Lajos Takács: A Hungarian Lawyer's Life in 20th-Century Transylvania

Lajos Takács was born in Transylvania, a multi-ethnic region, at the time (before 1918/20) part of Kingdom of Hungary and later part of Romania. He finished his studies in law in what was by that time Romania, given that the university centre of Transylvania, Cluj, had become part of Romania. He was a young lawyer of good ability, gifted with political and social sensitivity. After 1945, he found himself in the service of the emerging dictatorship because he certainly believed that the time had come for a solution to the question of nationalities, for reconciliation, equality, cooperation, and friendship between Romanians and Hungarians. In this capacity, however, he contributed to the dismantling of Hungarian institutions and organizations, most notably – as rector – to the forced merger of Bolyai University into Victor Babeş University. Instead of reconciliation, the system was characterized by the oppression of minorities. Takács, in his old age, realizing his mistakes, became an opponent of the regime and of Ceauşescu. In the 1980s, during the darkest period of the dictatorship, he died without the hope that some of his former dreams would come true.