Ekvtime Takaishvili

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Ekvtime Takaishvili

Monument at Tbilisi

Ekvtime Takaishvili also spelled Taqaishvili (Georgian: ექვთიმე თაყაიშვილი) (January 3, 1863-February 21, 1953) was a Georgian historian, archaeologist and public benefactor.

Born in the village of Likhauri in the western Georgian province of Guria (then part of Imperial Russia) to a local nobleman Svimon Takaishvili, he graduated from St. Petersburg University in 1887. From 1887 to 1917, he lectured on the history of Georgia at various prestigious schools in Tbilisi, including the Tbilisi Gymnasium for Nobility. During these years, he was actively involved in exensive scholarly activities and chaired, from 1907 to 1921, the Society of History and Ethnography of Georgia. Between 1907 and 1910, he organized a series of archaeological expeditions to the historic Georgian region of Tao-Klarjeti (now part of Turkey).

After the February Revolution, he engaged also in politics, taking part in the establishment of the National-Democratic Party of Georgia in 1917 and being elected to a post of Deputy Chairman in the national parliament of the Democratic Republic of Georgia from 1918 to 1921.

In 1918, he was among the founders and professors of the Tbilisi State University (TSU). He lost his tenure both in the parliament and at the TSU in 1921, when the Bolshevik Russia's 11th Red Army put an end to Georgia's independence. He followed the Georgian government in their French exile, taking the Georgian national treasury – numerous precious pieces of Georgian material culture - with him to Europe.

The treasury contained into 39 immense boxes, were shipped to Marseille and placed in a bank depository. Subsequently this precious cargo was transferred to one of the banks in Paris. Although the treasury was officially the property of the Georgian government-in-exile, it was actually Ekvtime Takaishvili who supervised this huge collection. In the early 1930s, Takaishvili won a process against Countess Salome Obolenskaya (1878-1961), daughter of the last Mingrelian prince Nikoloz Dadiani, who also pretended on a part of the treasury taken from the former Dadiani Palace in Zugdidi, Georgia. Despite numerous attempts by various European museums to purchase portions of this treasury, and extreme economic hardship, Takaishvili never even sell a single piece of the values to live on and guarded the collection until 1933, when the League of Nations recognized the Soviet Union; the Georgian embassy in Paris was abolished and transformed into the "Georgian Office". The treasury passed into the possession of the French state. In 1935, Takaishvili urged the French government to hand the collections to Georgia, but it was not until the end of the World War II when was he able, in November 1944, to attract the attention of the Soviet ambassador A. Bogomolov to the fate of the Georgian treasury. Stalin's good relations with General de Gaulle enabled Takaishvili to bring the treasury back to Georgia. However, Takaishvili had to spend his long unhappy days in Tbilisi under the home arrest, seemingly considered to be too old to be imprisoned.