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Octavian Goga (; 1 April 1881 – 7 May 1938) was a far-right politician, poetry, playwright, journalist, and translator. Octavian Goga was the first fascism Prime Minister of Romania.
Most of his holidays, as he recounts in various autobiographical texts, were spent in his father's native village, Felsőkarácsonyfalva, a village on the Târnava Mică, (today Crăciunelu de Sus, part of the commune of Cetatea de Baltă, Alba County, Romania), where about 20% of the families in the village bear the name Goga. The poet said: "The life of the peasants on the delnițele Crăciunelului was my inspiration for Plugarii & Clăcașii.
In 1890 the poet enrolled at the state high school in Sibiu (today Sibiu, Romania), the school which is called today Gheorghe Lazăr National College). In 1899 he transferred to the Romanian high school in Brassó (today Brașov, Romania), which is called now Andrei Șaguna National College). After graduating from high school in 1900, he enrolled at the Faculty of Letters and Philosophy of the University of Budapest, continuing his studies in Berlin and completing them in 1904.
On 14 October 1906 he married Hortensia Cosma, the youngest daughter of the politician and banker Partenie Cosma, director of the Albina Bank in Nagyszeben, one of the wealthiest Romanians in Transylvania.Bălan, Ion Dodu: Octavian Goga, Editura Minerva, București, 1975 The ceremony took place at the Metropolitan Cathedral in Nagyszeben, with Alexandrina and Alexandru Vlahuță as godparents. The marriage broke up after 14 years, when Goga fell in love with the singer Veturia Triteanu, born Mureșan, whom he married in January 1921.
Goga was a member of the in Paris.
The following poems he published in Iosif Vulcan's Revista Familia (Oradea, year XXXIV, 1898, no. 44, p. 13, November) and in the newspapers Tribuna and Luceafărul (no. 11, 1 December 1902, no. 14 - 15, 1 August 1903) were signed, above all, also "Octavian" and then "Nic. Otavă". It was not until 15 September 1903 that he signed his first poem ( Sfârșit de septembrie) in Luceafărul under the name "Octavian Goga".
On July 1, 1902, Luceafărul, a publication for national culture and political unity of the Romanians in Transylvania, appeared in Budapest, where Goga published most of his poems. The founding of the magazine was due to the Romanian students who were active in Budapest within the "Petru Maior" Society: Alexandru Ciura, the author of the article "In lieu de programme" in the first issue, and Goga, who said in 1933 that the title of the magazine "was related to the state of mind and literary consciousness of those times". Most of Goga's works included in the volume Poezii (1905) appeared in the magazine Luceafărul, in whose pages the poet established himself as a genuine literary talent.
In 1904 the well-known poem Oltul appeared in Luceafărul (year III, no. 4, February 15, p. 91–92), then in no. 7, April 10, p. 151, the poem Dăscălița, signed "Nic. Otavă", and in 1905, the poems Plugarii, Lăutarul, Dascălul, Rugăciune, and Clăcașii.
In 1905, the volume Poezii appeared in Budapest, reprinted by the publishing house "Minerva" in Bucharest in 1907 and in Nagyszeben in 1910. After this editorial debut, which became a true literary event, the poet became increasingly in the public consciousness. The literary critic Ion Dodu Bălan considered that Goga's volume "signifies the beginning of a new epoch for our Romanian soul", because "no one has surpassed the vigour, purity and music of our language, the richness of colours, the originality of ideas, the serenity of concepts, the candour of expressions and the healthy national background, which is concentrated in these poems". The poems in this volume are considered "brilliant creations" and the most valuable critics "understand the social, national and aesthetic significance of this appearance in the history of Romanian lyric".
After the review in Revista Familia, Iosif Vulcan returns, on the occasion of the publication of the poem , with the appreciation that Goga is "an original talent, inspired only by the soul of the people", and the poem, "a literary event".Revista Familia year XXXV, no. 44, 1–13 November 1898, p. 523 The volume Poems was enthusiastically received by critics and writers.
Titu Maiorescu revised his aesthetic theory of 1866 ("Politics is a product of reason; poetry is and must be a product of fantasy - otherwise it has no material: one, however, excludes the other"). In the notion of politics, the mentor of Junimea included patriotism as an element of political action, eventually acknowledging that patriotism has become one of the sources of Goga's poetry and inspires him in the most natural way. The proof lies in the bringing in and describing of ordinary figures in the life of the people, who, however, suddenly gain — in addition to their normal value and purpose — a significance, one might say, an extraordinary illumination and brilliance, which can only be explained by the ardour of the struggle to defend the national heritage".
Other appreciations of esteem were formulated by Sextil Pușcariu, Ion Luca Caragiale, George Coșbuc, Alexandru Vlahuță, Eugen Lovinescu, Barbu Ștefănescu Delavrancea, and George Panu. Considered a poet of the nation on both sides of the Carpathians, the poet enjoyed remarkable literary prestige by the age of 25.
Goga was buried in Bucharest, at Bellu Cemetery. Later the poet's body was reburied at his mansion in Ciucea, according to his wishes. Ciucea lui Octavian Goga, cu sprijinul CJ Cluj și Muzeul "Octavian Goga" Ciucea; Casa Cărții de Știință, Cluj-Napoca 2003, p. 22
These young people from Budapest knew that they had a duty to defend the ideals of an entire community.
Luceafărul appeared in Budapest on July 1, 1902, on the initiative and with the material support of A.P. Bănuț, supported by a group of patriotic Romanian students. "There was also a lack for Transylvania," said Goga, "of a literary magazine in whose pages the local character, with all its differences from other parts of our nation, was imprinted". Octavian Goga's contribution to the rise of Luceafăr was immense: "Octavian Goga," wrote Ion Chinezu, "wrote for other magazines, even founded some; his name is linked to Luceafărul".
With his activity in the Transylvanian Association for Romanian Literature and Culture of the Romanian People (ASTRA), his publicity concerns intensified with the passing of time, revealing yet another side of his literary talent. Under his direction, the journal Țara noastră appeared on 1 January 1907, temporarily replacing the journal Transilvania. Goga, who effectively directed this weekly, appeared first as editor and then as owner-editor. In the first issue he published the editorial entitled "To our scholars", in which he stated that he aimed to write: "A good gazette. A gazette that bridges the gap between the souls of the scholars and the peasants who kneel to read it on Sundays. All scholars who feel in their hearts the resonance of a duty that demands fulfilment will have their say in this paper, the profits of which will benefit our cultural establishment." The magazine Țara noastră appeared weekly in Nagyszeben until 5 December 1909. It then reappeared in Cluj (1922 - 1931), with Octavian Goga as director, and then in Bucharest (1932 - 1938). The issue of 29 May 1938 was dedicated to the memory of its founder, who died on 7 May.
Until the outbreak of World War I, Goga established himself as a brilliant journalist through his articles published in Țara noastră magazine, Epoca newspaper, Adevărul, Flacăra magazine and România magazine, his journalistic prose being stylistically and thematically comparable to Eminescu. His articles approached the value of the work of a vocational prose writer. The prose writings (included in the volume Precursori) were either speeches given at Romanian Academy meetings, anniversary addresses, or simply tributes to personalities or friends of the writer. Considered anthological pieces in a possible history of portraiture, Tudor Vianu dedicated a significant chapter to it in The Art of Romanian Short Stories.
Goga focused his publicity on the problems of "Romanianism" (the origin of the Romanians, the uninterrupted continuity in the formation of the Romanian people, the idea of the unity of all Romanians, the ideal of union in a nation state, the struggle against Austria-Hungary oppression). Through the magazine Luceafărul he managed to strengthen his cultural ties with Romania, towards the political union of later. The magazine Țara Noastra, which focused on Goga's ideology, also strengthened its ties with the people in the villages, advising them but also helping them with their spiritual and material needs.
With Meșterul Manole, performed in 1927 and published in 1928, Goga attempted to adapt the old myth to psychological drama, artistically rehabilitating the old plot of conjugal time by developing and examining erotic motivations. The main character was an artist, cynical, charming, an inveterate traveller, a great lover of passing erotic experiences.
Goga also left, as a draft, two one-act plays ( Sonata lunei and Lupul), the sketch Fruntașul, a dialogue article from 1911 and the translation of Imre Madách's The Tragedy of Man.
Tudor Vianu wrote that Memento mori and Tragediei omului are "poems of humanity seen through the hopes, defeats and struggles of peoples". George Călinescu observed that Goga's translation is done in a Romanian that approaches the perfection and beauty of Mihai Eminescu's language: "It is the language and even the style of Eminescu that is appropriate to our time and it is precisely interesting to see a classical poet who manages to be plastic through words, for the ear, not through colorism".
After the outbreak of World War I, Goga settled in Romania, continuing the struggle for the annexation of Transylvania to Romania and for the completion of Romanian state unity. He launched an extensive publicity campaign in the newspapers Adevărul and Epoca on the situation of the brothers across the Carpathians, who were subject to persecution. Together with Octavian Codru Tăslăuanu, Onisifor Ghibu and Sebastian Bornemisa, he signed the letter to the Transylvanian journalists who had taken refuge in Romania ( Epoca, 15 June 1915), with the aim of continuing the publicity work for the annexation of Transylvania.
On 14 December 1914, the "Extraordinary Congress of the Cultural League" was held (president Vasile Lucaciu, vice-president: Barbu Ștefănescu Delavrancea, secretary: Nicolae Iorga, and Goga was a member of the committee, representing Transylvania).
At the meeting organized by the "Political League of All Romanians", in Bucharest, on February 15, 1915, he declared: "For tomorrow's sacrifice we have crossed the border, let us come to Wallachia. We have lost our country, we have lost our homeland, but we still have our heads. We give them to you, do what you want with them. They can fall, Transylvania cannot fall".
Because of his political activity in Romania, the Hungarian government in Budapest brought Goga - as an Austria-Hungary citizen - to trial for high treason and sentenced him to death in absentia. He joined the Romanian army and fought as a soldier in Dobrogea. When hostilities ended and the peace was signed in Bucharest, Goga was forced to leave Romania for France. In the summer of 1918, the "National Council of Romanian Unity" was set up in Paris, a forum for putting pressure on the great powers to achieve Romanian state unity. At the beginning of 1919, Goga returned to Greater Romania.
In 1926 together with Vasile Goldiș, Ioan Lupaș, and Silviu Dragomir, Octavian Goga left the Romanian National Party and joined General Alexandru Averescu's People's Party (PP), a populism movement created upon the war's end. Interestingly, Goga, Goldiș, Lupaș, and Dragomir were all Orthodox, whereas the PNR leader Iuliu Maniu and other remaining members of the PNR were Greek-Catholic. Goga clashed with Averescu over the latter's conflict with King Carol II. Together with Goldiș, Lupaș, and Dragomir, Goga founded the National Agrarian Party on April 10, 1932.
The government, chaired by Goga (28 December 1937 – 10 February 1938) and dismissed after 44 days, was created by the National Christian Party, resulting from the merger on 14 July 1935 in Iași of the National Christian Defence League (led by Alexandru C. Cuza) and the National Agrarian Party (led by Goga).Pop, Gheorghe T.: Caracterul antinațional și antipopular al activității Partidului Național Creștin, Editura Dacia, Cluj-Napoca, 1978
As a sine qua non for the recognition of its new borders, Romania has solemnly undertaken to grant full citizenship and equal rights to all minorities across these borders. In this regard, on 9 December 1919, the Romanian government (Prime Minister Alexandru Vaida-Voievod, 1 December 1919 – 20 January 1920) ordered General Constantin Coandă (former Romanian Foreign Minister) to sign with the Allied and Associated Powers the "Treaty on Minorities", annexed to the Peace Treaty with Austria, which his predecessor, Romanian Prime Minister Ion I.C. Brătianu, had categorically refused to sign, leaving, in protest, the work of the Paris Peace Conference in May 1919. The provisions of the minorities' treaty were subsequently legislated by the Constitution of 29 March 1923 and the Law of 25 February 1924, whereby all inhabitants, former citizens of the Austro-Hungarian Empire and Tsarist Russia, who had administrative residence in Transylvania, Banat, Crișana, and Maramureș on 1 December 1918, in Bukovina on 28 November 1918 and in Bessarabia on 9 April 1918, acquired Romanian citizenship with full rights.
Under the pretext that between 1918 and 1924 Jews from the former Austro-Hungarian and Russian Empires had infiltrated Romania, the government chaired by Octavian Goga, in violation of the Constitution and Romania's international obligations, published on 21 January 1938 Decree No. 169 on the revision of citizenship, by virtue of which Romanian Jewish citizens were forced to prove their right to citizenship with documents, in accordance with the law of 25 February 1924, within 20 days of the posting of lists in communes and towns. On the basis of this decree, the situation of 617,396 Jews was reviewed, of whom 392,172 (63.50%) retained their Romanian citizenship and 225,222 (36.50%) lost it. The Jews who lost their citizenship received identity certificates valid for one year, with the possibility of extension, and were considered foreigners without a passport, subject to the legal regime as such.
This was the first in a series of discriminatory laws, adopted as part of a policy of ethnic cleansing, whereby the Romanian state abandoned its citizens of Jewish origin, depriving them of the most basic civic rights. The Jewish minority, left to the whim of despotic regional civil servants, began to expatriate. A wave of Romanian intellectuals and industrialists of Jewish origin left Romania, Romanian economy and culture were damaged, and leading intellectuals protested vehemently.Țurcanu, Florin: Mircea Eliade, prisoner of history, (translated from French by Monica Anghel and Dragoș Dodu), Bucharest, Humanitas, 2003Alexandra Laignel-Lavastine (2002). 9782130517832, Presses Universitaires de France. ISBN 9782130517832
In an interview with the British newspaper Daily Herald in January 1938, King Carol II and Prime Minister Goga gave the figure of 250,000 and 500,000 Jews respectively as "illegal". While the King rejected the idea of expulsion and denying them any rights, Goga spoke of 500,000 so-called "vagrants", whom "we cannot consider as Romanian citizens". Octavian Goga proposed the deportation of 500,000 Jews to Madagascar (a concept known as the "Madagascar Plan"), while Istrate Micescu, the foreign minister in the Goga–Cuza government, declared: "It is urgent to sweep up our own backyard, as it is useless to tolerate all these scum in our country".
Prime Minister Goga pursued a pro-Nazi policy by intending to ally with and adopt the policies of Nazi Germany and Fascist Italy and pursued an anti-Semitic policy by denying the legal rights of the Jewish population.The New York Times, January 20, 1938The New York Times, articles dated January 13, 1938; December 31, 1937; December 29, 1937 and February 11, 1938 The former Romanian minority freed from Habsburg oppression and turned politician, propelled to the leadership of the majority population, outperformed his teachers in the minority populations thrust. He turned out to be a Xenophobia Extremism, with Fascism and clearly Antisemitism. The historian Florin Constantiniu writes in his book O istorie sinceră a poporului român that the great poet Goga was in a state of dismay because he "believed himself to be and wanted to be a Romanian 'duce' or 'führer'".Constantiniu, Florin, O istorie sinceră a poporului român, p. 351, ed. Univers Enciclopedic, Bucharest, 1997.
The paramilitary wing of the National Christian Party, the Lănceri (meaning "Lancers", the word was derived from LANC, the Romanian acronym of National-Christian Defense League) contributed to the chaos, attacking both Jews and Iron Guard members.
Carol II first pushed towards a victory of the government in the snap elections in March 1938, which he had called on January 18, 1938. However, he soon abandoned Goga, preparing a coup together with the Minister of the Interior Armand Călinescu, a former member of the National Peasants' Party, who acted as a guarantee for the King in the government. The coup was likely precipitated when Goga negotiated an electoral agreement with Corneliu Zelea Codreanu, the leader of the Iron Guard, on February 8, 1938, thus posing a considerable threat to the King's power. On February 9, 1938, Carol II, Călinescu and the former National Liberal prime minister Gheorghe Tătărescu set the coup for the next day. On February 10, 1938, Carol II received Goga and told him to postpone the snap elections, whereupon Goga resigned. Goga refused to participate in the national unity government the King appointed the same day and withdrew to his estate in Ciucea, Transylvania, where he suffered a stroke on 5 May 1938. He died two days later, on May 7, 1938.
In 1920, Goga was elected a member of the academy, his acceptance speech being entitled George Coșbuc. In 1924, the poet received the National Poetry Prize and the Mihail Sadoveanu Prize for prose.
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