Fan Noli

Fan Noli (1924)

Fan Stylian Noli (born January 6, 1882 as Theofanes Stylianos Mavromatis in İbriktepe , Ottoman Empire , now Turkey ; † March 13, 1965 in Fort Lauderdale , Florida , United States ) was an Orthodox Albanian bishop who also acted as a writer, historian and Politician acted. In 1924 he held the office of Albanian Prime Minister for a short time . In 1908 he was the first priest to hold a mass in Albanian .

Life

Born in Eastern Thrace as Theofanes Stylianos Mavromatis, he lived as a young man in the Greek capital Athens and in the Egyptian Alexandria . In his younger years he worked as a tutor, translator and actor. Through his contacts with the Albanian diaspora , he became a supporter of the Albanian national movement Rilindja at an early age .

Fan Noli (1908)

In 1906 he went to Boston in the United States to mobilize the Albanian émigré community for the national movement. Noli worked for various magazines and was particularly committed to the establishment of an Orthodox Albanian Church in the USA, because the Orthodox Albanians felt oppressed by the Greek Church to which they belonged until then. He was ordained a priest by the Russian bishop in New York City on March 8, 1908 , and celebrated the liturgy in Albanian for the first time on March 22 of the same year . From 1908 to 1912 Noli studied at Harvard and then returned to Europe to support the Albanian independence movement there too. In 1913 he came to Albania, which had just become independent, for the first time. During the First World War he stayed again in the USA, where he became the chairman of the Albanian association Vatra . He was practically the head of the Albanian diaspora in North America . After the war he was able to persuade the American President Woodrow Wilson to speak out in favor of Albanian independence at the Paris peace negotiations , which was then achieved. With the admission of Albania to the League of Nations in 1920, the young state was internationally recognized. This success was also largely due to Noli.

In November 1918, Noli was raised to an archimandrite in the United States . In 1923 he was elected and consecrated archbishop in Albania. This is how the independent hierarchy of the nascent Albanian Orthodox Church was established.

In 1921 Noli came to the Albanian parliament as a representative of the liberal Vatra party , where he led this faction. He was foreign minister for a short time under Prime Minister Xhafer Ypi and then stood in sharp opposition to Ypi's successor Ahmet Zogu , who led the conservative landowners. When Zogu, who had a liberal politician murdered, had to flee to Yugoslavia in May 1924 because of popular anger , the way was clear for a liberal government under Noli. In June 1924 he became Prime Minister.

Fan Noli on the Albanian 100 lek banknote

His program of democratic reforms was very unpopular among the political elite, and by Christmas 1924 Noli was overthrown by Zogu's supporters. He fled to Italy and Austria, where he founded the National Revolutionary Committee (Albanian: Komiteti Nacional Revolucionar), known as KONARE , in Vienna . The committee published the magazine "National Freedom" (Albanian: Liria Kombëtare). Noli later returned to the USA, where he tried to form a democratic opposition to Zogu in exile from 1932. The latter had declared himself King of Albania in 1928 .

Noli also worked from America for the development of the Autocephalous Orthodox Church of Albania . In particular, he participated in the translation of the liturgical texts into Albanian. He also excelled as a translator of works from world literature (e.g. William Shakespeare ) into his mother tongue. During the Second World War he had contact with the Albanian communists under Enver Hoxha . He advocated their recognition by the US government as the legitimate representatives of Albania in the anti-Hitler coalition . Noli spent his old age in Florida , where he died on March 13, 1965 at the age of 83.

Bust of fan Nolis in Tirana

In 2011 a bust was erected in his Turkish birthplace near İpsala as a sign of the Albanian-Turkish friendship and inaugurated on January 6, 2012 on his 130th birthday. The minister Aldo Bumçi , Recep Gürkan (Turkish MP of the Republican People's Party ) and Enver Duran , Rector of the University of Thrace, were present .

There is also a bust of Fan Nolis in Albania's capital, Tirana.

Works

• Librë e Shërbesave të Shënta të Kishës orthodox. Boston 1909.
• Georg Castrioti Scanderbeg (1405-1468) , Boston University, 1939, accessed October 26, 2016.
• Beethoven and the French Revolution. New York 1947. (German under the title: Eroica. The violent life of Ludwig van Beethoven. Kiel 1990) .
• Izraelitë e Filistinë. (The Israelites and the Philistines - Drama) .
• Vepra. E përgatiti për shtyp Ali Rexha. Prishtinë. 1988. (Fan Noli's collected works in Albanian, edited by Ali Rexha) .

Translations

• Shakespeare, William: Hamleti princ i Danemarkes, e shqiperoj. Bruxelles 1926. (translation)
• Three liturgies of the Eastern Orthodox Church. Translated by Bishop Fan Stylian Noli. Boston 1955.
• Mesha dhe Katekizma e kishes orthodokse lindore. Shqip edhe Inglisht. Boston 1955
• Byzantine hymnal. Boston 1959.

literature

• Mehmet Gëzhilli: Fan S. Noli. 6 janar 1882 - 13 mars 2003. 120 vjet jetë dhe veprimtari . Argeta-LMG, Tiranë 2003, ISBN 99927-43-85-9 .
• Nasho Jorgaqi: Fan S. Noli. Antologji fotografike . Aferdita, Tiranë 2002, ISBN 99927-37-90-5 .
• Thomas Kacza: Fan Sytlian Noli (1882-1965). Albanian bishop and revolutionary democrat . Private print, Bad Salzuflen 2011.
• Hasan Kaleshi: Noli, Fan Stylian . In: Biographical Lexicon on the History of Southeast Europe . Volume 3. Munich 1979, pp. 334-338
• Behar Shtylla : Fan Noli, siç e came njohur. Kujtime . Shtëpia Botuese Dituria, Tiranë 1997.

Web links

Commons : Fan Noli  - album with pictures, videos and audio files

• Literature by and about Fan Noli in the catalog of the German National Library
• Albanian essay on the life and work of Fan Nolis

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Geōrgios K. Giakoumēs, Grēgorēs Vlassas and David A. Hardy: Monuments of Orthodoxy in Albania . Doukas School, 1996, ISBN 978-960-7203-09-0 , pp. 184 ( limited preview in Google book search - His full name was Theophanis Stylianos Mavrommatis, and he was born in Adrianople and studied in Athens and the USA. ...).
2. ↑ Miranda Vickers: Shqiptarët - Një histori modern . Bota Shqiptare, 2008, ISBN 978-99956-11-68-2 , Rritja e kundërshtimit ndaj xhonturqve , p. 101-102 (English: The Albanians - A Modern History . Translated by Xhevdet Shehu).
3. ↑ Arnavutluk'un İlk Başbakanının Bust İpsala'da Törenle Açıldı. Retrieved October 23, 2018 . 

predecessor	Office	successor
Iliaz Vrioni	Prime Minister of Albania in 1924	Iliaz Vrioni