Prošek Brewery

The Prošek brewery ( Bulgarian пивоварница братя Прошекови / piwowarniza bratja Proschekowi) was in the Bulgarian capital Sofia from 1884 to 2004 . The brewery was built from 1881 to 1884 by the two brothers Jiří Prošek (* 1847; † 1905) and Theodor Prošek (* 1858; † 1905). Both were Czech engineers who came from Beraun in Bohemia (then part of the Habsburg Empire ) and had settled in Bulgaria. Jiří Prošek came to the Balkans as a railway engineer as early as 1870 and was very much involved in the Bulgarians' national liberation struggle. His brother Theodor Prošek came to Bulgaria in 1878 - after the end of the Russo-Ottoman War of 1877/78, which ended with the liberation of Bulgaria .

Company "Gebrüder Georgi and Bogdan Proschek"

In 1879 the brothers officially changed their first names to the corresponding Bulgarian form: Jiří Prošek (Bulgarian Иржи Прошек / Irschi Proschek) became Georgi Prošek (Bulgarian Георги Прошек / Georgi Prošek) and Theodor Prošek became Bogdan Prošek (Bulgarian / Bogdan Proschek).

The company "Brothers Georgi and Bogdan Proschek" (bulg. Братя Георги и Богдан Прошек) was founded in Sofia in 1895 and existed until the expropriation by the communists in 1947. The registered purpose of the company was:

• Production and sale of beer and ice cream
• Manufacture of printed matter
• Construction company

The first large enterprise of the family firm "Brothers Georgi and Bogdan Prošek" was the Prošek brewery, construction of which began in 1881 and which opened in 1884. The beginning of the art of brewing in Bulgaria is connected with the name of the Prošek brothers. The brewery built on the eastern outskirts of Sofia was at that time the most modern brewery in the Balkans and it was very well known in Sofia. Prošek beer (Bulgarian Прошеково пиво / Proschekowo piwo) became a well-known beer brand in Sofia.

In addition to their brewery, the two brothers were also successful as entrepreneurs in other areas. A small, successful company dynasty developed from their company.

Breweries in Bulgaria

The first beer came to Bulgaria with Hungarian emigrants. After the Hungarian Revolution of 1848, they fled into exile with Lajos Kossuth in what was then the Ottoman Empire . In Shumen they brewed their own beer. After they left the city and Bulgaria after a short time, however, the Bulgarians' interest in the new European drink died out. It was only after the liberation in 1878 that people in Bulgaria became more interested in beer.

Before the liberation of Bulgaria in 1878, the beer otherwise only came to Bulgaria via the major Danube and Black Sea ports, where it was sold to the local population by foreign ships.

The first commercially operated brewery in Bulgaria was founded in Plovdiv in 1881 by the German-speaking Swiss Rudolf Frick and Friedrich Sulzer .

In 1882 merchants from Shumen founded the first brewery in Shumen together with the Czech brewer Franz-František Milde. Franz-František Milde was also involved in the establishment of the Bulgarian Brewery Association in 1882. With the help of the Swiss expert Christian August Bomanti, it was expanded into a large, modern brewery from 1879 to 1881. Production began in the Kamenitsa area in 1882. Today the successor to this brewery is called Kameniza Brewery .

The first brewery in Varna was founded in 1884 by Kasabow and Wtichev.

The Prošek Brewery in Sofia was also built during this period.

prehistory

Jiří Prošek, who came to Bulgaria for the first time in 1873, had noticed that the Shopes (a local ethnic group near Sofia) had the custom of brewing their own beer in the most primitive way, using the ancient Egyptian method, at harvest time. They moistened barley , sprouted it, dried it, and added hot water and wild hops so that natural fermentation began.

The French railway engineer Ducorp, who worked in the Sofia region from 1873 to 1876 - just like Jiří Prošek for Baron Maurice de Hirsch's Rumeli-Danube Railway Company , had opened a small brewery in the village of Knjaschewo , now a district in the south-west of Sofia . Exactly what kind of beer he brewed and to whom he sold it is no longer known. After three or four years the widow of the now deceased Ducorp sold the brewery to a Mr. Dschansasow (Bulgarian Джансъзов). He continued to operate the brewery until 1883 and then leased it to the Prošek brothers. The Prošek brothers hire the Czech master brewer Martinek. At that time there were only two or three pubs in Sofia selling beer. Initially, 10 barrels of beer were brewed daily in the leased brewery, which were supplied to these two to three pubs that sold the “new” drink in Bulgaria - beer.

According to another version, Jiří Prošek and his brother bought the small Ducorp brewery while they were building their brewery from 1881 to 1884. According to other sources, construction began in 1885.

Since the structural conditions of the brewery in Knjaschewo were inadequate, the brothers wanted to build a beer cellar elsewhere . They bought land on the eastern outskirts of Sofia, near the old Turkish cemetery (now the Borisova Gradina Park ) and built a deep beer cellar for the cool storage of the beer. The beer brewed in Knjaschewo was filled into barrels for further fermentation, transported to Sofia and stored in this ice cellar . The ice cellar was 7.70 m wide and 22.30 m long. There was also an ice cellar separate from the beer cellar. The brothers believed that the secret to good quality beer lies in making their own ice cream.

At the end of the 19th century, with the Europeanization of the Bulgarian capital Sofia, beer quickly became popular in Bulgarian pubs and demand increased. Therefore, from 1881 to 1884, the brothers built their brewery next to this "Deep Winter Cellar" (Bulgarian Дълбок зимник / Dalbok simnik). They ordered 100,000 bricks to build the brewery, paying 16 silver lewa for each delivery of 1,000 bricks . The massive building of the brewery (referred to as the brewery factory in Sofia) stood all alone on a hill in 1884, later it had the address 22 San Stefano Street . Opposite is the Bulgarian TV building today . The site was 150 m northwest of the Eagle Bridge , which the two brothers and their cousins Václav Prošek (came to Sofia in 1886) and Josef Prošek (came to Sofia in 1878) were involved in building (1889 to 1891) . In 1901 there were 456 pubs in Sofia with a population of 81,242.

The brothers also bought another piece of land with a burned-out barracks - on the spot where the Holy Synod of the Bulgarian Orthodox Church (Bulgar. Свети Синод на Българската православна цпърква, or Синода for short) stands.

1884 to 1947

After its opening in 1884, the brewery became supplier to the Fürstenhof ( court supplier ) of Alexander I von Battenberg in 1885 , which was considered the highest quality award. The Prošek brewery's beer received its first award at an exhibition in Antwerp (Belgium) in 1891 : an honorary diploma and a gold medal.

After the completion of the factory, the brothers close to the factory built a beer garden on the corner of Ulitsa San Stefano corner Boulevard Tsar Osvoboditel , with 50 tables and 400 seats. The brewery bar was named after the beer cellar: Bierstube "Tiefer Winterkeller" (Bulgarian бирария "Дълбок зимник" / Birarija Dalbow simnik). The beer was delivered directly from the factory via a pipe.

From 1888 to 1892 a new steam engine was installed in the brewery to drive an electrical generator to generate electricity. The brewery was the first electrified building in Sofia, it had its own power generator to enable lighting in the factory and power the engines. The factory already had electric lighting before the Fürstenhof / Zarenhof was electrically lit. During the balls in the Tsar's castle, the electricity from the brewery was conducted to the Tsar's castle. The castle was only electrified after the brewery.

Seven years after the brewery (1881 to 1884), the Prošek brothers also built the Lion Bridge ( 1888 to 1891) and the Eagle Bridge (1889 to 1891). The newly built Adlerbrücke naturally also improved the infrastructure for transport to and from the brewery and the brewery bar, as the brewery was only 150 meters northeast of the Adlerbrücke.

New brewing equipment was also installed from 1888 to 1892. The new brewery now had two boilers, a machine room with a diesel engine, an electrodynamo, a filling system for bottles and barrels, and a transport department. There was also an ammonia compressor in the brewery , the first cooling installation in Bulgaria. Artificial ice (cooling ice) was produced with the system.

In 1901 the Prošek brothers expanded their brewery to Tscham Koriaja (today Borovets ), where the recreational business began. They rented a building there and converted it into a pub.

In 1902 a 100 m deep artesian well was drilled next to their factory in Sofia . In the 1920s the brewery had 15,000 barrels. The company continued to prosper even after the death of its founders (1905).

Both brothers died a month apart in 1905. Theodor / Bogdan Prošek died in Sofia, his brother Jiří / Georgi Prošek died in his native town of Beraun. The company continued to prosper under the leadership of the sons-in-law. Although the brothers mainly had daughters, their husbands were later integrated into the management of the company, so that they had sufficient management staff for a wide variety of economic activities.

The brewery bar was leased to Ilija Avramow (Bulgarian Илия Аврамов) in 1915 after the investment in its construction had paid off.

From 1927 to 1947, the Prošek Brewery was one of the largest breweries in Bulgaria. The sales of the brewing industry in Sofia overtook spirits production, textile production, leather production and sugar production.

1947 to 2004

The communists, who came to power in 1944, nationalized the Prošek brothers' brewery in 1947 and renamed it the “Witoscha” brewery, although it was still widely known by its old name. Later it became part of the "Sofioter Bier" (Bulgarian "Софийско пиво") combine .

The accusation of the communists against the descendants of the Prošek brothers was that from 1878 - in the first years after Bulgaria's independence - they were only able to amass their considerable fortune thanks to their proximity to the then rulers and ministers in Sofia, of whom they then became the profitable ones Got government contracts.

Because of the increased demand for beer, the population of Sofia had risen sharply, in 1974 an additional brewery was opened in Sofia-Gorubljane. On August 1, 1978, the “Vitoscha” brewery was closed and production and the entire staff relocated to Gorubljane.

After the political change in Bulgaria in 1989 and the loss of power of the communists, the company "Sofia Beer" was renamed "Ariana Brewery" (Bulgarian Пивоварна Ариана) in 1996. The beer brand Ariana was created. Ariana is the French form of Ariadne (Greek "the lovely one"), the daughter of King Minos of Crete. In 1997, Heineken and Coca Cola Hellenic Bottling Company acquired a controlling stake in "Ariana Brewery". In 2004 the Ariana brewery was finally closed and production relocated to the Sagorka AG brewery in Stara Sagora . The old brewery building was demolished in 2004. Currently (as of April 2010) there is a 6.5 hectare construction site on this site for the construction of a complex of shops, apartments and an underground car park.

The beer brand Ariana - a brand of the Heineken brewery in Bulgaria - still exists, but is now only brewed in Stara Sagora, in the Sagorka AG brewery belonging to the Heineken Group. The beer brand Ariana is one of the most important brands of Sagorka AG today, it accounts for 50% of the beers sold by the brewery. Although the Ariana beer brand was heavily promoted in TV commercials in Bulgaria in 2009 with the brewing tradition of the Prošek brewery, this brand did not exist at the time of the Prošek brothers.

Individual evidence

1. ↑ History of the beer brewery in Bulgaria ( Memento of the original from September 3, 2012 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. (bulg.) 
2. ↑ Братя Прошек построили Орлов и Лъвов мост ( Memento of the original from April 24, 2010 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. (Bulgarian; German translation of the title: the Proschek brothers built the Lion Bridge and the Eagle Bridge)  
3. ↑ По пътя на бира Ариана (bulg.) German translation of the article title: On the way of the Ariana beer  ( page no longer available , search in web archives )  Info: The link was automatically marked as defective. Please check the link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.  

Web links

• www.proshek.com (bulg.)
• Pictures of the brewery (2nd and 3rd picture from the back)
• Pictures of a beer bottle from the Prošek brewery , bottle around 1900; Embossed inscription in glass: БР. ПРОШЕКОВИ - СОФИЯ (БР. = Братя), придворен доставчик; German: Gebrüder Proschek - Sofia, purveyor to the court

Coordinates: 42 ° 41 ′ 31.3 ″  N , 23 ° 20 ′ 17 ″  E