Emil Rebreanu

Emil Rebreanu (December 17, 1891 – May 14, 1917) was an ethnic Romanian soldier who served as an officer in the Austro-Hungarian Army during World War I and was executed for desertion. The protagonist in Forest of the Hanged, a 1922 novel by his brother Liviu Rebreanu, is drawn from his experience.

Biography Born as the fifth of fourteen children, Rebreanu came from a Romanian Greek-Catholic family in Major, Beszterce-Naszód County (present-day Maieru, Bistrița-Năsăud County, Romania), in Austria-Hungary. He graduated from high school in 1913 and entered the Law faculty of Franz Joseph University in Cluj (Kolozsvár), but was forced to interrupt his studies upon the war's outbreak.

Within a year of joining combat, he was made a second lieutenant in the Austro-Hungarian Army. He fought in Russia and Galicia, sustaining multiple injuries. Rebreanu also distinguished himself on the Italian Front and was given the Gold Medal for Bravery, the highest award granted by the Austrian command to a Romanian.

Legacy Forest of the Hanged, a novel by his brother Liviu Rebreanu, is dedicated: "To the memory of my brother Emil, executed by the Austro-Hungarians, on the Romanian Front, in 1917." Among the individuals whom he fictionalized were successive love interests Elena Haliță ("Marta Domșa") and Ilona Lászlo ("Ilona Vidor", daughter of Făget's mayor in real life, but of a gravedigger in the book), as well as General Karg, who issued the death sentence. In October 1921, he was present at his brother's exhumation and reburial on the soil of the former Romanian Old Kingdom, which the latter had requested prior to being hanged.

A street in Bistrița bears Emil's name since 1995, one in Năsăud since 1996, and there is one in Onești as well. In 2012, a monument was unveiled in his memory at the border between Ghimeș-Făget and Palanca in Bacău County, around the place where the hanging is believed to have occurred. Four meters high and made of stone and bronze, one side depicts him in effigy, while the other shows Saint George.