In 1871, Petar Beron was murdered in his estate near Craiova. He was a prominent Bulgarian Renaissance scholar, encyclopedist, educational activist, pedagogue, naturalist, physician and philosopher.
„On March 21 of this year, a villainous hand dared and reached out to take the life of the honest and most kind uncle Dr. Petar Beron, and in the ugliest and most torturous way - by strangling him!”
These are the first lines of the obituary published by the relatives of the author of the „Fish Primer”, on the occasion of his death, writes the "Bulgar" website. The obituary also states: “We are sure that everyone's hairs should stand on end when they think about the terrible situation in which the deceased was in the last days of his life, when he was tortured by the inhuman and beast-like creatures, called humans, who committed this brutal crime!”
Dr. Petar Beron was strangled on March 21, 1871, at around 8 pm in his home on ul. “Liceului” No. 1 in the “St. Troica” district in the city of Craiova. The Romanian police immediately set out on the trail of the suspected murderers and soon caught them. These were the villagers Ion Kalin and Nicolae Tibu. The Bulgarian newspaper “Svoboda”, published in Bucharest, reported that they had made full confessions. The alleged perpetrators of the murder were also arrested - Petru Alexandru and engineer Ilie Choculescu.
The latter owed Beron 110 gold coins.
The perpetrators were released due to lack of evidence. The two murderers were sent to life imprisonment in the salt mines, since at that time there was no death penalty in our northern neighbor.
Petru Beron was born in 1799 in Kotel, where he initially studied under priest Stoyko Vladislavov (later Sophrony of Vrachanski). He then studied at the Greek school in Bucharest. From 1821 to 1825 he taught in Brasov, and from 1825 to 1831 studied medicine in Munich (Germany), recalls "Focus".
After graduating with a doctorate in medicine in Munich on July 3, 1831, Beron settled for a while in Bucharest as a private doctor. From 1832 to 1841, he was the district doctor of Craiova. Together with his nephew Nikola Hristov, he founded a company for trading in abi. He also started a profitable business with grain. In 1841, he bought the "Skorila" farm near Craiova with an area of 10,000 decares. This allowed him to live as a rentier for the rest of his life.
Then, until 1841, Beron worked as a doctor in Craiova. From 1843 until the end of his life he was mainly engaged in scientific activity.
His greatest merits were in the field of Bulgarian education. As a teacher in Brasov in 1824, he compiled the first Bulgarian textbook - "Primary with Various Teachings" ("Fish Primer").
It covers issues from various fields of knowledge and this gives it the character of a small encyclopedia. In addition, "Fish Primer" is written in a living, spoken Bulgarian language, which makes it easily accessible to children. With it, Beron emerged as the first Bulgarian educator to decisively advocate secular education.
With the Fish Primer, he marked the beginning of a new stage in Bulgarian educational work.
Beron supported educational work in Bulgarian lands by providing funds for the opening of secular schools in various parts of the country.
He wrote about 20 scientific works. He lived in Paris, Berlin, London, Vienna, Prague, Athens. He spoke 9 languages. He bequeathed a large part of his inheritance to Bulgarian schools. In 1964, his heart (embalmed upon his death) was transferred to Kotel.