George Bariţ

George Bariț (4 June 1812 – 2 May 1893), often rendered as George Barițiu, was a Romanian historian, philologist, playwright, politician, businessman and journalist, the founder of the Romanian language press in Transylvania.

Born in Jucu de Jos, Jucu, Cluj County, he was the son of the Greek-Catholic priest Ioan Pop Bariț, and of Ana Rafila. He attended school in Trascău (today Rimetea, Alba County), and then highschool in Blaj and Cluj. Originally trained for priesthood, he decided instead to become a teacher at the Romanian language commercial school in Brașov.

In 1838 he founded in Brașov the first Romanian newspaper in his native region, and named it Gazeta de Transilvania. Politically active, he was an important personality in the revolution of 1848 in Transylvania, establishing connections with Romanian nationalists and radicals in Wallachia and Moldavia, and using Gazeta as one of the main political voices demanding equal rights for Romanians and Transylvanian Hungarians after the Hungarian nationalist revolutionary government began pressing for Transylvania to be removed from direct Austrian supervision.

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