page_title: Andrei Mocioni
section_title: Legacy
hierarchical_section_title: Andrei Mocioni / Legacy
caption_attribution_description: Română: Cripta familiei Mocioni din Foeni - vedere laterala This is a photo of a historic monument in județul Timiș, classified with number TM-IV-m-A-06332
context_page_description: Andrei Mocioni de Foen was an Austrian and Hungarian jurist, politician, and informal leader of the ethnic Romanian community, one of the founding members of the Romanian Academy. Of a mixed Aromanian and Albanian background, raised as a Greek Orthodox, he belonged to the Mocioni family, which had been elevated to Hungarian nobility. He was brought up at his family estate in the Banat, at Foeni, where he joined the administrative apparatus, and identified as a Romanian since at least the 1830s. He rose to prominence during the Hungarian Revolution of 1848: he was a supporter of the House of Lorraine, trying to obtain increased autonomy for Banat Romanians in exchange for loyalism. The Austrians appointed Mocioni to an executive position over that region, but curbed his expectations by including the Banat as a whole into the Voivodeship of Serbia. This disappointment pushed Mocioni to renounce politics during much of the 1850s.
  The attempt by Austria to ensure a new administrative formula in the 1860s saw Mocioni's co-option into the Imperial Diet. He also organized, in 1860, the National Assembly in the Banat—an abortive project, seeking to obtain autonomy on ethnic grounds.
context_section_description: Mocioni's body was taken to Foeni for an Orthodox burial at the common Serb–Romanian church, which he and his wife had furnished. Laura inherited all his wealth, which sparked a Mocioni family feud. Already a licensed postal worker, she continued Mocioni's work as a postmaster. She died on the estate in August 1892, aged 53, and was buried at his side. In her late years, she had carried on with Mocioni philanthropy work, but only servicing the local Serb community and punishing Romanian ingratitude. According to Tribuna, the "new generation" of Romanians, "more enlightened than the earlier one", was expressing shame and regret for having alienated her. 
  By then, a scandal had erupted over Mocioni's remains. The church remained a property of the Karlovci Patriarchy, which in 1900 refused to hand over the body for reburial in the Mocioni mausoleum. It cited texts which condemned the separation in death of husband and wife, but the Romanian press suspected that such resistance was proof of "intolerant" Serb nationalism. A separation was eventually made, and Andrei was reburied in the new location.
  The various Mocioni estates went to brothers Alexandru and Eugen. Some were inherited by Eugen's sons, before passing to Ecaterina Mocioni and her husband, Jenő, Count Teleki; others went to the Bukovinan baron Ioan Mocsony-Stârcea, who was Alexandru's adoptive son. The core manor at Foeni was nevertheless inherited by the Csávossy counts, while his horses continued to be bred by the Austrians Jakob Haas and Ludwig Deutsch. The property was pillaged by peasants during the revolutionary events which marked the collapse of Austria-Hungary in 1918. According to one Romanian account, this incident provided the Hungarian Royal Gendarmerie with an excuse to murder Romanians.
  Most other assets were kept by the surviving family following the establishment of Greater Romania, when Anton Jr bought back the Foeni mansion, hoping to turn it into a cultural club. According to historian Vicențiu Bugariu, by 1930 Andrei Mocioni was already forgotten, a victim of "ignorance and indifference". This trend was censured by the Banat politician Sever Bocu. Although a critic of "Mocionist" conservatism in Austria-Hungary, during the interwar he became noted for his work to preserve and shed light on the family's contribution as a "moral dynasty". Bocu wrote Andrei Mocioni's profile as a study in national pedagogy, declaring that any Banatian unaware of the Mocionis' role "is a Banatian in name only". Mocioni, or any other of his relatives, is also mentioned in the dialectical Banatian poetry of the interwar. Samples include Gheorghe Gârda's Că tăt Bănatu-i fruncea! ("And Yet the Banat Is Tops") and Cassian R. Munteanu's Vicejî noștri ("Our Braves").
  With the death of Anton Jr in 1943, the direct Mocioni lineage was extinguished; however, interest in the family was still kept alive by Bocu's nephew, the scholar Ion D. Suciu. In the 1950s, the estates were subject to nationalization under the communist regime, which turned the Foeni complex into a public bathhouse, and then into a storage room for chemicals. Following the Romanian Revolution of 1989, the mansion was re-purposed as a cultural club and mainly functioned as a disco, before being taken over by the local town hall. The communist and post-communist periods saw the Mocioni inheritance falling into disrepair, and the deposited collections were still being looted in 2003. In the latter period, busts of Andrei and Alexandru Mocioni were installed in Timișoara's Scudier Park.
caption: Mocioni crypt in Foeni, 2015 photograph
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