Evangelos Averoff

Evangelos Averoff and Joseph Luns (1963)

Evangelos Averoff-Tositsas ( Greek Ευάγγελος Αβέρωφ , born April 17, 1910 in Trikala ; † January 2, 1990 in Athens ) was a conservative Greek politician, writer and industrialist of Aromanian (Vlachian) origin. The full name was Evangelos Averoff-Tositsas (Ευάγγελος Αβέρωφ-Τοσίτσας) or Evangelos Anastasios Averoff-Tositsas (Ευάγγελος Αναστασίος Αβέρωφ-Τοσίτσας).

He came from the Aromanian family Averoff from the village of Metsovo in Epirus and was related to the entrepreneur Georgios Averoff . Averoff studied law and economics at the University of Lausanne (Switzerland). He then obtained his doctorate in political science as well as a doctorate in law. Formally he was also Baron Tositsa, succeeding Baron Michail Tositsas. Due to Article 4, Paragraph 7 of the Greek Constitution of 1975 (prohibition of the nobility and nobility designations), he did not use this title in Greece. He lived in Kifissia , a suburb in the greater Athens area , from 1946 , died there on January 2, 1990 and was buried there.

Political activity

In 1940 he was appointed Prefect (Nomarchis) of Kerkyra (Corfu). After the occupation of Corfu by Italian troops in 1941 during the Second World War , Averoff returned to Trikala. In Trikala, Averoff tried to prevent Vlach families from collaborating with the Italian occupying forces. For this Averoff was imprisoned and taken to Italy. Averoff managed to escape a year after his arrest, but remained in Italy and participated in a resistance organization. In 1944 he was formally military and served as a member of the Greek military mission in Italy, which had been fighting on the side of the Allies since September 1943. In 1946 Evangelos Averoff was first elected to the Greek parliament as a member of the constituency of Ioannina . He represented the Liberal Party of Greece (Komma Fileleftheron; KF). On January 20, 1949, he became Minister of Supply in the fifth cabinet of Prime Minister Themistoklis Sofoulis . He also held this office in Sofouli's sixth cabinet and Alexandros Diomidi's first cabinet until January 6, 1950. On March 27, Prime Minister Sophoklis Venizelos appointed him Minister for National Economy in his second cabinet. When Nikolaos Plastiras took office as the new Prime Minister, he lost his position on April 15, 1950. On August 21, 1950, Averoff became Minister of Agriculture in the third government of Sophoklis Venizelos. 7 days later, he switched to the economic department and took over the supply ministry, which was temporarily unoccupied. On January 28, 1951, Averoff resigned as Minister of Economics and Supply. In the third government of Nikolaos Plastiras, Averoff was appointed Deputy Foreign Minister. In this function, he proposed to British Foreign Minister Anthony Eden to unite Cyprus with Greece and at the same time to lease Great Britain military bases on the island for 99 years. Eden declined the offer. With the resignation of the Plastiras government, Averoff's term of office also ended on October 11, 1952. Subsequently, he belonged to neither the Kiosopoulos nor the Alexandros Papagos government (in contrast to the later Prime Minister Konstantinos Karamanlis). He defended the mandate for Ioannina in the elections in 1950 and 1951 as a party member of the KF. In the parliamentary elections on November 16, 1952 - in contrast to the previous with majority voting rights - Averoff was not re-elected in the constituency of Ioannina and left the Greek parliament.

In the parliamentary elections in 1956 , Averoff succeeded in re-entering parliament as a member of the constituency of Ioannina. Before the election, Averoff had joined the conservative Ethniki Rizospastiki Enosis (ERE, National Radical Union ) party of long-time Prime Minister Konstantinos Karamanlis, of which he remained until its de facto dissolution by the military dictatorship in 1967. He resigned from his previous Liberal Party with its chairman Sophoklis Venizelos. He successfully defended the mandate for Ioannina in 1958, 1961, 1963 and 1964.

With his appointment as Minister of Agriculture on February 29, 1956, he joined the 2nd cabinet of Konstantinos Karamanlis and thus in the Greek government. Less than three months later, Averoff moved from the Ministry of Agriculture to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. He held this post until the resignation of Konstantinos Karamanlis on June 20, 1963, only interrupted monthly by transitional governments with the then Foreign Minister Michail Pesmazoglou. During his time as Greek Foreign Minister, the Cyprus conflict dominated Greece's foreign policy agenda. During his tenure, the armed resistance of the Greek Cypriots escalated in the form of the underground organization EOKA under Georgios Grivas against British colonial rule in Cyprus with the aim of annexing Cyprus to Greece (Enosis). In addition to the armed struggle against the British colonial power, the disputes between the Greek-Cypriot and Turkish-Cypriot population groups escalated into an open armed conflict in June 1958. An initiative by Averoff to resolve the Cyprus conflict through independence of Cyprus with simultaneous Greek guarantees against enosis prevented both by the leader of the Cyprus-Greeks, Makarios , and by their own Greek cabinet. A month later, Averoff took part in the meeting of then Yugoslav head of state Josip Broz Tito with Egyptian President Gamal Abdel Nasser on the island of Brijuni on July 8 and 9, 1958, to assure the support of the non-aligned states for the Greek position in the simmering Cyprus conflict . In the autumn of 1958, Averoff tried, as the representative of Greece at the UN, to obtain a resolution that was supposed to support the Greek position in the Cyprus conflict; he did not succeed. Averoff then opened talks on the future of Cyprus in recognition of the need for a negotiated solution with the then Turkish Foreign Minister Zorlu († 1961). In the subsequent negotiations in Zurich to resolve the Cyprus conflict between Great Britain , Turkey and Greece , Averoff officially represented Greece alongside the Prime Minister. The negotiations led to the London Guarantee Treaty for an independent Cyprus of February 19, 1959. On August 16, 1960 Cyprus became an independent state. To stabilize the peace process initiated in Cyprus, Averoff as Foreign Minister for Greece, the Turkish Foreign Minister Sarper and the Cypriot Foreign Minister Kyprianou agreed in December 1960 in Paris to set up a conciliation commission. In August 1962 Averoff visited Turkey to further defuse tensions between the two countries over the Cyprus conflict.

With the resignation of Prime Minister Karamanlis on June 11, 1963, Averoff had to give up the post of Foreign Minister. Averoff did not hold any ministerial office in the following two executive governments up to the parliamentary elections . The election defeat of the ERE in 1963 brought the previously opposition Center Union ( Enosis Kendrou , EK) to power. Until 1967 he was a member of parliament; in the Conservative governments from July 1965 to April 1967 he was not represented. The Conservative Prime Minister Panagiotis Kanellopoulos appointed Averoff for the second time as Minister of Agriculture in the last government before the beginning of the military dictatorship on April 3, 1967. Averoff's term of office ended after 18 days with the beginning of the Greek military dictatorship on April 21, 1967.

Averoff did not leave Greece during the Greek military dictatorship from 1967 to 1974. Averoff was finally targeted by the repressive apparatus of the military dictatorship in 1973. After the Greek destroyer Velos "deserted" to Italy in May 1973, Averoff was arrested; he was accused of “inciting”.

With the return of Konstantinos Karamanlis from exile in France in July 1974, Averoff returned to important political offices. Karamanlis appointed him as defense minister in his transitional government. Averoff joined the center-right Nea Dimokratia (ND) party founded by Karamanlis in 1974 . In November 1974 Karamanlis and the ND won the parliamentary elections : Averoff was again appointed Minister of Defense and held this post until October 21, 1981 (from May 1980 after the resignation of Karamanlis under Prime Minister Georgios Rallis ). In October 1981 , PASOK won the election ; there was a change of government.

After the resignation of Karamanlis in 1980, Rallis and Averoff competed for the chairmanship of the ND: Averoff was defeated by Rallis on May 8, 1980 with just 84 to 88 votes. The ND, with its Georgios Rallis government, lost the elections against the previously opposition PASOK under Andreas Papandreou . Andreas Papandreou himself succeeded Averoff as Minister of Defense (at the same time as Prime Minister).

The election defeat of the ND in 1981 promoted Averoff to the head of the Nea Dimokratia party: He was elected chairman and replaced Georgios Rallis in this function. In his capacity as leader of the opposition, he was able to gain seven percentage points against the ruling PASOK in the 1984 European elections compared to the last parliamentary election: PASOK lost to the same extent. The goal of replacing PASOK as the strongest party was not achieved. At the end of 1984, at the age of 75, he resigned as party chairman and was elected honorary chairman of the Nea Dimokratia.

On April 17, 1961 he was awarded the Bavarian Order of Merit.

Journalism

Averoff published in 1933 an economics work on a customs union in the Balkans, which was awarded a prize. From 1939 he turned to political publications and published - still at the time of the dictatorship of Ioannis Metaxas - a treatise on the population problem of Greece. In 1948 he wrote a book about the interests of the Kutsovlachen (Aromanians). From the 1960s onwards, Averoff also published prosaic and dramatic literature. He continued to publish political science and political writings to a lesser extent. In his novels "The Voice of the Earth" and "Voice of Pain" and "Delphic Earth" Averoff dealt with the Italian occupation in Thessaly and the situation of the population during it.

Selected works by Averoff in chronological order are:

• 1933 - The Balkan Customs Union (in French). Awarded the first Carnegie Prize.
• 1939 - Proposal to study the population problem of Greece (Συμβολή εις την έρευνα του πληθυσμιακού προβλήματος της Ελλάδος). Awarded the Athens Academy Prize.
• 1945 - freedom or death
• 1948 - The political side of the Koutsovlachian desire (Η πολιτική πλευρά του Κουτσοβλαχικού Ζητήματος)
• 1960 - The Foreign Policy of Greece (in Italian)
• 1964 - The Voice of the Earth.
• 1968 - swallows (Περιστέρια). Prose.
• 1969 - When the gods forgot (Όταν ξεχνούσαν οι θεοί). Prose.
• 1973 - Fire and Ax - Greece 1944-1949 (in French). Awarded the gold medal of the French Academy
• 1973 - Return to Mycenae (Επιστροφή στις Μυκήνες), play
• 1981 - A History of missed opportunities: The Cypriot Problem 1956-1963 (in English)

Economic activity

Averoff worked as a winemaker in his family's winery (Averoff or Katogi Strofilia ) in Metsovo . In the 1960s, he created a red wine (Cuveé) for the first time from an indigenous Greek and an imported grape variety. In addition to the winery, he was chairman of the "Michail Tositsa" facility in Kifissia , a suburb of Athens.

literature

• Tatjana Averoff-Ioannou: Evangelos Averoff-Tositsas 1908–1990. Averoff-Tositsa Foundation, Metsovo 2000.
• Evanthis Chatzivasiliou: Evangelos Averoff Tositsas 1908–1990 - Political Biography. I. Siederis Publishing House, Athens 2004.

Web link

• Website of the General Secretariat of the Greek Government (Geniki Grammatia tis Kyvernisis) with governments including all ministers and deputy ministers since 1909 (in Greek).

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Greek Constitution of June 9, 1975 (in German translation) ( Memento of the original of March 26, 2008 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.  
2. ^ Giannis S. Koliopoulos and John S. Koliopoulos: Plundered Loyalties: Axis Occupation and Civil Strife in Greek West. C. Hurst & Co. Publishers, 1999, p. 84, ISBN 1-85065-381-X
3. ^ Thomas W. Davis jr .: The Role of the United States in the Cyprus Dispute: Past and Present. In: Koumoulides, John TA (Ed.): Greece in Transition. Essays in the History of Modern Greece 1821-1974. Zeno Publishers, London 1977, p. 260, ISBN 0-7228-0013-4
4. ^ Newspaper article in the Greek newspaper Eleftheria of November 17, 1952, page 1. (available from the Greek National Library)
5. ^ Newspaper article in the Greek newspaper Eleftheria of November 18, 1952, p. 3. (available from the Greek National Library)
6. ^ Pavlos Tzermias: Modern Greek History. An introduction. 3. Edition. Francke Verlag, Tübingen and Basel, p. 180, ISBN 3-7720-1792-4
7. ^ Hermann Bünz and Reinhard Kunze: Supreme organs. In: Klaus-Detlev Grothusen (Hrsg.): Südosteuropa-Handbuch. Volume III. Greece. Verlag Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, Göttingen 1980, S 625, ISBN 3-525-36202-1
8. ^ Brendan O'Malley and Ian Craig: The Cyprus Conspiracy. America, Espionage and the Turkish Invasion. 2nd Edition. IB Tauris Publishers, London and New York 1999, p. 69, ISBN 1-86064-737-5 .
9. ^ Brendan O'Malley and Ian Craig: The Cyprus Conspiracy. America, Espionage and the Turkish Invasion. 2nd edition, IB Tauris Publishers, London and New York 1999, p. 71, ISBN 1-86064-737-5 .
10. ^ Asylum for Greek sailors in Rome - the captain's indictment against the regime after the failed coup in Salamis. In: The time . June 1, 1973. Retrieved March 21, 2013 . 
11. ^ Pavlos Tzermias: Modern Greek History. An introduction. 3rd edition, Francke Verlag, Tübingen and Basel, p. 218, ISBN 3-7720-1792-4
12. ^ Richard Clogg: History of Greece in the 19th and 20th centuries. A demolition. Romiosini Verlag, Cologne 1997, p. 219, ISBN 3-923889-13-7
13. ^ Richard Clogg: History of Greece in the 19th and 20th centuries. A demolition. Romiosini Verlag, Cologne 1997, p. 234, ISBN 3-923889-13-7
14. ↑ Franz Ronneberger and Georg Mergl: population structure. In: Grothusen, Klaus-Detlev (Hrsg.): Südosteuropa-Handbuch. Volume III. Greece. Verlag Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, Göttingen 1980, p. 376, ISBN 3-525-36202-1
15. ^ ^{A b} Isidora Rosenthal-Kamarinea : Modern Greek literature. In: Grothusen, Klaus-Detlev (Hrsg.): Südosteuropa-Handbuch. Volume III. Greece. Verlag Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, Göttingen 1980, p. 496, ISBN 3-525-36202-1

predecessor	Office	successor
Spyridon Theotokis	Foreign Minister of Greece 1956-1958	Mikhail Pezmazoglou
Mikhail Pezmazoglou	Foreign Minister of Greece 1958–1961	Mikhail Pezmazoglou
Mikhail Pezmazoglou	Foreign Minister of Greece 1961–1963	Panagiotis pipinelis
Efstathios Latsoudis (dictatorship)	Defense Minister of Greece 1974–1981	Andreas Papandreou