Ioan Sterca-Șuluțiu

Who was Ioan Sterca-Șuluțiu?

Ioan Sterca-Șuluțiu was an ethnic Romanian bureaucrat in the administration of Imperial Austrian Transylvania, owner of gold mines at Abrud, and the brother of Greek-Catholic Metropolitan Alexandru Sterca-Șuluțiu. He was the father of the judge Dionisie Sterca-Şuluţiu and of the historian Iosif Sterca-Şuluţiu.

Born in Abrud, present-day Alba County, Șuluțiu served as an officer in the Imperial and Royal Army during the Napoleonic Wars.

In 1848, his house in Abrud served as a meeting place for the ethnic Romanian leaders of the Transylvanian revolution that year, and as a place of refuge for participants in the Wallachian revolutionary movement. Alexandru G. Golescu stayed in Șuluțiu's house until Russian troops entered Transylvania, when he fled to Paris.

As an experienced soldier, Șuluțiu was the tactical leader of the 1848 Romanian military operations in the Apuseni Mountains against the Hungarian revolutionary government. It was he who invented the legendary wooden cannons used by Avram Iancu.

With Șuluțiu acting as intermediary, the Austrian commander of the citadel at Alba Iulia sent munitions to the inhabitants of the mountains, in order to bolster their resistance against the pressure of the revolutionary Hungarian armies.