Pencho Slaveykov

Pencho Slaveikov Petkov ( Bulgarian Пенчо Петков Славейков, scientific transliteration Penco Petkov Slavejkov; * April 27, 1866 in Tryavna, Ottoman Empire, † June 10, 1912 in Brunate, Italy) was a Bulgarian poet and one of the participants in the Misal - circle. He was the youngest son of the writer Petko Slaveikov.

Life and work

He was born in Tryavna, during the Bulgarian National Revival with the decline of the Ottoman Empire. Pentscho Slaveikov grew up in Tryavna, where he received his first education, but later also in Stara Zagora and Plovdiv.

In an accident at the age of 18 he slept on a bench in winter, while it was snowing, and then he fell ill with pneumonia. However, despite lengthy treatment in Plovdiv, Sofia, Leipzig, Berlin and Paris this disease was not without long-term consequences - he could not walk without his dog, also he could only with difficulty speaking and writing. Due to the temporary result in sinking into melancholy and depression, he tried to find a cure in the literature and thus strengthen his own will.

Slawejkows work, including his poetry and the closely related lyrics. He has worked with many magazines that published his work and he spent part of his life in Leipzig, where he studied philosophy, where he worked with German literature.

After he returned to Bulgaria in 1898 to Slaveikov teamed up with the Misal - circle and many other authors, such as Krastjo Krastev, Petko Todorov or Pejo Jaworow. He became an assistant director ( 1901-1909 ) and from 1909 to 1911 director of the National Library of Saints Cyril and Methodius and was from 1908 to 1909 Director of the Bulgarian National Theatre.

He was sent on various missions, so to Moscow and Istanbul in 1909, to Athens Naples, Sorrento and Rome in 1911, where he studied the development of libraries. During his return he intensified work.

The post of Director of the National Library of Saints Cyril and Methodius he lost on July 10, 1911 because it came to political misunderstandings with the Minister of Culture Stefan Bobchew and he left Bulgaria. Slaveikov then lived in Zurich, Lucerne, Göschenen, Andermatt, Lugano and at other places in Switzerland, before he arrived in late November 1911 in Italy. He remained an initial three months in Rome, but broke in May 1912 to travel to Florence and on to the Engadine, to search in the mountains after a suitable site for a cure. At the end of this month May he came to the small town of Brunate, near Lake Como, where he died on June 10, 1912. Slaveikov was initially buried in the local cemetery in Brunate and 1921 his remains were exhumed and transferred to Bulgaria, where he was buried at the Central Cemetery Sofiaer. Due to his early death brought the Swedish Professor Alfred Jensen, who translated some of his works in Swedish, the proposal the Nobel Prize Committee a, Slaveikov posthumously honor a Nobel Prize.

Slaveikov was mapped from 1999 to 2006 on the front of the Bulgarian 50 lev banknotes.