Mikhail Sarafov

MK Sarafov, dating unknown

Mikhail Konstantinov Sarafow ( Bulgarian Михаил Константинов Сарафов ) (February * 14 ^{. Jul} / 26 February 1854 ^greg. In Veliko Tarnovo , then in the Ottoman Empire ; † 13. December 1924 in Sofia ) was a Bulgarian revolutionary , liberal politician and diplomat. He was the national education, finance and interior minister of his country.

Life

Sarafov came from a well-off family, his older brother Georgi became a doctor and later the first president of the Bulgarian Red Cross , his younger brother Ivan became a Bulgarian and later a Russian general . After his first school years in his hometown, he attended high school in Agram until 1875 and later that year took part in the work of the Central Revolutionary Committee in Bucharest and in the Stara Sagora uprising. In 1875/76 he worked as a teacher in his hometown before, after a short imprisonment, he went to study mathematics in Paris and Munich , from which he graduated in 1880.

In 1885 Sarafov became a senior employee of the Bulgarian National Bank and was busy with the financing and control of the railway construction . From 1893 to 1896 he was director of the Bulgarian boys and girls high school in what is now the Greek city of Thessaloniki . Subsequently, Sarafov was a co-founder of the insurance company "Balkan", whose management he was part of from 1897 to 1900. After his resignation as minister, he became a member of the board of directors of this insurance company.

Political career

After returning from his studies, Sarafov joined the Liberal Party and a short time later was appointed minister of education in the Karawelow I cabinet and remained so in the short-lived Ernrot cabinet that followed . His main task during this time was the development of a modern school system with uniform curricula throughout the country. After Ernrot's fall in July 1881, Sarafov was appointed director of the newly founded Bulgarian Statistics Office, which he headed until 1883. During his term of office, the first census in Bulgaria falls . In 1884 he was appointed finance minister for the first time in the Zankow II cabinet , but this government was overthrown in July of the same year after new parliamentary elections in which Sarafov was elected member of the National Assembly. After the election, the Liberal Party split into National Liberals and Progressive Liberals, with Sarafov joining the latter group. With the next election in 1886 he left parliament again. In the domestic political disputes between " Russophiles " and "Westerners" during this period , he stuck to the former, which resulted in several short-term arrests.

Only at the beginning of the 20th century did Sarafov return to high politics when he was Interior Minister of the Cabinets Karawelow IV and Danew I in 1901/02 and once again headed the Ministry of Finance for a few weeks ad interim . He was then employed in a diplomatic post, first from 1904 to 1909 in Vienna and then until the outbreak of the First Balkan War in 1912 as Plenipotentiary Minister in Constantinople . In 1913 he belonged to the Bulgarian delegations that concluded the peace treaties after the end of the Second Balkan War, as well as - as the only non-government member - in 1919 to the Bulgarian peace delegation in Neuilly .

Others

From 1884 Sarafov was a member of the Bulgarian Literary Society, from which in 1911 the Bulgarian Academy of Sciences emerged . A street in Sofia is named after him.

Publications

• Дипломатически дневник 1909–1912: България и Турция в навечерието на Балканските войни. ( Diplomatic diary 1909–1912. Bulgaria and Turkey on the eve of the Balkan Wars ), Ed .: Veličkova, Cvetana Ivanova, Sofia: Voenno izdatelstvo, 2009.

Individual evidence

1. ↑ ^{a b c d} Short biography Михаил Сарафов on the website of the Bulgarian Ministry of Finance, accessed on January 27, 2018.
2. ↑ ^{a b c d e} Marcholeva, Krasimira: Biographical notes on the 160th birthday and 90th anniversary of Mikhail Sarafov's death . in: Българи ( Bulgarians ), edition 04/2014, p. 36f., accessed on January 27, 2018.