Germans in Greece
The German minority in Greece comprises an unknown number of assimilated Germans as well as 11,806 German citizens according to the 2001 census. The latter form the tenth largest minority in Greece , but it is only slightly smaller than the three previous ones (Ukrainians, British, Poles). The former show a very high degree of assimilation, see themselves as Greeks and, if they come from southern Germany, are often still Catholics.
history
Even before the Roman era, Greeks came to Germania, mostly as traders, but there is no evidence of a reverse influence. It was not until the Germanic tribe of the Heruli that they embarked on raids in the eastern Mediterranean in late antiquity. The wedding of the Byzantine princess Theophanu with Otto II on April 14, 972 opened historically tangible relations between the Greek and German regions. German mercenaries were both in the army of the Byzantine Alexios Komnenos (1081–1118) and later in the regular army of the Ionian Islands on behalf of Venice. Field Marshal Johann Matthias von der Schulenburg (1661–1747) was raised to the nobility for the defense of Corfu. He founded the Schulenburg family.
With the coronation of Wittelsbach Otto the king of Greece in 1832 was followed by an emigration of German officials, craftsmen and adventurers to Greece by even after his abdication in 1862 and the accession of George I stopped. In 1833 Adolph von Schaden published the Counselor The Bavarian in Greece, a handbook for everyone who intends to move to Hellas or wants to get to know the same thing better in every respect . Bavarian beer gardens in Athens are also occupied during this time.
The wine merchant Gustav Clauss founded the Achaia Clauss winery with Jakob Klipfel in 1859 . Karolos Fix (Karl Fuchs), son of Bavarian immigrants, opened the Fix brewery in 1864 . Georgios Streit , son of the lawyer Stephanos Streit and a descendant of the Franconian - Saxon noble families of Freiherr von Streit and von Wurmb, became Foreign Minister in 1914. Eduard Schaubert was instrumental in building modern Athens. Ernst Ziller , who emigrated from Saxony , also became an important architect in Greece; Heinrich Schliemann had him build his residence in Athens.
As archaeologists in Greece lived u. a. Ludwig Ross (1806–1859), Adolf Furtwängler (1853–1907) and Wilhelm Dörpfeld (1853–1940). The astronomer Johann Friedrich Julius Schmidt was appointed director of the Athens observatory in 1858 and also spent his old age in Athens.
1933-1945
During the time of National Socialism , German Jews emigrated to Greece, in some cases Athens or Rhodes served as a stopover for a later emigration to Palestine . The German diaspora was torn apart by the events at home, and there was tension between the various attitudes.
Johannes Gaitanides wrote - probably as a special leader of the Waffen SS - the report New Greece during a trip to Greece . Ernst Kirsten was deployed to protect art during his military service in occupied Greece . From the collected material, he wrote the work on Greek Studies with Wilhelm Kraiker . During the war they had managed to drive Reichsleiter Rosenberg's Einsatzstab from Greece. Also Erhart Kastner was released as a soldier of the Wehrmacht in occupied Greece to write books about the country.
After 1945
After 1945 adventurers followed and now also retirees, who mostly settled on the islands. In 1978, for example, the Sarakiniko commune was founded on Ithaca. In Athens spent their twilight years e.g. B. Ernst Hardt (1876–1947) and Wilfried Baasner (1940–2006). A larger German community outside the big cities can be found in the west of the island of Crete .
The extent to which an aversion to Germans can be felt in Greece as a result of the Greek financial crisis is controversial.
Institutions
German Society Philadelphia in Athens until 1944
The German Society of Philadelphia was founded in Athens in 1837 ; it organized festivals related to Germany and also invited artists from Germany. B. the composer Richard Strauss , who gave a concert in the stadium in 1926. In 1847 she acquired a plot of land on Homerstraße (Omirou), and on January 1, 1848, the foundation stone was laid for the building that had been designed by the building manager Eduard Riedel. More an inn than a cultural center, it had a beer garden and a bowling alley. Residents complained about noise. In 1939 a neighboring building was acquired to expand the cultural center. Construction work was suspended due to the outbreak of war. Because the society was involved in National Socialism, it was finally banned and dissolved in 1944.
New founding of the Philadelphia and Goethe Institute
At the end of the war, the Philadelphia was re-founded by Werner Günther under the name German-Greek Association Philadelphia . She also offered language courses. In 1952, when it was taken over by the Goethe-Institut , it was the very first Goethe-Institut abroad. Until 1954, the previous association and the institute were still in the same building. The interest in German culture and language courses was so great that there were already Goethe-Instituts in all major cities in the 1960s and the Goethe-Institut in Athens rented many neighboring buildings. The lucrative property of the Philadelphia Association, which was dissolved in 1944, was acquired by the German state for 25% of the market value from the Greek state on condition that the former association's cultural work be continued in the same place. This led to the institute's conflict with Philadelphia, which in 1978 was compensated for with another property. The library of the Goethe-Institut became a meeting place for the Greek opposition during the junta (1967–1974).
German schools
The German School of Thessaloniki was founded in 1887. In 1896 Wilhelm Dörpfeld founded the German School Athens . The German Archaeological Institute Athens (DAI) has existed since 1872.
Churches
It was not until 1913 that the German-speaking Protestant community of Athens was formally founded. The German Evangelical Community of Athens and the surrounding area succeeded the royal court and city community of Athens , which had previously been in contact with originally Protestant members of the royal family. In the same year, the state gave the municipality a piece of land on Sinastraße in Athens, on which the Christ Church was built in the 1920s .
The German-speaking Catholic community of Athens St. Michael is located in the suburb of Kifissia. Other German-speaking congregations of both denominations are in Thessaloniki and on Crete.
media
During the military dictatorship from 1967 to 1974 , Deutsche Welle broadcast programs in Greek that were popular with Greeks who were critical of the regime.
The state radio station ERA broadcast medium wave 1386 kHz news in German at 4.30 p.m.
From 1996 the German-language Athens newspaper was published, which was succeeded by the Greek newspaper .
See also
literature
- Siegfried Mackroth: The Germanness in Greece . Abroad and Home Publishing Corporation, 1930.
Individual evidence
- ↑ Resident foreign citizens according to the data of the census of March 18, 2001 ( Memento of March 27, 2009 in the Internet Archive ) (PDF; 84 kB)
- ↑ Adolph von Schaden: The Bavarian in Greece, a manual for everyone who intends to move to Hellas, or who would like to get to know the same thing better in every respect . Munich 1833, pp. 11, 85
- ↑ a b O. Stollberg: We Germans in the world . 1939, p. 128
- ↑ a b http://www.goethe.de/ins/gr/ath/pro/50/main2.htm
- ↑ German Protestant Congregations Abroad, p. 20