Museum collection Dobri Chintulov - Sliven

Overview

Dobri Chintulov was born in 1822 in the town of Sliven in the family of a craftsman. He spent his first sixteen years in his hometown attending a Greek school. His father was very poor, so in 1838 Chintulov himself went to Tarnovo, where he studied for about six months, while at the same time serving. From there he went to Bucharest, where he studied (again in Greek) for about a year and a half with the teachers, the Christidi brothers. Chintulov went to Odessa after Zahari Knyazheski told him that the Russian government had granted several scholarships to Bulgarians. Dimitar Diamandiev from Sliven, living in Braila, helped him with the trip. Chintulov managed to receive a scholarship and in three years graduated from the district school in Odessa, which then consisted of four classes, two years each class. Then he entered the seminary, which he graduated in six years, and in 1850 he returned to Bulgaria. From 1850 to 1858 he taught in Sliven. At the same time he participated in the struggle for church independence and modern Bulgarian education. He also founded a community center in his hometown. He writes and distributes patriotic-revolutionary poems. Some of them are gaining great popularity, which arouses the hatred of Turkophile and Greco-Roman circles, who even assassinated him. All this forced Chintulov to move to teach in Yambol as a head teacher until 1861. In 1861 the Sliven municipality summoned Chintulov again to Sliven, where he again became head teacher and taught continuously until 1871, and in that year he was elected a delegate from the Sliven diocese at the First Bulgarian Church-People's Assembly in Constantinople in drafting an exarchate statute. . After returning from Constantinople, Chintulov taught for another 3 years, leaving alone due to vision problems. Although half-blind and ill, he was one of the people who met the Russian troops when they arrived in Sliven on January 5/17, 1878, where he delivered a fiery speech in Russian. In the old Sliven neighborhood "Deli Balta" is the home where the famous Revival poet, educator and church figure Dobri Chintulov lived and worked until 1886. The house was built in the 1950s by the two brothers Ivan and Dobri Chintulovi, near their father's home. It is of the typical architectural type - open, asymmetrical, two-story building, with wooden corners and verandas, towering over a spacious cobbled yard. In the middle of the 70s of the XX century the house was mainly restored and a museum exposition was opened in it. With its photo-documentary part, with the original belongings of the poet and the recreated typical for the time atmosphere, significant stages of the life, social and creative activity of Dobri Chintulov are revealed. The exhibits-books from his personal library, textbooks and aids carry information about the educational and chitalishte work in the Revival Sliven. Every year in the exhibition hall a solemn ritual is performed to enter the name of the winner of the Grand Prize for Literature and Art "Dobri Chintulov" on a special panel. The award is given to outstanding artists during the celebrations dedicated to the day of Sliven - October 26 - St. Dimitrov's Day.