EKIP– Expert Club for Economics and Politics A Different Opinion
On November 30, 1781, Ivan Denkoglu (Ivan Nenov Denkov) was born. He is known as the "benefactor of Sofia" and is one of the great donors of education and science during the Bulgarian Renaissance. Denkoglu was born into a poor family of the tailor Neno in the Sofia village of Balsha. As a child, he was a shepherd in the village. After his family moved to Sofia, he began working as a servant in an inn. But little Ivan did not particularly like this role because he was boisterous, mischievous and could not stand the constant harassment from his masters. After his father died, his mother was forced to send Ivan with 14 Turkish liras she had saved to a relative in Tarnovo, because she could not take care of him.
First steps in trade and entrepreneurship
At the age of 15, Ivan Denkoglu, together with Greeks seeking a livelihood outside their country, ended up in the Russian city of Nezhin. This city at that time was an important trade center. The Greek merchants in this city, where many Bulgarians also lived, enjoyed privileges granted to merchants by the Russian authorities - such as the import of goods without duty and free travel throughout the empire. Subsequently, Denkoglu became a member of the Nezhin Greek Brotherhood.
It is also claimed that he himself called himself a non-Greek in order to benefit from the privileges of Greek merchants . Thus, he learned trade and began to engage in the sale of goods from the Ottoman Empire - oil, wool, wheat, fabrics, pastrami, silk, etc. He made successful deals, gained popularity and trust in these circles, which contributed to his being chosen as an associate of large merchants. After gaining enough experience, he became an independent merchant.
In the 1830s, he moved to Moscow with a considerable amount of capital. Then he began his banking operations. At the same time, however, he did not stop trading. It was there that he revived the trade in Siberian mink furs, wild Siberian sable, silver and arctic foxes, martens, Siberian ferrets, etc. At the same time as he became a major merchant in Berlin, Leipzig, Prague and Vienna, he also began to carry out his first banking operations. After gradually becoming a prominent banker and merchant, he began to develop charitable activities.
Development of donation activities
Denkoglu donated 15 thousand gold rubles to Moscow University and with them a fund was created, thanks to which scholarships were paid to deserving students. Such a student was Nikola Mikhailovsky - the creator of the "Hellenist Daskalovnitsa" - our first teacher training institute. However, Mikhailovsky was not the only one who studied with such a scholarship - Konstantin Gerov, Nikolai Katranov, Sava Filaretov and others also received scholarships to study at Moscow University in the same way. In fact, there is only one condition that those wishing to benefit from the scholarship must satisfy. It is that after graduating, they must return to their homeland and be useful to it.
However, Denkoglu's charitable activities did not stop there. In 1849, he donated 30 thousand gold rubles for the construction of the first girls' school in Sofia, which opened 9 years later. He also donated books and teaching aids to the school itself. The donated books and teaching aids later became the basis of the National Library's collection, and Denkoglu's personal library became a public library at the first Sofia community center, founded in 1870.
In addition to this, Denkoglu invested 10 thousand rubles in a bank in St. Petersburg in perpetuity for the schools in Sofia. He also supported the school in Gabrovo with donations. Later, he founded a fund for the education of Bulgarian children at the Richelieu Lyceum in Odessa. In 1857, he returned to his native village of Balsha. He made gifts to Sofia churches and monasteries, donated a sum for the maintenance of the school of Sava Filaretov, who was studying with a scholarship from the fund at Moscow University. A year later, after an earthquake in Sofia, he sent a sum with which to buy flour and distribute it to the affected population. In his will, he left 1000 rubles to the Sofia school, 100 rubles to the Sofia churches and 2 thousand rubles with which to redeem poor residents of Sofia who had been sentenced to prison for debts.
To honor the name of the benefactor Ivan Denkoglu, to date, one community center, 127 secondary schools, and one street in the center of Sofia have been named after him.
