Gogea Mitu, the “Goliath of Romania”, was the tallest Romanian of all time. Under his real name Dumitru Goagă, the young man had a tragic end, under suspicious conditions. He was born on July 14, 1914 in a poor family from the town of Mârşani, Dolj county, located approximately 50 kilometers from the city of Craiova. He had 10 brothers and sisters, his mother was only 16 years old when she gave birth to him.
Since he was a child, the signs of the disease called gigantism made their appearance. At only three years old, he looked like a primary school child, and at the age of 10 he already had no place in the bank. But despite the fact that the young man was not the only one who suffered from gigantism, his older brother, who had died at the age of 7 due to the disease, had reached the height of 1.80 m at the age of kindergarten, many doctors wanted to study him Gogea.
How Gogea Mitu became known
The family received an offer from a circus patron in Prague, and Gogea accepted on the spot, hoping that he would find a girl to marry. “Leave it, father, and this is how my mother complains that no girl from the village will take me! Going to the circus, maybe I’ll marry a woman who, riding the trapeze, can reach me”, he allegedly told his father, according to Newsweek.ro. This is how Gogea became one of the attractions of Târgu Moşilor.
It is considered a human rarity
Gogea, who already weighed 120 kilograms, was kept hidden in a tent and for a few lei the businessman brought him out into the light, like a human rarity, to impress the visitors of the fair with his stature. He presented numbers in which he bent metal bars and iron rods in his gigantic palms.
He was discovered at the age of 17 by a businessman who proposed to his parents to let him go to Bucharest, thus arriving from Târgul Moşilor to the famous Globus circus, already 2.42 meters tall. In the early 1930s, in 1934, Gogea’s circus career ended and he became a famous boxer in the West. The one who noticed him was the former Romanian pugilist of Italian origin Umberto Lancia, who was in Bucharest.
Gogea Mitu died at only 22 years old
In 1936, Gogea Mitu died. They say he had tuberculosis. “According to my mother, Mărioara, who was Gogea Mitu’s sister, my uncle was quite intelligent, he liked jokes and spoke at the top of his tongue. He was very mature from a young age: he learned to read by himself and, around 10-12 years old, being in the primary classes, he no longer had a place in the bench. You have no idea how hardworking he was and how much he loved animals.
Returning from Paris to Bucharest and being very hot in the train, he opened the window and turned on the electricity a little. On the advice of his manager, he was hospitalized for a few days at the Philanthropia Hospital, for massages and investigations. Then, I found out on the radio that he died”, said Gogea Mitu’s granddaughter, Constanta Burada, in the Ediție Specială newspaper.
