Cartisoara is a small village, situated in the South-East part of the Sibiu County, next to the mountains of Arpasel, Balea, Valea Doamnei and Laita. It is crossed by the river Balea and by the Transfagarasan road (DN 7C).

Its origins date from the Middle Ages, in the XIVth century, when there were two different settlements, on both sides of Balea river. One of them consisted of a Romanian population, while the other was inhabited by German colonists, broght here through the arrangements of the monastery of Carta. In time, the two settlemets (called Streza and Oprea) merged and became the village that is now known as Cartisoara.

Cartisoara hosts a couple of interesting historical objectives (two Orthodox churches built at the beginning of the XIXth century), but it is mostly remembered as the birthplace of Badea Cartan, an extremely original figure from the XIXth century. Gheorghe Cartan was born in 1849, at a time when Transylvania was part of the Austro-Hungarian empire. His parents were former servants on count Teleki domain and were so poor, that he could not go to school and have a formal education.

He was forced to become a shepherd and to wander the mountains with his animals. One day, when he was high in the mountains with his fellow shepherds, he asked what was behind the cliffs of the Carpathian mountains and he found out that there were other Romanians, living free, in another country (which, at that time consisted of Wallachia and Moldavia). He decided to get to know his countrymen and  began his journey by foot (this would be his only way of travelling and lead to a Romanian saying – to travel like Badea Cartan).

In 1867 he passed the mountains into Wallachia and developed a close relationship with Ion Cotiga, a more educated person, who, during the following 10 years, taught Badea Cartan how to read and write and revealed to him the origins of the Romanian people. As a result, Badea Cartan became extremely attached the Romanian history and its people and his actions had an ultimate objective the unification and freedom of Romanians everywhere.

He donated his fortune and enlisted in the Romanian army during the Independence War in 1877 and, in 1896, began the journey that would make him famous throughout Europe. For 43 days, he travelled by foot to Rome, to see the Colum of Trajan, the monument that depicts the war between the Dacians and Romans and, thus, the birth of the Romanian people. He fell asleep at the basis of the Column and, the next day, he was discovered by a policeman that said: ”Wow, a Dacian fell from the Column!”, because Badea Cartan’s clothes (that of a simple peasant from Transylvania) were identical to those of the Dacians carved on the monument. He was introduced to the Romanian ambassador in Rome, to the Italian officials and developed a close friendship with the mayor of Rome.
He returned to Rome several times, and besides that, he travelled to  France (in Paris he held a conference in front of the French students), to Switzerland, to Spain, to Belgium, to Greece and Jerusalem. Mostly by foot, of course.

Another part of his adventurous life was his struggle for the education of the Romanian people from Transylvania. Recognising the importance of education, he began bringing books from the Kingdom of Romania into Transylvania, sometimes in a bag, sometimes with a couple of charriots. It was calculated that he brought to his fellow people a total of 250.000 books. The authorities were not at all pleased with this and he was imprisoned and put to trial in 1905.

Later on he was released; he died at Poiana Tapului in 1911 (a village between Sinaia and Busteni) and was burried in Sinaia. His memorial house in Cartisoara holds objects and books that belonged to Badea Cartan and a few pictures taken throughout his life and offers a suggestive perspective about how a peasant’s house looked like at the middle of the XIXth century, with original furniture, ceramics or dowry chests.

Author: Iulian Fira

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