Christo Botew

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Christo Botew around 1875

Hristo Botev (also Hristo Botev written), born Christo Botjow Petkov ( Bulgarian Христо Ботев / Христо Ботйов Петков * December 25, 1847 . Jul / 6. January  1848 greg. In Kalofer , † May 20 jul. / June 1  1876 greg. in Vratsa ) was a Bulgarian poet , revolutionary and one of the leaders of the april uprising . Christo Botew is considered one of the national poets of Bulgaria.

Life

Youth and education

The poet's birth house, interior

Christo Botew was born in 1848 in the town of Kalofer in the Balkan Mountains . He is the son of the teacher Botjo Petkow and Ivanka Botewa. Between 1854 and 1858 Christo Botew lived with his father in Karlovo , where his father worked as a teacher. There he began his school education, which he finished after his family returned in 1863 at the class school in Kalofer.

In October 1863 he enrolled in the Second Gymnasium in Odessa as a scholarship holder of the Najden Gerow Foundation. There he got to know Russian literature and was influenced by the writers Lev Nikolayevich Tolstoy , Nikolai Chernyshevsky , Nikolai Dobroljubow and Alexander Herzen . His first attempts at poetry and his contacts with the Russian bourgeois-democratic movement Narodniki also fall during this time . In 1865 he was expelled from high school because of "lack of interest", but enrolled in the New Russian University in Odessa, which opened in the same year . Between October and December 1866 he worked as a teacher at the Bulgarian school in the Bessarabian village of Sadunaewka .

Because of an illness of his father Botew returned in January 1867 in his hometown Kalofer. On January 15 of the same year, the first poem by Botev, the poem Majze si (Bulgarian Майце си), was published in the newspaper Gajda, published by Petko Slaveykov.

Armed fight

Since 1869 Botew belonged to the leadership circles of the Bulgarian Revolutionary Central Committee (BRZK for short), or rather its revolutionary-democratic wing.

With a group of around 200 companions, Botew kidnapped the Austrian paddle steamer Radetzki on May 17, 1876 to the village of Kozlodui in Bulgaria in order to contribute to the fight against the Ottoman Empire . His aim was to rekindle the insurgency movement in Bulgaria after the April uprising was put down by Turkish troops. Christo Botew fell through a bullet 3 days after his arrival. Ultimately, the April uprising led to Russian intervention and Bulgaria's independence.

Revolutionary theory and ideas

Botev was influenced by the ideas of Russian revolutionaries and the Paris Commune . In the struggle for a free Bulgaria he supported the revolutionary theory of Wassil Lewski , which provided for an organized and centrally controlled uprising of all Bulgarians living in the Ottoman Empire. Like Levski, he also imagined the future of Bulgaria as a democratic republic .

Works

His literary work consists mainly of a series of poems.

  • Khadji Dimitar, which deals with the life of Hajduken Khadji Dimitar .
  • Black a cloud
  • On Farewell
  • Heiduken
  • In the tavern
  • my prayer
  • To my mother
  • St. George's Day
  • To my brother
  • elegy
  • The hanging of Vasil Levski (was his last poem)

souvenir

National celebration on June 2nd at the Okolchitsa summit

After Botev's death, Stalinists from the Bulgarian Communist Party and Bulgarian neo-Nazis tried to take Botev for themselves. Today many public institutions, streets and places bear his name, including the city of Botevgrad , the highest peak in the Balkans, the asteroid (225 238) Hristobotev , several football clubs including Botev Plovdiv and Botev Wraza , and the second program of the Bulgarian national radio . The headland Botev Point and indirectly the Botev Peak on Livingston Island in West Antarctica also bear his name. In 2007, Botev was voted one of the ten greatest Bulgarians in history by Velikite Balgari.

On June 2nd, the life and work of Botev will be honored throughout Bulgaria by switching on the air sirens at 12 noon and a minute of silence.

literature

  • Roman Jakobson: The Structure of Botev's Last Poem in Poetry of Grammar and Grammar of Poetry Complete Poem Analysis. Annotated German edition. Volume 2: Analyzes of poetry from Romanticism to Modernism , Verlag de Gruyter, Berlin, 2007 p. 395 ff.

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Botew, Christo: ″ Black a cloud ″, Reclam Leipzig, 1976, p.106 and Botew, Christo 1849-1876 poet
  2. ↑ a b Wolfgang Geier: Bulgaria between West and East from the 7th to the 20th century: socially and culturally-historically significant epochs, events and shapes in volume 32 of studies by the Research Center East Central Europe at the University of Dortmund , Otto Harrassowitz Verlag, 2001, p. 130
  3. ↑ Elka Dimitrova: Прозата на Хр. Ботев - публицистичното лице на бунтаря , in the literature portal slovoto.bg, 2002
  4. ↑ Christo Botew: Революция народна, незабавна, отчаяна , in the Sname newspaper, year I, issue 23, Bucharest, July 27, 1875
  5. ^ A rendezvous for neo-Nazis . In: jungle.world . ( jungle.world [accessed February 13, 2018]).

Web links

Commons : Christo Botew  - collection of images, videos and audio files
personal data
SURNAME Botev, Christ
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Христо Ботйов Петков (birth name Bulgarian)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Bulgarian poet and freedom fighter
DATE OF BIRTH January 6, 1848
PLACE OF BIRTH Kalofer
DATE OF DEATH June 1, 1876
Place of death Wraza