Simeon Radew

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Simeon Trajtschew Radew ( Bulgarian Симеон Трайчев Радев ; born January 19, 1879 in Resen today in Macedonia ; † February 15, 1967 in Sofia ) was a Bulgarian diplomat , historian, chronicler, journalist and publicist . He was also the first representative of Bulgaria in the League of Nations in Geneva , co-founder and member of the Macedonian Scientific Institute and a Freemason . Simeon Radew is the father of the writer Trajan Radew and one of the most famous chroniclers during the years of the Bulgarian state building.

family

Simeon Radew was born in the tradition-conscious family of Trajche Radew in Resen. Trajche, who was a merchant, had contacts with many activists of the Bulgarian Revival . When Simeon was young, one of them even lived in his family house, Sachari Tschintulow (brother of Dobri Tschintulow ), who was a teacher in Resen at the time.

Simeon had eight siblings, and the early death of his younger sister Olga left deep marks on him. One of his brothers Vladimir graduated from the prestigious Bulgarian Men’s School in Saloniki and was a teacher in several Bulgarian schools in Macedonia (including Resen, Štip and Kumanovo ), which were established with the help of the Bulgarian Exarchate at that time. When Simeon went to school in Ohrid, one of his teachers was his brother Vladimir. There he made friends with Despina, the daughter of Grigor Parlitschew , with whom he was in the same school class. She later made Simeon a good friend of the Parlichev family. Another known brother of Simeon was named Christ. During his childhood there were four languages ​​spoken in Resen: Bulgarian, Turkish, Albanian and Wallachian, all of which he spoke very well. Simeon Radew was also very good friends with other well-known Bulgarian personalities, including Anthim I - first Bulgarian exarch, Dame Gruew - Bulgarian freedom fighter, Andrei Lyaptschew - Bulgarian politician, or the Romanian King Charles I.

Life

From 1891 he was enrolled in the Bulgarian school in Ohrid. In the school, which is located in an outbuilding of the Church of Sw. Kliment found that the teachers were all graduates of the prestigious Bulgarian School for Men in Thessaloniki or the equally well-known Robert College in Constantinople . During his time in Ohrid he got to know works of the French revolutionary literature, whereby The Wretched of Victor Hugo left deep traces in the young character of Simeon. In allusion to the work, Simeon later said himself that he looked like a wretched person in his time in Ohrider because he was very thin. He learned French and quickly became one of the best in the school. Due to his close friendship with Despina Parlitschewa, the daughter of the writer Grigor Parlitschew, he was often invited as a guest to his literary evenings.

Since his brother Vladimir was transferred to another school a year later, the parents decided to send Simeon to Bitola . When he arrived in Bitola in 1892, he lived in the Bulgarian pension and studied at the Bulgarian grammar school together with students from all over Southeast Macedonia . Most of his classmates became teachers in Bulgarian schools in Macedonia and members of the BMARK ( Bulgarian Macedonian-Adrianople Revolutionary Committee / Български Македоно-Одрински революционни комитети , a predecessor organization of IMRO ). Radev later stated that one of his favorite subjects was Old Bulgarian grammar, which he found very helpful in learning and reading the Russian language.

During the winter holidays, he and his little sister Olga fell ill. He survived, she didn't. Back in Bitola he made friends with Georgi Pop Hristow, who was later accepted into the BMARK by Dame Gruew and who led a Cheta during the Ilinden uprising . After successfully completing the Progymnasium and taking some exams before the Wali (governor) of Bitola, in 1893 his father decided to send Simeon to the prestigious Bulgarian men's school in Thessaloniki .

At the suggestion of Nikola Paskow, a good friend of the Radewi family and a distinguished person in the ranks of the Bulgarian exarchate, Simeon was proposed for a scholarship for the gifted. The students were sent to Constantinople for training in the Galatasaray Mekteb-i Sultani Elite University ("Galatasaray School of the Sultans"). In Simeon's class, three of the students came from the Bulgarian high school in Skopje and two from the one in Bitola - Vladimir Robew and Simeon Radew. Radew studied here from 1893 to 1898 when he passed his final exams as one of the best students. On one of his trips home in 1895, at the age of 16, he was accepted into the BMARK at the suggestion of Goze Deltschew . After graduating, Simeon went to Geneva.

In 1902 he completed his law degree in Geneva. During his time in Geneva he published the bi-weekly paper L'Effort (1900) in French and in Paris the newspaper Le Mouvement Macedonia (1902) also in French. During this time he kept a diary which served as the basis for his later work, the “Colony of Bulgarian Students in Geneva (1898–1899)” (from the Bulgarian “Българската студентска колония в Женева (1898–1899)”). After the Ilinden Preobraschenie uprising in 1903, he went to Italy , France and Great Britain , where he campaigned for the solution of the “Macedonian question”.

Between 1901 and 1909 Simeon was a journalist for the Wetscherna Posta (Вечерна поща, from the Bulgarian Evening Post), where he worked as a correspondent , editor (1906) and editor-in-chief (1905-1909) and reported from Russia during the revolution .

At the suggestion of Pawel Genadiew he was together with Aleksandar Balabanow between 1906 and 1909 co-editor and from 1909 to 1912 editor-in-chief of the magazine Chudozhnik (Bulgarian “Художник” = painter, artist). At the end of 1908, Nikola Genadiew sent Simeon Radew to Thessaloníki with the order to establish contact with the Young Turks , to publish a newspaper and to ask for his election from the list of the party " Union of Bulgarian Constitutional Clubs in Macedonia " (Bulgar to seek the Turkish parliament.

During this time he joined the Bulgarian People's Liberal Party and became one of the authors of its 1911 program. In the same year he founded the party-affiliated daily Volja (Bulgar. “Воля” = will), of which he was director for some time.

During the First Balkan War , Simeon took part as a volunteer, initially as a liaison officer for the foreign press in the general staff of the Bulgarian army and later as an officer in the Macedonia-Adrianople Volunteer Corps . He was involved in battles in Thrace and Macedonia against Turks and Serbs. He took part in the storming of Tekirdağ , Corlu , and the Marmara Island in Thrace . In the last days of the war he was relocated to his familiar Macedonia via the Edirne - Thessaloniki railway and took part in skirmishes with the Serbian army .

After the outbreak of the Second Balkan War , he was ordered to Sofia in 1913. A few weeks later, Simeon Radew became the Bulgarian envoy in Bucharest, where he took part in the negotiations on the peace of Bucharest together with Colonel Ivan Fitschew and Dimitar Tonschew . After he and the Bulgarian delegation were unable to prevent Macedonia from remaining within Serbia during the peace talks, he was viewed as a traitor in his homeland. After the peace conference, Radew remained active as ambassador in Bucharest at the personal request of the Romanian King Charles I.

After the Kingdom of Romania entered World War I alongside the Entente in the summer of 1916 , Radew was transferred to Bern in September 1916. However, he only stayed there until March 1917, when he resigned and volunteered in the Bulgarian Army. At the end of the war he and his old friend Andrei Lyaptschew took part in the drafting of the armistice with the Entente, which was signed on September 29, 1918 in Thessaloniki.

In the following years he was Bulgarian Ambassador to The Hague (1920–1921), Ankara (1923–1925), Washington, DC (1925–1933), London (1935–1938) and Brussels (1938–1940) October 1925, the Angora peace and friendship treaty with Turkey . He was the first representative of Bulgaria in the League of Nations in Geneva.

However, after the communists came to power in Bulgaria , Radev quickly fell from grace and was dismissed. At the same time, he was denied access to the press and public and political activities. Nevertheless, because of his experience on the international stage, he was proposed as a delegate to the Paris Peace Conference in 1946 by Wassil Kolarov .

He died in abject poverty in Sofia in 1967, a few days after his autobiography "Early Memories" was due to be published. However, like his other works, it was blacklisted by the communist rulers a little later and was a banned book until the early 1990s. Some of his manuscripts were bought by the Bulgarian Academy of Sciences and have not yet been published.

Radev Point , a headland of Rugged Island in Antarctica, has been named after him since 2006 .

bibliography

Simeon Radew often wrote under the name S. Trajchev / С. Трайчев Articles in magazines and newspapers. He has written more than 1500 articles, reports, interviews, pamphlets and more. Some of his memoirs are learned today as standard works in the Bulgarian school.

memoirs

  • The Bulgarian student colony in Geneva (1898–1899) (from the Bulgarian “Българската студентска колония в Женева (1898–1899)”)
  • Early memories (from the Bulgarian "Ранни спомени")
  • What I in the Balkan War have seen (bulg. "Това, което видях от Балканската война")
  • The builders / creators of modern Bulgaria Volume 1, Volume 2 (1910–1911) and Volume 3 (2008) (Bulgarian "Строителите на съвременна България. Том 1"). The book is based exclusively on the careful study of contemporary documents, archive materials and interviews with those involved
  • “La Macedoine et la renaissance bulgare au XIXe siecle” ( Macedonia and the Bulgarian Revival in the 19th Century ) (1918–1943г.), Published in 1918 - in French, 1927 and 1943 - in Bulgarian
  • The Bucharest Conference and the Bucharest Peace Treaty of 1913 (from the Bulgarian “Конференцията в Букурещ и Букурещския мир от 1913 г.”)
  • “Погледи върху литературата, изкуството и лични спомени” (1965)

additional

  • “La question bulgare et les Etats balkaniques”, 1919
  • The poem The Hajduke Velju (bulg. “Хайдут Велко”) is the first work by Radew, written during his time in Constantinople
  • The stories
    • Dispute (bulg. “Раздор”) 1895
    • A walk to Halki (Bulgarian "Една разходка до Халки")
    • Tanas Kalimachka (Bulgarian "Танас Колимачка") based on a true story from Ohrid
    • The blind violin player (bulg. “Слепият цигулар”)
  • The drama Summer Rain (Bulgarian “Летен порой”)

Translations

Literary criticism

  • Dr. Krastew as a literary critic. (Bulgar. "Д-р Кръстев като литературен критик") 1907

swell

  • Eduard Bayer, Dietmar Endler: Bulgarian literature at a glance. P. Reclam, Leipzig 1983, DNB 840021690 .
  • United Center for Research and Training in History: Bulgarian historical review / 1.1973. Publ. House of the Bulg. Acad. of Sciences, 1973, ISSN  0204-8906 .
  • Norbert Randow: The more recent Bulgarian history in the mirror of literature. German-Bulgarian Society, Hamburg, pdf - online version , visited on June 16, 2008.
  • Helene Auzinger: Small Slavic biography. Harrassowitz, Wiesbaden 1958,
  • RJ Crampton: Bulgaria. Oxford University Press, 2007, ISBN 978-0-19-820514-2 , p. 451.
  • Otto Harrassowitz : Small Slavic biography. MZ-Verlag, Wiesbaden 1958, p. 569.
  • Yearbook of European History. Volume 5, 2004, pp. 128-130.

Web links


Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Article on Simeon Trajkow Radew in Meyers Lexikon online (accessed on February 14, 2009; no longer accessible)
  2. ↑ Founder member of the Macedonian Scientific Institute (Bulgarian) ( Memento of the original from April 19, 2012 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link has been inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / macedonia-science.org
  3. ↑ Claudia Weber : In Search of the Nation: Culture of Remembrance in Bulgaria from 1878-1944. LIT Verlag, Berlin / Hamburg / Münster 2006, ISBN 3-8258-7736-1 , p. 94.
  4. ↑ a b c d Simeon Radew: Early memories
  5. ↑ Otto Harrassowitz: Small Slavic Biography. P. 743.
  6. ↑ Simeon Radew: What I saw in the Balkan war
  7. ↑ Magarditsch A. Hatschikjan: Tradition and Reorientation in Bulgarian Foreign Policy 1944–1948. Oldenbourg Wissenschaftsverlag, 1988, ISBN 3-486-55001-2 , p. 184.
  8. ^ Eduard Bayer, Dietmar Endler: Bulgarian literature at a glance.
personal data
SURNAME Radew, Simeon
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Radew, Simeon Trajchev; Radev, Simeon; Симеон Трайчев Радев
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Bulgarian writer and diplomat
DATE OF BIRTH January 19, 1879
PLACE OF BIRTH Resen
DATE OF DEATH February 15, 1967
Place of death Sofia