Batak massacre

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Later staged remains from the Batak massacre

The Batak massacre is a massacre that was committed in 1876 during the April Uprising of the people of Batak in what is now Bulgaria .

The Batash massacre is the killing of the majority of the Bulgarian Christian population in the village of Batak in the suppression of the April Uprising. It was carried out by an Ottoman bashibozoo from the neighboring Pomak villages under the direct command of Ahmed aga Barutanliya. After the massacre, he was convicted and imprisoned in Diyarbakir, but was later pardoned by Sultan Abdul Hamid II. According to various estimates, between 1,400 and 5,000 people were killed in the village.

Prehistory and course

Batak is a city in the Rhodope Mountains, divided into an upper and a lower quarter . Their wealthy merchants bought themselves free from Islamization several times, most recently in 1657 . Batak remained an island of Christianity .

On February 21, 1876 Panayot Wolow , under the chairmanship of Peter Goranow in Batak, founded an IRO revolutionary committee that organized and armed 1,100 insurgents from the region in the following months. After the outbreak of the April uprising , July 22nd was held . / May 4, 1876 greg. proclaimed an independent republic. Batak was free for the next ten days and was under the direction of the Revolutionary Committee.

When the Turkish press reported on the insurgents, the Ottoman government took notice and decided to intervene. April 30th July / May 12, 1876 greg. Batak was surrounded by a Turkish army of 8000 soldiers and irregular troops, the so-called ( Başı Bozuk ), according to some opinions also Pomaks from the surrounding Muslim villages under the leadership of Ahmet Aga Barun Tan. The first fighting took place on the same day in the lower quarter. The merchants and elders of Batak decided to start negotiations with Ahmet Aga Barun Tan because of the military superiority of the Ottomans. This promised the withdrawal of the Ottoman troops on condition that the arms and ammunition of the rebels were surrendered. In return, the lives of the residents were to be spared, a common practice at the time.

On May 1st, Jul. / May 13th 1876 greg. the first handover took place. After some of the insurgents surrendered their weapons, the Başı Bozuk attacked the defenseless population. Most of them were beheaded. The fight lasted five days and nights and extended to the place Galagonkata , to Bogdan Haus (the house of the Bogdanow merchant family), to the school Kyrill and Method and to the church "Sweta Nedelja". On May 2nd, Jul. / May 14, 1876 greg. fell the Bogdan house. The church "Sweta Nedelja" became the last fortress of the April Uprising and is the only remaining building. According to Robert More, between 3,000 and 4,000 people died during the massacre, and 5,000 according to the Times , according to Januarius MacGahan , correspondent for The Daily News in London, around 7,000 people.

Reactions abroad

Bones of the victims of the Batak massacre subsequently staged

The actions of the Ottoman troops were sharply criticized in the western public. “There is a point in the world in atrocities that cannot be exceeded. The Turks have far exceeded it in Batak ” , wrote the American journalist MacGahan as a special correspondent for the English newspaper“ Daily News ”. Victor Hugo , Dostoevsky , Aksakov , Garibaldi and other well-known personalities protested.

Russia, however, knew the events of Batak on the occasion of the Russo-Ottoman War (1877-1878) , which took place mainly in the territory of Bulgaria, to use for its war propaganda. In the context of Pan-Slavism , Russia felt itself to be the protective power of the Bulgarians. After the liberation of Bulgaria in 1878, the survivors of Batak, around 1200 people (before the massacre, the number of inhabitants is estimated at 9000), returned and began to rebuild their burned down houses.

Picture dispute 2007

In the spring of 2007, the East European Institute of the Free University of Berlin planned a conference in Sofia and Batak with the title Feindbild Islam - the past and present of anti-Islamic stereotypes in Bulgaria using the example of the myth of the Batak massacre and the exhibition Batak as a Bulgarian place of remembrance. The aim of the conference was to present previous investigations into the use of the media to instrumentalize the massacre, which led to the formation of a national myth.

After Bulgarian protests (president, press and parts of the Bulgarian Academy of Sciences) the conference and exhibition on May 17, 2007 were canceled. In Bulgaria, some circles feared that the massacre would be called into question. The project was seen as a provocation. Nevertheless, the current image of the “Batak massacre” as a “ national myth ” has been criticized by historians. After the painting by Antoni Piotrowski from 1892 "The Batak Massacre" had been exposed as propaganda by the art historian Martina Baleva , she then found herself exposed to massive threats. The allegations by the Bulgarian side mainly related to the fact that Martina Baleva did not take into account the eyewitness reports of the few survivors in her investigations due to the art-historical analysis carried out and only relied on art-historical sources and media (especially images). In Bulgaria, Batak is inextricably linked with the memory of the 500-year-old “Turkish yoke” and Bulgarian identity.

canonization

The Holy Martyrs of Batak ( Icon )

On May 17, 2006, the Bulgarian Orthodox Old Calendar Church announced the canonization of the Batak Martyrs . The first icon (see picture on the right) was made in Knjagina Elisaveta Monastery in Etna (California) .

In March 2011 the Synod of the Bulgarian Orthodox Church decided to canonize the “Martyrs of Batak”. On April 3 of the same year, the festive liturgy of canonization took place in the Patriarchal Cathedral of Alexander Nevsky in Sofia. Almost two months later, the Holy Synod of the Russian Orthodox Church announced the recognition and inclusion in the calendar of the Holy Martyrs of Batak.

Single receipts

  1. ↑ Methodius Draginow: The Belove Chronicle
  2. ↑ Ivan Vazov ; In the lap of the Rhodope Mountains. Wanderings through Bulgaria
  3. ↑ Sahari Stojanow (ed.): “Chronicle of the Bulgarian uprisings of 1875/1876. History of eyewitnesses "
  4. ^ MacGahan on Turkish rule in Bulgaria
  5. ^ Robert Jasper More: Under the Balkans. Notes of a Visit to the District Philippopolis in 1876
  6. ↑ Klaus Köhler: Alles in Butter: how Walter Kempowski, -Bernhard Schlink and Martin Walser sweep the civilization break under the carpet , Verlag Königshausen & Neumann, 2009, pp. 7-10
  7. ↑ Batak as a Bulgarian place of remembrance.  ( 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. Bulgarian Embassy Berlin, accessed July 13, 2011@1@ 2Template: Toter Link / botschaft-bulgarien.de  
  8. ↑ Terror over a picture. In: Der Spiegel 47/2007, Hamburg, November 19, 2007, pp. 74ff. ISSN  0038-7452
  9. ↑ Цъкровна прослава на Баташките мъченици на 17 май 2006 г. on the website of the Bulgarian Old Calendar Orthodox Church, accessed July 12, 2011
  10. ↑ Canonization of the Martyrs of Batak (Bulgarian) ( Memento of the original from September 4, 2013 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link has been inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. on the www.pravoslavie.bg portal, accessed July 12, 2011 @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.pravoslavie.bg
  11. ↑ The Holy Synod of the Russian Orthodox Church made the decision to honor the Holy Martyrs of Batak (Bulgarian) , on the website of the Bulgarian Patriarch, accessed July 12, 2011

See also

literature

  • Robert Jasper More: Under the Balkans. Notes of a visit to the district Philippopolis in 1876 , HS King, London 1877 full text
  • William Miller: The Ottoman Empire and Its Successors, 1801-1927. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge 1913, Cass, London 1966, Routledge, New York 1966, pp. 358ff.
  • Sahari Stoyanov : The Departure of the Flying Band. Chronicle of the Bulgarian uprisings of 1875/1876 , Rütten and Loening, Berlin 1978 (German translation of the Bulgarian edition from 1884–1892)
  • Martina Baleva u. a. (Ed.): Batak - a Bulgarian place of remembrance / Batak kato mjasto na pametta. Iztok-Zapad, Sofia 2007. Exhibition Nacionalen Etnografski Muzej Sofija 2007. ISBN 978-954-321-391-7
  • Martina Baleva: Foreign artists - own myths. The Polish artist Antoni Piotrowski and the massacre in Batak, Bulgaria. In: Matthias Krüger u. a. (Ed.): In the service of the nation. Berlin 2011, pp. 373-397

Web links