Essad Pasha Toptani

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Essad Pasha Toptani (1914)

Essad Pascha Toptani ( Albanian  Esat Pashë Toptani ; * 1863 in Tirana , † June 13, 1920 in Paris ) was an Ottoman military and Albanian politician.

Life

Essad Pascha came from a family of landowners who owned extensive estates in central Albania. He served as an officer first in the Constantinople Palace Guard of the Ottoman army , then in the Turkish police force. At the beginning of the 20th century, when Albania was still part of the Ottoman Empire, he supported the reform-oriented Young Turks . He was a member of the delegation that informed Sultan Abdülhamid II of his removal.

Then he returned to Albania to lead the national movement Rilindja in the spirit of the Young Turks. From 1909 he was a member of parliament in Constantinople (now Istanbul ). During the First Balkan War he was sent to Shkodra as the commander of a reserve army , where he had the Turkish city commander Riza Pascha , who wanted to hand the city over to the newly formed Albanian government, murdered in January 1913. He then handed the city over to the besieging Montenegrins in exchange for a Montenegrin recognition of his claim to become King of Albania.

Essad Pasha leaving Durrës in 1916

In the turmoil after the Albanian declaration of independence, Essad Pasha tried to gain a share of power and in May 1913 announced his claim to the (yet to be created) Albanian throne under Turkish protectorate in Cetinje . In order to secure his loyalty, Wilhelm zu Wied - appointed Prince of Albania as a German by the London Ambassadors Conference in 1914 - appointed him to his cabinet as Minister of the Interior and War in February of that year. But in May he was released and temporarily arrested because he had conspired against the German-born prince. Essad Pasha was brought to Italy on an Italian warship . He returned in September when Wilhelm von Wied had left Albania because of the outbreak of the First World War . With Serbian and Italian support, he occupied Tirana and Durrës and on October 5th rose to head of government. He ruled large parts of central Albania, the administration was completely controlled by Serbia. He had his finance minister murdered without a hitch. At the end of 1915 Serbia was defeated by Austria-Hungary and Bulgaria . Essad Pascha then fled to Italy, which granted him asylum in 1914. The troops of the Danube Monarchy and Bulgaria were able to occupy Essad Pasha's sphere of influence in Albania and hold it until 1918.

After the end of the war he went to Paris , where he hoped to be admitted to the peace conference as a representative of Albania . The delegates of the Triple Entente ignored him, however. In the meantime the situation in home Albania had changed. Essad Pasha's followers had fallen apart and other forces were in charge of Tirana. He could no longer return, but remained in exile in Paris. There he was murdered on June 13, 1920 by Avni Rustemi , a young Albanian teacher and politician. The act made Rustemi very popular in Albania, because many Albanians viewed Essad Pasha's cooperation with the Montenegrins, Turkish Ottomans and Serbs as treason. Journalist Joseph Swire (1903–1978) described Essad Pascha as "one of the most ruthless adventurers who ever became notorious in politics."

literature

  • Tahir Kolgjini: Esat Pashë Toptani dhe akuzat. Eliminate qi . T. Kolgjini, Istanbul 1977, (2nd edition under the title: Esat Pasha, tradhtar apo patriot. Botimet Kumti, Tirana 2003).
  • Michael Schmidt-Neke: Development and expansion of the royal dictatorship in Albania (1912–1939). Formation of government, mode of rule and power elite in a young Balkan state . Oldenbourg, Munich 1987, ISBN 3-486-54321-0 , ( Southeast European Works 84).
  • Miranda Vickers: The Albanians. A modern history. Tauris, London a. a. 1995, ISBN 1-85043-749-1 .

Web links

Commons : Essad Pascha Toptani  - collection of pictures, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Vladimir Petrowitsch Potjomkin (Ed.): History of Diplomacy , Vol. 2: The diplomacy of the modern age (1872-1919) . SWA-Verlag, Berlin 2nd edition 1948. p. 276.
  2. ^ Karl-Peter Schwarz: Wrong time, wrong place . In: Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, July 14, 2014, p. 6.
predecessor Office successor
Turhan Pasha Përmeti Prime Minister of Albania
1914–1916 		Regency Council
personal data
SURNAME Toptani, Essad Pasha
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Toptani, Esat Pashë
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Albanian landowner and politician (Prime Minister 1914)
DATE OF BIRTH 1863
PLACE OF BIRTH Tirana
DATE OF DEATH June 13, 1920
Place of death Paris