Geo Milev

Geo Milev was born on January 15, 1895, in Radnevo. Studying modern philology at Leipzig, Milev was drawn to German expressionism and the modernist journal Der Sturm. Mobilized in World War I, he was severely wounded at the battle of Doiran, losing his right eye (famously replaced with a glass eye and covered by a dramatic forelock).

Returning to Sofia, he founded the revolutionary modernist journals Vezni and Plamak. In 1924, following the bloody crushing of the September 1923 uprising, he published his avant-garde masterpiece Septemvri, an explosive montage of expressionist fury. Arrested during the 1925 White Terror, he was murdered and buried in a mass grave at Iliyantsi, identified decades later by his glass eye.