Anatolia College in Merzifon

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Anatolia College by Marsovan
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The Anatolia College in Merzifon ( Turkish Merzifon Amerika Koleji , English American College of Mersovan ) was a coeducational high school in the city of Merzifon near Amasya in the Ottoman Empire , which was founded in 1886 by American missionaries and operated until 1924.

Theological seminar

Classes at Anatolia College

The school was first founded as a theological seminary in 1864 when the American Robert College in Bebek , Constantinople , ceased its theological training and limited itself to general education due to the increasing number of young people interested in learning the English language . The school in Merzifon initially served to raise children from the Greek and Armenian communities in Anatolia who wanted to become pastors or preachers .

college

In 1886, the theological seminary in Merzifon was expanded to include general education and a college that taught liberal arts for four years was added. The institution was called "Anatolia College", Charles Tracy became the first president and remained so until 1912. The motto of the college was "The Morning Cometh" - referring to the Greek word for sunrise (ανατολή - anatole), as well as the region of Anatolia . The seal of the college showed the rising sun over Akdağ at the eastern end of the Merzifon plain. Most of the 115 students, mainly Greeks and Armenians , came from outside Merzifon and lived in the school.

The girls' school was founded in 1893. When Armenian activists put up posters in 1893, Ottoman troops arrested numerous Armenians and damaged some buildings of the college; Armenian students and teachers were accused of being in contact with the rebels. The damage was later paid for by the Ottoman government. Therefore, from 1894, the college was subject to the laws of the US state of Massachusetts .

After the end of World War I and the Armenian genocide , the college's facilities on campus consisted of a kindergarten , a school for the deaf and dumb, a college-level program, one of the largest hospitals in Asia Minor, and an orphanage for over 2,000 orphans in addition to the theological one Seminar and schools for boys and girls - all in more than 40 New England style buildings . The activities of the American missionaries came to a de facto standstill with the collapse of the Ottoman Empire in 1918 .

Moved to Greece

In 1920 there were 218 students and an equal number in the girls' school. After the Greco-Turkish War from 1919 to 1922 and the subsequent exchange of population between Greece and Turkey , the college in Merzifon was forcibly closed and reopened in 1924 as Anatolia College in the port city of Thessaloniki in the Kingdom of Greece with the help of Eleftherios Venizelos .

The American missionary George E. White, who was a teacher from 1890 and president of the college in Merzifon from 1913 to 1921, wrote his memoirs in the book Adventuring With Anatolia College .

An exhaustive history of Anatolia College in Turkey and Greece was published in 2015 by the ninth president of the institution, William McGrew (president from 1974 to 1999) under the title Educating across Cultures: Anatolia College in Turkey and Greece .

literature

  • George E. White: Bir Amerika Misyonerinin Merzifon Amerika Koleji Hatiralari ( Memories of an American Missionary at the Merzifon American College ), translated by Cem Tarık Yüksel, Enderun Kitapevi, İstanbul-1995. ( Turkish )
  • George E. White: Adventuring With Anatolia College , Herald-Register Publishing Company, Grinnell, Iowa, March 1940
  • William McGrew: Educating across Cultures: Anatolia College in Turkey and Greece , Rowman & Littelfield, Lanham, Boulder, New York, London 2015
  • Hans-Lukas Kieser : Some remarks on Alevi responses to the missionaries in Eastern Anatolia (19th – 20th cc.) . In: Eleanor Harvey Tejirian, Reeva Simon Spector (Ed.): Altruism and imperialism. Western cultural and religious missions to the Middle East (19th - 20th cc.) . Columbia University, Middle East Institute, New York 2002, ISBN 978-0-9721231-3-6 , pp. 120-142 .

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