Gancho Tsenov

Gancho Tsenov (Bulgarian: Ганчо Ценов) (1870-1949) was a Bulgarian scholar and professor who studied mainly Bulgarian history. He is considered to be the founder of the fringe theory on the autochthonous origin of the Bulgarian people, which he detailed for the first time in 1910 in his main work, "The Origins of Bulgarians and the Origin of the Bulgarian State and the Bulgarian Church". He translated sources from Bulgarian, German, Latin, Greek, Hebrew, Hungarian, Polish and Russian.[1]

Gancho Tsenov (Gancho Tzenoff)
Ганчо Ценов
Bulgarian historian
Born(1870-06-06)6 June 1870
Boynitsa, Ottoman Empire
Died1949
West Berlin, West Germany
NationalityBulgarian
OccupationTeacher, historian, philologist

Life

Tsenov was born on June 6, 1870 in the village of Boynitsa, Sanjak of Vidin, Ottoman Empire (now in Bulgaria). He graduated in 1894 at the Sofia University and two years later became a history teacher at the Male High School in Vidin. He worked in the Cultural Department of the Military Ministry.[2]

In 1899, he was sent from there on a four-year specialization competition at the Humboldt University in Berlin, Germany. There he defended a dissertation on Russian history on "Who set fire to Moscow in 1812?" on Napoleon's invasion of Russia in 1812 and became the first Bulgarian doctor at German university. He then began work on "Origin and history of the Bulgarian people". The most important part of his dissertation was published in the Historic series.[3]

His revisionist ideas were not welcomed by academic circles in Bulgaria, and his application to Associate Professor at Sofia University was rejected. Therefore, Tsenov went back to Germany, where he became a lecturer in ancient history at Humboldt University. His most important writings were issued in Germany and in Bulgaria.

In Bulgaria, criticism of him had meanwhile continued. In 1936, Tsenov applied again for Professor at the Department of History at Sofia University, but his candidacy was rejected for a second time, and he moved to Germany again. After the communist coup from 1944 in Bulgaria, Tsenov, who now had a German wife, stayed in West Berlin until his death.

Criticism

Tsenov's theory was a full revision of the official Bulgarian historiography by rejecting the migration of the Bulgars from Central Asia to Europe. Some of Tzenov's ideas were that the Bulgars were an ancient Thraco-Illyrian people, not a Turkic people. As well, he denied their Volga residence.

Those statements fit entirely in the context of the Balkan nationalisms of the early 20th century. He maintained that Kubrat also bore a Slavic name from which came the name of the Croats, Justinian I was a Bulgarian himself, as was Belisarius.[4] Tsenov maintained that Alexander the Great was descended from that people, nie called Bulgarians.[5] His theory claimed that the Slavic-speaking Bulgarians are native in the Balkans and that the ancient Balkan populations were Bulgarian. In that way, Tsenov imposed the deceptive idea of the Bulgarian nation being one of the oldest, with unbroken continuity from the antiquity to the modern times.[6]

Tsenov's views were not accepted by the official Bulgarian historiography in which he was a subject of sharp criticism.[7] His application for Professor at Sofia University was twice rejected. He continued to defend his extreme views and was affiliated with the Nazi regime. After the Second World War, Tsenov was condemned as fascists by the Bulgarian communist regime, and his books were banned.

His ethnogenetic conceptions are now considered as a groundless fringe theory.[8] Some researchers now make a parallel between Tsenov's theses and the Antiquisation of modern Macedonian historiography.[9]

His writings are popular today on some Bulgarian websites, nationalist forums and the like.[10]

His ideas find support among some amateur historians practicing historical negationism like Dr. Georgi Sotirov (financier), Professor Asen Chilingirov (culturologist), Professor Yordan Tabov (mathematician) and Nikolay Todorov (philologist).[11]

Selected bibliography

"Wer hat Moskau im Jahre 1812 in Brand gesteckt?", Gancho Tsenov. - Nachdr. d. Ausg, Historische Studien No.17, E. Ebering, Berlin 1900. - Vaduz: Kraus Reprint, 1965

"Goten oder Bulgaren : quellenkritische Untersuchung über die Geschichte der alten Skythen, Thrakier und Makedonier", Ganco Cenov - Leipzig : Dyk, 1915 https://archive.org/details/gotenoderbulgare00tsen

"Geschichte der Bulgaren", Steiwetz, Berlin, 1917

"Das wissenschaftliche Leben in Bulgarien", статия, "Minerva" (WdeG), Berlin, 6 Sept., 1924.

"Geschichte der Bulgaren und der anderen Südslaven von der römischen Eroberung der Balkanhalbinsel bis zum Ende des neunten Jahrhunderts", Dr. Gancho Tsenov, Berlin/Leipzig, Walter De Gruyter & Co., 1935

See also

References
  1. "Bŭlgarskii͡at imennik v stara i nova Evropa in SearchWorks catalog". searchworks.stanford.edu. Retrieved 2018-09-05.
  2. Александър Мошев, "Историкът д-р Ганчо Ценов от с.Бойница", „Венец: Белоградчишко списание за история, култура и народознание“, Том 1, Година 2010, Брой 3, стр. 314-329.
  3. Здравко Даскалов, "Учителят, който изпревари времето", "Учителско дело", Година XCXIX, Брой 24 (3578), 29 юни 2006 г.
  4. Kenneth M. Setton, The Bulgars in the Balkans and the Occupation of Corinth in the Seventh Century. (Speculum, 25, 4, 1950, 502-543).
  5. Ганчо Ценов, Народността на старите македонци, Сказка, държана на 4 ноември 1938 г. в София, стр. 15.
  6. Евлоги Станчев, Творчеството на д-р Ганчо Ценов - академичен национализъм или квазинаучен автохтонизъм. "Преходът - гласове, образи и памет". Доклад изнесен на научна конференция: „Науката в преход: История и параистория“, Белград, Сърбия, 19 – 21 септември 2011 г..
  7. Tchavdar Marinov, "Ancient Thrace in the Modern Imagination: Ideological Aspects of the Construction of Thracian Studies in Southeast Europe (Romania, Greece, Bulgaria)" pp. 80, 111, in Entangled Histories of the Balkans - Volume Three: Shared Pasts, Disputed Legacies, Balkan Studies Library with Roumen Daskalov, Alexander Vezenkov as ed. BRILL, 2015, ISBN 9004290362, pp. 10-118.
  8. Joshua A. Fishman, Overcoming Minority Language Policy Failure: The Case for Bulgaria and the Balkans, Volume 179 от International journal of the sociology of language with Angel G. Angelov and David F. Marshall as ed., Mouton de Gruyter, 2006, p. 67.
  9. Цочо В. Билярски, Александър Македонски, д-р Ганчо Ценов и днешното македонско оглупяване. 04.11.2011, Сите българи заедно.
  10. Maciej Gorny, War on Paper? Physical Anthropology in the Service of States and Nations, p. 163, in Legacies of Violence: Eastern Europe’s First World War, Volume 3 Europas Osten im 20. Jahrhundert with Jochen Böhler, Wlodzimierz Borodziej and Joachim von Puttkamer as ed. Walter de Gruyter, 2014, ISBN 3486857568, pp. 131-168.
  11. "За бог Зевс – бог Живе, Орфей, пръстена от Езерово и античната българска книжнина, book of Nikolay Todorov Gods and books"" (PDF). 2002. Archived from the original (PDF) on August 21, 2018. Alt URL
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