Florian Ștefănescu-Goangă

Following World War I, he became a professor at the newly founded University of Cluj, emerging as a pioneer in experimental psychology in Romania over the ensuing decades.

After 1945, he initially worked with the new communist government, but his insistence on an apolitical teaching environment ultimately saw him held at Sighet prison from 1950 to 1955, and he died three years after his release.

[3] In 1919, he became a professor at the newly established Romanian University of Cluj, situated in the capital of Transylvania, which had recently united with Romania at the close of World War I.

[8] More broadly, his rectorial term coincided with the Great Depression and a serious shortfall in university funding, so that he consistently used his position to call for budgetary increases.

[9] As early as 1924, when Sextil Pușcariu proposed inviting Lucian Blaga to teach at Cluj, he stood in opposition due to a wish to bring in one of his own students.

Two days later, fourteen of its most prominent members, including its leader Corneliu Zelea Codreanu, were taken from their prison and shot dead on a deserted road.

[18] When the university had to withdraw to Sibiu in 1940 as a result of the Second Vienna Award, he organized its orderly transition to another city, although himself settled in Bucharest, working at a government ministry.

[19] In spite of his anti-communist reflexes, he sided with Salvator Cupcea and Alexandru Roșca in pushing for Mărgineanu's dismissal from the faculty, hoping to save his own position and initially gaining favor with the Romanian Communist Party.

In his memoirs, Mărgineanu noted he had concealed from his mentor the presence of Roșca among his would-be assassins, and the involvement of both men, while Guard members, in the campaign against him.

He insisted on hosting the founding meeting in his own home (his wife's property), later putting up a plaque reminding viewers of Romania's struggle alongside the USSR in the closing period of World War II.

He defected from the PNL to the Communist-allied National Liberal Party–Tătărescu, and headed the candidate list for Giurgiu in the 1946 election, winning a seat in the Assembly of Deputies.