Konstantin Fotinow

Konstantin Georgiev Fotinov (also written Konstantin Georgiev Fotinov , Bulgarian Константин Георгиев Фотинов ; * around 1790 in Samokow , then Ottoman Empire ; † November 29, 1858 in Constantinople , ibid.) Was a Bulgarian encyclopedia and promoter of the Bulgarian language school the time of the Bulgarian National Revival . As the author of the first Bulgarian magazine Lyuboslovy(Ljuboslowie) he is considered the founder of Bulgarian journalism. Fotinow was also one of the founders of the New Bulgarian language and a student of Theophilos Kaïris .

Today several educational institutions and places in Bulgaria bear his name.

Life

It is not known exactly when Konstantin Fotinow was born in Samokow, which was then Ottoman, at the foot of the Rila Mountains. We know for sure that he was the grandson of Baba Fota, the founder of the Samokov nunnery , where he grew up. Fotinow first attended the monastery school in his hometown. Until state schools were founded in the first half of the 19th century, the monastery schools (a kind of elementary school) were the only schools for Bulgarians in the Ottoman Empire. The piety of his grandmother and the education in the convent school shaped Constantine throughout his life.

After primary school, Constantine moved to Plovdiv , where he attended a Greek school, and then became a student of the Greek philosopher Theophilos Kaïris in Kydonies . During this time he was influenced by Hellenism and often signed as Fotiadis .

In 1825 he returned to Samokow, where he sold an estate in order to use the money to go to Smyrna (now Izmir in Turkey ) as a merchant that same year . After moving to Smyrna, which at that time had a large Bulgarian community, he traded in fruit.

In 1828 Fotinow founded a Hellenistic-Bulgarian private school in Smyrna. This was the first Bulgarian school that taught according to the Lancaster school form and a model for its spread in the Bulgarian areas. He taught: Bulgarian, Greek , French , accounting and theology . His students were both Bulgarians and Greeks. In order to supplement his income, he was also a teacher at the theological school in Smyrna, in whose buildings he lived. At that time he was composing some resources for teaching the Bulgarian and Greek languages.

In 1838 Fotinow published a Greek grammar ("Гръцка граматика") for Bulgarians under his Hellenized name Fotiadis .

In 1842 Fotinow published the form in what was then Smyrna (today Izmir in Turkey ) and in 1844 the first issue of the first Bulgarian magazine " Lyuboslowie " (Bulgarian Любословие). The printing was done by the Greek Damiani, as it had been one of the few printing houses in the Ottoman Empire since the 1830s that had Cyrillic printing sets . Fotinow had become aware of the printer when it was commissioned in 1840 to print the translation of the New Testament by Neofit Rilski into New Bulgarian for the Bulgarian Catholics .

Two years after "Ljuboslowie", Ivan Bogorow published the first Bulgarian newspaper " Bulgarski orel " (Bulgarian "Българский орелъ" = Bulgarian eagle) on April 20, 1846 in Leipzig . With the publication of “Ljuboslowie” and “Bulgarski orel” not only the foundation stone for Bulgarian journalism was laid, but also the foundation stone for the written dissemination of the ideas of the Bulgarian Revival period.

The magazine “Ljuboslowie” was published for only two years. In 1846 Fotinow published the last edition and again became a teacher and also a bookseller. In the following years he took part in the translation of the Old Testament into New Bulgarian.

While Fotinow was preparing the printing of the Bible in the New Bulgarian language in Constantinople in 1858, he died of tuberculosis on November 29th .

bibliography

In his works and in the lexicons, Fotinow, like Neofit Rilski and the Miladinowi brothers from Struga, used the western Bulgarian dialects, in contrast to Petar Beron and Najden Gerow , which, however, could not prevail in the development of the New Bulgarian language.

• "Гръцка граматика" (1838)
• "Общое землеописание" (1843)
• Любословие (1844)
• "Болгарский разговорник" (1845)

Individual evidence

1. ^ Hermann Albeck: Sofia Perspectives on Germany and Europe: Studies on Economy, Politics, History, Media and Culture. , LIT Verlag Münster, 2006, p. 209
2. ↑ Новый завет господа нашего Iисуса Хрiста сега новопреведенный от Славенскаго на Болгарскiй язык. В Смирне, 1840, 8 °, 516 стр [1]

Web links

• Biography of Fotinow on LiterNet (Bulgarian)