Konstantin Fotinov (1790 - 1858)

Konstantin Georgiev Fotinov is a Bulgarian Renaissance writer, educator and translator. He was born in 1790 in the town of Samokov. From 1828, he became a teacher and was also busy with literary work. In the same year, he established a private mixed Greek-Bulgarian school in the city of Smyrna (today Izmir), where he introduced the Bell-Lancaster method. The school curriculum includes Bulgarian, Greek and French. He was the editor and publisher of the first Bulgarian magazine "Lyuboslovie", published in Smyrna in 1842 (trial issue) and then from 1844 to 1846. The magazine has an encyclopedic character. In Smyrna, Fotinov met the American missionary Elias Riggs, whom he taught Bulgarian and together with whom he compiled "Notes on the Grammar of the Bulgarian Language", intended for the teaching of Bulgarian to other American missionaries. In connection with the needs of teachers, Fotinov also published some teaching aids, such as "Greek Grammar" (1838), "Bulgarian Phrasebook" (1845), translated from Greek "Obschoe zelemopisanie" and others. He died on November 29, 1858 in Constantinople. With all his activities, Konstantin Fotinov left lasting traces in the cultural and enlightened life of Bulgarians in the middle of the 19th century.