[1] 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 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....

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 (German: Groß-Kokel, Romanian: Târnava-Mare) (in November), as well as the administrator de facto of the respective county.

General Józef Bem offered the administrators amnesty, and Roth retired to Muzsna (German: Meschen, Romanian: 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.