Greeks in Austria

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

There are around 1,800 Greek citizens living in Austria. In addition to this relatively small group of immigrants among the 730,000 foreign citizens living in Austria, the Greek Orthodox Church in Austria has around 18,000 members, most of whom are descendants of immigrant Greeks.

Hellenism in Austria-Hungary achieved its greatest economic importance and social recognition in the 19th century.

history

Greek merchants lived in Vienna even before the first crusade (1096–99). According to the Wiener Geschichtsblätter: "The crusades and the resulting dynastic relations between the Babenbergs and Byzantium brought a number of Greek traders to Vienna" In the nobility, contacts between Greeks and Austrians can be traced back to the Middle Ages.

The Levant Trade

Since the 17th century there was an emigration of Greeks to Austria. Similar to the Huguenots from France, the Greeks sought the possibility of economic development in Austria, which they were denied in their homeland. When the borders of the Ottoman Empire opened up a little, merchants in particular took the opportunity to settle in Austria and set up trading houses and banks. With the presence of the Greeks, Austria expanded its oriental trade, as they had contacts in the Ottoman Empire as traders. In the 3rd district of Landstrasse , Ungargasse No. 37, there is still a former caravanserai to see.

So they sold the Maria Theresa thalers , which were popular there because of their minting quality, to the Ottoman Empire and obtained tobacco, coffee and carpets from there. Their main activities soon shifted to domestic trade within Austria-Hungary. Places of the monarchy with a significant German-speaking minority often had a larger Greek community, so there were Greek churches and communities in Temeschburg and Neusatz .

At first they suffered from regulations, later they were granted privileges, as they were the bearers of the Austrian Levant trade .

Contrary to  what the legend says, a Greek named Johannes Theodat opened Vienna's first coffee house on January 17, 1685 on Haarmarkt (today Rotenturmstrasse 14) . In the year 1700 there were already four Greeks who had been given the privilege of "serving coffee to the public".

From trading to lending

The Vienna Ephemeris was the first ever Greek-language newspaper.

As a result of complaints about alleged capital outflows and acquisitions of goods in the Ottoman Empire, many Greeks preferred to turn away from trade.

The oath of allegiance of 1774 forced the Greeks to accept Austrian citizenship and meant the loss of their privileges as Greeks. Many took advantage of the opportunity and bought land, but a large part stayed with the lucrative Levant trade. The official harassment forced them to organize in guilds that acted as interest groups.

In the medium term, banking established itself as the most important field of activity for the Greeks in Austria. The credit system was previously a very static affair and can be compared with today's mortgages. With the entry of the Greeks it had become a component of trade. They granted short-term loans to merchants to buy goods and introduced bookkeeping and bills of exchange for the first time.

Social establishment and center of the Greek diaspora

The banking house of Simon Georg Sina and his son Georg Simon von Sina granted generous loans to the Austro-Hungarian monarchy during the Napoleonic Wars and acquired lands in Austria, Bohemia and Hungary. At the same time, infrastructure projects such as railway and canal construction were financed. The entrepreneur Nikolaus Dumba was an important art patron. As a patron of music, he also held the office of vice-president of the Gesellschaft der Musikfreunde in Vienna . So wrote Johann Strauss (son) the waltz The Blue Danube to a premiere in Dumbas Palais.

In ice skating, Georg Zachariades was twice European champion, but he competed for Germany. As a member of the Vienna Ice Skating Association , Demeter Diamantidi worked on the work “Tracks on the Ice - The Development of Ice Skating on the Track of the Vienna Ice Skating Association” and also drew the illustration; it is still considered a standard work today.

Until the liberation of Greece, Vienna became the center of the Greek diaspora. Critical authors found a platform in the newspaper Ephemeris , the newspaper Hermes the Scholar became the mouthpiece of the Greek Enlightenment. The Greek national hero Rigas Feraios also settled in Vienna in 1796, where he composed revolutionary songs and wrote the Charter of Hellas as a draft constitution for a federal new Greek state. Eleonore Condorussi became known as an actress , for whom Johann Nestroy wrote numerous roles.

Towards the end of the k. u. k. In the monarchy, Austrians of Greek origin were also in high positions in the diplomatic service, for example Hugo II. Logothetti was the last envoy of the monarchy in Tehran and Konstantin Dumba was the last envoy of the monarchy in the USA.

In the early 20th century the tennis player Georg von Metaxa and son of the lawyer and district commissioner of Vienna-Hietzing Stefan von Metaxa competed in numerous tournaments for Austria. The Baltazzi brothers also competed for Austria at horse shows. The skater and mountaineer Demeter Diamantidi climbed for the 40th Jubilee of Emperor Franz Joseph I. The Agglsspitze .

Since the 20th century

In the 1950s and 1960s, students from wealthy Greek families came to Austria to study. Here they had the opportunity to study subjects that were severely restricted in their home country. The most popular place to study was Graz . Some of the graduates stayed in Austria and now form the Greek community in Austria together with Greeks whose ancestors came as traders.

Urban development traces today

The Greek Church of the Holy Trinity at the meat market

The Sina family brought the Danish architect Theophil Hansen to Vienna for their building projects. Hansen had made a name for himself in Greece as a classical architect. In addition to various commercial buildings and the Rappoltenkirchen Castle, the Greek Church of the Holy Trinity and the new Palais Sina were built . Dumba also had Hansen built and built the Palais Dumba . The Palais Ephrussi of the banker Ignaz von Ephrussi was also built on Vienna's Ringstrasse . Hansen was now also known in Austria and received prominent orders such as the parliament building , which he also built in the classical Greek style. The grandson of the Sina family, Simon von Sina donated the new building for the University of Vienna .

The Viennese meat market was once the Greek quarter of the city of Vienna , here is the Georgskirche , the Greek Church of the Holy Trinity and the Greeks Lane . The traditional Austrian restaurant Greeksbeisl is also located here and was once a tavern visited by Greeks.

Demographics

With the decree of 1774 all immigrant Greeks of Austria-Hungary were naturalized. Since then, they have no longer been recorded statistically in Austria. However, the Greek Orthodox community gives a number of 18,000 believers, 10,000 of whom live in Vienna. This also includes the 1,848 Greek citizens listed by Statistics Austria who live in Austria and 90% of whom were born abroad. According to the Greek Embassy, ​​the “Greek Community in Austria” has around 5000 members, the majority of which are in Vienna, Graz and Linz.

Institutions

Pedagogy and teaching of Greek culture

The Greek school in Vienna can look back on 200 years of tradition and is the Greek school with the longest uninterrupted teaching in Greek outside of Greece. It was founded in 1804, but lost the status of a state elementary school in 1920 and has specialized in language teaching ever since.

The Institute for Byzantine and Neo- Greek Studies at the University of Vienna is considered the most important institution of Greek history in German-speaking countries.

The Greek Orthodox Church

In the 18th century, two Greek parishes were formed, St. George (the Greeks who were still Ottoman citizens) and the Holy Trinity (the Greeks who mostly took on Austrian citizenship). With the fall of the Kuk monarchy, a metropolis for Austria and Hungary was established in 1924, but it was not established permanently as the Metropolis of Austria - Exarchate for Hungary and Central Europe of the Ecumenical Patriarchate of Constantinople until 1963 . St. George and the Holy Trinity were recognized with the Federal Law on External Legal Relationships of the Greek-Oriental Church of 1967, and with the 2011 amendment also the Metropolis itself. In addition to Vienna there are 4 Greek Orthodox parishes in Graz, Linz, Innsbruck and Bregenz. The Constantinopolitan Patriarchate, with approx. 18,000 believers, comprises a larger group than the 5000 members of the “Greek community” in Austria.

People of Greek origin such as Theodor von Karajan , Basilio Calafati and Constantin von Economo were members of Greek Orthodox communities in Vienna.

societies

There are a total of nine associations in Vienna with a connection to Greece, as well as a few more in other cities. Since 2004 there is an umbrella organization of Greek municipalities with five associations. The website of the Greek Embassy in Vienna links to 10 associations.

See also

literature

  • Franz Dölger : Vienna and New Greece. Rohrer, Vienna et al. 1943 ( Viennese scientific lectures and speeches 6, ZDB -ID 987893-2 ).
  • Amelie Lanier: The History of the Sina Banking and Trading House. Peter Lang Verlagsgruppe, Frankfurt am Main et al. 1998, ISBN 3-631-33747-7 ( European university publications . Series 3: History and its auxiliary sciences. 805), Chapter I. Austrian trade policy and the “Greeks” .
  • Willibald M. Plöchl: The Viennese Orthodox Greeks. A study on the legal and cultural history of the parishes of St. George and the Holy Trinity and the establishment of the Metropolis of Austria. Publishing house of the Association of Scientific Societies in Austria, Vienna 1983, ISBN 3-85369-530-2 ( Church and Law 16).
  • Johannes Preiser-Kapeller: From Ostarrichi to the Bosporus. An overview of relationships in the Middle Ages. In: Pro Oriente. Yearbook. 2010, ZDB -ID 2427066-0 , pp. 66–77, online (on the earliest contacts between medieval Austria and the Greek world).

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Statistics Austria: 2001 population by nationality, country of birth and gender ( memento of the original dated December 16, 2007 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.statistik.at
  2. ↑ a b Presentation of the Greek Orthodox Congregation on the website of the Greek Embassy, ​​Vienna ( Memento of the original from July 5, 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.griechische-botschaft.at
  3. ↑ Greeks. In: Felix Czeike : Historisches Lexikon Wien. Volume 2: De-Gy. Kremayr & Scheriau, Vienna 1993, ISBN 3-218-00544-2 , p. 598.
  4. ^ Peter Schmidtbauer: On the family structure of the Greeks in Vienna. In: Viennese history sheets. 35, 1980, ISSN  0043-5317 , pp. 150-160, here p. 150.
  5. ^ Emanuel Turczynski: The German-Greek cultural relations up to the appointment of King Otto. Oldenbourg, Munich 1959, p. 75 ( Southeast European Work 48, ZDB -ID 985884-2 ).
  6. ^ Karl Teply: The introduction of coffee in Vienna. Georg Franz Koltschitzky, Johannes Diodato, Isaak de Luca. Association for the history of the city of Vienna - youth and people in commission, Vienna 1980, ISBN 3-7141-9330-8 , p. 104 ( research and contributions to the history of the city of Vienna 6). Quoted in: Anna Maria Seibel: The importance of the Greeks for economic and cultural life in Vienna using the example of the Zepharovich family. Dipl.-Arb. Univ.Wien, Vienna, 2008, p. 94 ( online ; PDF; 1.6 MB; and website )
  7. ↑ On Hansen's work, see references in the article: Theophil von Hansen
  8. ↑ Statistics Austria: Population 2001 according to demographic characteristics ( Memento of the original from April 18, 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. @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.statistik.at
  9. ↑ Information from the Greek Embassy, ​​Vienna ( Memento of the original dated June 29, 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. @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.griechische-botschaft.at
  10. ↑ a b Information from the Greek Ministry of Foreign Affairs
  11. ^ A b Institute for Theology and History of the European East, University of Vienna: The Greek Orthodox Congregation in Vienna . Lecture script 2004 (no longer accessible 2011: online  ( page no longer available , search in web archives )  Info: The link was automatically marked as defective. Please check the link according to the instructions and then remove this note. , 35 kB)@1@ 2Template: Toter Link / www.univie.ac.at  
  12. ↑ In addition, there is now a Rum-Orthodox community with around 1000 members , to which, however, the majority of Arabic-speaking Greek-Orthodox from Syria belong. It has two parishes, one in Vienna and one in Innsbruck.
  13. ↑ Web presence of the Ecumenical Council of Churches in Austria ( Memento of the original of 23 August 2006 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was automatically inserted and not yet checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.kirchen.at
  14. ↑ Link list ( Memento of the original from June 29, 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. on the website of the Greek Embassy, ​​Vienna @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.griechische-botschaft.at