Ekvtime Takaishvili
Ekvtime Takaishvili NHG | |
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ექვთიმე თაყაიშვილი | |
Member of the Constituent Assembly of Georgia | |
In office 1919–1921 | |
Personal details | |
Born | January 5, 1862 Georgian SSR, Soviet Union |
Resting place | Mtatsminda Pantheon |
Nationality | Georgian |
Education | Saint Petersburg State University |
Occupation | Archeologist, Professor, Historian and public figure |
Signature | |
Ekvtime Takaishvili (also spelled Taqaishvili, Georgian: ექვთიმე თაყაიშვილი; January 5, 1862 – February 21, 1953) was a Georgian historian, archaeologist and public benefactor.
Born in the village of
After the
Georgian national treasury
In 1917, he was among the founders and professors of the
The treasury, filling 39 immense boxes, was shipped to Marseille and placed in a bank depository. Subsequently, this precious cargo was transferred to one of the banks in Paris. Although the treasury was officially the property of the Georgian government-in-exile, it was actually Ekvtime Takaishvili who supervised this huge collection. In the early 1930s, Takaishvili won a lawsuit against Salome Obolenskaya, daughter of the last Mingrelian prince Niko Dadiani, who also laid claim to a part of the treasury taken from the former Dadiani Palace in Zugdidi, Georgia. Despite numerous attempts by various European museums to purchase portions of this treasury, and extreme economic hardship, Takaishvili never sold a single piece of the priceless collection to live on and guarded it until 1933, when the League of Nations recognized the Soviet Union; the Georgian embassy in Paris was abolished and transformed into the "Georgian Office". The treasury passed into the possession of the French state. In 1935, Takaishvili urged the French government to hand the collections to Georgia, but it was not until the end of the World War II when he was able, in November 1944, to attract the attention of the Soviet ambassador Aleksandr Bogomolov to the fate of the Georgian treasury. Joseph Stalin's good relations with General Charles de Gaulle enabled Takaishvili to bring the treasury back to Georgia. However, Takaishvili had to spend his long days in Tbilisi under house arrest, seemingly considered to be too old to be imprisoned.
He was an author of numerous scholarly works on the history and archaeology of Georgia and the
References
- ^ "Mikheil Saakashvili – Georgia will not kneel, or lick the conqueror's boots". InterPressNews. 26 October 2013. Archived from the original on 20 November 2015. Retrieved 14 January 2015.
- (in Russian) Такаишвили, Эквтиме. Люди и судьбы. Биобиблиографический словарь востоковедов - жертв политического террора в советский период (1917-1991). Изд. подготовили Я. В. Васильков, М. Ю. Сорокина. СПб.: Петербургское Востоковедение, 2003. 496 с.
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