Eleftherios Venizelos
Eleftherios Venizelos ( Greek Ελευθέριος Βενιζέλος , born August 11 . Jul / 23. August 1864 greg. In Mournies in Chania on Crete ; † 18th March 1936 in Paris ) was a politician and prime minister in Greece .
Life
Cretan Beginnings and Entry into Greek Politics
Venizelos came from a simple Cretan family. From 1888 he was one of the most important activists for a connection between the island and Greece ( Enosis movement). In the Turkish-Greek War of 1897 he was one of the leaders on the Greek side. The war was unsuccessful for Greece, but under pressure from the great international powers , the Ottoman Empire had to grant Crete limited autonomy .
A Cretan executive committee with the participation of Eleftherios Venizelos took over the administration of Crete until Prince George of Greece came to the island on December 9, 1898 as governor general. Thereafter, Venizelos was Minister of Justice of the first Cretan government from April 29, 1899 to March 18, 1901. Dismissed in the dispute over Crete's future membership of Greece, Venizelos headed the opposition, which openly called for the unification of Crete with mainland Greece. With the unilateral proclamation of the Anschluss on March 11, 1905 and the associated political development, Venizelos overthrew the prince, who submitted his resignation as governor-general on September 12, 1906. On October 6, 1908, Venizelos again proclaimed the annexation to Greece.
When an uprising in Macedonia rocked Greece in 1909 , the military government brought Venizelos to Athens as an advisor. In 1910 he founded the progressive “Liberal Party”, which received a majority in elections in the same year, whereupon Venizelos was elected Prime Minister. In November 1913 he saw the implementation of his goal, the union of Crete with Greece .
The Megali Idea: The Balkan Wars and the Engagement in Asia Minor
The foreign policy successes in the course of the Balkan Wars in 1913 with the annexation of Crete to Greece and the doubling of the mainland territory made him an advocate of the Megali Idea , the idea of a Greater Greece including Constantinople and the west coast of Asia Minor. On the side of the Entente he tried to achieve this goal in the First World War . Venizelos' alliance with Serbia and his mobilization order after the allied Bulgaria entered the war brought him into conflict with King Constantine I. In October 1916, Venizelos installed a republican after he was elected but dismissed by the king Counter-government in Thessaloniki in northern Greece ; British and French troops had already landed in Thessaloniki beforehand in order to put pressure on the Central Powers on their southeastern front. In 1917 Venizelos participated in the expulsion of the king by the Entente powers and then declared war on the Central Powers. Domestically, as Prime Minister, he implemented reforms in almost all branches of state administration, including fixed civil servants' salaries, compulsory schooling and a reorganization of the military, which of course at the same time amounted to a 'cleansing' of the armed forces - as well as the political leadership - of the supporters of Constantine.
At the Paris suburban conferences in 1919 and 1920, Venizelos seemed to have achieved a significant expansion of the national territory - including Eastern Thrace and a protection zone around Smyrna in Asia Minor , which efforts were subsequently made to expand. The mandate for the establishment of a Greek zone around Smyrna (gr. Ζώνη Σμύρνης) was nevertheless Venizelos already in May 1919 before the conclusion of the representatives of Great Britain , the United States and France have issued the construction of a peripheral Italian protected zone in southwestern Asia Minor Peninsula, including Antalyas as well as Smyrnas, wanted to prevent. But the Greek-Turkish War (1919–1922) that started as a result ended in the " Asia Minor catastrophe ". After the conservative opposition won the 1920 elections, Venizelos left the country - ten years after his first election as prime minister and in the midst of a struggle with a strengthening Turkey under Mustafa Kemal - and retired to Paris, while Constantine returned to Greece . The campaign in Asia Minor, which his successors continued, ended with the loss of the East Thrace and Asia Minor provinces won in the Treaty of Sèvres and the uprooting of the Greeks residing there and in the rest of Asia Minor.
Last term, exile and death
After his time in exile, Venizelos was once again Prime Minister from July 4, 1928 to May 26, 1932. He played a major role in the integration of the Greeks who had been expelled from Turkey and tried to maintain good relations with all neighbors in terms of foreign policy. In 1932 he resigned because of the poor economic situation ( global economic crisis ) and strong royalist currents. Several assassinations on Venizelos failed. In 1935 he went into exile again in France , where he died a year later. A funeral service for Venizelos took place on March 21, 1936 in the Cathédrale grecque Saint-Étienne before his body was brought to Italy by train and to Crete by ship.
His grave site ( 35 ° 31 ′ 29 ″ N , 24 ° 3 ′ 22 ″ E ) is on the island of Crete ( Profitis Ilias , hill in the northeastern urban area of Chania, on the border with the Akrotiri peninsula ). The new Athens Airport also bears his name, as do many streets and squares as well as the El. Venizelos , one of the largest ferries in the Mediterranean. Venizelos' images were and are in many areas of public life, such as B. on the reverse of the Greek 50 cent coin.
One of his sons was the Greek politician and Prime Minister Sophoklis Venizelos .
Footnotes
- ^ Llewellyn Smith, Ionian Vision , p. 57.
- ^ Llewellyn Smith, Ionian Vision , pp. 58-61.
- ↑ Llewellyn Smith, Ionian Vision , pp. 77 ff.
- ↑ his predecessor was Georgios Kafantaris , his successor Alexandros Papanastasiou .
- ↑ Venizelos, Helena: Mon mari Venizelos . In: Hommes et mondes . 1955.
- ^ Mark Mazower : Greece under Hitler: Life during the German occupation 1941-1944 . S. Fischer Verlag , 2016, ISBN 978-3100025074 , chap. I.1
literature
After 1945
- Κώστας Α. Καραμανλής : Ο Ελευθέριος Βενιζέλος και οι εξωτερικές μας σχέσεις. 1928-1932. Εκδόσεις Παπαζήση, Αθήνα 1995, ISBN 960-02-1144-2 (Eleftherios Venizelos and Greece's external relations. 1928–1932.) .
- Paschalis M. Kitromilides (Ed.): Eleftherios Venizelos. The Trials of Statesmanship. Reprinted edition. Edinburgh University Press, Edinburgh 2006, ISBN 0-7486-2478-3 .
- Dimitri Kitsikis : Eleuthère Vénizélos. In: François Crouzet: Hommes d'Etat célèbres. Volume 5: De la Révolution française à la Première guerre mondiale. Editions Mazenod, Paris 1975.
- Γιάννης Μανωλικάκης: Ελευθέριος Βενιζέλος. Η άγνωστη ζωή του. Γνώση, Αθήνα 1985.
- Dimitris Michalopoulos, Eleutherios Venizelos. An outline of his life and time , Saarbrucken: Lambert Academic Publishing, 2012. ISBN 978-3-659-26782-6
- Charles Personnaz: Venizélos. Le fondateur de la Grèce modern. Bernard Giovanangeli Éditeur, Paris 2008, ISBN 978-2-7587-0011-1 .
- Michael Llewellyn Smith: Ionian Vision. Greece in Asia Minor, 1919-1922. Facsimile edition with a new introduction by the author. C. Hurst & Company, London 1998, ISBN 1-85065-368-2 .
Before 1945
- Doros Alastos: Venizelos. Patriot, Statesman, Revolutionary. P. Lund, Humphries & co., London 1942, (Reprint, with a special added introductory essay. (= The Central and East European Series. Vol. 10). Academic International Press, Gulf Breeze FL 1978, ISBN 0-87569- 030-0 ).
- Eugene S. Bagger: Eminent Europeans. Studies in Continental Reality. GP Putnam's Sons, New York NY et al. 1922, digitized version (PDF; 12.81 MB) .
- Samuel B. Chester: Life of Venizelos. With a letter from His Excellency M. Venizelos. Constable and Company, London 1921, digital version (PDF; 14.29 MB) .
- Herbert Adams Gibbons: Venizelos. Houghton Mifflin Company, Boston MA et al. 1920, digital version (PDF; 8 MB) .
- Costas Kerofilas: Eleftherios Venizelos. His life and work. John Murray, London 1915, digitized version (PDF; 9.88 MB) .
- Crawfurd Price: Venizelos and the War. A Sketch of Personalities and Politics. Second impression. Simpkin, Marshall, Hailton, Kent & Co., London 1917, digitized version (PDF; 11.93 MB) .
- Vincent J. Seligman: The Victory of Venizelos. A Study of Greek Politics, 1910-1918. George Allen & Unwin 1920, digitized version (PDF; 14.15 MB) .
Web links
- Literature by and about Eleftherios Venizelos in the catalog of the German National Library
- Newspaper article about Eleftherios Venizelos in the 20th century press kit of the ZBW - Leibniz Information Center for Economics .
- Website of the National Research Foundation "Eleftherios K. Venizelos"
- Review of Eleftherios Venizelos in the newspaper "Patris" in Heraklion (PDF; 9.3 MB), page 6: Chronology of Eleftherios Venizelos, February 2009 (Greek)
| predecessor | Office | successor |
|---|---|---|
|
Stephanos Dragoumis Dimitrios Gounaris Nikolaos Kalogeropoulos Alexandros Zaimis Stylianos Gonatas Alexandros Zaimis Alexandros Papanastasiou Panagis Tsaldaris |
Greek Prime Minister 1910–1915 1915 1916–1917 1917–1920 1924 1928–1932 1932 1933 |
Dimitrios Gounaris Alexandros Zaimis Spyridon Lambros Dimitrios Rallis Georgios Kaphantaris Alexandros Papanastasiou Panagis Tsaldaris Alexandros Othoneos |
| personal data | |
|---|---|
| SURNAME | Venizelos, Eleftherios |
| ALTERNATIVE NAMES | Ελευθέριος Βενιζέλος (Greek) |
| BRIEF DESCRIPTION | Greek politician |
| DATE OF BIRTH | 23 August 1864 |
| PLACE OF BIRTH | Chania |
| DATE OF DEATH | March 18, 1936 |
| Place of death | Paris |