History of Cluj-Napoca

d in Sibiu, and proclaimed the 1848 Law concerning the Union of Transylvania with Hungary. Before 1918, the city's only Romanian-language schools were two church-run elementary schools, and the first printed Romanian periodical did not appear until 1903.

After the Austro-Hungarian Compromise of 1867, Klausenburg and all of Transylvania were again integrated into the Kingdom of Hungary. During this time, Kolozsvár was among the largest and most important cities of the kingdom and was the seat of Kolozs County. Ethnic Romanians in Transylvania suffered oppression and persecution. Their grievances found expression in the Transylvanian Memorandum, a petition sent in 1892 by the political leaders of Transylvania's Romanians to the Austro-Hungarian Emperor-King Franz Joseph. It asked for equal rights with the Hungarians and demanded an end to persecutions and attempts at Magyarisation. The Emperor forwarded the memorandum to Budapest—the Hungarian capital. The authors, among them Ioan Raţiu and Iuliu Coroianu, were arrested, tried and sentenced to prison for "high treason" in Kolozsvár/Cluj in May 1894. During the trial, approximately 20,000 people who had come to Cluj demonstrated on the streets of the city in support of the defendants. A year later, the King gave them pardon upon the advice of his Hungarian prime minister, Dezső Bánffy. In 1897, the Hungarian government decided that only Hungarian place names should be used and prohibited the use of the German or Romanian versions of the city's name on official government documents.

20th century

In the autumn of 1918, as World War I drew to a close, Cluj became a centre of revolutionary activity, headed by Amos Frâncu. On October 28, 1918, he made an appeal for the organisation of the "union of all Romanians"