Leader of the National Peasant Party who led Transylvania's union with Romania, sentenced to life in 1947 and dead in Sighet prison
On 11 November 1947 the Bucharest military court sentenced the seventy-four-year-old Maniu to hard labour for life. His closing statement came to a single sentence: everything he had done had been for the Romanian people, and history would judge.
A lawyer born into a Greek Catholic family in Sălaj, Transylvania, he began in politics as a Romanian National Party deputy in the Hungarian parliament. After the great assembly at Alba Iulia in December 1918 he led Transylvania's union with Romania as president of its Directing Council, and in 1926 he merged with the Peasant Party to found the National Peasant Party, serving as prime minister in 1928–30 and 1932–33. He opposed Carol II's personal rule and the royal dictatorship of 1938; under Antonescu he supported the recovery of Bessarabia but opposed the war beyond the Dniester, and took part in preparing the coup of 23 August 1944. After the war he was the centre of the opposition to the Groza government and Soviet domination and protested the rigging of the 1946 election. In July 1947 the arrest of party leaders attempting to fly abroad from Tămădău airfield became the pretext for dissolving the National Peasant Party, and at the trial of October and November he was sentenced to life imprisonment for "treason". He died at eighty in Sighet prison in February 1953 and was buried in an unmarked grave.
Career Timeline
- 1906–1910Romanian National Party deputy in the Hungarian parliament
- 1918–1920President of the Directing Council of Transylvania
- 1926Founded the National Peasant Party
- 1928–1930Prime minister
- 1932–1933Prime minister
- 1944Took part in preparing the coup of 23 August
- 1945–1947Leader of the opposition to the Groza government
- 1947Tămădău affair; party dissolved; sentenced to life
- 1953Died in Sighet prison