History of Athens

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The Acropolis in Athens

The history of Athens , today's Greek capital, goes back around 7500 years, that is, to the Neolithic Age . However, more precise details are only available from around 1600 BC. Known when a Mycenaean palace was built on the Acropolis (= high city ) . Athens is located on the Attica peninsula .

Overview: Early Period to Hellenism

The origin of the name of the city

The origin of the name Athens (in classical Greek Ἀθῆναι , Athenai ; today Αθήνα , Athína ) has not been elucidated. It is unclear whether the city is named after its patron goddess Athena or vice versa. Originally the singular form seems to have been Ἀθήνη ( Athḗnē ). In classical times , the plural Athênai came into use , analogous to other city names such as Thêbai ( Θῆβαι ) and Mykênai ( Μυκῆναι ) . The oldest written evidence for the later city goddess comes from the Mycenaean Greek of some linear B tables from the Cretan Knossos , where u. a. an A-ta-na po-ti-ni-ja (=  Athana potniya , either "Mistress Athana" or "Mistress Athens") is addressed.

Already in antiquity there are various, probably partly paretymological, interpretations of the theonym, which is regarded as the origin of the name, such as in the Platonic dialogues Kratylos and Timaeus , where the god's name soon derived from a fictional form Ἀθεονόα ( Atheonóa ) and above it from the terms θεός ( theós " God ”) and νοῦς ( noûs “ spirit ”), soon to be associated with the Egyptian goddess Neith .

While modern linguistics mostly assume a non-Indo-European origin of the name, myth research suggested the character of the goddess as a heaven or sun daughter and thus at least one association with the Indo-European pantheon was postulated.

Early and archaic

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The Mycenaean fortress (royal castle) of Athens remained, unlike most of the other previously known Mycenaean palace centers in Greece, possibly from the destruction shortly after 1200 BC. Chr. Spared. The inhabitants of Attica later always emphasized their old Ionic tradition and that they had no Doric elements. Nevertheless, the upheavals around and after 1200 BC left behind. BC also left their traces in Athens, whose influence in the Dark Ages of the next centuries remained rather minor.

According to later tradition, Athens initially held the local kingship, whose ancestral line was sought to be linked to the mythical prehistoric times. Whether there really was a monarch in Athens at the time is disputed in research. Apparently Athens society had at least one powerful nobility ( called the Eupatrids ) who, through an aristocratic council, the Areopagus , who met regularly on the Ares Hill not far from the Acropolis, exerted significant influence on state affairs. This Areopagus determined the city officials (the so-called Archons ) and the military commander (the Polemarchus ).

During the Archaic period (8th to 6th centuries BC) the city took a slow boom. Due to its central location and the active participation in sea trade via its port of Piraeus, Athens soon gained prosperity, in which, however, not all Athenians participated in the same way. Social tensions arose from the unification of the surrounding area (Attica) to form a polis . In the meantime, if there had been a kingdom, it faded into the background and finally disappeared. Allegedly since 682 BC The archons were only appointed for one year at a time.

Tensions within the Athens aristocracy increased, such as the attempted coup by Cylon around 632 BC. Shows who probably wanted to establish a tyranny. The need for a political reorganization became more pressing. Initially, Drakon tried to guarantee order with the proverbial “draconian penalties” by writing down the generally applicable penalties for the first time and displaying them publicly. This should prevent arbitrary judgments and blood revenge. The conflicts between nobles who sought supporters in the lower classes did not abate; a stasis threatened. Soon after Drakon, Solon provided reforms and legislation in the crisis of the polis for a balance of interests between noble landowners and impoverished citizens, some of whom lived in debt slavery. The Athenians were divided into four classes, only the highest of which was admitted to political office. At the same time, however, debt slavery and oversized land ownership were abolished and free trade was promoted. Citizens of all classes had the right to vote in the popular assembly, a first democratic element in the development of Athens.

But initially Solon's attempt at pacification failed because the power struggles in the nobility continued. Probably in the year 561 BC. Chr. It came with the takeover of Peisistratos to tyranny , the rule of an individual, the v after his death in 527. Was continued by his sons, Hippias and Hipparchus . The tyranny in Athens ended in 510 with the murder of one of the brothers and the expulsion of the other. A Spartan intervention played an important role .

The flowering of democracy in the 5th century BC Chr.

After tyranny was removed in 510 BC. There was a slow process of democratization (see Kleisthenes of Athens ). Another milestone towards democracy and the avoidance of renewed tyranny is the introduction of the broken court . Around 500 BC The Persian Wars determined city ​​life after Athens sided with the rebels during the Ionian uprising against the Persian Empire . The most famous battles are those of Marathon (490 BC) and Salamis (480 BC). After the Battle of Salamis , the Athenians succeeded in expanding their power to other cities and founding the Attic League (477 BC). With the help of the League, Athens established a hegemony over large parts of Greece and Asia Minor : The League itself developed into the Attic Empire and Athens into the strongest naval power.

The 5th century BC From a cultural point of view, Athens was also in its heyday: Philosopher , writer, mathematician or artist who were self-respecting lived in Athens. Good examples are the writers Aeschylus , Aristophanes , Euripides and Sophocles , the historians Herodotus , Thucydides , the philosopher Socrates , the poet Simonides and the sculptor Phidias . Athens had around 40,000 inhabitants (all of Attica around 300,000 inhabitants) and extended over an area of ​​around 2 × 2 km around the Acropolis . The main square, the agora , was located near today's Monastiraki Square. To the south of it was the Pnyx , where the popular assemblies were held. Important temples in the city included the Athena sanctuaries and the Erechtheion on the Acropolis, as well as the Temple of Hephaestus .

Most of the Athenian population did not consist of full citizens, but slaves or strangers ( Metöken ) who had practically no rights. The most influential politician in the city at that time was Perikles , who had the monuments destroyed by the Persians rebuilt on the Acropolis and, as he said, made the city the "school of Greece" . Under Pericles, the Attic democracy was brought to its climax.

But Athens government policy was no longer supported by all members of the Attic League. The differences with Corinth (and indirectly with Sparta ) finally led to the Peloponnesian War against the so-called Peloponnesian League , which was led by Sparta. Pericles' strategy of not facing the superior Spartan army in open combat and instead operating with the fleet did not have lasting success.

In addition, from 430 BC BC to 426 BC A third of the city's inhabitants died of an epidemic (see Attic epidemic ). DNA tests carried out by Greek researchers at the National and Kapodistrian University of Athens in 2006 on skeletons from this period suggest that it was typhoid , not the plague , as previously thought. However, these findings were soon called into question again. Pericles also died in 429 BC. At the consequences of this epidemic.

In 421 BC The Peace of Nikias came about , but it did not last long: Sparta advanced against Argos , while Athens turned to the slowly disintegrating League. 415 BC The Athenians, under the influence of Alcibiades , undertook the so-called Sicilian expedition , which began in 413 BC. Ended in disaster for Athens. The Persian Empire intervened in favor of Sparta and despite some victories, the Athenians were defeated in 405 BC. In the battle of Aigospotamoi . The war finally ended in 404 BC. With a complete defeat of Athens.

Athens had to dissolve the League and was temporarily ruled by an oligarchic government before 403 BC. A moderate democracy could be established again.

Athens in the 4th century BC Chr.

In the 4th century BC The philosophers Plato and Aristotle brought philosophy to bloom, after Thucydides the historian Xenophon connects .

While democratic Athens in the 4th century BC For a long time BC was regarded as an era of "decline" and "retreat into the private sphere", the picture in research has gradually changed since the 1980s. The democratic institutions - not staffed with civil servants and specialists, but with citizens drawn every year - continued to work; nothing has been handed down of citizens' disenchantment with politics. The constant architectural expansion of the Pnyx, where the people's assembly, the central body for democratic decisions, met, speaks for the political commitment. No politician - not even the influential Macedonian opponent Demosthenes - was able to achieve such a dominant position as Pericles occupied in the 5th century.

In the decades after the Peloponnesian War, the Athenians gradually regained their freedom of action through a clever rocking policy between Persia and the rival Greek powers Sparta and Thebes . 377 BC They succeeded in founding a smaller sea alliance. In the permanent wars for supremacy in Greece, Athens at times fought for a general peace between the poleis.

Since the 50s of the 4th century BC Athens faced the rising power of Macedonia under its king Philip II . At the instigation of Demosthenes an anti-Macedonian alliance came about in almost all Greek cities, but his army in 338 BC. Was defeated by the Macedonians in the battle of Chaeronea . In the following year Athens felt compelled to join the Corinthian League , which was dominated by King Philip .

Athens in the time of Hellenism and under the Romans

Philip and after him his son Alexander the Great respected the great tradition of Athens. After Alexander's death, Athens and other Greek city-states rose again against the Macedonians in the so-called Lamic War, but were defeated. Athens had to restrict its democracy and endure a Macedonian garrison. From 317 to 307 BC Demetrios of Phaleron , a disciple of Aristotle, ruled as administrator supported by the Macedonians.

After Demetrios von Phaleron was driven out with the help of Demetrios Poliorketes , Athens returned to radical democracy and defended itself until 262 BC. BC successfully against the Macedonian attempts at conquest. After the defeat in the Chremonideischen War the city was until 229 BC. BC Macedonian, then Athens became free again. Independent Athens regained its cultural importance and became an important political field of action for the Diadochi and their successor states, who sought the favor of the Greek public with numerous foundations (for example the Stoa of Attalus). Athens sided with Rome in the clashes between Macedonia and the Roman Empire .

In the year 86 BC However, Sulla saw Athens as a punishment for supporting Mithridates VI. conquered and sacked. But even under the Roman emperors, the city remained a center of cultural life and had the status of a free city. Many members of the Roman upper class went to Athens for a while to pursue philosophical studies.

Emperor Hadrian had extensive construction work carried out in the city. From the 3rd century the city was a center of Neoplatonism ; A pillage by Herulian warriors in AD 267 hit Athens hard, but the place quickly recovered. However, since 380, as under Theodosius I , the Christianity in fact Roman state religion, and were more forbidden than all pagan cults even after 391, the importance was as an educational center more and more lost. In 397 Gothic warriors sacked Attica, but not Athens. The Eastern Roman Emperor Justinian I finally closed the philosophy schools in 529, which were considered a refuge of paganism for a reason. The last Athenian philosophers first sought refuge in Persia, but returned to the Imperium Romanum in 532 . The closure of the Platonic Academy is often seen as the beginning of the end of ancient Athens. Finally, around 580, heavy destruction by Avar and Slavic warriors marked the end of the city's ancient history.

Sights from ancient times

Temple of Hephaestus

Athens is an important tourist destination not least because of the sights from antiquity. In addition to the Acropolis with the Parthenon and Erechtheion , the Greek and Roman Agora with the Temple of Hephaestus and the Tower of the Winds are important sights. Further evidence of antiquity are the Areopagus , the Pnyx and the Temple of Zeus . At Cape Sounion there is the Temple of Poseidon, another temple on the island of Aegina . Significant exhibits are in the National Archaeological Museum .

Timeline: Early to Modern

Wine jug from the late Geometric period , around 750 BC BC, today in the Louvre .

Neolithic Age (approx. 5000-3000 BC)

First signs of a settlement on the Acropolis in Athens.

Bronze Age (approx. 3000-1050 BC)

During the late Bronze Age ( Späthelladikum ) in the 14th century BC A Mycenaean royal palace on the Acropolis and in the second half of the 13th century BC A defensive wall was built. Unlike some other major Mycenaean cities like Pylos , Athens remained in the 12th century BC. Populated during the Late Helladic III C).

Sub-Mycenaean and Protogeometric Period (approx. 1050–900 BC)

Geometric Period (900-700 BC)

By the 8th century Athens had stabilized again and consolidated its central position in the Greek world, the fortress on the Acropolis and access to the sea gave the city a great advantage over possible rivals such as Thebes and Sparta . Since the beginning of the 1st millennium BC The court hearings were carried out on the Areopagus . The Athenian kingdom, whose last king is said to have been the legendary Kodros , is also classified in this period .

Archaic Period (700–500 BC)

In the 7th century BC Chr. Drakon passed very harsh laws ( Draconic punishments ), which Solon (640–559 BC, one of the seven wise men) softened and extended civil rights to the poorer strata of the people. 515 BC Start of construction of the largest temple on the Greek mainland, the Olympieion , under the tyrant Peisistratos . After the death of the tyrant, the reign of terror of Hippias (son of Peisistratos) followed, who lived in 510 BC. Was overthrown. With the reform of Kleisthenes of Athens and the disempowerment of the nobility and the simultaneous establishment of democracy , the further construction of the giant temple was stopped. (King Antiochus IV had work resumed in 174 BC. The temple was finally completed about 640 years after construction began under the Roman Emperor Hadrian .)

Reforms of Kleisthenes (around 507 BC)

Athenian tetradrachm around 449 BC Chr.
schematic representation of the political order of Attica according to Solon

Due to the size of Attica, some regions were located quite a long way from the actual center of the area - Athens - and were thus isolated from political events. Kleisthenes' goal, however, was to involve the entire Attic population in politics and thus give them a sense of belonging to the community.

For this purpose he divided the Attic population into 139 demes. These were roughly the size of a village and administered themselves on the basis of equality. They formed the smallest units of the new phylene system . Attica was divided into three regions. The city of Athens itself to the coast, the inland and the rest of the coast. Each region also consisted of ten related departments. These altogether 30 departments were in turn merged into ten phyls, each phyle belonging to a department from the city, one from the coast and one from the inland. (Hence the name Trittyes (third districts) for the departments.) Around 3500 citizens belonged to a phyle.

Since all three regions were represented in each phyle, it formed a “cross-section” through the entire Attic population. A preference for the urban population was thus avoided. Instead, this reorganization enabled an institutional and social integration of both the center and the periphery:

The aim of the reform was the presence of the entire citizenry and their participation in politics and cooperation between the population groups, i.e. political cooperation between the phyle: Each phyle sent 50 representatives to the boules (council assembly), which formed the council of five hundred. (These representatives were drawn because chance was above all the will of the gods.) The will of the people was to be made present in Athens in this way.

The Athenian Democracy was, as the historian Thucydides the politician Pericles puts in his mouth, a significant part to power and to the economic prosperity of the city at. “The constitution we live by does not compare to any of the foreign ones. Because the state is not based on a few citizens but on a larger number, it is called people's rule. [...] But we live freely together in the state ... " (Thuk. II. 37)

With the schools of Plato and Aristotle , Athens formed an important philosophical center. In the Peloponnesian War it lost its influence.

Persian Wars (500–479 BC)

In the early 5th century BC The Persian great kings Darius I and Xerxes I tried in vain to incorporate Greece into their empire by military force. Important events were:

Classical Period (479–338 BC)

The ancient city of Athens; underlaid the modern road network ( P. W. Forchhammer , 1841)

Athens was one of the most powerful poleis of ancient Greece and the great opponent of Sparta in the Peloponnesian War . Athens was - with the Constitution of Solon , especially since the reform of Kleisthenes of Athens - the first democracy in history. This form of government experienced its ultimate heyday in the 4th century, when the time of Athens' greatest development of power was already over.

Hellenistic period (338–146 BC)

Demosthenes , Athenian politician and most famous orator of antiquity (Philippika), tries in an alliance with Thebes to defend himself against the Macedonian great power under Philip II . However, Athens loses its independence in 338 BC. At the battle of Chaeronea . An attempt in 322 after the death of Alexander the Great to shake off Macedonian rule fails. Athens' time as a sovereign power is over, but culturally and economically the city will remain important in the centuries to come.

Roman period (146 BC-582 AD)

The Hadrianstor near the Olympieion marks the entrance to Adrian city .
Athenian area (marked in dark red) around the time of Emperor Augustus

At least since 146 BC The city, which had existed since 229 BC, stood. BC was considered a “friend” of Rome, as was the rest of Greece, in fact under Roman rule. Since the Romans were supported early on, Athens was first promoted and experienced around 100 BC. An economic boom. The tide turned when the Athenians in 88 BC. Under the tyranny of Aristion decided to give King Mithridates VI. to support against Rome: In the year 86 BC It came to the conquest of Athens by the troops of the Roman general Sulla and the thorough sacking of the place, which however retained its reputation as an intellectual center and the status of a "free city" and soon recovered.

Wealthy Romans acted as benefactors of the city, and the emperors followed their example: the Roman Agora was built during the reign of the first emperor Augustus . The apostle Paul also visited Athens on his second journey ( Acts 17.15–17.34) and preached with moderate success on the Agora and Areopagus (49 AD). Emperor Hadrian (117-138 AD), a personal friend of Herodes Atticus , then stayed several times in Athens. The philhellene and art lover donated several large buildings to Athens: he had Hadrian's city built (today, above all, Hadrian's Gate ) and Hadrian's library , as well as the completion of the huge Temple of Olympian Zeus (the Olympieion ) , which was begun in archaic times . The theater of Herodes Atticus at the foot of the Acropolis was also built in Roman times . The city has now reached the peak of its urban development.

During the imperial crisis of the 3rd century , Athens was conquered by the Germanic Herulians in 267 , after the defensive structures had been neglected since their destruction by Sulla due to a lack of external threats and were only inadequately restored. The city was largely able to recover from the destruction and remained an important intellectual center in late antiquity . Between 529 and 531 the Athenian schools of philosophy were closed by Emperor Justinian I , which accelerated the city's decline.

Byzantine Period (582-1453)

Mosaics in Daphni Monastery from the 10th century

See also: List of Byzantine Emperors (364–1453)

In the late 6th century, probably around 582, Athens was badly destroyed by Slavic and Avar attackers as part of the Slavic conquest . This marked the end of the ancient phase of the city, which, like most of Greece, temporarily slipped out of imperial control.
The urban area probably shrank to a small area at the foot of the Acropolis, which already had its own fortification in late antiquity, in which the remains of Hadrian's Library and the Herodes Atticus Theater were supposedly integrated. Athens remained the bishopric. Born in Athens, Irene became the first single empress of the Byzantine Empire in 797 .

After the Fourth Crusade in 1204, Athens became a Frankish duchy under the suzerainty of the "King" of Thessaly . Around 1260 the city fell again to the Byzantines.

Ottoman period (1453-1832)

Mosque construction at Hadrian's Library

In 1456 Sultan Mehmed II conquered Athens [Setines]. He granted her certain privileges, such as self-government for the Christian population. Athens also remained a bishopric.

During the Great Turkish War against the Ottoman Empire in 1687 when Athens was besieged by the Venetians, the Parthenon temple on the Acropolis was hit and parts of the temple were destroyed when the Turkish ammunition depot there exploded. After the reconquest by the Ottomans, the city recovered and with 10,000 to 12,000 inhabitants was one of the larger in the southern Balkans.

In the Greek struggle for independence , the locals succeeded in taking the Acropolis and thus the city from the Turks in 1822 . A Greek occupation stayed in the city for four years, then in 1826 there was a siege by Ottoman forces under Reschid Pasha . On June 5, 1827, the crew surrendered against the condition of free withdrawal. Turkish troops temporarily occupied Athens again until March 1833.

Modern Greek time

1832-1912

Athens in 1868
Fencing competitions of the 1896 Olympic Games in Zappeion

See also: List of Greek Kings and Presidents (1832-1995)

At the beginning of the 19th century after the Wars of Independence, Athens was just a rubble field with around 300 intact houses. Parts of the population had fled, died or displaced. The number of inhabitants has more than halved to around 4,000. The first theater event took place in the city in 1830. In 1834 the capital was moved from Nauplion to Athens. The first Greek king, Otto I (1832–1862) had Athens expanded and commissioned numerous classicist buildings, including the Athens Trilogy . In 1843 King Otto I involuntarily enacted a constitution under revolutionary pressure.

Josef von Ow wrote in his memoirs in 1854: “The Society of Athens is a model map of all the nations of Europe” and mentions how Italians, French, Germans and English settled in the city and founded companies such as the Fix brewery in 1864 . In 1862 the rule of Otto I ended and the House of Wittelsbach had to leave Athens. 1863–1913 George I became King of Greece.

Around 1860, elegant cafes and restaurants appeared outside of the large hotels and were frequented by a new middle class and students. Simple taverns and shops remained the meeting places of the lower classes. Around 1890 the social separation disappeared again in public.

In 1869 the first steam railway line in Greece was opened, which connected Athens with the port of Piraeus, this was electrified from 1904 and gradually expanded to the Athens subway . In 1882 the horse-drawn tram was put into operation, from which the Athens electric tram emerged in 1908 . In 1877 a French company expanded the gas plant, which had existed since 1859, and introduced street lighting. Electricity was also introduced before the turn of the century. Since 1856 there have been efforts to establish a large state stage. In 1880 the National Theater was finally opened. The Athens market hall was inaugurated in 1878, and in the same year Heinrich Schliemann had a representative house built by Ernst Ziller , which he called the Palace of Ilion and which today houses the numismatic museum . Around 1880 the population of the city area exceeded 100,000. In 1896 the first modern Olympic Summer Games took place in Athens , in 1906 the Interim Olympiad took place as an anniversary event, to which many Olympic rites are owed. The telephone network was established in 1908.

A popular entertainment was public square concerts, which were held, for example, in the Zappeion Park or in front of the castle. Since the turn of the century there has also been a popular excursion restaurant right on the Zappeion , which soon also hosted concerts that were later directed by the composer Manolis Kalomiris . A special feature was that women also took part in the event for the first time, so far this has only been the case with explicit female roles on stages. The oasis , the first Athens vaudeville theater, was built near the Zappeion and, since the inter-war period, the bar the cows , which staged a farm with a stable in the middle of the city and offered fresh cow's milk. A general distinction was made in Athens between Café Aman , bars that served water pipes and where fortune tellers and charlatans performed, and Café chanting the variety shows. Athens' nightlife earned the city the reputation of being the Paris of the eastern Mediterranean.

1912-1944

Greek and Armenian refugees from Turkey, 1923
Herbert von Karajan in the Odeon of Herodes Atticus , 1939
Wehrmacht tanks at Thesion, 1943

In two Balkan Wars in 1912/1913, the Ottoman Empire was pushed back from Southeastern Europe to today's borders of Turkey and had to cede large areas to neighboring countries. In June 1917 Greece entered the First World War under the influence of Eleftherios Venizelos . The Allies had previously occupied Athens and almost all strategically important parts of the country.

In 1920 Greece sparked the Greco-Turkish War in Asia Minor, which lasted until 1922 (Asia Minor catastrophe). 230,000 refugees from Asia Minor came to Athens, which in 1880 had no more than 100,000 inhabitants. The state allocated land to the refugees on the outskirts, and barrack settlements were built. The city palace temporarily became a transit home. The large number of workers promoted the industrialization of the city and often founded small businesses themselves.

The cultural life of Athens was shaped by the pent-up demand since the founding of the state until the early 1920s. Music, literature, art and architecture flourished and turned the city into a metropolis of the avant-garde . Artists and conductors such as Egon Petri , Camille Saint-Saëns , Arthur Rubinstein , Jacques Thibaud visited Athens several times for inspiration. Felix Petyrek settled permanently in Athens and worked at the Athens Conservatory . The Academy of Athens was officially established as an institution in 1926. In 1933 the World Congress of Architects took place and the Athens Charter became a manifesto of modernity. In 1938, 15-year-old Maria Callas made her debut at the Athens Opera. The impulses of that time in Athens are now referred to as the generation of the 1930s .

Politically, the epoch was marked by great instability; a revolution had taken place in 1922 that resulted in the overthrow of the monarchy . This was followed by a republic from 1924 to 1935, which was followed by a return to the monarchy in 1935 with an authoritarian regime under General Metaxas .

After the Italian attack on Greece was repulsed at the end of 1940, the German Balkan campaign followed in April 1941 ; the Greek government fled to Alexandria on the armored cruiser Georgios Averoff ( Trokadero Marina Ship Museum in Paleo Faliro ) . On April 23, Greece capitulated; On the morning of April 27, Athens was occupied by troops of the 6th Panzer Division without a fight . The whole country was divided into zones of occupation by the Axis powers, the Third Reich reserved economic exploitation for all zones and founded the DEGRIGES in order to pull property and assets out of the country. On May 31, 1941, Manolis Glezos tore the swastika flag from the Acropolis as a sign of resistance . The great famine as a result of the looting by the occupying power hit the urban population particularly hard: in the winter of 1941/1942 and 1942–1943, over 100,000 people died from starvation in the Athens metropolitan area. When the deportation of the Jews was due in 1944, the Athens Archbishop Damaskinos ordered that all monasteries and nunneries in Athens and the province should accept any Jew who asked for protection. He also ordered backdated baptism certificates to be issued to Jews. Since Greek identity cards and passports indicated religious affiliation, the police chief Angelos Evert had new documents issued for 1200 Jews, which identified them as Christians. 1800 of 3500 Jews in Athens could be saved from deportation. On October 13, 1944, units of the British Army entered Athens; shortly afterwards the government in exile returned to Faliron .

Since 1944

The Omonia Square in the early 1960s, in the background the coffee roasting Bravo
  • 1944–1949 The Greek Civil War also shakes the capital. On December 3, 1944, 15 demonstrators were shot by the police at a mass demonstration by the EAM on Syntagma Square . ELAS units attack police stations and engage in street fights with British forces.
  • One of the most important late works by Walter Gropius (1883–1969) is in Athens: the American embassy, ​​built from 1956 to 1961.

A second wave of immigrants came to Athens until the 1960s. The cause was the backwardness in the country caused by world war and civil war. A lack of infrastructure delayed the decentralization of the industry. Until the 1970s, the outskirts of Athens were dominated by industrial establishments that contributed to air pollution.

The Greek military dictatorship (junta) ruled from 1967 to 1974, and on November 17, 1973 the uprising at the Polytechnic was brutally suppressed. On the night of July 24, 1974, Konstantinos Karamanlis landed in Athens, was greeted by a cheering population and sworn in as Prime Minister that night. The military regime had collapsed.

In 1980, Greece's accession to the then EEC was signed in Zappeion , and on December 19 of the same year, in the middle of the pre-Christmas period, arson attacks were carried out on the Minion and Karantzos department stores . The boom that followed the decline of the military dictatorship has increased the number of cars, so traffic jams and smog are the norm from the 1980s onwards. As a first measure, the “Daktylios” (finger) was introduced, in which only cars with even or uneven license plates are allowed to enter alternately on smog-prone days. Bus lanes were introduced and trees were planted. Smog and traffic jams could already be contained with the first measures, the situation was also favored by the reduction in parking space in the city center.

Expansion of the infrastructure in the 1990s

Wall on Syntagma Metro Station

The rapid growth of Athens had long led to a neglect of the infrastructure, which was made up for in the 1990s in particular. Athens' application for the 1996 Olympic Games in 1990 served as an impetus. Although the application with 2nd place actually failed, the public discourse about the quality of life in the city was initiated. The town planner and architect Antonis Tritsis was elected mayor with the support of both major popular parties. The Megaro Mousikis concert hall was completed in 1991, and in 1994 the large Psyttalia sewage treatment plant on the island of the same name went into operation. At around the same time, the construction of underground lines 2 and 3 began. In 1997, the World Athletics Championships took place, which provided essential information about the later Olympic Games.

State and municipal finances, especially rail transport was modernized and expanded ( metro Athens , Athens Tram and Proastiakos ), privately the Athens city highway and the new are Athens airport emerged. All work was delayed by meticulously executed archaeological excavations (for the suspension or shortening of which there would be no sympathy among the population). Even the far away airport was affected, where relics were found from ancient evidence to early Christian graves. The small medieval church of St. Peter and St. Paul was moved to another property on rails.

The central section of the subway from Syntagma Square to Monastiraki remained unfinished for years due to excavations, and the route with the already excavated Keramikos station had to be relocated due to an important excavation area, a new station was built about 1000 m further north. The yield of finds is large and was shown in the exhibition “the city below the city”. The subway construction is considered to be the largest inner-city archaeological campaign on the European continent. In 2003 a European accession treaty was signed again, this time the accession of the ten Eastern European countries to the EU on the ancient agora .

Olympic Games and urban development impulses

Velodrome at the OAKA sports complex

The changed safety regulations after September 11, 2001 as well as new requirements of the IOC had led to delays in the preparations. The planning committee's detailed descriptions of the state of the buildings were lost in numerous press releases that considered it impossible to hold the games on time. The dirt campaign was ultimately the high price paid for the sophisticated buildings by star architect Santiago Calatrava .

The post-Olympic use of the buildings, such as the former airport site and later sports field in Hellenikon or the facilities in Faliro, provide further structural impulses. The additional toll revenue from the ring road is to flow into the construction of a new underground line 4. The acceptance by the Stavros-Niarchos-Foundation of a donation of a new opera and a new national library on the derelict site of the former racetrack had to be postponed because the Greek state cannot provide for maintenance due to new austerity measures. In 2009 the new Acropolis Museum was inaugurated after the "biggest move in the history of Athens" .

Since the turn of the millennium, Athens has increasingly been a destination for emigrants. Came the immigrants since the 1990s, especially from neighboring countries, the immigrants are now increasingly from Asia and Africa. For example, a Chinatown and an oriental quarter were created. At the same time, aided by the long coastline and the poorly secure border with Turkey, there was an increase in economic emigration to Athens organized by gangs of smugglers, which overwhelmed the already difficult economic situation of the city and the state.

After Elena Paparizou won the Eurovision Song Contest in 2005, the event took place on May 18 (semifinals) and the Eurovision Song Contest 2006 on May 20, 2006 in the Olympic Indoor Hall .

After a 15-year-old was shot dead by a police officer in Athens, violent riots broke out on December 6, 2008 in Athens and later in other cities in Greece , which lasted until December 31. The circumstances surrounding the death of the youngster are controversial. The police officer who fired the fatal shot was charged with murder in June 2009. Another police officer present at the time of the crime is charged as an accomplice.

literature

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ See Homer, Odyssey 7.80 .
  2. ↑ KN V 52, Text 208, in: Michael Ventris and John Chadwick: Documents in Mycenaean Greek . Second edition. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge 1973; see. the entry a-ta-na , at palaeolexicon.com, accessed on October 6, 2016.
  3. ↑ Plato, Cratylus , 407b.
  4. ^ Plato, Timaeus , 21e.
  5. ↑ Cf. Günther Neumann: “The Lydian name of Athena. Re-reading of the Lydian Inscription No. 40 ”, in: Kadmos , Vol. 6 (1967); Robert SP Beekes: Etymological Dictionary of Greek . Brill, Leiden 2009, p. 29.
  6. ↑ Miriam Robbins Dexter: “Proto-Indo-European Sun Maidens and Gods of the Moon”, in: Mankind Quarterly , Vol. 25 / 1–2 (Fall / Winter 1984), pp. 137–144; see. the recourse to the surnames Τριτογένεια, Tritogéneia , and Διός θυγάτηρ, Diós thygátēr "Zeus daughter ", with Michael Janda: Elysion. Origin and development of the Greek religion . Innsbruck 2005, p. 293f.
  7. ↑ Scienceticker ( Memento of the original from May 19, 2009 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. @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.scienceticker.info
  8. ↑ B. Shapiro, A. Rambaut, M. Gilbert, No proof did typhoid Caused the Plague of Athens (a reply to Papagrigorakis et al.) , In: International Journal of Infectious Diseases 10 (4), 2006, p 334 f .; Answer to this: ibid., P. 335 f.
  9. ↑ Sigrid Deger-Jalkotzy : The exploration of the collapse of the so-called Mycenaean culture and the so-called Dark Ages. In: Joachim Latacz (Ed.): Two hundred years of Homer research. Colloquium Rauricum Vol. 2, 1991, p. 139; Penelope A. Mountjoy : Mycenaean Pottery. An Introduction. Oxford University Press, Oxford 2 2001 (1st edition 1993), pp. 130 f.
  10. ↑ Overview of the pericle constitution: inka.de
  11. ^ Notes of a Junker at the Court of Athens, Volume 1 By Josef von Ow, p. 75
  12. ^ Notes of a Junker at the Court of Athens, Volume 1 By Josef von Ow, p. 71
  13. ↑ Harald Heppner : Capitals in Southeast Europe: History, Function, National Symbolism, page 131
  14. ↑ a b c Harald Heppner: Capitals in Southeast Europe: History, Function, National Symbolism, page 122
  15. ↑ Harald Heppner: Capitals in Southeast Europe: History, Function, National Symbolism, page 134
  16. ^ Paul Hellander: Greece, page 99
  17. ^ Maria Helfgott, Eike Rathgeber, Nikolaus Urbanek : Viennese Music History: Approaches, Analyzes, Outlooks, p. 551
  18. ^ Mark Mazower: Inside Hitler's Greece: The Experience of Occupation, 1941-1944 . Yale University Press, 2011 ( ISBN 978-0-300-08923-3 ), pp. 4f. .
  19. ↑ Der Spiegel 46/1982, review of: Martin Gilbert: Endlösung . The expulsion and extermination of the Jews. An atlas (Rowohlt 1982)
  20. ↑ Murder charges against police officers who shot the 15-year-old by (red) on derstandard.at, accessed December 28, 2009