Twentieth-century Greece Research Articles

Professor Nikolaos Louros, a concerned scientist in twentieth-century Athens

The personal papers of Nikolaos Louros present an invaluable source of information on Louros’s place in the medical, social, cultural and political history of twentieth-century Greece. A royalist, liberal and keen observer of scientific and social developments, he participated actively in the shaping of the country’s post-war progress in medical education, institutions and ideas.

The classical drama as contested heritage in modern Greece: theatre productions from private initiatives to state projects in the 1930s

Abstract Performing classical drama at ancient venues in interwar Greece reflected the socio-cultural context of the time. The development of archaeological tourism and the perception of classical monuments as heterotopic spaces created particular political and ideological needs. Until the mid-1930s, private theatre companies and individual artists reused classical venues such as the Odeon of Herodes Atticus and the theatre of Epidaurus to stage productions that gradually attracted local, national, and international attention. But by 1936, the National Theatre began exploiting the socio-political potential of ancient theatres and classical drama festivals and state-sponsored productions dominated the Greek theatrical stage. During this period, the claims of exclusivity on the part of the National Theatre and the National Conservatoire defined their competition with private companies and shaped the course of the revival of classical drama in twentieth-century Greece.

Geography, landownership inequality, and literacy: historical evidence from Greek regions

AbstractOur work sheds light on the joint role of human capital and geography during the early stages of the transition from stagnation to growth in early twentieth century Greece. We uncover a robust association between geography and literacy. We also show that geography is correlated with land inequality and thus establish that land distribution is a channel through which geography influences literacy. Finally, the impact of geography on human capital formation weakens with industrialization. Our work contributes to the literature on geography and human capital in the transition from stagnation to growth since Greece was at the early stages of the industrial era during the study period.

On Airs, Waters, and Places: The Construction of a Natural History of Healthcare in Twentieth-Century Greece

On Airs, Waters, and Places: The Construction of a Natural History of Healthcare in Twentieth-Century Greece

The British Council and Anglo-Greek Literary Interactions, 1945–1955 ed. by Peter Mackridge and David Ricks

Reviewed by: The British Council and Anglo-Greek Literary Interactions, 1945–1955 ed. by Peter Mackridge and David Ricks Foteini Dimirouli (bio) Peter Mackridge and David Ricks, editors, The British Council and Anglo-Greek Literary Interactions, 1945–1955. London: Taylor & Francis, 2018. Pp. xii + 262. 2 figures. Cloth $144.00. The entire course of modern Greek history has been subject to foreign interest and the tight grip of great power politics. The extent to which cultural institutions have played a role in buttressing exogenous political agendas has been a topic of intensifying research focus, at least since the term "soft power" entered our lexicon to refer to propaganda in its most subtle variety (16n10). The volume of collected essays The British Council and Anglo-Greek Literary Interactions, 1945–1955 partakes of this scholarship and comes as an indispensable complement to the growing number of studies that systematically engage with American cultural sponsorship in Greece during the Cold War, and especially since the country passed from the British to the American sphere of influence with the Truman doctrine in 1947. (Bournazos 2017; Lalaki 2018; Lialiouti 2018). The subject of the volume is the British Council, one of the pillars of British cultural diplomacy in Greece as this took shape after the 1930s. The Council's status fluctuated over the course of the twentieth century: founded in 1934, it ceased its activities during the Occupation, strengthened its position in the postwar period, and gradually declined due to the Cypriot armed struggle against the British in the 1950s. Its activities were largely educational: they revolved around English language teaching and intellectual exchange through sponsored visits abroad and scholarships, as well as milestone initiatives in the world of letters, such as the establishment of the Byron Chair of English Studies at the University of Athens in 1937 and the launch of the prestigious periodical Anglo-Greek Review in 1945. But, beyond its educational mission, the Council was connected to the overall British presence in Greece, and particularly to its efforts to promote British values and exert influence abroad during turbulent times. Edited by Peter Mackridge and David Ricks, the book consists of thirteen chapters, which vary in length as much as they do in focus. Whereas the British Council's preeminence in twentieth-century Greece is a topic that [End Page 460] recurs in earlier works on relations between Greece and Britain, this is the first study to adopt the Council as its subject matter. It brings together a mosaic of perspectives, ranging from long, in-depth pieces about the Council's history to short commentaries about overlooked or anecdotal aspects of its activity. Most chapters draw on archival material, correspondence, diaries, and literary works to reveal hitherto unknown information about the lives and activities of key members of the Council, often as a way to chart the changing relationship between Britain and Greece in the mid-twentieth century. Frequent allusions to ideas of Anglo-Greek "friendship" and the delicate fabric of interpersonal contacts between representatives of the two countries showcase the ways in which cultural bonds were orchestrated, crucially affected by the Greek political backdrop, integral to the intellectual networks that developed at the peak of Greek modernism, and framed by the internal workings of an institution that enjoyed cultural prominence. The book's main focus is the Council's most "fruitful" period (1945–1955, with its "Golden Age" during 1945–1947), during which close links were fostered between British officials and intellectuals and Greek writers and artists (3). In his introduction, Peter Mackridge demonstrates that the Anglo-Greek interactions galvanized by the Council were rooted in the interwar period, as major figures of the Generation of the 1930s—George Seferis, Odysseas Elytis, George Theotokas, George Katsimbalis—collaborated with the itinerants Rex Warner, Lawrence Durrell, Patrick Leigh Fermor, and Robert Liddell to shape the contours of Greek modernism and, later, to provide impetus to the Council's "chief literary organ," the vastly influential Anglo-Greek Review. Following Mackridge's overview of the history of the modern Greek state, which is essential in contextualizing these cultural liaisons, the first chapter by Robert Holland also offers historical background and a critical analysis of the longstanding...

From Virginity to Orgasm: Marriage and Sexuality in Twentieth-century Greece

This article charts the gradual sexualization of marriage in twentieth-century Greece, exploring both expert and lay ideas. First, through official writings and marital correspondence, it sketches the subtle transformation of the nineteenth-century ideal of conjugal love into a more sexualized emotion by the turn of the century. Then, it analyzes the writings of “sex experts” and the correspondence with their clients, showcasing how sexual pleasure became a priority within marriage after World War II. Lastly, the records of a postwar mental health service show that by the late 1970s, the consensus on the importance of mutual sexual satisfaction was being established.

The Iconography of a Nation: Materiality and Coin Production in Twentieth-Century Greece

The Iconography of a Nation: Materiality and Coin Production in Twentieth-Century Greece

On ‘Strategic Frontiers’: Debating the Borders of the Post-Second World War Balkans

This article examines debates between Bulgaria, Greece and Yugoslavia concerning the post-Second World War Balkan borders in preparation for the Paris Peace Conference of 1946. While for most of the twentieth century Greece and Yugoslavia were close allies united in their position against revisionist Bulgaria, after 1944 the communist affiliations of the new Bulgarian and Yugoslav governments determined the rapprochement between the latter two states. As various proposals for border revisions and the possibility of a Balkan Federation were discussed, the Balkans became a prime battlefield in the emerging Cold War split between the Soviet Union, Britain and the United States. By examining a period of extreme political fluidity between 1944 and 1947, this article explores how the legacy of long-standing national tensions combined with the new political realities after the Second World War created the current borders of Bulgaria, Greece and the (former Yugoslav) Republic of Macedonia.

Shadow on the Soul dir. by Marios Polyzogopoulos and Dimitris Pliagkos, and: Kisses to the Children dir. by Vassilis Loules, and: Dowsing the Past: Materialities of Civil War Memories dir. by Kostas Kalantzis, and: Beneath the Lemon Tree dir. by Stavroula Toska

Reviewed by: Shadow on the Soul dir. by Marios Polyzogopoulos and Dimitris Pliagkos, and: Kisses to the Children dir. by Vassilis Loules, and: Dowsing the Past: Materialities of Civil War Memories dir. by Kostas Kalantzis, and: Beneath the Lemon Tree dir. by Stavroula Toska Violetta Hionidou (bio) Marios Polyzogopoulos and Dimitris Pliagkos, directors, Shadow on the Soul. 2016. 94 mins. Vassilis Loules, director, Kisses to the Children. 2012. 112 mins. Kostas Kalantzis, director, Dowsing the Past: Materialities of Civil War Memories. 2014. 47 mins. Stavroula Toska, director, Beneath the Lemon Tree. 2015. 76 mins. The importance of film as a medium for imparting knowledge and affect, thus contributing to or even creating a social memory of historical events, is widely acknowledged (Berger 2007). As films, museums, and the press shape the popular understanding of the past, the engagement of academia with such modes of transmission of historical knowledge becomes imperative. The four historical films reviewed here all make references to major events of twentiethcentury Greece, the memory and current understanding of those events, and their connections to today's Greece. For those who know little about Greek history, these films provide an introduction to three traumatic episodes with long-term repercussions: the 1922 Asia Minor Disaster that led to the mandated Greco-Turkish population exchange which created at least 1.5 million refugees; the Holocaust; and the Greek Civil War. As I cannot claim any expertise as a film critic, I feel I have to make it clear from the start that my perspective is that of the historian. Nevertheless, I also review these films as someone who has an increasing interest in how histories are taught, internalized, and ultimately remembered. [End Page 226] For the most part, documentaries bring to the screen the words, voices, emotions, and personalities of individuals who lived through the studied events. This manner of presentation is an engaging and much more immediate way of learning, one that can particularly reach children. However, the immediacy of film and testimonies can also create prosthetic memories. All four films reviewed here bring together in distinct ways issues of collective and individual memory, addressing very painful aspects of Greek history. While the Holocaust has rarely been addressed in the Greek context (the only case I am aware of is the 2013 film, The Longest Journey: The Last Days of the Jews of Rhodes, directed by Ruggero Gabbai), the other subjects have been dealt with in both Greek and non-Greek cinema, as well as in historical documentaries. Shadow on the Soul deals with the 1922 refugees and their legacy, both in Greece and in Turkey. Experts interviewed in the film, including the eminent scholars Renée Hirschon and Dimitris Kamouzis, focus on the social issues concerning the arrival and settlement of the refugees in Greece and Turkey. They identify and elaborate on the friction between the host population and the newcomers, as well as the names that the latter were called by the former: "Turkish-seed" in Greece; "Greek-seed" in Turkey. It is bewildering to hear the Turkish descendants of the exchanged population mix Greek and Turkish words while speaking today—nearly 100 years after the event—a stark reminder of a past when the two languages and peoples inhabited the same spaces. The refugees and their descendants interviewed in the film talk about the hunger, the disease, and the high mortality rate among the refugees following their arrival in Greece. But they also speak about the conviviality of the refugees, their passion for life, singing, and makeshift celebratory gatherings. We are told about the shanty towns that were initially erected in the greater Athens area and how they lacked running water in the early days and did not have a central sewage system until the 1970s. It should be pointed out that these deficiencies applied to most impoverished areas within Greece at the time and were not exclusive to refugee areas. The extensive use of credit when purchasing food from local grocers is mentioned; this too was not specific to refugees, but more of an attribute of the Greek urban poor. It is interesting and rare to see in a documentary the differentiation that is made...

The afterlife of the Greek gods in the modern world: the revival of the epiphanies of Pan and Dionysus in the early poetry of Angelos Sikelianos

The article discusses the divine epiphanies of Pan and Dionysus in Sikelianos’s early poetry, situating them in the context of the revival of the ancient Greek gods and their epiphanies in nineteenth-century European literature and thought, and in modern Greek poetry. Moreover, drawing on secularization theory, the article considers the implications of this revival for the historical process of secularization in early twentieth-century Greece. It is argued that Sikelianos seeks to find a viable place for the Greek gods in his early poetry being aware of their displacement in the modern, post-pagan world. The poem Visionary evokes Pan through a reference to Panic dread experienced by the first-person speaker through his contact with modern Greek folk culture. By contrast, the disenchanted literate speaker of ‘Pan’ experiences an imaginative epiphany of Pan, which functions as a modern secular type of enchantment that resides in the aesthetic. Last, in ‘I Set Sail with Dionysus’ and ‘Dionysus-Jesus’ Dionysus is revived as a symbol of Sikelianos’s evolving poetics and as a symbol of synthesis of life’s antinomies.

Family Strategies, Work, and Welfare Policies toward Waged Domestic Labor in Twentieth-Century Greece

This article investigates paid domestic work in twentieth-century Greece by focusing on family relations and on domestic workers' experiences of and emotions toward their labor. From the late nineteenth century, when the female domestic worker emerged as the typical yet concealed migrant in the city, until the end of the first half of the twentieth century, domestic work was an integral part of the country's economic, social, and cultural systems. While focusing on welfare policies, the article investigates a paradox in the public discourse during the first half of the twentieth century: the absence of legislative provisions concerning juvenile and adult domestic labor and the use by reformers of the figure of the child servant as a vehicle for campaigning for the abolition of child labor. This historical inquiry into domestic work concludes that in periods of crisis, domestic workers are the first to experience the effects of an increase in social inequality.

The “Art of Commerce”: An Outline of Commercial Education in Twentieth-century Greece

<p>The first half of the twentieth century in Greece was marked by consecutive<br />military and civil conflicts that caused profound territorial, demographic and social<br />changes. The movement of vast numbers of young peasants from rural areas to the capital<br />coincided with the broadening of internal trade, a proliferation of industrial investments<br />and the intense urbanization of Athens and other Greek cities, especially during the<br />interwar period. This article examines education concerning the “art of commerce”, a<br />more flexible type of training in comparison with its strictly technical equivalent; a form<br />of education that was associated with a completely different outlook compared to the<br />traditional apprenticeship guilds of the nineteenth century. In this context, the essay seeks<br />to emphasize the ways in which a professional group, recognized by the state through its own<br />associations, was specifically created and developed and how this group envisaged creating<br />the sole educational opportunity for its own members, those working in the field of retail.</p>

The once and future language: Communication, terminology and the practice of science in nineteenth and early twentieth century Greece

Science appeared in modern Greece in the first decades after its establishment as a sovereign state in 1828. The University of Athens, the Royal Observatory, the Botanical Garden, and the Natural History Museum were quickly established as spaces of scientific activity. Greek scientists were enthusiastic participants in the emerging Greek public sphere, often not only as science experts, but also as poets, intellectuals and political personae. In a space whose cultural, intellectual and historical boundaries were still being negotiated, the choice of language was not a given but a pressing, sensitive national desideratum. This article examines how Greek scientists used languages to communicate with their peers and with their publics, how they handled terminology and nomenclature, and how the issues surrounding the Greek language in particular affected their practice as scientists. The article aims to show that, in nineteenth-century Greece, languages were not passive, neutral vehicles of communication, but rather integral (though tacit) components of the practice of science.

Reinventing Paradise: the Greek Crisis and contemporary British travel narratives

In the second half of the twentieth century Greece became a subject for travel writers in search of a European ‘Paradise’. But ‘Hell was also to be found in Greece, often in the form of frustrations over allegedly ‘non-European’ standards of living, facilities, and attitudes. A sample of travel narratives published between 2006 and 2014 suggests the extent to which, in the light of the ‘Greek Crisis’, twenty-first-century writers are abandoning these formerly conventional themes. There is now the potential for the realignment of narratives, with Greece becoming the Hell, rather than the Heaven, of Europe.

Reinventing Paradise: the Greek Crisis and contemporary British travel narratives

In the second half of the twentieth century Greece became a subject for travel writers in search of a European ‘Paradise’. But ‘Hell was also to be found in Greece, often in the form of frustrations over allegedly ‘non-European’ standards of living, facilities, and attitudes. A sample of travel narratives published between 2006 and 2014 suggests the extent to which, in the light of the ‘Greek Crisis’, twenty-first-century writers are abandoning these formerly conventional themes. There is now the potential for the realignment of narratives, with Greece becoming the Hell, rather than the Heaven, of Europe.

Onwards facing backwards: the rhetoric of science in nineteenth-century Greece

The aim of this paper is to show how the Greek men of science negotiated a role for their enterprise within the Greek public sphere, from the institution of the modern Greek state in the early 1830s to the first decades of the twentieth century. By focusing on instances where they appeared in public in their official capacity as scientific experts, I describe the rhetorical schemata and the narrative strategies with which Greek science experts engaged the discourses prevalent in nineteenth- and early twentieth-century Greece. In the end, my goal is to show how they were neither zealots of modernization nor neutral actors struggling in isolated wastelands. Rather, they appear as energetic agents who used scientific expertise, national ideals and their privileged cultural positions to construct a rhetoric that would further all three. They engaged eagerly and consistently with emerging political views, scientific subjects and cultural and political events, without presenting themselves, or being seen, as doing anything qualitatively different from their peers abroad. Greek scientists cross-contextualized the scientific enterprise, situating it in the space in which they were active.

Editing the Nation: Classical Scholarship in Greece Ca. 1930

This article looks at the role of classical scholarship in early twentieth century Greece and its discursive role in discussions of national literature and culture; it focuses on the (German-trained) young scholar Ioannis Sykoutris, particularly his edition of Plato’s Symposium; it is forthcoming in a volume on Classics and National Culture, ed. by Susan Stephens and Phiroze Vasunia for Oxford University Press.

Archaeological etymologies: monumentality and domesticity in twentieth-century Greece

Archaeological etymologies: monumentality and domesticity in twentieth-century Greece

‘Artfully classified’ and‘appropriately placed’: notes on the display of antiquities in early twentieth-century Greece

‘Artfully classified’ and‘appropriately placed’: notes on the display of antiquities in early twentieth-century Greece

In Byron's shadow: modern Greece in the English & American imagination

Modern Greece constructed by the early nineteenth-century ideals and ideas associated with Byron, has been 'haunted, holy ground' in English and American literature for almost two centuries. In Byron's Shadow analyses how authors employ ideas about romantic nationalism, gender politics, shifts in cultural constructions, and literary experimentation to create variations of Greece to suit changing eras. Complementing and complicating Edward Said's view of relations between East and West, Roessel discusses the way perceptions of modern Greece have been shaped by historical events, arguing that the Greek struggle for independence became a touchstone in the English and American imagination of the nineteenth century, and that twentieth-century Greece became a symbol of the attitudes and ideals that many believed caused the Great War.