Stephan Ludwig Roth

Stephan Ludwig Roth (24 November 1796 – 11 May 1849) was a Transylvanian Saxon intellectual, teacher, pedagogue and Lutheran pastor.

Early life
Stephan Ludwig Roth was born in Mediasch (Principality of Transylvania, part of the Austrian Empire), in the family of Marie Elisabeth Roth (born Gunesch) and Gottlieb Roth, the rector of the Mediasch Gymnasium. After studying in Mediasch, Hermannstadt (Sibiu) and at the University of Tübingen, Roth in 1818 pursued his interest in the science of teaching by travelling to Switzerland to gather experience from Johann Heinrich Pestalozzi's projects in Yverdon-les-Bains. He became a collaborator of Pestalozzi, published Der Sprachunterricht (a work on language learning) and finished a doctorate in philosophy at Tübingen (1820).

Returning to Transylvania, Roth followed in the footsteps of his father as head of the Mediasch Gymnasium from 1831 and became a pastor in 1837.

Political career
In the debates raised by the Transylvanian Diet in 1841, he proposed that laws should be published in Latin, Hungarian and German. He thought that the Diet could keep using Hungarian by tradition but that the public administration should communicate with the people simultaneously in Hungarian, German and Romanian. He considered that making Romanian as well an official language in the region would point out its ascendence over the others and its lingua franca status in the ethnical composition of the country. He publicised the idea in his 1842 work: Der Sprachkampf in Siebenbürgen: "The gentlemen from the Diet in Klausenburg may have given birth to an official language, and now they rejoice, that the child was born.... However we have already a language of the land. It is not German, also not the Hungarian language, but the Wallachian language! We may take measures and threaten as we like, that is the way it is, and not otherwise.""When two people of different nationalities, who cannot speak each other's language, meet, is the Wallachian language that serves as translator. No matter if one travels or goes to the market, anyone can speak Wallachian. Before one tries to see whether that one can speak German or that one can speak Hungarian, the discussion starts in Wallachian."

He was against cultural assimilation of Romanians, but Roth had always argued that the Saxon element in Transylvania could be strengthened by encouraging new German colonists to move in.

Roth further irritated Hungarian sensibilities by rejecting any form of union between Transylvania and Hungary. He initially supporting in the March of 1848 but was dissatisfied of lack of guarantees of ethnic rights. He tried instead to build a bridge between Saxons and Romanians. Thus, he attended on 15 May the first ethnic Romanian gathering at Câmpia Libertății (near Blasendorf (Blaj) see ) and wrote about it in the local press. His articles showed full support for the movement and highlighted Avram Iancu's contribution to the cause.

With the outbreak of the violent clashes between Imperial and Hungarian troops in October 1848, Roth became a member of the Hermannstadt Pacification Committee and commissioner for Saxon villages in Nagy-Küküllő (Groß-Kokel, Târnava-Mare) (in November), as well as the administrator de facto of the respective county.

With the Hungarian victories in January 1849 came the end of local government structures. General Józef Bem offered the administrators amnesty, and Roth retired to Muzsna (Meschen, Moșna). However, in February, Lajos Kossuth set up military tribunals with László Csányi, the government commissioner of Transylvania in which the pre-amnesty cases were trialed, backed by a parliamentary decree. On 21 April 1849, on orders of Csányi, Roth was arrested in his seat, under the following charges: 1. Accepting an office under enemy's occupation

2. Introducing Romanian as an official language throughout the county (a protocol written down in Romanian was presented as evidence)

3. Attaching 13 villages from the county to the Saxon Seats, considered a violation of the Hungarian territory

4. Robbing the Hungarian population, as leader of a Saxon and Wallachian revolt.

Execution
Roth expressly prohibited the local peasants to exert violence in his defence against the authorities. He was brought to Kolozsvár (Klausenburg, Cluj). On 11 May 1849, less than one month after Bem's amnesty has been cancelled, he was court-martialed for high treason against Hungary and was swiftly executed. He wrote to his children before his death that "dead or alive I've never been the enemy of the Hungarian nation. Believe this to me, a dying person in the very moment when all mendacity will cease to exist". Kossuth regarded the death penalty as a mistake, and Bem argued that if he had known about the sentence in time, he would have prevented the execution.