20-24 septembrie 2009 - Biblioteca Metropolitana Bucuresti

824 Ion Constantinthe Timoc people did not pass the stage of promises and Athanasie PopoviciFurnică realized that when he came in Romania and later on at the PeaceConference in Paris. After a short staying in Sibiu he was named adviserwith the agreement of Ionel Bratianu and Iuliu Maniu. He went to Paris asa member of the Romanian commission. There he spoke in the name of theTimoc people from Serbia by handing a memoir to the peace conference.The given information were meant to inform and sensitize the great powersrelating the Timoc people and also convince them to take a reasonabledecision regarding them, a decision made after Wilson ’s principles. Alongwith the representative of the Romanians from Macedonia he foundedat 8th of March 1919 “Liga pentru Eliberarea Românilor din Timoc siMacedonia”. The operation took place at the headquarters of the RomanianColony from Paris. Representatives of the Romanians situated in Serbia,Pind and Macedonia called up their free brothers from Romania and theinternational public opinion to help them in the fight for liberation. 3After the realization of the unification, Onisifor Ghibu started asuccessful and solid activity for consolidating the Romanian state. Beingnamed general secretary for the instruction spring in the leading council,he started from December 1918 a careful work for reorganizing theTransylvanian system of education and also recruiting it by setting up theUniversity of Cluj and organizing secondary schools by a number appositeto the requirements of a Romanian society in a full creative burst. Inhis activity he proved to have the same preoccupation for elaborating aRomanian pedagogy that could offer a scientific foundation to the act ofcreating young generations in a national spirit. His struggle to realize theunification, to bind the unitary Romanian state and to defend its territorialintegrity became a valuable example for the patriotic behavior of allgenerations.A highly cultivated and man of science, Onisifor Ghibu was anencyclopaedist who knew how to cherish the value of writing that was whyhe safely kept any paper which he could grab. This explains the huge fundof archives gathered all his lifetime and his descendants gave it further to theNational Archives of Bucharest where they form “The Onisifor Ghibu Fund”(with two inventories, nr. 1835 and 1836). In many domains – especiallypedagogy, philosophy, religion, national history, religious and minoritypolitics, but also from the battles for defending the national territory towhich integrity he had an absolute role, as in others – researchers couldfind material of an exceptional cultural and scientific value.3Ibidem.