Bulgaria · 150th anniversary of the Liberation of Bulgaria

The Bulgarian Liberation is connected with the Russo-Turkish War (Russisch-Osmanischer Krieg) of 1877/78. It was preceded by a cultural and political national revival of the Bulgarians, as well as uprisings against Ottoman rule. In particular, the suppressed April Uprising of 1876 and reports of the violence committed during it heightened the attention of the European public to the situation of the Christian population in the Balkans.

Russia intervened in the conflict the following year and waged the war together with Bulgarian volunteer units against the Ottoman Empire. The campaign ended with the Treaty of San Stefano on 3 March 1878. The treaty provided for the establishment of a largely self-governing Bulgarian principality and became a symbol of national liberation in Bulgaria. 3 March is therefore observed as Bulgaria’s national holiday.

However, the provisions of San Stefano did not permanently enter into force in this form. At the Congress of Berlin in the same year, the European great powers altered the planned order. The Bulgarian principality received a smaller territory and initially remained formally under the suzerainty of the Ottoman Empire. To the south, Eastern Rumelia (Ostrumelien) was established as an autonomous province; other territories that the Treaty of San Stefano had assigned to Bulgaria remained under Ottoman administration. Bulgaria’s full state independence was not declared until later.

The coin thus refers to the beginning of modern Bulgarian statehood and to a central point of reference in Bulgarian commemorative culture. The anniversary commemorates not only the end of a military conflict, but also the restoration of a Bulgarian political order after centuries of Ottoman rule. The choice of the 150th anniversary invokes the firmly established symbolic significance of 3 March 1878 in Bulgaria’s state commemorations.