Georgi Markow (writer)
Georgi Ivanov Markov ( Bulgarian Георги Иванов Марков ; born March 1, 1929 in Sofia , † September 11, 1978 in London ) was a Bulgarian writer and playwright and dissident who was murdered by the Bulgarian secret police in a sensational umbrella attack .
Life
Markov emigrated from Bulgaria to Italy in 1969 , where his brother lived, and later worked as a journalist in London. He publicly criticized the communist leadership in his home country; in the Bulgarian programs of the BBC, Deutsche Welle and Radio Free Europe he mocked the Bulgarian dictator Todor Zhivkov .
He was the victim of the umbrella attack on September 7, 1978 on Waterloo Bridge in London , in which a man stabbed him in the right calf with an umbrella with an impregnated small ball that was at the tip of the umbrella. The sphere made of a platinum - iridium alloy had a diameter of 1.52 mm and was prepared with about 200 micrograms of the highly toxic substance ricin . Markov died four days later with fever and hypotension in heart failure .
An agent of the Bulgarian secret service by the name of Francesco Giullino (alias Piccadilly ) was blamed as the perpetrator . The former major general of the Soviet secret service Oleg Kalugin confirmed in an interview with the Bulgarian broadcaster Darik Radio that this attack was carried out on the orders of Todor Zhivkov. The KGB supplied the poison and the capsule.
Posthumously , Markov was awarded the highest Bulgarian order Stara Planina in 2000. On November 11, 2014, a statue of him was inaugurated in the center of Sofia.
Others
The former head of the secret service, Vladimir Todorov, destroyed six Markov files in 1990 after the revolution against the communist dictatorship ; he later claimed that these records had no operational or historical significance. Todorow was imprisoned for 16 months in 1992; an important witness committed suicide shortly before he was questioned.
Fonts
- The portrait of my doppelganger. Novella. Translated from Bulgarian by Rumiana Ebert and Ines Sevesta. Wieser, Klagenfurt 2010, ISBN 978-3-85129-862-8 . (first Sofia, 1966)
- The women of Warsaw . Novella. Translated from the Bulgarian by Rumania Ebert and Ines Sebesta. Wieser, Klagenfurt 2012, ISBN 978-3-85129-897-0 . (first Sofia, 1968)
- The first lieutenant and the power. First German-language excerpt from Markov's long-distance reports. In: europabrevier limitless 2 - a literary trip to Bulgaria, a puzzle & other directions from the narrowness. (Anthology; Thomas Frahm , translator and ed. And Klaus Servene , ed .; further contributions by: Christo Botev , Stojan Mihajlovski , Konstantin Pavlov , Angel Wagenstein , Vladimir Zarev , Kalin Terzijski , Galina Zlatareva , Ivan Kulekov , Mirela Ivanova , Kristin Dimitrova , Dimo Alexiev ). Andiamo, Mannheim 2012, ISBN 978-3-936625-19-6 .
- Reports from afar. Eyewitness accounts from post-war Bulgaria. Translated from Bulgarian and with an introduction by Wolf Oschlies . Wieser, Klagenfurt 2014, ISBN 978-3-99029-094-1 .
literature
- Jack Hamilton, Tom Walker: Dane named as umbrella killer - Times Online. In: The Sunday Times . June 5, 2005, archived from the original on April 20, 2011 ; accessed on April 20, 2011 (English).
- Article The Poison Umbrella , The New Presence 4/2006, pp. 46-48
- Klaus Brill : Poison straight from the dictator. Mysterious "umbrella murder" solved. In: Süddeutsche Zeitung. August 2, 2008, archived from the original on April 20, 2011 ; Retrieved April 20, 2011 .
- Thomas Frahm : "A good man, unfortunately he doesn't belong to us": Georgi Markov's exile reports on Bulgaria. In: Sense and Form. 3/2013. (Reading sample)
- Dimiter Kenarov: A Bulgarian Murder. In: Lettre International . 107, winter 2014. ( excerpt )
- Stefanie Gregg : And the scent of white. Ullstein, 2015. The novel, published in 2015, contains a storyline that describes the planning and implementation of the umbrella attack on the Bulgarian writer Georgi Markow. The author also continues the latest developments in the case, up to and including the discovery of a suspected accomplice in Austria in 2012.
- Christopher Nehring : “The cooperation of the GDR foreign intelligence with the intelligence of the People's Republic of Bulgaria. Regional branches of the KGB? ” , Pp. 300–302
Web links
- Literature by and about Georgi Markow in the catalog of the German National Library
- Georgi Markov in the Internet Movie Database (English)
- ZDF film: Silenced. on Arte 2013: Georgi Markov and the umbrella murder .
- Georgi Markow at dissident.eu
Footnotes
- ↑ a b Christoph Gunkel / One day March 17, 2018: "I will die, you can no longer do anything"
- ^ Ricin and the umbrella murder. on: CNN.com , October 23, 2003. Retrieved October 23, 2016.
- ↑ L. Rózsa, K. Nixdorff: Biological Weapons in Non-Soviet Warsaw Pact Countries. In: M. Wheelis, L. Rózsa, M. Dando (Eds.): Deadly Cultures: Biological Weapons since 1945. Harvard University Press, 2006, pp. 157–168.
- ↑ Sweet ball . In: Der Spiegel . No. 7 , 1992, pp. 168-170 ( online ).
- ↑ Jack Hamilton and Tom Walker: Dane named as umbrella killer - Times Online. In: The Sunday Times . June 5, 2005, archived from the original on April 20, 2011 ; accessed on April 20, 2011 (English).
- ↑ Klaus Brill : Gift directly from the dictator. ( Memento of the original from March 21, 2009 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. In: Süddeutsche Zeitung. August 2, 2008.
- ^ Georgi Markov: Bulgaria inaugurates statue to dissident. BBC News, August 27, 2020, accessed August 27, 2020 .
- ^ Judith Leister: Notes from a mausoleum. In: NZZ . October 30, 2014.
personal data | |
---|---|
SURNAME | Markov, Georgi |
ALTERNATIVE NAMES | Markov, Georgi Ivanovr |
BRIEF DESCRIPTION | Bulgarian writer, murder victim of the Bulgarian secret police |
DATE OF BIRTH | March 1, 1929 |
PLACE OF BIRTH | Sofia |
DATE OF DEATH | September 11, 1978 |
Place of death | London , UK |