From „Secrets of Srednogorie“
Continuing from Part 1 – if you happened to miss it or want a refresher, please go here: „Rhodoppe Mysteries. Koprivshtitsa – Archaeology of the Spirit“ – Part 1.
The wealth that built Revival-era Koprivshtitsa
Burned three times by the Kardzhali raids at the end of the 18th and beginning of the 19th centuries, the town stubbornly rose from its ashes. In its present form – a pearl in the crown of the Bulgarian Revival and its living symbol – it was recreated by wealthy Bulgarians in the 19th century.
Their prosperity had clearly surpassed not only that of a large part of the Christian population but also that of the rest of the population in the Ottoman Empire.
For the scale of the then economy, the Koprivshtitsa *chorbadzhii* were like today's American billionaires.
In approximately a thousand houses lived over twelve thousand people who produced healthy goods and conducted lively trade, mainly in sheep, wool, and its derivatives – primarily felt and socks, of which over two hundred and fifty thousand pairs were exported annually.
Their production reaches the farthest corners of the entire empire, Western Europe, and Asia. The commercial activity of the wealthiest Koprivshtitsa resident, Nencho Palaveev, reaches Alexandria, Cairo, India, London, and Petersburg.
He owned shares in the Suez Canal and had involvement in other major international undertakings.
Some of the largest tax farmers in the empire lived here. They bought the tax owed to the state on livestock from the Sultan – the beglik – and then collected it from the population in almost all of Southern Bulgaria.
One of them, Chorbaji Valko Chalakov, had personal contact with the Sultan and was appointed by him as the chief tax collector for the territory of Thrace.
A keen spirit as the basis of success
With particular fondness for their native place, the wealthy Koprivshtitsa residents generously donate to the construction of houses, schools, and all sorts of other public activities.
A vibrant public life is organized. Merchants and artisans unite in guild associations, which already in the first half of the 19th century established a mutual insurance fund and created a „Public Benefit Fund.“.
Lyuben Karavelov's father – Chorbaji Liben, Doncho and Nencho Palaveevi, Valcho Chalakov, Tsolo Kableshkov – Todor Kableshkov's father, are members of the board of directors of the fund, which invests large sums in public welfare activities, including the preparation of the April Uprising.
Besides strong will, enterprise, and hard work, Koprivshtitsa's rise is mainly due to an awakened spirit that values culture and knowledge as the foundation of any sustainable success.
In 1837, Neofit Rilski opened a mutual school. In the middle of the century, Nayden Gerov founded the first male high school in Bulgaria. In 1864, a girls„ high school was opened, and Todor Kableshkov established the student society “Zora" in 1867. Two years later, a town community center was opened. In 1932, the high school was established with a huge donation from Nencho Palaveev.
Why does Koprivshtitsa choose freedom?
Despite its flourishing economic state, Koprivshtitsa became the center of the April Uprising.
Today's self-denial is unclear.
Rejection of a materially secure world that, however, does not align with the idea of a fulfilling existence for those Bulgarians without national freedom and independence.
From here come most of the ideologues and leaders of this doomed, but beautiful romantic rebellion – the great heroes of Bulgarian freedom.
We are accustomed from textbook history to accept these events as something natural, almost inevitable, and even a historically ordained action, as if we fail to see the incredible contrast between the affluent life, the comforts, and the high social standing of the Koprivshtitsa rebels and the sacrifice they made in the name of something else, something higher, greater than profit, beautiful clothes, and subtle pleasures.
Something they couldn't enjoy without.
The leaders of the uprising came from the richest Bulgarian families of the time!
How can this discrepancy be explained?
The romanticism and political fashion of the 19th century are not enough. Irredentism, Garibaldi's Italy, the idea of national freedom, independence, and the unification of the tribe in its own state cannot fully explain the ordeal of these men.
Even a heroic gesture is more understandable with some degree of realistic expectation of success, or at least the possibility of avoiding the worst consequences. But in the face of inevitable slaughter, without even the opiate of dreams of media glory, this act becomes somehow desperate, more like ritual suicide, utter madness, a deliberate sacrifice.
Why?
In the name of what?
Archaeology of the Spirit
Educational clichés are useless here.
Perhaps it is a bit naive of us to assume that these people were born solely for the history books and our national pride, to fulfill some duty to the nation inherent only in them, by gracing it with their names.
But they were also people like us, flesh and blood. They had dreams of a good life, a career, love, family.
Who now is ready to be hanged, drawn, and quartered, or roasted alive, for ideals?
Where are these ideals today at all?
Forgive this digression, but Koprivshtitsa is essentially not an architectural reserve, a kind of art installation created for the amusement of modern tourists.
It is material to the extent that it is read as a trace, a testament to the past greatness of the human spirit, a memorial to virtue, purity, courage, and free thought.
With this abundance of spirit, Koprivshtitsa is particularly impressive with its sense of measure in daily life. The delicate harmony between intentions, the ambitions natural to human nature that come with big money, and the moderate scale of construction and furnishings prioritizes beauty and comfort over grandeur and pompousness. The megalomania inherent in power and wealth, which springs up all over the world in pyramids, palaces, and skyscrapers, is absent here.
It is difficult, if not impossible, to decipher the priorities of these people.
We are proud of them, but somehow out of inertia, formally and officially.
This pride of ours, inflated, trivialized, and distorted by intrusive patriotic propaganda, rings hollow due to the obvious misunderstanding of these distant, too different psychological states and spiritual ascensions. Quality levels inaccessible to today's man, who is capable of fighting and crying only for wages, pensions, and domestic comfort.
The Museum City and the Mystery of the Past
That is why he now enjoys here, with his inherent superficiality, primarily the visible Koprivshtitsa – with its colorful facades, the wonderful sun, the marvelous meadows, the healthy climate, the pleasant entertainment in nature, and the colorful taverns.
Perhaps this is exactly what Kableshkov, Benkovski, Nayden Gerov, and Lyuben Karavelov dreamed of?
May their memory be eternal!
And so – a watchful mind and spirit, an unyielding will, faith, and a love for knowledge and freedom create this beauty that we admire today.
Only the museum city remains – a monument to a once full-blooded, but now incomprehensible, vibrant and fulfilling society, which could have rivaled any leading European nation of its era.
Subsequently, political and demographic misfortune struck theRenaissance miracle, similar to Palmyra, Carthage, Corinth, Petra, and so on.
Today is an architectural still life of a irrevocably past, rich and generous event.
The tourist looks and clicks with natural wonder at the distant past, but also with the arrogance towards ancestors, inevitable for modern man, born out of the barren and false idea of progress as a continuous, step-by-step improvement of man and society on the path to the future.
But this city and its history, compared to our present reality, are one of the most vivid refutations of this Hegelian evolutionary delusion.
On this past, with its examples and riddles, which we may never understand and ascend its peaks.
End of Part Two
Next: „Gift from God“ - for Bogdan Peak
Traveler, if you have wandered the alleys of Koprivshtitsa's architectural spirit and looked at the photographs: a string of photos by the eloquent storyteller Atanas Krastev, please read their titles – they are short aphorisms, brilliant philosophical discoveries!
For me, as an editor, it was extremely difficult to select only 10 according to the regulations…
See more Author Atanas Krastev here
