The Ministry of Culture recently held a press conference presenting the photographs from the so-called Hoyer Collection—including three depicting some of the most dramatic moments of the execution of 200 Greeks in Kaisariani by Nazi occupation forces on May 1, 1944—and announcing the creation of a National Photographic Archive. At the press conference, in the presence of Minister of Culture Lina Mendoni, the participants included four experts who traveled twice to Belgium to meet Tim de Craene, a collector-dealer, in order to assess the authenticity and legal provenance of the collection, as well as its significance and value. The collection was purchased for €100,000 with funds from the Ministry of Culture.

Minister of Culture Lina Mendoni presented a historical overview, from the initial discovery of the collection - comprising 262 photographs, 16 documents, and four old banknotes offered for sale by a Belgian collector on an online auction site - to the transfer of ownership of the collection to the Ministry of Culture and the Greek state.

National Photographic Archive

Minister Lina Mendoni stated that “with a legislative provision, the Ministry of Culture will establish a National Photographic Archive. It will constitute a distinct body within the National Archive of Monuments and will be interconnected with the other databases of the Directorate for the Management of the National Archive of Monuments”. She emphasized that, beyond the photographs of exceptional importance from Kaisariani and the Hoyer Collection, “there were many reasons why we wished to establish a National Photographic Archive. For example, there are the extremely significant photographic collections from Tatoi for our modern history; photographs of Greek refugees—archives that have already been handled by the Ministry of Culture and which will be housed in the Museum of Refugee Hellenism in Thessaloniki—as well as photographs from the historical archive of the Archaeological Service. The Ministry of Culture holds a large amount of material, and if the collections of the supervised institutions are also taken into account, there was every reason to create this distinct National Photographic Archive within the National Archive of Monuments.” 

Next steps

Regarding the next steps for the Hoyer Collection, L. Mendoni provided the following information: “The Ministry of Culture, since it has now declared the photographs as monuments - that is, they constitute a material monumental relic protected under Law - has already begun to handle the collection according to the procedure required for monuments: protection, conservation, safeguarding, scientific documentation, and ultimately its promotion and wider public presentation. The aim is for it to be used, like all the evidence of our historical and cultural heritage, in public discourse and in education. Throughout the study, what I insist on and what I have requested is strict scientific documentation and testimony. The photographs are monuments of our modern history, and this is how we will treat them. This period requires study and specialists who can address it,” the minister emphasized.

As was announced in the interview, the first step for the collection, after care by the competent Conservation Directorate, is the digitization of all the material. “Digital copies, under certain terms and conditions, may be provided by the Ministry of Culture to specific recipients. A necessary prerequisite is the historical identification of subjects, places, people, and dates, as well as the integration of the collection into its historical context. Obviously, the photographs of the execution will receive special treatment,” the Minister of Culture emphasized, noting that the research work has already been undertaken by the National Hellenic Research Foundation, within the framework of the Cultural Development Programmatic Agreement with the Ministry of Culture, under the scientific supervision of Mr. Schneider and his colleagues at the Foundation. “The collection is in very good condition. However, it is more than 80 years old, so it will require special care. What concerns us now is conservation, digitization, and management in order to protect the collection in the future,” said M. Mertzani, head of the Directorate for the Conservation of Ancient and Modern Monuments of the Ministry of Culture.

The Significance of the Collection

The head of the Directorate of Modern Cultural Heritage of the Ministry of Culture, V. Fotopoulou, emphasizing the importance of the collection and noted: “We were certain from the beginning about the value, importance, and authenticity of the entire set of photographs, and thus - with the very decisive stance of the political leadership - we managed, within 13 days, to bring to completion a very difficult undertaking. We were very confident because we are historians and we know very well what these kinds of collections are photographs taken by soldiers of the Third Reich, the Wehrmacht, and the SS of Nazi Germany, which now circulate widely. We know what happened here. It is estimated that more than 40 million photographs were taken by Wehrmacht soldiers and over 2 million photographs by the propaganda units established by Joseph Goebbels.”

“It is important, first of all, that we study how these individuals were shaped within the context of war. The photographs taken by this particular sergeant, and by many others, are a study of how people are formed through violence. They are also a study of the power of propaganda. Goebbels created a propaganda machine not only with professional photographers from the propaganda units but also by encouraging everyone - soldiers and their families - to take photographs. Why? So that these photographs would return home and create an image of the successes of the Wehrmacht for families, so that in the future - because he was certain that Germany would win - there would be a vast album of memories from the Great War and what Germany had achieved in it. Of course, and fortunately, none of that ever came to pass,” she pointed out.

Photographer Stavros Mavrommatis noted that the “photographer” in quotation marks is completely untrained. “He has almost no instruction for documentation and is simply creating a personal album. He uses a very good camera and excellent photographic paper that was circulating at the time—from this we understood the authenticity of the photographs at first glance. Nevertheless, his photographs are poor in photographic terms; that is, he had no instruction to document events. Rather, he had the instruction to create an album that would show the activities of the Third Reich. He takes the photographs completely detached from what he is seeing—in the album, next to the images of the executions, he places photographs of people swimming at Votsalakia Beach in Piraeus. This is precisely another reason why these photographs have particular value, because they show that they were taken not by explicit order, but in accordance with the spirit that prevailed among the occupation troops,” said.

Valentin Schneider, historian and researcher at the National Hellenic Research Foundation stressed that “these are photographs that have a hybrid character, because on the one hand they are private photographs, documenting private life in the army and during the war. On the other hand, however, it seems that there may have been some low-level instruction, perhaps at the level of the military unit itself, to document the everyday life of the unit so that photographs could be exchanged after the war.”

Valentin Schneider presented several characteristic photographs from the Hoyer Collection, including the 13 images from Kaisariani, three of which were the most dramatic, as they depict the moment of the execution and the minutes immediately afterward.

(Source: https://www.ertnews.gr/eidiseis/ellada/kaisariani-parousiastikan-oi-istorikes-fotografies-apo-tin-ektelesi-ton-200/ )

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Nikos Christofis, Assistant Professor of International Cultural Relations at the Department of Language and Intercultural Studies at the University of Thessaly, was interviewed by Rethinking Greece* on the occasion of the publication of the collective volume History and Historiography in Greece :Recent Trends, which he edited. Professor Christofis examines how Greek historiography has evolved—from nation-building narratives to transnational and interdisciplinary approaches. He highlights the impact of the Metapolitefsi period, the rise of gender and memory studies, and the growing internationalization of the field and interconnection between historiography and national identity. Finally, he emphasizes the importance of transnational and comparative frameworks in decentering Greek exceptionalism and aligning modern Greek historiography with broader international scholarly trends. Despite challenges such as language barriers and limited funding, Greek historiography is increasingly dialoguing with global currents.

What are the central aims and motivations behind this volume on history and historiography in Greece?

The idea for this collection originated at the 26th Modern Greek Studies Association Symposium, held in Sacramento, California, on 7–9 November 2019. The symposium showcased a wide range of topics and high-quality research on various aspects of modern Greek history, which brought to my attention the pressing need for an updated volume on Greek historiography. The vision for this book became even clearer when I began teaching the course “Theories of History and Historiography” in the “Public History” postgraduate program at the Hellenic Open University, where I serve as an adjunct lecturer. It became evident that a comprehensive volume addressing the key themes explored in that course could serve as a valuable resource for both graduate and postgraduate students.

Against this background, the project aspires to serve as a contemporary companion to the monumental two-volume proceedings of the Fourth International History Congress, published by the Institute for Neohellenic Research in 2002, which was entirely dedicated to Greek historiography. The book traces the evolution of Greek historical scholarship by reviewing the ideas, methods, and schools of history shaping the field, while, at the same time, places Greek historiography in an international context by checking how these developments correspond with international trends and their rate of development alongside global shifts in scholarship.

How did the establishment of the Greek state in 1830 influence the development of historical writing in Greece? What was the "national mission" of the University of Athens and its historians in the early decades of the Greek state?

As in many parts of the world, the development of the historical sciences in Greece was closely tied to the formation of the modern Greek nation-state in 1830. From the outset, historians made significant efforts to conceptualize a unified national state with a continuous historical narrative and a shared national consciousness, enabling the Greek people to claim a legitimized past stretching from antiquity to the present.

Following the Greek Revolution and the establishment of the independent state, history proved instrumental in achieving the broader goal of national consolidation. Greek antiquity and the Byzantine period were especially emphasized as sources of prestige and cultural legitimacy, particularly through the influential writings of figures such as Constantine Paparrigopoulos and Spyridon Zambelios.

In this context, the University of Athens—founded in 1837—played a central role in shaping the historical sciences in Greece for more than eight decades. It not only supplied personnel for the emerging state apparatus but also helped construct and disseminate a national historical narrative. The university’s symbolic authority was pivotal in promoting the Megali Idea, the dominant irredentist nationalist ideology of the time, and in advancing the cause of Hellenism, particularly within the territories still under Ottoman rule. Language, religion, and especially history were employed as key unifying elements, intended to forge connections between the subjects of the new Hellenic Kingdom and the Greek-speaking Orthodox populations of the Ottoman Empire.

How did the Metapolitefsi period (post-1974) impact Greek historiography and introduce new approaches?

The Metapolitefsi—the period following the fall of the Colonels’ dictatorship in 1974—marked the beginning of a gradual yet profound sociopolitical transformation in Greece. In the realm of historiography, it sparked a significant "explosion," evident in the structural evolution and expansion of the professional historical community. Many Greek historians who had sought refuge primarily in Europe during the dictatorship returned shortly thereafter, bringing with them fresh perspectives and revitalizing the field. Exposed to new intellectual currents and in dialogue with international scholars, these returning historians introduced critical questions and approaches that enabled the integration of Greek history into broader global narratives. To a considerable extent, this generation reshaped the practice of historical writing in Greece, with many assuming influential roles within the emerging institutional landscape.

What roles have Gender History, Biography & Memory Studies played in shaping recent historiographical developments in Greece? What significance do these approaches hold within the broader field of Greek historical studies?"

Gender History, Biography, and Memory Studies emerged within the broader intellectual movement known as the New History, which gained prominence across various national historiographical traditions. Broadly speaking, this movement represented an epistemological shift from viewing history as a fixed set of facts to understanding it as a field of inquiry and interpretation. The New History critically challenged both the positivist illusions of traditional historiography and the dominant nationalist narratives propagated by established academic institutions. Instead, it emphasized the analysis of economic and social structures, prioritized interpretation over description, and employed impersonal analytical categories. In essence, history began to be approached as a social science.

Although the roots of this paradigm shift in Greek historiography can be traced to earlier decades, it crystallized during the late 1970s and 1980s. These new approaches have offered alternative perspectives on the past, particularly by highlighting the experiences of marginalized groups and questioning established historical narratives. Through the lenses of gender history, biography, and memory studies, scholars are now able to interrogate social structures, analyze gendered discourses, explore individual lives, personalize history, and examine collective memory and cultural practices. Collectively, these fields have made Greek historiography more inclusive, dynamic, and nuanced.

In what ways have comparative and transnational frameworks impacted Greek historiography, and how have they contributed to rethinking national narratives or methodological approaches?

Comparative and transnational frameworks have profoundly reshaped Greek historiography – transnational more than comparative history, I believe – by challenging the traditional nation-centered narratives that emphasized Greece’s exceptionalism (e.g. the example of the Greek Revolution) and linear national development. These approaches situate Greek history within broader regional, European, and global contexts, revealing the interconnectedness of Greek experiences with those of the Ottoman Empire, the Balkans, and the Mediterranean. By highlighting cross-border flows of people, ideas, and goods, they have decentered, or at least they try to do so, the nation-state as the sole unit of analysis and introduced interdisciplinary methods that incorporate social, cultural, and economic perspectives. This has led to more pluralistic histories that include minority voices, diasporic influences, and transnational actors, thereby complicating nationalist myths and encouraging critical reflection on the construction of Greek identity. Consequently, Greek historiography has become more dialogic and internationally engaged, enriching both its methodological toolkit and its understanding of national narratives as contingent and multifaceted rather than fixed and exceptional.

In your view, how do historiography and national identity intersect, and in what ways do they shape or influence one another?

Historiography and national identity are deeply interconnected, as the writing of history often serves as a crucial tool in constructing and legitimizing the nation. Through selective emphasis on certain events, figures, and cultural achievements—while often omitting uncomfortable or divisive aspects—historiography helps forge a shared narrative that binds individuals into a collective identity. This narrative is further reinforced through educational curricula, public monuments, national holidays, and museums, all of which draw from dominant historical interpretations to cultivate a sense of belonging and continuity. Conversely, national identity also shapes historiographical agendas, as state institutions, political ideologies, and cultural priorities influence which histories are preserved, taught, or suppressed. In more recent decades, however, the emergence of new historiographical approaches—such as gender history, memory studies, and postcolonial critique—has begun to challenge traditional nationalist narratives, offering more inclusive and critical perspectives that reflect the diversity and complexity of the past. As a result, the relationship between historiography and national identity remains dynamic, with each continually shaping and reshaping the other in response to evolving political, social, and intellectual contexts.

What do you identify as the current trends and key challenges in the study of modern Greek history? To what extent does the Greek academic community engage with broader international developments in historiography?

Current trends in the study of modern Greek history reveal a significant shift away from traditional nation-centric narratives toward more nuanced, transnational, and interdisciplinary approaches. Greek historians are increasingly situating Greece within broader Ottoman, Balkan, and Mediterranean, but also global contexts, exploring shared histories and cross-border influences that challenge earlier linear and exceptionalist national stories. This shift is complemented by the incorporation of gender studies, social history, and cultural analysis, which have expanded the field beyond elite-focused perspectives to include marginalized voices and diverse experiences.

However, the field faces key challenges, notably a degree of insularity due to the predominance of Greek-language scholarship and limited translations into English – although all the more the new generation of Greek historians publish in other languages – which restrict its international visibility and integration. Economic difficulties have further compounded these issues by reducing funding for research and causing a brain drain of promising scholars seeking opportunities abroad. Despite these obstacles, the Greek academic community is increasingly engaging with global historiographical developments through participation in international research networks, publication in global journals, and interdisciplinary initiatives that align with contemporary methodological trends. Prestigious European grants and collaborations, such as those involving the Institute for Mediterranean Studies, demonstrate growing recognition of Greek scholarship internationally. Thus, while resource limitations and language barriers remain significant challenges, the adoption of comparative and transnational frameworks alongside efforts to foster global academic dialogue signal a promising evolution in modern Greek historiography.

*Interview to Ioulia Livaditi

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The Battle of Crete (also referred to as “Battle for Crete”) took place from 20 May until 1 June 1941, between the Allied Forces and the Axis powers; the Greek island of Crete was fiercely defended against the Axis invasion, as part of the German invasion of Greece in World War II. Crete would eventually fall in the hands of the Nazi army – but their heroic resistance of the Greek and Allied soldiers is an enduring symbol of courage and tenacity. Hundreds of soldiers from the UK, Australia and New Zealand remain buried in a cemetery in Crete.

Greece in World War II

Greece entered World War II on 28 October 1940, after Italy’s fascist leader, Benito Mussolini, issued an ultimatum to Greece, demanding free passage for his troops to occupy strategic points in its territory. Greece rejected the ultimatum, declaring war and, a few hours later, the Italian offensive against Greece began. (It should be noted that this date is one of Greece’s two national holidays, known as the “Ohi Day” [The day of “No”].)

The Greek Army successfully repelled the Italian assault, and in fact launched a victorious counteroffensive. Italy’s defeat in the Greco-Italian War compelled its German allies to intervene, starting the invasion of Greece on 6 April 1941 (“Operation Marita”). Grossly outnumbered –despite a small reinforcement from British and Commonwealth forces– the Greek army was unable to fend off the ruthless attack by the combined German and Italian powers, especially given the German air supremacy. Mainland Greece had been conquered by the end of April, with its only free part being the island of Crete in the south.

Operation Mercury

The Crete campaign, led by the Axis powers under the code name “Operation Mercury” (Unternehmen Merkur), began on 20 May 1941. It was of great strategic importance for the Axis to take hold of Crete due to its habours, commanding shipping lanes to the Black Sea and the Middle East, and its airfields.

The British forces had already garrisoned Crete during the Greco-Italian War, as the Royal Navy found its harbours and airfields useful for the war against the Axis. With the British taking over the defense of the island, the Cretan Division was transferred to the Albanian front where it participated in the January–February offensives against the Italians. Only three battalions had remained in Crete; the rest of the air assault brigade was unable to return to Crete following the retreat of the Greek army during Operation Marita.

The British were aware of the German plans for the invasion of Crete thanks to the breaking of Enigma codes. The combined British, Australian and New Zealand forces amounted to about 30,000, under the command of Lieutenant General Bernard Freyberg; together with the Greek soldiers, they clearly outnumbered the Germans. However, the latter still had aerial superiority, while the defending forces lacked heavy weapons. The Germans decided to make the most of their advantage, launching an airborne attack with glider and parachute forces.

They did not however expect the ferocious resistance they would encounter not only from the defending soldiers but also from the Cretan civilians. About 9,350 troops landed on the first day, but German casualties were overwhelming. At the Maleme Airfield (in the nothwest), defended by New Zealanders, and the nearby town of Chania, defended by Greek forces, German paratroopers and gliders faced the most severe casualties. Greek resistance was equally fierce at the capital city of Heraklion and the town of Rethymno, in central Crete.

Among the Australian and New Zealand soldiers, many were indigenous people of the Australian continent – most notably the 28th (Māori) Battalion (Te Hokowhitu a Tū), a light infantry battalion of the New Zealand Army, which had previously fought at the Battle of Greece (even fighting at the legendary position of Thermopylae). At the Battle of Crete, they became famous for their bayonet charges against the enemy, letting out fierce Haka war cries.

On the days that followed, the Germans continued their attacks from the air, using paratroopers, and aerial and artillery bombardment; they also launched landing attempts using their war ships, which had to face the British Royal Navy. Italians also had to send reinforcements, who arrived in the last days.

Despite the unparalleled valiance demonstrated by the island’s defending forces, the continued attacks and extensive use of heavy weaponry eventually helped the German army advance and inflict serious damage on the allied forces. The Royal Navy suffered heavy losses and its eastern Mediterranean strength were virtually depleted. On the 26, Lieutenant General Freyberg ordered a general retreat to the south of the island to prepare for evacuation. From 28 May to 1 June, troops were embarked for Egypt; however, thousands of both Commonwealth and Greek troops were still on the island on 1 June, when the island came under German control.

Aftermath

Despite the German’s eventual victory, Operation Mercury, the first invasion in history that took place predominantly using parachute and glider troops, was considered too costly in terms of war casualties, making Germans avoid large-scale airborne operations for the rest of the war. Members of the German armed forces that took part in the Battle of Crete between 20 and 27 May 1941 would later be awarded the Crete Cuff Band: it was the first time that such a military decoration was bestowed as a campaign award.

The Cretan civilians had fought against the enemy with all their strengths usings any means at their disposal – which often meant just farming tools and even kitchen utensils, together with old rifles. As the Nazi army eventually took over the island, multiple civilians were killed, many of them in retaliative mass executions. In total, several thousand Cretan civilians (including women and children) either died fending off the invasion, were killed in the crossfire, or were summarily executed in reprisal for the German casualties. Throughout the Axis occupation of Crete, many locals entered resistance groups; German reprisals for the participation of Cretans in the Resistance often included summary executions and the destruction of entire villages.

Thousands of British Commonwealth and Greek soldiers were also captured by the enemy, while some of the foreign soldiers managed to hide in the mountains and survive for some period thanks to the help of the locals. One notable case was that of Reg Saunders, the first Aboriginal Australian to be commissioned as an officer in the Australian Army: as part of the 2/7^th Infantry Battalion, he fought in the area around Chania; later, taking rearguard actions to allow other units to be evacuated from the island, his own battalion was eventually left behind. He was among the few who evaded captivity, hiding out in the hills and adopting Cretan dress. He remained hidden for eleven months, with the help of the locals, until he was finally evacuated from southern Crete in May 1942, along with other Commonwealth soldiers who had also stayed hidden or had escaped from prison camps.

Today, the graves of many Commonwealth soldiers who lost their lives defending Crete against the Nazi army can be found at the Souda Bay War Cemetery, a military cemetery administered by the Commonwealth War Graves Commission. Designed by architect Louis de Soissons, it contains 731 World War II burials where the body was identified along with another 776 burials of bodies which are unable to be identified.

N.M. (Intro image: Lieutenant General Bernard Freyberg, command of the Allied forces during the Battle of Crete, gazes over the parapet of his dug-out in the direction of the German advance)

Photographs source (except where noted): Imperial War Museums via picryl © Public Domain

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Eirini Karamouzi is Professor of Contemporary History at The American College of Greece and Associate Dean of Research and Innovation at the School of Liberal Arts and Science. She is also a Senior Research Fellow at the University of Sheffield. She is the author of Greece, the EEC and the Cold War: The Second Enlargement (2014), co-editor of The Balkans in the Cold War (2017) and Beyond the Euromissile Crisis: The Global histories of anti-nuclear activism (2024). Professor Karamouzi is also the principal investigator of the curating team for "Imagining Greece," an evolving research-based exhibition that explores how social, political, and cultural forces have shaped Greece's image as a tourist destination. Along with lead researchers and scientific and artistic Curators for Imagining Greece, Dr Stavros Alifragkis and Dr Emilia Athanasiou, professor Karamouzi spoke to Greek News Agenda* on the aspects of the Greek experience that "Imagining Greece" highlights for potential or past travelers, on the forces have shaped the global perception and image of Greece as an ideal place to visit, the major turning points in the modern history of Greek tourism and finally, on what the present and future holds for Greek tourism and on what constitutes a Southern European identity.

What is the central focus of the "Imagining Greece" project?  Why is the period between the end of World War II and the end of the Cold War significant for tourism?

‘Imagining Greece' is an evolving research-based exhibition that explores how social, political, and cultural forces have shaped Greece's image as a tourist destination. The exhibition brings together a rich diversity of archival materials on Greek tourism alongside first-hand accounts, presenting them on a single platform for the first time. It reveals the complex interplay of vision, ambitions, and expectations of those who established Greece as one of the world's most beloved destinations and shaped the image of the idyllic Greek summer. Over the course of these five decades, the conditions for the development of the Greek tourism industry were shaped through state policies and private initiatives, which at times functioned complementarily and at others antagonistically. In the early postwar decades, the state assumed a dominant role through the newly established Greek National Tourism Organisation (GNTO, 1951), which implemented a remarkably broad and multidimensional programme of tourism reconstruction. This included the formation of the institutional framework for regulating the market, the promotion of the country’s image abroad, the renovation of existing and the construction of new leisure infrastructure and facilities, the upgrading of archaeological sites, the modernisation and densification of transport networks, the establishment of festivals, cultural events, and local celebrations, and the broader cultivation of tourism awareness as a tool for revitalising the Greek periphery.

Spearheaded by the ‘XENIA’ programme, the GNTO embarked on an unprecedented, large-scale, and innovative —considering the capacities of the time— production of mostly in-house and self-managed projects, such as hotels, motels, tourist pavilions, roadside stations, car camps, border posts, organized beaches, marinas, and more, alongside the regulation of excursion frameworks and the cruise market. The objective was to establish modern standards for tourism infrastructure and services, which private actors —who entered the field relatively early— would adopt, though without necessarily being bound by the guidelines set forth by the state.

By the end of the period under examination, the GNTO had effectively concluded this phase of its activity with an equally ambitious programme aimed at showcasing Greece’s vernacular architecture through the retrofitting of traditional mansions to guesthouses, thereby transitioning into a more strategic and managerial role. Our exhibition celebrates the cherished legacy of these formative decades, during which the founding mythology of the Greek summer first began to take shape through early efforts at strategic planning.

What aspects of the Greek experience does "Imagining Greece" highlight for potential or past travelers? Can you tell us more on the underlying concept of the "voyage immobile par excellence”?

The exhibition emulates a visitor’s journey from fantasizing about Greece, then travelling and discovering the country to remembering what is left of the Greek holiday. How do these visitors perceive Greece? What pictures and expectations inspire their journey? How does their presence influence Greek society? In what ways do they transition from mere tourists to catalysts of modernity, shaping the local economy and culture? As they travel across the islands and mainland, what do they discover? How does the country’s ancient heritage resonate with the spirit of the times? And what do they remember of their adventures? Is it the keepsakes they collect, the breathtaking landscapes etched in their memories, or the people they meet along the way? ‘Imagining Greece’ explores these questions and more, bringing the traveler’s experience to life through a captivating photographic and audiovisual collection spanning five decades.

The expansion of tourism has long been intertwined with the proliferation of travel literature and, from the 1960s onward, the rise of the travel documentary. These narrative forms extend beyond guiding prospective travelers in planning or navigating their journeys. Instead, they also contribute to the enduring and increasingly popular tradition of armchair travel — a form of imaginative escape from the routines of everyday life, mediated through text, photography, and moving images.

In recent years, technological advancements and the growth of the digital humanities have transformed armchair tourism into a distinct and dynamic field, both as an entrepreneurial venture and a mode of artistic expression. Freed from the constraints of physical mobility — whether economic, logistical, or temporal — this type of tourism offers the pleasures of discovery and immersion without the necessity of travel.

Our exhibition draws upon this idea of the quasi-journey to Greece — not only as a tangible geographical space but also as a site of memory, imagination, and cultural projection. Through a curated selection of digital exhibits spanning approximately five decades, we chart the evolution of tourism and its visual and experiential narratives.

What political, social, and cultural forces have shaped the global perception and image of Greece as an ideal place to visit? What would you say were the major turning points in the modern history of Greek tourism?

Since the end of the Second World war, it's possible to observe the establishment of an integral part of Greece’s distinctive tourism ‘brand’- cultural tourism grounded in a widely shared appreciation of Greece’s ancient past and its myriad cultural legacies. The strength of these associations would play a major role in sustaining the remarkable growth of the Greek tourism industry for the remainder of the twentieth century and beyond. Innovations in air travel, package holidays and the popular use of the car however  revolutionised the market ushering in a period of mass tourism, with Greece marketing itself as a land of ‘sun, sea and sand’ to foreign audiences. All of these were happening as the country was modernizing its infrastructure, upgrading the road network and, more broadly, creating new opportunities to experience Greece’s unspoiled landscapes and historical sites through newly established leisure facilities that adhered to international standards while highlighting local architectural features. 

Aside from the GNTO, international tour operators were instrumental in introducing Greece to the wider world and attracting more visitors. Their contribution remains largely undocumented in recent scholarship. We hope that, as our exhibition evolves, further information on this subject will become available to the general public. Equally important, though less well known, was the critical role played by various clubs and organizations, such as the Hellenic Touring Club and the Automobile and Touring Club of Greece, which supported the GNTO in the micro-management of various aspects of tourism development. These ranged from the organization of festivals and local feasts, to the promotion of water sports, the operation of campsites, the publication of travel guidebooks and updated maps, and the maintenance of road and directional signage. Their micro-histories are closely interwoven with the evolution of tourism in Greece, particularly the rise of domestic tourism during the 1960s and 1970s. Another milestone, albeit not in a strictly chronological sense, was the involvement of the private sector —particularly banks— in the tourism industry. This led to a significant increase in serious stakeholders within the sector, marked by the arrival of international hotel chains in Greece and the emergence of domestic hotel groups, some of which remain active to this day.

How did the growth of tourism influence Greek society and its economy during the post-war and Cold War eras? It is often said that tourism is Greece’s ‘heavy industry’. Do you agree with that take and what are its implications?

Tourism has constantly been upward trending in the last decades. It started in 1950 with 33,000 visitors, skyrocketed to 5.271.000 in 1980 to reach 36 million tourists in 2024. Until 1990, Greece’s development in the tourism sector was the fastest in Europe. Tourism has become the country’s heavy industry with a contribution of almost 25 percent to GDP and employing more than 400.000 Greeks.Even in 1948 in the midst of the Greek civil war, the American Mission had identified tourism as a major source of foreign currency and an avenue for the country’s economic reconstruction. The implications of an over reliance on the Greek tourism product, is Greece’s vulnerability to the massive influx of tourists and how that affects the quality of life of the local population, and threatens the country’s landscape and traditions.

Greece’s destination branding has been based on “Sun, Sea & Sand” triptych as well on ancient sites and the country as the “Cradle of Western Civilization”. Do you see any other branding options opening up in the future? 

In an efforts to grow their country’s tourism sector, Greek stakeholders have grappled with the same conceptual schism between an imagined Hellas (a ‘romanticized spectre of a lost civilization’ built on ‘the desired relics of material culture’) that had become deeply embedded in the foreign imagination during the 19^th century, and a modern Greece, at once a ‘geographical space that hosted the material remnants of Hellas’ while being ‘inferior to it’ and a desirable destination for sun-worshipping travelers seeking respite from modernity. The demand for the ‘Greek summer’ remains unabated. Extending the tourist season has been a long-standing goal for the Greek tourist industry and since the 1970s Greece had branded itself as the land of all seasons but only recently has managed to achieve that. In a pursuit for a more sustainable tourism, there are calls for diversification of the tourist product, with alternative activities beyond the usual ‘sun and sea that will make Greece an all-year round European destination. 

Your current research project deals with the role of tourism and mobility in the construction of a Southern European identity. What are the components of a Southern European Identity, and how do tourism and mobility interplay with other factors that shape it?

The countries of Southern Europe are, for the most part, also Mediterranean countries, and this characteristic has significantly shaped their identities for centuries. Around the life-giving waters of this enclosed sea —Mare Nostrum, as the Romans called it— national identities gradually took shape, united by a common thread: the sea as an open route for trade, a bridge for cultural exchange, and, at times, a means of conquest through brute force. Southern European identity, as an intellectual construct, is by its very nature inextricably linked to the rich and densely layered cultural geography of the Mediterranean sunbelt, whose origins are lost in the depths of historical time. Enduring elements of the mythology of the Mediterranean have consistently included antiquities, the sun, and the coastlines —sometimes gentle, at other times dramatic— that have been immortalized in every form of art.

For the modern Greek state, the formation of its national identity is likewise inextricably linked to the emergence of modernity in the 19th and 20th centuries, as expressed through touring (e.g., the Grand Tour) and, later, tourism respectively. The geographical and cultural mobility of cosmopolitan Europeans and Americans  —bourgeois merchants, scientists, and artists from the elites of the 19th century and the interwar period, who, through their travels, paid homage to the ancestral civilization of ancient Greece— played a significant role in shaping the conditions and terms under which Greeks were reconstituted as a nation, a people, a country, and an idea(l). This same phenomenon also influenced the image of the West itself, whose model the Greeks continuously measured themselves against — while always casting a sidelong glance towards the alluring East.

In the postwar period, the Greek version of Southern European identity was significantly reshaped by tourism, a dynamic phenomenon that fueled social, economic, and cultural transformations in both urban centres and the periphery. The vast mobility generated by the massification of tourism established holidays as a democratic right to leisure time — not only for Northern Europeans, whose ‘exodus’ to the sun-drenched South and the Greek archipelago was experienced as restorative, but also for Greeks themselves, for whom contact with the traveler's ‘otherness’ became a form of education. In the case of Greece, as in other southern countries, the redefinition of national identity through tourism was filtered via the process of modernization. More specifically, the Greek state was restructured institutionally, politically, economically, socially, and culturally, with the aim of aligning the Greek standard ever more closely with that of Europe. Greece reinvents itself in order to promote its image both abroad and at home — a process broadly analogous to that of the 19th century, when the Western gaze largely shaped the way in which modern Greeks wished to view themselves and their future.

*Interview to: Ioulia Livaditi

The post Eirini Karamouzi on ‘Imagining Greece’, the digital exhibition on Greece as a tourist destination: “Greece is always reinventing itself” appeared first on Greek News Agenda.

The history of feminism in Greece begins at the end of the 19th century when some educated women of the Greek bourgeoisie decided to take action and help women become visible in public life through their discourse, their ideas, their demand for equality and their practical solidarity with working class women.

The start of the feminist movement in Greece was marked by the founding of the newspaper Ladies' Journal (Greek: Ephemeris ton kyrion) in 1887, published by women and addressed to the middle-class women of the new Greek state and the Greek diaspora. The newspaper’s publisher and editor-in-chief was journalist and writer Kalliroi Parren, while the editorial team included Agathoniki Antoniadou, Sappho Leontias, Dr. Anthi Vassiliadou, Florentia Fountoukli and Krystallia Chrysovergi, all of who had knowledge of the struggles for the women’s cause in Europe and overseas.

The early demands of the feminist movement

The first demands of Greek feminists were related to women’s right to education and professional training, especially for working-class women. At the initiative of the movement, and Kalliroi Parren in particular, "Sunday schools" were founded from 1890 in most Greek cities, in order to provide an education for the girls who worked and could not go to school. From 1896 onwards, "professional and housekeeping schools" were founded, with the aim of linking education with employment.

Indeed, during the interwar period women entered the labor market en masse, both as factory and freelance workers, and also in public services; this allowed them to stop depending exclusively on the income of male family members as well as to become more aware of the social restrictions and inequitable conditions they faced in these new fields.

The first feminists also demanded some civil rights so that women could manage their own property, participate in family councils and assume custody of their children.

The first legal reforms regarding women in the workforce and the educational system were introduced in 1910 by Eleftherios Venizelos' Liberal Party government. From 1912, women were prohibited by law from working night shifts and from participating in heavy and unhealthy occupations. The first maternity protection measures were also introduced, providing for a maternity leave of a few weeks. At the same time, schools, educational institutes and high schools for girls were established and the number of female students increased. The presence of women was especially felt in certain professions: teachers, switchboard operators, typists, cashiers, nurses, midwives, doctors, pediatricians and journalists.

The right to vote in the 1930s and 1950s

It wasn’t until 1920 that the feminist movement in Greece began to claim civil rights for women, with the founding of the League for Women's Rights by Avra Theodoropoulou, wife of Spyros Theodoropoulos, lawyer and adviser of Eleftherios Venizelos. The League, affiliated to the International Alliance of Women, was the first exclusively feminist organization in Greece, uniting all feminists in the common fight for women's suffrage. The brochure "The Women's Struggle", written in the "demotic" (vernacular) language, reflected the positions of the League for Women's Rights and its demands.

In February 1930, under pressure from the women's movement, political authorities granted women the right to vote in municipal elections under the following conditions: they to be literate and over the age of 30. The municipal elections in 1932 marked the first time Greek women participated in elections, although only a few thousands would actually make use of their right at the time.

During the country’s occupation by the Axis powers, women actively participated in resistance groups, especially within the National Liberation Front (EAM). In April 1944, at the elections for the National Council, a legislative body set up by the National Liberation Front resistance movement, women over 18 voted for the first time, on a national level.

After Greece’s liberation, women's associations resumed their activities and new associations were created in the tradition of the EAM, such as the Panhellenic Democratic Union of Women. Peace and the protection of mothers and children became the main demands of the women's movement.

On the eve of the Greek Civil War (1946-1949), all left-wing women's groups were declared illegal. During the civil war, women were present on both sides, although in different circumstances. The participation of women in the Democratic Army allowed, among other things, to test societal norms and stereotypes, as well as to demonstrate their persistence.

Greek women gained full electoral rights on June 7, 1952 under Law 2151, passed by the centrist alliance government of Nikolaos Plastiras. Although later that year national elections took place in Greece, women’s right to vote was not yet exercised given that electoral rolls had not been updated. However, many did vote at local by-elections that took place in 1953. It was at these by-elections that the first Greek woman member of parliament was elected: it was Eleni Skoura, member of the conservative “Greek Rally” party. At the 1956 general elections all adult Greek women could at last participate in elections on a national level.

The fall of the military dictatorship and "neo-feminism"

During the seven-years military dictatorship in Greece (1967-1974), the functioning of women's organizations was prohibited and many of their archives were destroyed. Women played an important role in resistance organizations in Greece and abroad, while many were imprisoned and exiled.

After the fall of the military junta and during the period of transition to democracy (Metapolitefsi), new collective subjects emerge in the public sphere with a strong claim to political visibility. Feminists of the time attempted to highlight the political character of gender hierarchy, both in the private and public spheres, denouncing male domination as the underlying condition of all social phenomena. The slogan "The personal is political" best sums up the importance given to highlighting the social and political aspect of relations between men and women. Many women were involved in movements that denounced gender-based discriminations, demanded gender equality and sought to ensure women's presence in politics.

The 1975 Constitution lays the foundation for gender equality. In article 4, par. 1 and 2, it is stated that: "All Greeks are equal before the law. Greek men and women have the same rights and obligations". The state begins to recognize feminist issues by creating institutions responsible for gender equality and attempts to reduce institutional discrimination against women. The constitutional recognition of equality led to subsequent changes in family law, labor law, and laws on education, social security, maternity, health, and crime.

After the restoration of democracy, the structure of the women's movement diversified. The movement of "neo-feminism" focused its efforts on issues including domestic violence, legalization of abortion, sexuality, family and work.

Women's organizations, whose functioning had been interrupted by the military junta, were re-established. The "Greek League for Women's Rights" is an example: it was re-founded in 1974 and was strongly involved in women's activism during the period of 1974-1990. It also played a crucial role in the establishment of the new institutional framework on gender equality.

At the same time, national women's organizations were created in relation to or within political parties. This category includes three major national women's organizations: the Union of Greek Women (EGE) politically linked to PASOK, the Democratic Women’s Movement (KDG) politically linked to the Eurocommunist party of Greece and the Federation of Greek Women (OGE) linked to the Communist Party of Greece (KKE). During that same period youth movements and trade unions gradually established women's sections or committees focusing on issues related to working women.

Family law was radically reformed in 1982-1983, introducing gender equality, the abolition of dowry and the authority of the father, the decriminalization of adultery and the right to have children outside of marriage. The decriminalization of abortion was also introduced in 1986. In 1984, Greece also enacted Law 1414/1984 against employment discrimination.

Feminism today

The feminist movement in Greece follows the general trends in that immerge in the Western world. Third-wave feminism (beginning in the 1990s) redefined the movement focusing on the aspects of diversity and inclusivity, and addressing issues such as intersectionality, sex positivity and the LGBTQ+ agenda.

Fourth-wave feminism, believed to have emerged around 2012, has further sought to raise awareness on gendered norms and systemic discrimination, placing emphasis on the empowerment of women and giving voice to survivors of trafficking and of domestic, gender-based and sexual violence. Feminism today is concerned with issues that range from the needs of women affected by armed conflict to the gender pay gap, gender stereotypes, unrealistic beauty standards and casual sexism.

N.M. (Based on the original article which appeared on GrèceHebdo; Intro photo: Kalliroi Parren (1859-1940), from the Archives of "Lyceum Club of Greek Women")

The post The feminist movement in Greece: a brief overview appeared first on Greek News Agenda.

ELIAM (Greek Historical Archives of the Eastern Mediterranean) is a new digital archive, dedicated to preserving and presenting the history of Greek presence in the Eastern Mediterranean during the modern era. The project aims at showcasing the multicultural and multiethnic context in which Greeks lived in the Eastern Mediterranean, emphasizing the interconnectedness and interactions between Greeks and other communities in the region.

The archive focuses on the Eastern Mediterranean, encompassing countries that emerged from the Ottoman Empire including Egypt, Greece, Jordan, Israel, Cyprus, Lebanon, Libya, Palestine, Syria, and Turkey, focusing on the time period between the 19th and 20th centuries, a historical period of significant political and social change.

Both along the coasts of the Eastern Mediterranean and in its broader hinterland, populations who often identified ethnically as “Greeks” or “Romaioi” and predominantly religiously as “Greek Orthodox Christians” lived—and in some cases, still live. However, there were also Greek Catholics and Protestants, as well as Greek Jews and Muslims. The project acknowledges that their professional activities ranged from industrialists and large-scale merchants to office clerks, craftsmen, and unskilled laborers, with the majority of these Greeks belonging to middle and lower social classes. Countering the prevalent monolithic view of Greek populations in these regions, they occupied a broad socio-economic spectrum.

Alexander Kitroeff, historian, author of The Greeks and the Making of Modern Egypt (American University in Cairo Press, 2019), and one of ELAM’s founders, talked to Greek News Agenda:

"Two colleagues of mine, historian Angelos Dalachanis, and visual anthropologist Irini Chrysocheri, invited me to join them in establishing the Greek Historical Archives of the Eastern Mediterranean (ELIAM). It is a non-profit organisation whose aim is the creation of a digital archive that will bring together printed (e.g. documents from private or other archival collections), visual (e.g. family and school photographs, maps, films) and audio (e.g. interviews, music, songs) material, following international standards for registration and documentation.

Other organizations are already collecting archives of Greek associations that existed in the Eastern Mediterranean. But we realized that privately held papers, documents and photographs of the Greeks who lived in Egypt, and other places in the region such as Jerusalem and Aleppo, also need to be safeguarded.

Our purpose is to preserve these documents belonging to individuals and families. But we do not want to take these away from private individuals, because we recognize these have great sentimental value along with their historical value. These include printed books, periodicals, archival material, photographs, films- or personal documents such as correspondence, unpublished notes, autobiographies, school certificates and items of material culture and intangible items, such as oral interviews or musical recordings.

Therefore, instead, we scan the materials or ask persons to do it themselves and then we presented these materials on our web-page which was established thanks to a grant from the Onassis Foundation. Through our website, these materials are freely available the academic community and everyone else who has an interest in the history and cultural heritage of the Greek presence in the Eastern Mediterranean.

We are searching for these materials all over the world. The Greeks who lived in the Eastern Mediterranean and left the region went not only to Greece but in many other places, Europe, the Americas, Australia. We had a successful launch of the website https://eliam.gr in early February with many people in attendance and there was great support and interest. The next step for us is to find sources of funding so we continue our work."

The website organizes its collections into various categories, including photos, old footage films, documents, artifacts, oral testimonies, and ephemera, encouraging individuals to "share their family documents and and pictures," actively seeking contributions from the public to expand its archival holdings.

ELIAM helps preserve and promote awareness of a complex and often overlooked aspect of Eastern Mediterranean history and serves as a valuable resource for researchers, historians, genealogists, and anyone interested in the history of Greeks in the Eastern Mediterranean.

I.L.

The post ELIAM: Preserving the heritage of Greek presence in the Eastern Mediterranean appeared first on Greek News Agenda.

Κοstis Kornetis is Assistant Professor of Contemporary History at the Universidad Autónoma de Madrid. He has studied History and Political Science in Munich, London and Florence, taught history at Brown University, New York University and the University of Sheffield. His monograph "Children of the Dictatorship: Student Resistance, Cultural Politics and the 'Long 1960s' in Greece" (2013) won the Edmund Keeley prize, while he has co-edited the volumes “Consumption and Gender in Southern Europe since the “Long 1960s” (2016), “Rethinking Democratisation in Spain, Greece and Portugal” (2019), and “The 1969 Greek Case at the Council of Europe. A Game Changer for Human Rights” (2024).

Kornetis’ research is focused on the history of dictatorships in southern Europe and the social movements of the twentieth century, especially around 1968 and the 'long 60s'. Likewise, he has published theoretical reflections on transnational history, oral history and the relationship between history and cinema. His most recent line of research focuses on the so-called history of the present and analyzes the history of democratic transitions in Spain, Portugal and Greece and the collective memory built around them.

On the occasion of the celebration of the 50^th anniversary of the restoration of Democracy in Greece as well as  the impending publishing of his new monograph “A Collective Biography of Southern European Democratization,” professor Kornetis spoke to Rethinking Greece* on how Greece, Spain and Portugal experienced and remember their respective democratic transitions, the imprint of the Metapolitefsi (post-dictatorship) period in Greek culture and of course, its political legacy.

Your latest book manuscript is titled “A Collective Biography of Southern European Democratization: The Age of Transitions.” Could you tell us a bit about this periodization of three generations and its significance?

The Age of Transitions is about how Greece, Spain and Portugal remember, represent, and commemorate their transitions today beyond similarities and differences: how moments of change, and the steady acceleration of events, are reflected in memory; how the transitions solidified into settled ‘autobiographies’ of individuals, of a generation, of each nation. I expound these transitions and their afterlives according to multiple political generations, identifying missing links between stories, storytellers, contexts, and respective political generations.

Hence the book shifts the attention of inquiry from institutional breakthroughs and setbacks to political generations. As transitions are inherently ‘multi-generational’ the book looks at three distinct generations. One that went through the events of the transitions as young adults and hence remembers them fully. One with people who were children during the transitions – not old enough to have participated in the events, but old enough to hold memories of them, however vague. And a third one, which was not born then, but contains ‘projective’ (post)memories of the events that go beyond family memories and recollections. The book is largely based on people who have become academics, artists and activists, at times with an overlap between these different functions, and hence combines their own lived experience with their capacity to reflect on the events using the tools of their disciplines or craft. Several of them have worked on the very issue of transitions, hence the book operates on multiple levels of analysis. 

In the book I sought to explore the intersection between personal recollections and collective remembrance, linking democratization studies to oral history and memory studies. I look at the memory battles, or conversely the synergies, between two sets of opposing poles: between individual memory and collective memory, and between private microhistories and dominant transition narratives. To do so, I bring into dialogue historical and biographical time. The similarities in memories across time, geography, and generations are surprising, outweighing their differences. 

Generational memory, I conclude, plays a crucial role in shaping the political, social and cultural developments of the entire post-authoritarian period, affecting people’s political conclusions. The diverse memories are, the book argues, concomitant with the myriad experiences of transition; and these unique experiences, and their memories subsequently structure present political space. They determine the meaning of democracy, as well as the identities of the political Left and Right.

What do you believe were some of the biggest challenges Greece faced in transitioning to a democratic system? How did the initial years of Metapolitefsi shape the political landscape of Greece?

Greece transitioned to a full-fledged democracy after many decades of political stalemate, extreme polarization, political exclusion and violence. Its post-1974 democratization did not signify the return to the status quo ante, meaning the pre-1967 state of affairs, but rather the end of the long post-civil war period. It was the final end of the “30-year war” according to novelist Alexandros Kotzias’s acute description, himself being an emblematic literary figure of the transitional years. So Greece had to move away from the anticommunist state of ethnikofrosyni and the ‘sickly democracy’ [καχεκτική δημοκρατία] per Ilias Nikolakopoulos, into a plural, parliamentary system, that included the banned Communists after decades of persecutions. In this respect, and despite inertias, it proved to be successful – with the last chapter of the revival of the repressed being written in 1981 with PASOK’s spectacular victory. The three additional challenges being the settlement of the nature of the country’s political system, the constitutional process, and the issue of transitional justice were all swiftly and efficiently dealt with: Greece abolished monarchy once and for all, voted a liberal Constitution, and put the culprits of the 1967 coup d’état on trial and in prison. Another great success was that for the first time in the 20th century the army stayed in the barracks where it belongs. Less successful was the issue of ‘dejuntification’, or cleansing, of the police and the judicial system from authoritarian residues.

How does Greece’s experience of transitioning to democracy compare with Portugal and Spain?

These are three societies that had to deal with a different set of problems and different chronologies as far as the onset of authoritarianism is concerned, with the Iberian dictatorship being residues from the interwar years. Nevertheless, they synchronized at the time of their transitions, being faced with similar challenges as far as democratic consolidation was concerned. Portugal faced the crucial issue of the loss of its empire, propelled by a revolutionary process, hence a full rupture with the authoritarian past. Spain, on the other hand, experienced a ‘pacted’ transition, based on an agreement between regime holders and recently legalized political parties aspiring to power. This transition from within had its own complexities but was hailed for a long time as a ‘model’ transition. The greatest challenge of the new democracy were the local nationalisms – Basque and Catalan, above all, a legacy that the transition bequeathed to the present day. Greece of course had its own major issue which was the ongoing conflict in Cyprus that followed the Turkish invasion. It did not deal with this issue head on as it was of existential proportions – a possible direct involvement in warfare might have had tremendous consequences for the country as a whole. Instead Karamanalis opted for the clever move of the removal from NATO’s military wing to let off steam. However, this lack of direct engagement of sorts fuelled resentment and a lingering trauma – especially in Cyprus proper, of course.

The Age of Transitions is actually grounded in the premise that each country’s transitional process led to distinct political histories and national trajectories. These distinctions, in turn, caused major variation in how each generation remembers the transitions. How people remember the transitions and both their achievements and their setbacks matters because these people became the very subjects of democratic rule.

All three Transitions (Portuguese, Spanish, Greek) are considered as “political masterpieces”. How has this perception changed over time? Do you believe the public memory of the Transitions still plays a role in contemporary politics?

This perception has changed a great deal, especially regarding the Spanish case, which spearheaded the idea of the “model transition” which inspired the entire field of ‘transitology’ back in the late 1970s and throughout the 1980s. It was supposed to be smooth and peaceful but nowadays we are much more aware of the bloody aspects of that transition, with extreme right-wing and left-wing political violence ruling the day, but also institutional one lurking from the Francoist era. More importantly, Spain’s transition was based on a so-called pact of silence regarding the past and the flagrant lack of transitional justice as far as Francoist crimes are concerned. This particular issue has come to be a matter of intense debate in the past years. Portugal on its own right was considered a rare case of a revolution that was both bloodless and without an authoritarian outcome. By contrast it led to a long and stable democracy ever since 1976 and the first free elections. However, some dark aspects concerning in particular the issue of war crimes, were never tackled head-on, as the militaries who made the revolution were themselves involved in that bloody conflict that lasted thirteen years. Connected to the above was the issue of half a million refugees from the ex-colonies, dubbed the ‘returnees’ who experienced great difficulties in becoming assimilated in Portuguese society. These are all issues which were slipped under the transitional carpet. For Greece dejuntification and Cyprus remained, as mentioned above, unresolved issues.

Such issues experienced a powerful comeback in the past years due especially to a new generation of thinkers, intellectuals, politicians, activists and artists wanting to promote uneasy memories. Definitely in terms of academia there is a much more analytical and critical approach to the transitions, backed up by more reflexive writings and artwork. In all three cases the public memory of transitions became weaponized during the years of the Great Recession (2009-2015). While the hegemonic discourse transitioned from celebratory to condemnatory, we might be reaching a point of more balanced approaches. After all, fifty years since the events are always a landmark point that triggers more reflection.

What was the imprint of the Metapolitefsi period in Greek culture and arts?

If we consider as Metapolitefsi the short period of 1974-75 or even 1974-81, its imprint was great, since this was a time of great effervescence. It is a time that is very much connected to the last years of the Colonels’ regime. In music, cinema, and the visual arts, we witness the dynamism and passion of the dictatorship years being channeled into creative expression. Contestatory action was fueling the arts and vice versa. So, we need to keep in mind the fact that, even though 1974 is a rupture and a turning point politically, much of what is happening in the arts has its origins, inspiration and raison d’etre in the previous era. Both New Greek Cinema and the dawn of the Greek political song date in the dictatorship years – and the same applies to the so-called Generation of the 70s in literature, or even the burgeoning counterculture and figures such as Leonidas Christakis, for instance. The current exhibition at the National Gallery of Greece on “Democracy” charts precisely this dynamism and the suffering of the Junta years being transformed into creativity in the mid-1970s onwards. As the exhibition shows, similar traits can be spotted in the Iberian Peninsula around the time of the fall of the dictatorships as well. 

What I find interesting in the book is the revival of certain political and aesthetic norms during the Great Recession (2009-2015) in Greece. The political or éngagé art had a comeback, or an afterlife – in a way several artists felt the need to go back to codes of a time of rupture and renewal to deal with a time of stagnation and crisis.

What do you think is the legacy of the transition in Greece?

The legacy of the transition is twofold. The present stable parliamentary system that managed to overcome grave crises has its roots in those very days, including the Constitution, which has remained basically unaltered. The ‘big bang’ of the Metapolitefsi, in historian Antonis Liakos’ fitting term, generated the socio-political plurality that characterized Greece in the following decades. I don’t share the negative appraisals of the Metapolitefsi which dominated the 2010s, identifying it with corruption, cronyism, clientelism and populism, to name but a few examples. Even though such traits existed and continue to exist, I doubt that they are the main characteristics of Greek democratic practice – to quote Robert M. Fishman's term– from 1974 to the present.

The second one has to do with the dual nature of the Greek transition: it bore from the very outset both the legacy of the Polytechnic uprising in November 1974, which discredited Papadopoulos’ ‘liberalization’ ‘from below’, and the actual collapse of Ioannidis’ junta on 23-24 July1974, that triggered regime change ‘from above’. The abundance of social movements during the first Metapolitefsi years and the continuous symbolic significance of the Polytechnic till the present-day attest to that dual significance. What is more, much of what happened in the first Metapolitefsi years and in a way shaped Greek democratic practice was moulded through these characteristics. In my book I quote legendary left-wing composer Mikis Theodorakis boasting in 1975 about Karamanlis’ above-mentioned withdrawal of the country from NATO’s armed wing, as being a left-wing demand all along. It is this dialogue between Left and Right, the government and the movements, unheard of until that moment, that can and should be catalogued alongside the Metapolitefsi characteristics – and why not, a legacy that should be rescued.

*Interview to: Ioulia Livaditi

Read also from Greek News Agenda:

• Rethinking Greece|Christina Koulouri on half a century of Greek democracy: “The greatest achievement of Greek democracy is its resilience”

The post Rethinking Greece | Kostis Kornetis on the Democratic Transitions of Greece, Spain, and Portugal: Memory and Legacy appeared first on Greek News Agenda.

The Edmund Keeley Book Prize is awarded every two years by the Modern Greek Studies Association (MGSA) to an academic book dealing with modern Greece or a Hellenic theme published originally in the English language.  The 2024 Edmund Keeley Book Prize was awarded to Michalis Sotiropoulos, for his book Liberalism after the Revolution: The Intellectual Foundations of the Greek State, c. 1830-1880 (Cambridge University Press, 2023).

Sotiropoulos is a historian of Modern Europe, currently employed at the British School at Athens and a post-doctoral researcher at the University of Athens in the department of History and Philosophy of Science. His research focuses on the 'political history of ideas' and in particular on the ideas and the sociopolitical processes (revolts, revolutions, secessions, unifications, constitution-making and state-building) that changed the political culture and eventually the geopolitical map in the Mediterranean during the long nineteenth century. He has conceded an interview to Rethinking Greece on the intellectual origins of the Greek State, Greek liberalism and the historiography of the Greek revolution of 1821.  

The announcement for the 2024 Edmund Keeley Book Prize reads: “Michalis Sotiropoulos’s Liberalism after the Revolution: The Intellectual Foundations of the Greek State, c. 1830-1880 distinguished itself among an impressive selection of books on Greece from a wide array of disciplines. It addresses three key questions concerning state formation: “How is a new state built? To what ideas, concepts and practices do authorities turn to produce and legitimise its legal and political system? And what if the state emerged through revolution, and sought to obliterate the legacy of the empire which preceded it?” (2023, cover blurb).

By focusing on the political thought of important nineteenth-century Greek legal scholars (e.g., Pavlos Kalligas, Ioannis Soutsos, Nikolaos Saripolos, and others), and, perhaps more importantly, by documenting the accuracy, depth, and subtlety of their intellectual formation, Sotiropoulos illustrates the ideological breadth, creativity, and potency of nineteenth-century Greek liberalism, as well as the way it engaged in reforms of the Greek state.

Using a plethora of original sources that were produced by the jurists themselves—articles, books, pamphlets, public statements, as well as the contributions they made to parliamentary proceedings—the author offers an original perspective on this period and its broader impact. Sotiropoulos departs from the conventional narrative of Greek state formation by challenging western-centric histories of nineteenth-century liberalism to emphasize the roots of Greek liberalism in a broader, less canonical set of international currents of thought.

While Greek liberals engaged with and were influenced by the arguments of their counterparts in Europe, they did not do so uncritically. Sotiropoulos shows that Greek legal thought and Greek liberalism were not regressive, underdeveloped, or byproducts of some kind of core (northern) European liberalism, but, on the contrary, quite broadly rooted in global conversations. As a result, the author maintains that the standard argument that nationalism predominated in the political thought of Greek liberals should be qualified. Greek liberals did not simply transform liberalism into a practical mode of statecraft; they also preserved its radical edge at a time when liberalism was losing its appeal elsewhere in Europe.

Throughout, Sotiropoulos’s writing is exquisite. His volume is carefully crafted, thorough, fair-minded, balanced, informative, and focused; it is both highly detailed and instructively comparative. Moreover, while the volume focuses on the Greek state and a relatively small handful of actors over a defined period of time (1830-1880), Michalis Sotiropoulos masterfully weaves that story into a broad, rich narrative of political thought that will have a definitive impact on future histories of southern Europe and beyond. Liberalism after the Revolution is a smart and intellectually engaging read that will prove to be a true delight to readers for years to come.”

The Committee also confers an Honorable Mention to: Elizabeth Anne Davis, Artifactual: Forensic and Documentary Knowing (Durham: Duke University Press, 2023).

As we read the editor's page, "In Artifactual, Elizabeth Anne Davis explores how Cypriot researchers, scientists, activists, and artists process and reckon with civil and state violence that led to the enduring division of the island, using forensic and documentary materials to retell and recontextualize conflicts between and within the Greek-Cypriot and Turkish-Cypriot communities. Davis follows forensic archaeologists and anthropologists who attempt to locate, identify, and return to relatives the remains of Cypriots killed in those conflicts. She turns to filmmakers who use archival photographs and footage to come to terms with political violence and its legacies. In both forensic science and documentary filmmaking, the dynamics of secrecy and revelation shape how material remains such as bones and archival images are given meaning. Throughout, Davis demonstrates how Cypriots navigate the tension between an ethics of knowledge, which valorizes truth as a prerequisite for recovery and reconciliation, and the politics of knowledge, which renders evidence as irremediably partial and perpetually falsifiable."

Elizabeth Davis is Professor of Anthropology. Her research and writing, grounded in the European horizons and the Ottoman history of the Greek-speaking world, focus on the intersections of psyche, body, history, and power. Her particular interest is in how the ties that bind people to communities and states are yielded and inflected by knowledge: that is, how expert and subaltern epistemologies mediate conceptions of self and others. Her first book, Bad Souls: Madness and Responsibility in Modern Greece (Duke University Press, 2012), is an ethnographic study of responsibility among psychiatric patients and their caregivers in the borderlands between Greece and Turkey. She has also written two books based on ethnographic and archival research in Cyprus. The first, Artifactual: Forensic and Documentary Knowing (Duke University Press, 2023), addresses public secrecy and knowledge projects about the violence of the 1960s-70s that led to the enduring division of Cyprus, including forensic investigations, visual archives, and documentary film. The second, The Time of the Cannibals: On Conspiracy Theory and Context (Fordham University Press, 2024), takes Cyprus as a context for rethinking conspiracy theory and political theology.

The 2024 Keeley Book Prize Committee consists of Evdoxios Doxiadis from Simon Fraser University, Laurie Kain Hart from the University of California, Los Angeles, and Neovi Karakatsanis from Indiana University South Bend, who served as Chair.

Edmund Keeley was founding member and first president of the MGSA; the eponymous award was name after him in recognition of his distinguished contributions, as pioneering translator and critic, to the broad dissemination and scholarly study of modern Greek literature in the English-speaking world and to the field of Modern Greek Studies in the United States.

The Edmund Keeley Prize will be presented at the Award Ceremony of the 28th MGSA Symposium on Thursday, October 17, 2024, in Princeton, USA.

Read more via Greek News Agenda

• Rethinking Greece: Michalis Sotiropoulos on the History of Greek Liberalism in the 19th Century

• Eleni Kefala’s ‘The Conquered: Byzantium and America on the Cusp of Modernity’ wins 2022 Edmund Keeley Book Prize

• Rethinking Greece: Anna Karakatsouli on Philhellenes as ‘freedom fighters’ and the transnational aspects of the 1821 Revolution

I.L.

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In 2024, Greece commemorates the 50th anniversary of the fall of its military dictatorship (1967–1974) with a series of exhibitions reflecting on the nation's journey from repression to democracy. These exhibitions explore the social, political, and cultural impacts of the dictatorship and its collapse, offering a window into this pivotal period in modern Greek history. Key exhibitions include “1974. From Dictatorship to Democracy” at the National Library of Greece, which chronicles the struggle against the regime and cultural and societal shift of the first years of the Metapolitefsi; “City of Athens 1974 & 1944 – Athens Celebrates its freedom” honoring two crucial milestonesons, the 50 years since the restoration of democracy in July 1974 and 80 years since the liberation of Athens from the Nazi occupation in October 1944 and finally, “Democracy,” an art exhibition at the National Gallery of Greece that explores artistic responses to the struggles against authoritarian rule and pursuit of democracy in 1960s-70s Greece, Spain, and Portugal.

National Library of Greece: "1974. From Dictatorship to Democracy"

The National Library of Greece (EBE), the General State Archives (GAK) and the Greek Broadcasting Corporation (ERT) are co-organizing an exhibition in celebration of the 50-year anniversary of the Metapolitefsi (post-dictatorship) period, entitled "1974. From Dictatorship to Democracy," taking place from July 17 to December 31, 2024 at the National Library of Greece.

The exhibition presents unique archival evidence and rich audio-visual material on the dictatorship as well as the anti-dictatorship struggle, outlining the major institutional changes of first year of the Metapolitefsi period, but also the grand scheme changes in the social and cultural landscape of the country, up to the first years of the 1980s.

National Broadcaster ERT participates in the exhibition with material from its archive, including, among others, 100 photographs, 240 minutes of audio-visual material, censored documents from broadcasts and news, 20 vinyl records, etc. The National Library of Greece participates with material from its Collections, which mainly includes newspapers, magazines and books (over three hundred items in total). The exhibition is accompanied by a 288-page color catalogue, which is a publication of the National Library of Greece, edited by Stavros Zoumboulakis.

The artistic curation of the exhibition has been undertaken by Vassilis Zidianakis and ATOPOS, who invited the visual artist Alexis Fidetzis to present the installation "Phoenix Canariensis" on the ground floor of the National Library, posing the question: How does one present the continuity of archives through the plastic language of visual arts?

As the president of the National Library of Greece, Stavros Zoumboulakis notes: “Let us repeat the undeniable: the unprecedented, in Greek history, period of untroubled democratic life spanning half a century, was entrenched in those first few months of the Metapolitefsi. The Metapolitefsi is not merely the restoration of a pre-dictatorship Republic, but also the transition to a new period of a full democratic life.

We all know its three most critical achievements: the army’s return to the barracks, the end of the Monarchy, and the abolishment of Emergency Law 509. It was all carried out swiftly and dutifully by the first post-dictatorship national unity government and the first Prime Minister, Konstantinos Karamanlis, who undoubtedly played a pivotal role, as well as by dint of the forceful demand of mass democratic movements.

But no one can appreciate the significance of the Metapolitefsi without knowing about the dictatorship, its violence and its vulgarity. We want our exhibition to be one of memory and education, aiming to convey to its visitors, and especially to school pupils, both the horror of the Dictatorship and, most importantly, the belief that the Metapolitefsi of 1974 is a major political achievement. In a country with such high rates of self-pity, let us hold that fact in mind with a certain amount of pride.

In the purely political and institutional field, the Metapolitefsi lasted a few months, until the end of the year or, at the extreme, until the passage of the new Constitution in June 1975. But beyond that purely political and institutional Metapolitefsi, there is also a social and, even more so, cultural Metapolitefsi, whose limits cannot ever be strictly defined. What is for certain is that the wind of political change began to blow strong in the final years of the dictatorship, as early as 1970-71, with that unprecedented publishing boom, but was brutally interrupted by the junta of Ioannidis that seized power on 25 November 1973. In the summer of 1974, the country’s intellectual world picks up the severed thread once again and extends it, dynamically and with optimism. In the field of cultural Metapolitefsi, the exhibits of our exhibition stretch as far as the early 1980s."

The President of the General Archives of the State, Dimitris Sotiropoulos commented that this exhibition brings together individual memory and the historiographic record. The exhibition, which spans the three floors of the EBE at the SNFCC, will run until 31 December 2024. Admission is free and the public can visit the exhibition every day of the week from 09:30-20:00.

City of Athens “1974 & 1944 | Athens Celebrates its freedom”: 50 years since the restoration of Democracy & 80 years since the Liberation of Athens

The year 2024 marks 50 years since the restoration of democracy in July 1974 and 80 years since the liberation of Athens from the Nazi occupation in October 1944. The City of Athens, in a spirit of unity and collaboration, is honoring these two crucial milestones for the country’s journey to freedom and democracy, as well as the struggles of the Greek citizens for national independence, by organizing a series of events called “1974 & 1944: Athens celebrates freedom”. The program, aiming to highlight the city’s vibrant historical memory and initiate a dialogue with our modern history is being designed and carried out by the City of Athens Culture, Sports and Youth Organization (OPANDA) and the Technopolis City of Athens, featuring a wide array of events and artistic and educational activities, which will take place until the end November.

The major historical exhibition “1974 & 1944: Athens celebrates freedom”, which is the centerpiece of the City of Athens’ celebrations, is hosted at the OPANDA Arts Center, in Eleftherias Park. The venue, with its buildings of profound historical and architectural value, is part of the memorial site of the old junta Detention and Interrogation centers. From July 22 to October 28, the grand historical exhibition, a joint effort of the Technopolis City of Athens, the Contemporary Social History Archives (ASKI), and the General State Archives, commemorates this double anniversary.

Divided into two major sections, dedicated to the events of 1944 and 1974 respectively, the exhibition narrates a journey from darkness to light, from the extreme cruelty of the Nazi occupation to the frenzied celebration of the first days of freedom, and from the brutality of the junta to expectations born of the fall of the authoritarian regime. Through rare photographs, audio-visual material, documents, newspapers, posters, works of art, notices, personal items and rich archival material, the more than 500 items in the exhibition "1974 & 1944: Athens celebrates its freedom" the exhibition highlights the collective historical memory and the popular struggles for freedom and democracy, focusing on the feelings of hope and joy that these generate and the same enthusiasm that accompanied the Athenians both on the festive days of 1944 and 1974.

At the same time, the exhibition cannot but to unite joy with sorrow, redemption with pain, relief with agony, as the double holiday outbreak was weighed down by both the shadow of the Decemberists and the fear of civil war in 1944, as well as the Turkish invasion of Cyprus in 1974.

Visitors discover, among other things, evidence from the period of the great famine of 1941 in Athens, audiovisual material related to the arrest and torture practices of the junta, an installation with personal stories of three women of the Resistance who sacrificed themselves for the liberation, and also an installation dedicated to the 25 murdered activists of the Polytechnic Uprising.

And on the other hand, in the center, unique impressions from the river of people that on the day of liberation in 1944 flooded the flag-decorated streets of the capital with songs and dances, flyers, banners and improvised posters full of festive slogans, celebratory front pages for the triumph of democracy, snapshots of hugs with those who returned from places of exile.

Some of the bitterest moments of Athens' modern history join its happiest, in a unique exhibition that is a tribute to two different eras and two different worlds united by the same city, Athens, but the common demand of its inhabitants for democracy and freedom, the collective dream for a better life.

The exhibition, which ends on October 28 and has free entry, is surrounded by talks, discussions, screenings, special guided tours by the exhibition's curators, educational programs, exhibitions, theatre, music, dance, theatrical and historical tours, activities for children and schools as well as an insert of contemporary dance and dance performances. See here for the detailed program of events.   

National Gallery of Greece: “Democracy”

As nearly half the world goes to the polls in 2024 in a historic year of elections, the National Gallery of Greece in Athens unveils a timely exhibition on art, social change, and democracy. This is the first major exhibition to explore artistic responses to the struggles against authoritarian rule and pursuit of democracy in 1960s-70s Greece, Spain, and Portugal. It marks the 50th anniversary of the restoration of democracy in Greece.

Featuring 140 works by 55 artists, brought together in collaboration with the Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía – MNCARS, Museu d’Art Contemporani de Barcelona – MACBA, Centro de Arte Moderna Gulbenkian, Centro de Estudos Multidisciplinares Ernesto de Sousa and private collections from Greece and Portugal.

Running from 11 July 2024 to 2 February 2025, this is the first major international exhibition to examine the political role of art during the pivotal period in Southern European history as Greece, Portugal and Spain transitioned from authoritarian to democratic rule during the 1960s to 1970s.

The large-scale presentation brings together 140 masterpieces by 55 artists and artist groups, showcasing a diverse range of styles, perspectives, and practices. It explores how artists were inspired by and depicted the struggle against the era’s dictatorial regimes and the new cultural expressions and creative practices that evolved during the pursuit of civil liberties, including the rise of critical realism and abstract art, as well as the emergence of performance and conceptual art.  The formation of artistic collectives, the art of protest in posters and prints, the politics of the body and the involvement of art in the public sphere all underscored the demand for democracy in the realm of the arts, providing a vibrant field for creative research and activity.

The National Gallery aims to reflect on the current socio-political state of the world and its resonance with the conflict and turmoil of 1960s and 1970s Southern Europe. Against the backdrop of a historic year of global elections and challenges to democratic values, the exhibition traces the shared cultural experiences, emotions, and trauma shaped by disruption, acts of protest, defiance, and resistance, that are just as relevant today as they were fifty years ago.

Syrago Tsiara, Curator and Director of National Gallery says “We proudly present our landmark exhibition on Democracy and Art in Greece, Spain, and Portugal, showcasing powerful artistic responses to repression and the fight for freedom. This exhibition prompts reflection on our historical experiences, achievements, and their impact on our collective identity and future. Amid rising extremist voices, declining voter turnout, and growing scepticism towards institutional credibility, it serves as a poignant reminder of the ongoing need to defend democracy. In these challenging times, museums and art play a vital role beyond solace, empowering profound engagement with imagery, ideas, and critical questions that shape our social interactions and coexistence.”

The exhibition explores themes of ‘Facing the Enemy’, ‘Resistance’, ‘Uprising’, and ‘Arousal’ through  a range of artistic mediums, including sculpture, painting, engraving, posters, video, performance art, as well as theatre and literature and runs until 02.02.2025

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I.L.

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The craft of building wooden boats is a living tradition that has been practiced across all Greece and through all historical periods. In the past it was one of the most prominent expressions of the maritime societies’ technology and craftsmanship with unique technical, typological and cultural characteristics, some of which date back to the Middle Ages and the Byzantine Times. There were many variations, or even different traditions, of boatbuilding that are linked tosea areas, lakes, rivers and lagoons.

The craft’s transmission from one generation to the next took place through empirical apprenticeship, which entails younger people learning the craft by working side by side with a master craftsman. Today empirical apprenticeship is still the only means of learning the craft. he Craft of Wooden Shipbuilding has been listed in the National Inventory of Intangible Cultural Heritage
of Greece.

As Katerina Velentza writes in her paper on Traditional Shipbuilding on the Island of Samos: "Traditional boats, as tangible cultural heritage assets, and the practice of wooden shipbuilding, as a traditional craft and intangible heritage, are expressions of local knowledge of the Aegean Sea communities.

For the Aegean Sea islanders, their attachment to the sea, their insular environment, as well as the availability of particular material resources, such as certain species of timber, resulted in the development of specific types of wooden watercraft and methods of shipbuilding that evolved through several centuries of human interactions with the surrounding natural environment.

The traditional wooden boats, known as kaikia (καΐκια in Greek, καΐκι in singular), were established technologically in the Aegean roughly in the 18th century. The local knowledge of creating and using these wooden boats was a defining element of the island populations and their maritime identities, present in all economic and social activities, until the second half of the 20th century.

With the rapid modernization of Mediterranean societies in the 20th century, the Aegean Sea, as many other maritime regions, saw the rapid reduction of traditional watercraft made of wood and propelled by sails or oars. This concurred with a transition to metal or fiberglass motorboats. The shift resulted in the loss of traditional maritime jobs, the development of touristic rather than maritime economies and the degradation of the marine environment from the extensive use of large-scale polluting fisheries, as well as cargo and tourist ships.

Currently, Greece is experiencing a sharp decline in wooden shipbuilding and use of traditional kaikia. One of the biggest threats to the tangible and intangible heritage assets related to this Greek shipbuilding tradition is the destruction of wooden fishing boats with subsidies provided by the government to enforce the ‘EU Regulation No 508/2014 of aims at reducing the fishing fleet and the environmental impact of the fisheries of each European state. In the last 25 years alone, about 11,000 boats have been lost, many of which were monuments of popular traditional shipbuilding."

Museum of Aegean Boatbuilding and Maritime Crafts

The Museum of Aegean Boatbuilding and Maritime Crafts (MNNTA) in Samos is a thematic technical museum based on the concepts of new museology, designed to operate through a network of educational and research activities. At the heart of the new Museum is both the rescue and promotion of the tangible and intangible heritage in shipbuilding and maritime crafts of the Aegean.

The Museum's exhibition presents key aspects of maritime craftsmanship as explored through ethnographic studies in the boatyards and ports of the Aegean and archeological research on Aegean shipwrecks. The museum's design aims to interpret the material remains and the intangible elements of boatbuilding tradition, focusing on the individuals behind the techniques and on the empirically transmitted knowledge, as well as the more technical aspects of boatbuilding.

The museum operates on four functional units in addition to the permanent exhibition. The first unit is focused on rescuing and exhibiting at least 12 types of boats representing the boatbuilding tradition of the Aegean. Traditional shipbuilding tools and over 300 exhibits are also a large part of the collection, which further includes a number of designs, shipbuilding models and molds. Other categories of exhibits include boat accessories, instruments and mechanisms onboard, logbooks and notarial documents, business records and other evidence from Aegean boatyards and shipping companies.

The Museum also preserves items of intangible cultural heritage, such as recorded or videotaped oral testimonies of craftsmen and sailors, archival photographs and film or video material of boatbuilding and maritime activities in the Aegean. The museum’s Archive of Oral includes recordings from 1984 until today from all over Greece and more than 200 interviews-personal testimonies on the life, employment, woodworking techniques, complementary professions, customs, and social practices of the people of the sea.

The museum is part of a wider effort to safeguard the boatbuilding craftsmanship and to permanently cease the subsidized destruction of traditional fishing boats.

The Vocational Training and Apprenticeship Program in Wooden Boatbuilding

In addition and in close collaboration with to Museum of Aegean Boatbuilding and Maritime Craft, a new Apprenticeship and Vocational Training program will operate in the island Samos. The programs is based on the framework recently established by the Ministry of Education and will be implemented collaboration with the University of the Aegean’s School of Sciences, also based on Samos.

This new boatbuilding educational program will operate from the new academic year (2024-2025) at the Museum of Boatbuilding and Maritime Crafts of the Aegean, with the aim of preserving and developing this inextricably linked to Greek identity craft. The program was presented last December, at the Library of the Aikaterini Laskaridis Foundation, in the presence of the Minister of Culture Lina Mendoni and the Minister of Shipping and Insular Policy Christos Stylianidis.

The program, funded of the Ministry of Culture with the amount of 210,000 euros, includes the pilot operation of an apprenticeship program, the organization and operation of which will be undertaken by the Lifelong Learning Center (KEDIVIM) of the University of the Aegean. The educational program will be of two years duration followed by one year of apprenticeship, in boatyards as at the Museum, especially in the maintenance of the wooden boats on display.

in her speech, minister Mendoni underlined that it is imperative that we establish permanent, multi-year, institutions for apprenticeship and teaching of the craft with a perspective of professional rehabilitation. “There are many examples from other countries, which indicate that wooden boat building based on traditional know-how can emerge as a modern practice, being integrated into sustainable business plans, as well as sustainable local development plans.

Today, Greek carpenters are carriers of know-how and practices, many of which are links in an ancient chain. Boat Carpentry, one of the great arts of modern Greece, requires special knowledge and a long apprenticeship. However, until now the young could only learn through experiential teaching, alongside the older craftsmen. Our primary goal in harnessing our woodworking heritage is to teach this craft to young people who are interested in it and believe in the value of perpetuating it. However, in order to do this, the economic and social acknowledgment of the wooden boats industry must first be restored," she explained.

For his part, the Minister of Shipping and Insular Policy Christos Stylianidis emphasized that "the rescue of traditional boats is intertwined with the rescue of the art of shipbuilding itself, and these will save the carnaya and the tarsanades (shipyards)". Because, as he explained, the traditional shipwright will maintain and repair the existing traditional boats, build new ones and pass on his craft to the next generation. “The wooden boat must remain alive. Either as fishing, tourist or commercial. And the work of the shipwright must be treated as a living art. And not as an art taught in some "elite" workshops, he stated.

Kostas Damianidis, scientific director of the Museum of Aegean Boatbuilding and Maritime Crafts

A few months before the first school of woodworking was opened in Samos, Greek newspaper "Kathimerini" visited Heraio, Samos and spoke with Kostas Damianidis, scientific director of the Museum of Aegean Boatbuilding and Maritime Crafts (MNNTA):

“On the south coast of the island, next to its most important archaeological site, in a quiet seaside settlement stands a building that looks as if it has come from Space. It is a new, state-of-the-art museum that houses a valuable archive of our great national art that is being lost, that of traditional shipbuilding. It is the Museum of Boatbuilding and Maritime Crafts of the Aegean (MNNTA), which is preparing to open its doors soon to show the public precious pieces of tangible and intangible heritage and also to inaugurate an apprenticeship school in woodworking.

There, Kostas Damianidis, scientific director of the new museum, opens the doors to us and offers us a brief tour of its exhibits and facilities. Above our heads, in the lobby of the museum, hang two rigs, one for salt water and one for fresh water, a papadia from the island of Hyrda, and a kurita. Outside the museum, just meters from the shoreline, a scaffolding installation awaits a series of historic exhibit boats, thirteen in all, that have been salvaged or reconstructed in recent years by the museum's research team.
As Kostas Damianidis tells us, "the biggest bet we want to win with this museum is its parallel and complementary function with the school of Wooden Boatbuilding. This is something that does not exist in Greece – it is rare even abroad.

That the life of the museum will be intertwined with the life of the school is an idea that gives a new dimension both to the museum experience and to the context of the education of young people in the craft. It is an approach that is actively supported by the competent department of Culture and we are advancing it together, step by step, together with the University of the Aegean and the Municipality of Eastern Samos. The viability of both the museum and the school will depend a lot on their harmonious coexistence and cooperation."

"It is a thematic technical museum that is a project of the Municipality of Eastern Samos and is financed by the operational program "Competitiveness, Entrepreneurship and Innovation 2014-2020", says the mayor of Eastern Samos Paris Papageorgiou to "Kathimerini". The goal is, as the mayor says, for the museum and the school to open during the 2024-2025 school year, as part of a program funded by the Ministry of Education. "The school is expected to offer two years of study and an additional year of apprenticeship alongside an experienced craftsman, in a shipyard anywhere in the country."

For his part, Kostas Damianidis states that he has no illusions: "I know that out of the 15 apprentices each year, only one or two will go to work in this field. But, with today's conditions, even two people every year becoming professional shipwrights in boatmaking, this will give a great breath of life to the field."

His optimism is also based on the new trends inspired by the threat of climate change: "Woodworking, among its various benefits, also contributes to the proper management of forests, since they must be felled in the right way in order for them to survive, but also to protect them from fire. In addition, a wooden boat has a lifespan of about the same as plastic, but its recycling is environmentally friendly. A plastic boat has materials that are not recycled – even burning it is poisonous. So, in my opinion, the production of wooden boats should also be supported institutionally.

And, of course, there is the obvious acknowledgment that the wooden boat is a valuable piece of cultural heritage that we should save in our seas. Throughout time, boats have always been something very attractive, even for the tourism that concerns us so much - just for the image of our landscapes themselves. Our wooden boats are a quality feature of our islands built and man-made environment.""

I.L., with information from Woodenboats.gr, Kathimerini and the Ministry of Culture; all photos from Woodenboats.gr and their Facebook page

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