Jiří Prošek

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Jiří Prošek ( Bulgarian Иржи Прошек / Irschi Proschek; born December 25, 1847 in Beraun , Bohemia; † September 16/29 , 1905 ibid), also known as Georgi Prošek (Bulgarian Георги Прошек), was a Czech engineer, correspondent, Bulgarian patriot and revolutionary who spent most of his life in Bulgaria . Since 1868 he was a railway engineer on the Balkan Peninsula and worked on the construction of the railway line in Thrace . In the course of Bulgarian independence, he settled in Sofia. After the establishment of the Principality of Bulgaria in 1879, he was an architect in Sofia until 1881 and worked on the first urban development plan of Sofia. Later he was the chief engineer of the Directorate for Public Buildings (1881 to 1885). Together with his brother Theodor / Bogdan Prošek, he founded the first printing company in Sofia ( Hofdruckerei Sofia ; bulg. Придворна печатница) in 1879, in 1884 he founded the Prošek brewery , which was the largest brewery in Sofia at the time, and later also a ceramic and porcelain factory . The brothers Jiří and Theodor Prošek left their mark on the construction of some emblematic buildings in the young capital Sofia ( Lion Bridge , Eagle Bridge , Sofia Central Station and Narodno Sabranie Parliament Building ) and were with their company "Gebr. Georgi and Bogdan Prošek" (Bulgarian Братя Георги и Богдан Прошек) successfully.

Life

Origin and education

Jiří Prošek and his brother from Bogdan Prošek , as well as their sister Maria were children of the shoemaker Jiří František Prošek, and his wife Maria geb. Bartaková, a good piano player. The Prošek family had lived in Beroun for 300 years . The family also included the two cousins Václav Prošek and Josef Prošek , who also came from Beraun and also came to Bulgaria at the invitation of Jiří and Theodor and worked as architects and engineers for a time.

Prošek attended elementary school in his hometown and graduated from the 4th grade (school year 1858/59) with distinction. Then he attended the First Czech Realgymnasium in Prague . Immediately after graduating from high school, he enrolled at the Royal Bohemian Polytechnic in Prague to study as a land surveyor ( geodesist ) and civil engineer. After four years of study, he obtained the title of engineer in 1869. According to other sources, Prošek studied two semesters at the Imperial Technical School in Prague and then until 1869 three years of mechanical engineering at the Czech Polytechnic in Prague with a degree in structural engineering .

Since his father died after the end of the first year of study, Prošek had to finance his studies by doing odd jobs. In addition, he learned several foreign languages, he spoke German, French, English, Italian and Russian. In Prague he worked as a parliamentary stenographer in the Bohemian state parliament .

During his time in high school and while studying, Jiří Prošek made acquaintances with Bulgarians who were studying in Prague. His best Bulgarian friend was Ivan Drasow (Bulgarian Иван Драсов), one of the closest friends of the Bulgarian poet and revolutionary Christo Botew . He also made friends with Petar Berkovsky (Bulgarian Петър Берковски), from whom he also learned Bulgarian.

Railway engineer in the Balkans

After completing his studies, Jiří Prošek went straight to the Balkans in 1869 (according to other sources in 1870), where specialists in railway construction were sought.

First he practiced his profession in Constantinople (Istanbul). At that time he was 23 years old and began to work for the Rumeli-Danube Railway Company (Bulgarian Румелийска железница / Rumelijska schelesniza ) from Baron Maurice de Hirsch , which built and operated railway lines in the European part of the Ottoman Empire. Rumelia was the European part of the Ottoman Empire on the Balkan Peninsula. He worked from August 26, 1869 to March 31, 1870 as an assistant engineer in the central office of the Rumelian Railway in Istanbul and was involved in the planning of the railway line from Adrianople to Belovo or Saranbej (today Septemwri ).

From April 27, 1870 to July 2, 1873 (according to other sources from 1871) he was appointed inspector of the 5th management (according to other sources, 4th management) with his company in the village of Almanlij (Bulgarian Алманлий; at that time 270 families) , today Jabalkowo (bulg. Ябълково) in Chaskovo Oblast ). There he supervised the construction of the railway line in the section from Kajajik (Bulgarian Каяджик), today the district of Rakovsky in Dimitrovgrad to Khadji Eles (Bulgarian Хаджи Елес), today Parwomaj .

The Czech and Polish civil engineers (including Anton Pelz , Antonin Svoboda, Prof. Ostrava; Bankowski and Stanislaw Dombrowski ) deliberately chose the village of Almanlij for their camp (1870 to 1873) because the village had a purely Bulgarian population. In Kaza Chaskowo only 60 of 360 villages remained purely Bulgarian.

Commitment to the Bulgarian liberation movement

During his time as inspector of the 4th Directorate, Jiří Prošek got closer contact with the Bulgarians living in the village of Almanlij, especially with the representatives of public life and with members of the Revolutionary Committee of the Internal Revolutionary Organization . The local committee was chaired by Dimitar Ralow. They founded the Slavic Secret Revolutionary Committee (Bulgarian Славянски таен революционен комитет) - consisting of Bulgarians, Czechs and Poles. Soon Jiří Prošek became acquainted with Wassil Lewski , the main organizer of the revolutionary committees in Bulgaria and joined the Bulgarian liberation movement.

Petar Berkowski (* 1852; † 1892), a comrade in arms of Wassil Lewski, was the chairman of the secret revolutionary committee in the city of Chaskovo and main teacher at the Bulgarian school there. Jiří Prošek had known and been friends with Berkowski since his time in Prague. Stojan Saimow , a well-known fighter of the April uprising of 1876 , also taught at the school. In his book The Past (Bulgarian "Миналото" / Minaloto), Stojan Saimow described Jiří Prošek as warm and generous, he described his respect for Bulgarian traditions and holidays and the festivals they celebrated and ice skating together on the Mariza river .

Jiří Prošek, under the influence of the Bulgarian patriots, is committed to the liberation of Bulgaria from the Ottomans. He is committed to improving the school in the village of Almanlij, based on the standard of the Czech schools in his old homeland. The school in Almanlij was one of his early successful projects; it became known as a model school throughout southern Bulgaria (then northern Thrace ). Prošek introduced new subjects, took care of the sports and pre-military education of the students and also directed the school choir. Globes, calculators, teaching aids, maps and pictures were purchased and a science cabinet was set up.

Jiří Prošek, together with the other Czech and Polish engineers in his village, supplied the Bulgarians with weapons, he forwarded mail from the Revolutionary Committee. They founded the "Slavic House" (bulg. Славянски дом / slawjanski dom) as a culture house and Tschitalischte . The Czechs, Poles and Bulgarians all saw themselves as oppressed Slavic peoples at the time: the Czechs under the rule of Austria , the Poles under the rule of Russia and Austria, and the Bulgarians under the rule of the Ottoman Empire.

In many railway departments, Jiří Prošek had established connections with his Czech compatriots and with revolutionary Bulgarians. Among them were Sachari Stojanow (Bulgarian Захари Стоянов), Todor Kableschkow (Bulgarian Тодор Каблешков), Georgi Ikonomow (Bulgarian Георги Икономов). And Teofan Rajnow (Bulgarian.

After Vasil Levski, the main organizer of the Bulgarian national resistance, was captured by the Ottomans on December 26, 1872 and sentenced to death, it was rumored that he was being shipped to Istanbul (at that time still Constantinople ) because the Sultan was interested in Levski. The local revolutionary committee then decided to organize the liberation of Levski. They expected Lewski's transfer by train to Istanbul, where he would be tried, and contacted Jiří Prošek to find out more about the timetables and train movements. Jiří Prošek joined the liberation plan and through his efforts "his people" were employed in the various railway stations and railway districts of the Edirne - Belovo railway line . Between the Popowiza and Charmanli stations , they prepared ambushes along the railway line. However, these precautions were in vain as the plan failed. Unexpectedly, Levski was executed in Sofia on February 19, 1873. Levski had not been brought to Istanbul, as expected, but to Sofia and, moreover, by horse-drawn carriage and not by train.

Russo-Turkish War

In 1876 Jiří Prošek quit the railway company and became a freelance correspondent for European newspapers to inform the public of European countries about the situation of the Bulgarian people, in particular about the suppression of the Stara-Sagora uprising of 1875 and the April uprising of 1876 and about fate of the revolutionaries of the Bulgarian liberation struggle exiled to Diyarbakır in Asia Minor . As a member of the Revolutionary Committee, Jiří / Georgi Prošek described in detail the difficult fate of the Bulgarians under the Ottoman rule and all the atrocities that the Ottomans did to the Bulgarian people. Jiří Prošek published an appeal in European newspapers that was signed by thousands of Bulgarian insurgents.

He sent his reports to his brother Bogdan Prošek in Prague, who translated them into French and English and passed them on to the Paris and London press via the Prague newspaper Lidové listy (German popular papers ) (now Národní listy ). This is how the whole world learned of the Ottoman crimes. The Ottoman rulers were angry about this and ordered strict censorship for all correspondence to France and Great Britain. This was unsuccessful, however, as they did not know the route of correspondence from Bulgaria via Prague to Paris and London.

From October 13 to December 15, 1875, he published ten articles. The name of the "secret correspondent" was not revealed by the newspaper, instead his articles were introduced with words such as: Excerpts from a private letter , We were written about Bulgaria , Authentic letter . Readers in the Czech Republic and Austria-Hungary and then in Western Europe first heard about the April Uprising and the subsequent Batak massacre . Jiří Prošek also often wrote his correspondence from Bucharest to Prague, as he often stayed there.

The Russo-Ottoman War of 1877/78 made him stand up even more actively for the Bulgarian cause. He reported on him as a freelance correspondent for Czech newspapers.

During the period of heavy fighting on the Shipka Pass (→ Battle of the Shipka Pass ), in the summer of 1877, Jiří Prošek was in Istanbul. There he learned from his friend and compatriot, the pharmacist Dr. Nadherny (bulg. Надхерни) - called Chekim Pasha, who was the head of the health service in the Ottoman army, that the Ottoman high command prepared the dispatch of a very large reinforcement force for the troops at the Shipka Pass under Suleyman Pasha by rail. The second battle at the Schipka Pass then took place from August 21 to 26, 1877.

Jiří Prošek immediately went to Edirne, where his friends were employed by the railroad. This conspiratorial community dismantled around 200 m of railway tracks under the pretext of "technical circumstances that could not be postponed" and threw them from a bridge into the Mariza river . With this sabotage, known as the "crazy enterprise" (bulg. Лудо предприятие), the only existing railway line from Istanbul to Bulgaria was blocked for the passage of military trains for 30 hours during the decisive phase of the Russo-Turkish war. This blockade should prove to be decisive in the battle, since the Ottoman troop reinforcements could no longer be brought to the Schipka Pass in time. This pass was successfully defended against an overwhelming Ottoman force by Bulgarian volunteers until the arrival of the strong Russian troops under Skobelev, which were initially set up on another Balkan pass. They arrived at the Schipka Pass before the Ottoman troop reinforcements stopped in Edirne.

So Jiří Prošek contributed to the victorious outcome of the battle on the Shipka Pass for the Russians and Bulgarians: General Fyodor Radezki was able to win with his Russian troops on the Shipka Pass. However, Prošek's action at Edirne was uncovered by the Ottoman rulers and Jiří Prošek had to flee to Bucharest disguised as a farmer. In recognition of his deed, he was awarded the high distinction of the Alexander Nevsky Order, 1st Class, and Mikhail Skobelev presented him with a golden saber in the name of the Russian Tsar Alexander II . He then worked in Bucharest as a translator for a Russian agency in the service of the Russian High Command.

Prošek in Sofia

After Bulgaria's independence in 1878, Jiří Prošek settled in the new Bulgarian capital Sofia and worked as a teacher, civil engineer, inspector and entrepreneur.

After the Russian victory, Jiří Prošek made his language skills available to the Russian high command in Sofia. The polyglot Prošek was used as an interpreter in the office of the Russian governor Pyotr Alabin (Russian Пётр Владимирович Алабин; Bulgarian Пьотър Владимирович Алабин). Jiří Prošek was one of the initiators for the erection of a monument to Vasil Levski , the hero of the Bulgarian liberation struggle in Sofia, and he is asking Governor Alabin for approval. The construction of the Levski monument according to plans by the Czech architect Václav Antonín Kolář dragged on for years due to a lack of funds. The donations raised for the construction of the monument were initially only sufficient for the foundation.

Jiří Prošek was one of the first teachers in the newly established Sofia First Girls' High School . He was there from November 10, 1879 to November 1, 1880 teacher of drawing and shorthand . At the same time, due to his previous work in the Prague parliament, he was a parliamentary stenographer in the Bulgarian parliament ( Narodno Sabranie ) together with Besenschek (Bulgarian Безеншек), as he was one of the few available in Sofia for this.

At that time numerous foreign specialists came to Bulgaria, who then worked there for years or their entire lives , mainly Russians (e.g. Porfirij Bachmetiew - Bulgarian Порфирий Бахметиев), Czechs, French, Germans, Austrians. The Czech brothers Škorpil , Konstantin Jireček and Václav Dubrowski (Bulgarian Братя Шкорпил, Иречек, Вацлав Добруски) were also known. In 1878/79 Prošek built five wooden houses for immigrant Czechs and his brother, which formed the beginning of the so-called "Czech Colony". Unofficially, he became the "Czech Consul" because he took care of the affairs of his compatriots in the Bulgarian administration.

In 1879, the Mayor of Sofia invited the Czech architect Lubor Bajer to draw up the first urban development plan for Sofia. His assistants were Jiří / Georgi Prošek and Vaclav Raubal, whose sister Jiří Prošek later married. Jiří Prošek officially changed his first name to the corresponding Bulgarian form in 1879: Jiří Prošek became Georgi Prošek (Bulgarian Георги Прошек).

As part of his work for Alabin, the Russian governor of the provisional Russian civil administration of Sofia (1878–1879), Jiří Prošek explored, among other things, the marble deposits in Bulgaria and created a map. He organized brick production in the village of Dolni Bogrow (bulg. Долни Богров) in Sofia Oblast in order to obtain building materials for the expansion of the capital.

After meeting the urgent need for teachers in Sofia, Jiří Prošek moved to the Construction Department of the Ministry of Public Buildings, Roads and Infrastructure (Bulgarian Министерство на обществените сгради, пътитуата и вротитата и вротитата и вротерство на обществените сгради was responsible. He developed projects for the alignment of the highway from Silistra to Schejtandschik (today Chitrino in the Shumen Oblast ), as well as the highway from Elena to Osman Pasar (today Omurtag ). He later worked on the design and building of the railway line Sofia- Lovech - Svishtov , on the construction phase Arabakonak Pass -Orchanie (now Botevgrad ) and on the railway line Zaribrod (today Dimitrovgrad in Serbia) -Sofia- Wakarel , the construction phase Sofia- Samokov . He worked on numerous other technical projects as technical director or inspector.

His friends included Prime Ministers Todor Burmow , Kliment Tarnowski (who succeeded Burmov as Prime Minister from November 1879), Petko Karawelow , Konstantin Stoilow , Education Minister Georgi Atanasowitsch and Finance Minister Grigor Natschowitsch . Jiří Prošek owed these friendships, among other things, his rapid economic success as an entrepreneur in Bulgaria.

With his brother Theodor / Bogdan Prošek, who came to Sofia in 1878, he founded the first printing company in Sofia. From 1881 to 1884 they built the Prošek brewery, which is very well known in Sofia . In the early 1890s he was the leading expert on the Sofia land registry , which was created from 1878; At that time, his brother Theodor / Bogdan Prošek was mainly responsible for running the print shop. Both brothers built a house that seemed aristocratic for the time at uliza Moskowska No. 5 .

The Prošek brothers, as contractors, built the Lion Bridge ( 1888 to 1891) and the Eagle Bridge (1889 to 1891). Of course, the newly built Adlerbrücke also improved the infrastructure for transport to and from the brewery 150 m to the northeast and to its beer bar.

Honorary positions

Jiří Prošek was also very active in the field of culture and education in Sofia: he was one of the initiators for the construction of the Vasil Levski monument and in 1880 a founding member of the society "Slavic Talks" (Bulgarian "Славянска беседа" / Slavjanska beseda) in Sofia (1880) - today the Chitalishte "Slawjanska beseda" (also today's theater "Сълза и смях" / "Salsa i smjach" emerged from it) and the Bulgarian Engineering and Architecture Society. He was also a founding member of the "Czech" (bulg. Чех / Czech) society and headed the magazine "Czech Eagle" (bulg. Чешки сокол / Czechki sokol) for a period of time.

Family and offspring

While Jiří Prošek was working on the city development plan as an employee of the city administration and the first governor Pjotr ​​Alabin, Jiří Prošek made the acquaintance of the Czech Anna Roubalova (Bulgarian Анна Роубалова; * 1853; † 1935), the sister of his colleague from Vaclav Roubal, who he met on Married October 23, 1878 in Sofia. She graduated from the music school in Prague. In order to get to Bulgaria with her luggage and her piano, she had traveled by steamboat on the Danube and then on an ox cart to Sofia. The couple had three daughters (Maria, Růžena and Anna) and a son (Georgi). According to other sources, five daughters and one son were born from this marriage (Anna brought the son into the marriage), the son of which died in Prague in 1928.

The company "Gebrüder Georgi and Bogdan Proschek" was founded in 1895 and existed until the expropriation by the communists in 1947. Later, the daughter Maria Prošek married an Iwan Kadela, who was employed as the head of the Prošek printing house and was the first son-in-law to be a member of the management of the family company has been. The Prošek Brothers company was also involved in the construction of the port of Varna and the planning of a casino restaurant in Varna, since the second daughter Ruschena married Aleksandar Wasilew and moved to Varna with him. Jiří / Georgi Prošek was a co-founder of the construction company and technical director until 1901.

Jiří Prošek died in Sofia in 1905 at the age of 58. He is buried in the Sofia Catholic Cemetery in Orlandowzi, plot 16.

After the expropriation by the communists in 1947, the descendants of the Prošek brothers were evacuated from Sofia and imprisoned in the Bobow dol camp. Among the descendants was Elena Pipewa, a well-known opera singer.

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Filip Panayotov, Iwanka Nikolowa: България XX век. Trud Publishers, 1999, ISBN 954-528-146-4 , p. 597. (German: Bulgaria XXth century. )
  2. ↑ Bild der Tschitalischte Slawjanska beseda  ( 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.@1@ 2Template: Toter Link / europa.bg  

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SURNAME Prošek, Jiří
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Прошек, Иржи (Bulgarian); Proschek, Irschi; Prošek, Georgi; Прошек, Георги (Bulgarian)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Czech engineer
DATE OF BIRTH December 25, 1847
PLACE OF BIRTH Beroun , Bohemia
DATE OF DEATH uncertain: September 16, 1905 or September 29, 1905
Place of death Beroun , Bohemia