boyars (including the future Ottoman diplomat Alexandros Kallimachis, Scarlat's son, Teodor Balş (who was to serve as Moldavia's kaymakam in 1856–1857), Daniel Scavinschi, as well as Gheorghe Asachi's brother Petru. He gave various lectures, and offered additional training in drawing and art history, as well as in Romanian history. He organized several exhibits of his students' work in technical drawing. Despite a favorable report from its inspectors, Asachi's facility soon met with opposition from Greek teachers at the Academy, which led it to be closed soon after its original students graduated (1819). Nevertheless, Asachi was not stripped of his professorship, and was allowed to maintain both his position as head of the Princely Library and his house on Academy grounds. Later in the same year, he was involved in reorganizing the Orthodox seminary at Iaşi's Socola Monastery, and traveled to Transylvania in order to enlist the help of scholars active there. His friendly relations with various leaders of the Transylvanian School helped in achieving this goal; in 1820, he returned to Moldavia accompanied by Vasile Fabian Bob, Ioan Costa, Ion Manfi and Vasile Pop, all of whom became teachers at the Academy. Early in 1821, Gheorghe Asachi's activities were interrupted when the Greek Filiki Eteria forces crossed the Prut River and took over Moldavia on their way to Wallachia, during what constituted the earliest stage of the Greek War of Independence. Like his father (who died in 1825), Metropolitan Veniamin, and many other notable Moldavians, Asachi fled into Russian territory. He returned the following year, as the Ottoman Empire retook the region and put an end to Phanariote rules (a measure which attracted Asachi's enthusiasm); the new prince, Ioan Sturdza, appointed him Moldavian representative to the Austrian Empire, an office which he held between 30 November 1822 and February 1827. With this, he was awarded the traditional rank of Great Comis, and thus joined the ranks of nobility. As a diplomat, Asachi was foremost noted for his contacts with nationalist intellectuals who represented various ethnicities subject to the Austrian Empire. While in Vienna, he met the Austrian woman Elena Tauber, former governess of the Sturdza children and widow of the merchant Kiriako Melirato; she was his concubine until 1827, when they were married in an Orthodox church in Iaşi. Tauber had three children from her marriage to Melirato — a girl, Hermiona, and two boys, Alexandru and Dimitrie (later, a