“You Undoubtedly Remember Mr. L. E. Feldmahn”: The Bulgarian Dolls of the Near East Foundation

Jack L. Davis, Carl W. Blegen Professor of Greek Archaeology at the University of Cincinnati and a former director of the American School of Classical Studies at Athens (2007-2012), here contributes an essay about Leonty E. Feldmahn, the man who conceived and produced in the 1930s the Bulgarian dolls of the Near East Foundation.

One rewarding sidelight of researching institutional history is that, from time to time, it affords an opportunity to resurrect once well-known individuals who have been lost to history. Here I call attention to a fascinating man, who, throughout much of his life, made outsize contributions to addressing one Balkan refugee crisis that resulted from the Russian Revolution of 1917. In the years prior to World War II, his activities in Bulgaria were sometimes tangential to those of certain individuals known to readers of this blog through the intermediary of the Near East Industries subsidiary of the Near East Foundation.

I only learned of Leonty E. Feldmahn recently and by accident. I didn’t remember him from any earlier reading. Feldmahn is not mentioned in the standard history of the Near East Foundation, or on the Foundation’s historical web site. He appears only three times in the New York Times: when he was awarded the Bulgarian Cross for Philanthropy from King Boris (he had in 1923 established “a playground and children’s club in Sofia serving 4200 poor children,” December 31, 1935, p. 17); earlier in 1935, when the character of the playground and club was described in detail (April 21, 1935, pp. 78, 80); and in his obituary (January 6, 1962, p. 16).