St. Anastasia Island

Sweta Anastasia ( Bulgarian остров света Анастасия, ostrow sweta Anastasija ) is a small, only about one acre Bulgarian island in the Black Sea and belongs to the city of Burgas. It is the only inhabited island Bulgarian sea and is located in the Bay of Burgas, near the military harbor. The island has electricity and water supply. On the island, the only surviving medieval island monastery located in the Black Sea.

History

The history of the island in closely with the former monastery " Sveta Anastasia" connected to her. The name of the monastery was eponymous for the island. The Medieval island monastery was like the entire coastal region since the fall of Ottoman rule repeatedly target of pirates. The monastery was thereby damaged several times and rebuilt. The French officer Lafitte - Clavé visited the monastery in 1784 and found on the island of Turkish units, you were stationed there against a possible attack of the Russian fleet. 1802 funded the merchant from Kotel Hadji Matej ( founder of Chadschipetrow family ) the repair of the monastery and the church " Sveti Kliment of Ohrid ".

With the establishment of the Bulgarian Exarchate by the Sultansferman of 1870, the Bulgarian Orthodox Church regained its independence. Several places on the western Black Sea coast, including Burgas and the monastery " Sveta Anastasia", but remained more under the ecclesiastical authority of the Ecumenical Patriarchate of Constantinople Greek embossed Opel. From 1900 the Ecumenical Patriarchate handed after long protests, the last churches and monasteries of the Bulgarian Church. The official handover took place on August 15, 1901 This was not always peaceful.; so the Greek Hegumen of the monastery " Sveta Anastasia" was previously still sell the treasury of the church. This experiment led to riots in Burgas and only through the intervention of the Bulgarian government pogroms against the Greek population could be part of Macedonian Bulgarians prevented. The monastery and its adjacent monastery church but were abandoned in early 1923.

After the coup of June 9, 1923 against the government of the People's Federal Bauer, the former convent of the new government under Aleksandar Tsankov to prison. Thus, in the second half of 1923 on the island of 132 members of the peasantry Federal and held even communist prisoners in the same year after the September uprising of the Bulgarian Communist Party. The bad supply situation of the island and the associated costs led the government in the same year to close the prison. Gradually, some of the prisoners were released and a further part transferred to the prison of Burgas.

After the bombing of the Sveta Nedelya Cathedral, committed in April 1925 by the Bulgarian Communists, the island was once a prison. This time, the government imprisoned mostly members of the Communist Party of Bulgaria one, so in only four cells over 90 prisoners were incarcerated. On July 29, succeeded in 43 of them to escape from the island to the nearby Cape Atiya. About the beach Saddle Mountains and Istanbul, they were able to flee to the Soviet Union. The majority of the fugitive, however, came during the Stalinist purges killed. They were the island in honor after 1945 in Bulgaria, the Communist Party came to power renamed Bolschewikeninsel ( Bulg остров Болшевик ). During the expedition, " Pontos 73 " part of the island and surrounding waters was investigated archaeologically. In the 1980s, the former prison became a museum. After the democratization of the country with the fall of the Iron Curtain, the island was given back her original name.

Today the monastery is managed again by the Bulgarian Orthodox Church. In addition to the Anastasia Island Sweta is still a lighthouse, some accommodation, a restaurant and a quay. The island can be reached by regular boat traffic from Burgas. In the future, the island should be better developed- by attractions are built.

Cinema

The Bulgarian film director Rangel Waltschanow dedicated in 1958 a movie ( " On the small island " ) the prisoner uprising of 1925.

In August 2010, portions of the film Ostrowat ( Bulg Островът to dt The island, including Thure Lindhardt and with Laetitia Casta ) turned Bulgarian director Kamen Kalev on the island.