Draft:Mateja Sumenkovic

Mateja Šumenković

Mateja Šumenković (Serbian Cyrillic: Матеја Шуменковић; Borovac, 1864 -Borovac, 1939) was a Serbian archpriest and people's champion in Drimkol at the end of the 19th- and the beginning of the 20th-century.

Biography

Mateja Šumenković was born in 1864 in the village of Boroec (or Borovac) in Struška Drimkol. He comes from the Šumenković family, whose member Kosta Šumenković was a fighter for freedom and the spiritual and cultural upliftment of Serbs in the Struga and Ohrid regions. As a merchant of money, advice and connections, Kosta operated from Serbia, while his nephew Mateja led the fight in Drimkol itself. He finished primary school in his native village, where he was taught by his cousin Arsa Šumenković. He graduated from the Svetosava Evening School, and worked as a Serbian teacher and Orthodox priest in Macedonia. He was also a teacher in the village of Jablanica in 1889. Since 1897, the persecution and terrorizing of Serbs has stopped, and Serbian nationality has been recognized throughout Turkey and the opening of Serbian schools has been allowed. In 1897, Mata opened another Serbian elementary school in Borovac, where he also worked as a teacher.

In 1900, Mateja was also a Serbian teacher in his hometown of Borovac.He was ordained as a priest in Borovac in 1900; and continued to work there as a teacher, due to the lack of teaching staff. With interruptions, he was the director of Serbian schools in Drimkol for a long time. He was awarded as a teacher in Borovka in 1923 with the Order of St. Sava IV degree.VMRO and the Bulgarian Exarchate considered the counter a dangerous opponent, so four unsuccessful assassination attempts were made against him. The first assassination attempt on him was attempted in 1901, while he was working as a teacher, and he was wounded in subsequent attacks.

Founder

He was the founder of the first Serbian Chetnik company in Old Serbia in 1903 and before the creation of the Serbian Chetnik Organization. He worked on the Serbian Chetnik organization, together with Mitra Đerović from Jablanica, who, however, died at the hands of the Bulgarians. The company protected several Serbian villages in Drimkol: Labuništa, Boroec, Jablanica and Podgorce. After the creation and centralization of the Serbian Chetnik organization, Father Mateja became part of the Drimkol Chetnik Committee. After the Young Turk Revolution in 1908, he was a people's representative at the First Assembly of Ottoman Serbs.

In 1912, during the First Balkan War, Mateja Šumenković activated a Chetnik detachment in Drimkol and together with the Serbian army liberated Struga. After the liberation, he devoted himself to his priestly vocation.

He retired in 1925, and in the same year was elected in his homeland as a regional deputy. As a retired teacher and protojerej in Borovac, Šumenković became the president of the municipality of Struga (1933).

He died and was buried in his birthplace Borovac near Struga in September 1939.

Sources

• Nova Iskra, Belgrade in 1900
• Politika, Belgrade, July 27, 1928
• Prosvetni glasnik, Belgrade in 1923
• B. Jokanović, "Cross, pen and sword", Cetinje 1999, 144-146.
• Pravda, Belgrade in 1933
• A. Krstić, "Our Chetnik Action in Drimkol", Southern Review, Skopje 1930.
• Politika, Belgrade in 1928
• Pravda, Belgrade in 1939

Literature

• Како се некад радило и гинуло, Политика, број 7269, уредник Миомир Миленовић, Јован Тановић, 27. 7. 1928, стр. 8
• А. Крстић, Наша четничка акција у Дримколу, Јужни преглед, Скопље, 1930.
• Јован Хаџи-Васиљевић, Матеја Шуменковић, Братство XXXI, Београд, 1940, стр. 244–245

References

• Translated and adapted from Serbian Wikipedia: Матеја Шуменковић
• Translated and adapted from Serbian Encyclopedia: Матеја Шуменковић