HOVSEP GUYUMJIAN
1877, Bitlis – 1934, Cairo
The benefactor Guyumjian was born in Bitlis in 1877. Having completed his primary education at the local school, his parents sent him to Constantinople at the age of 8.
He attended the Central School, and after successfully graduating in 1896, he decided to remain there, where he served as a teacher of Armenian language within the very National Central School from which he had graduated.
After serving for about 12 years, upon the recommendation of Vahan Tekeyan, he was invited to the newly formed Ramgavar circle of Van, to assume the post of inspector of the Central Haygazian School.
In the spring of 1909, Guyumjian departed for Van to assume the post offered to him. Despite the fact that Guyumjian had become a sought-after public figure in Constantinople and, immediately after the proclamation of the Ottoman Constitution in 1908, had been elected deputy from the Ortaköy district to the National Assembly of Constantinople, Guyumjian preferred to leave for the provinces and take an active role there, supporting the educational and social life of Vaspurakan. In those days, with the Constitutional Ramgavar ideology he espoused, the Vaspurakan circle was to assume an important role as a continuation of the first circle of the Armenakan Party.
Within a year, Guyumjian had already become a beloved and sought-after educator and national figure, especially for the party and sympathising families. Many of his students were already enthusiastic about serving the ideology that their principal belonged to and preached. In April 1910, on the occasion of the 4th anniversary of the founding of the Armenian General Benevolent Union (AGBU), Hovsep Guyumjian took the initiative to form the Van branch of the Union, whose first chairman was elected the well-known national figure Bedros Bey Gapamajian, while Guyumjian became an administrative member of that body.
Before the end of the same year, he was appointed delegate by the Central Board of the AGBU to tour various regions of Western Armenia and become an educational figure.
In Van there existed the teachers’ college of the United Society, which the Dashnaktsakan structure of Van was trying, through encroachments, to have closed. By order of the Ramgavar circle of Vaspurakan, the benefactor Guyumjian became the director of the teachers’ college.
With his skill as an educational worker, he defied every encroachment, and a year later, in 1912, thanks to the cooperation of the AGBU Central Board and the United Society, the care of the teachers’ college was entrusted to Guyumjian. The same year he was appointed general inspector of the AGBU’s schools in Greater Armenia, as well as itinerant figure for the Union’s branches in Western Armenia. The supervision of the teachers’ college was entrusted to the well-known Armenian-American editor Mikael Minasyan, who had first come to Constantinople as editor of the newspaper “Loos”.
The benefactor Hovsep Guyumjian, alongside his itinerant post, also formed part of the leadership of the Vaspurakan Ramgavar circle and contributed to the official organ “Van-Tosp” as a staff member.
The red April had already arrived, and the fate of the Armenians of Vaspurakan was self-defence, with the heroic battle of Van in 1915. The Armenians of Western Armenia were also experiencing the horror of deportation, plunder and massacre. The teachers’ college was closed, and the educational worker Hovsep Guyumjian stood by the side of the military commander Armenak Yekarian. He was entrusted with the leadership of a self-defence group in the trenches, where they successfully drove the Turkish army from the Ayghestan district.
After the victory of the heroic battle of Van, the Armenians of Vaspurakan were able to hold onto their ancestral land for only five months, because at the end of September of the same year, due to the retreat of the Russian army, the Armenians of Vaspurakan also took up the wanderer’s staff and crossed to Vagharshapat or Tiflis.
Hovsep Guyumjian settled in Tiflis, where he took an active part in reorganising the Ramgavar circle in the Caucasus, and formed part of the efforts to republish the official organ “Van-Tosp”, alongside Artak Darbinyan and Vartan Papikyan.
In 1917, due to the deterioration of his health, he was forced to leave for Paris via Sweden, amid the insecurity and turmoil of the First World War.
After receiving treatment in Paris, he took up residence there for about 3 years, forming part of the local social life.
At the end of 1920 he was invited to Constantinople, where he assumed the teaching post at the Central School.
During this period in Constantinople there was a new national and social awakening, in which the Ramgavar Party was publishing the official organ “Hayreniki Tsayn” (Voice of the Fatherland). Alongside the educational field, he threw himself into important national work, forming part of the merger of the Ramgavar and Liberal currents, which was to proclaim the Armenian Democratic Liberal Party on 1 October 1921. During this period, Vahan Tekeyan, who held the inspectorship of the Central School, became Guyumjian’s close collaborator.
In 1923 Guyumjian moved to Paris, finally leaving Constantinople because of the Kemalist offensives.
Arshak Chobanian, who after the formation of the ADL had undertaken the organisation of the Ramgavar circle of France, invited Guyumjian to assume the editorship of the official organ “Abaka” (Future), which he conducted with competence for about two years. In 1925 he was invited to Marseille as inspector of the “Tbrotsaser” school. Two years later the school was moved to Paris, and Guyumjian returned to Paris to continue the same post. During this period, the centre of the Armenian Democratic Liberal Party had moved from Athens to Paris, where Arshak Chobanian had assumed the chairmanship of the Central Board.
In 1929, the 4th General Delegates’ Assembly of the ADL, held in Paris, elected Guyumjian as a member of the Central Board, alongside Chobanian, Mikael Babajanyan, Avetis Terzibashyan and Hovhannes Boghosian, for the following two years.
He resigned from his educational post in Paris in 1933 and left for Egypt, at the invitation of the Armenian Diocesan Council of Egypt, to become inspector of the “Nubarian” national school in Heliopolis. Before the school year was over, Guyumjian fell ill and was taken to hospital, where barely two months later, incurable, he passed away in March 1934, at the tender age of just 57.
The students who recognised the devoted service of the benefactor, and his comrades in ideology, from Constantinople to Van and from Paris to Cairo, expressed their condolences in the “Arev” daily, whose editorship had been assumed by Hovhannes Boghosian. Boghosian praised the devoted educational and social service of the benefactor Guyumjian with a eulogy during the national funeral held in Cairo.
Ara Aharonian
