduta building building trial place
