Maria Svolou

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Maria Svolou ( Greek Μαρία Σβώλου , born Desypri ; * approx. 1892 in Athens ; † June 3, 1976 ) was a Greek suffragette and politician.

Life

Maria Desypri was born around 1892 as the daughter of Georges Desypri and his wife. Desypri was one of the couple's four daughters. The family lived in Piraeus for two years before moving to Larissa , where the father was appointed director of a branch of the Greek National Bank. She attended an Arsakeion School in Larissa, which she graduated in 1907. After the father's death in 1915, the family moved back to Athens. In 1916 Desypri received a degree in French there, and in 1919 a license to teach French from the Ministry of Church and Public Education. In 1923 she married the law professor Alexandros Svolos , whom she had met in 1921 while working in the Ministry of Labor.

Svolou was active for the women's movement in Greece from an early age. As general secretary of the League for Women's Rights, she campaigned for the creation of evening schools for women and fought against prostitution. She campaigned for equal rights for women in her country and was involved in the Panhellenic Women's Committee against war and fascism. As a labor inspector in the Ministry of Economic Affairs, she used her position to point out the working and living conditions of impoverished female workers.

Between 1911 and 1936, Svolou was committed to liberal politics and supported the peace movement. She was the editor of the political women's magazine O Agonas tis Gynaikas . When her husband was banished by dictator Ioannis Metaxas from 1936 to 1939 because of his sympathy for the Greek Communist Party , she went with him. Although Svolou is the leader of the liberal women's movement in her country, she believed that gender equality could only be achieved through profound social change.

In 1940 she returned to Greece and volunteered as a nurse in the Greco-Italian War . She later organized meals for children during the German occupation of Greece in World War II. In 1941 she was responsible for overseeing milk distribution in Athens. During this time she repeatedly wrote articles on political and social issues and was involved in aid organizations for the needy.

Svolou soon joined the National Liberation Front (ELAS-EAM) and was elected a member of the National Council, while her husband became chairman of the Political Committee of National Liberation in April 1944. Together with Rosa Imvrioti, Svolou organized the first nationwide women's conference in Athens in May 1946, in which delegates from the newly formed women's groups from many villages and towns took part and reported on the appalling living conditions they supported the Eniaia Panelladiki Organosi Neon (United Panhellenic Youth Organization). or were exposed to ELAS or in the Ravensbrück concentration camp . Svolou sympathized with the communists. She was arrested during the Greek Civil War in 1948 and spent over a year in Athens' Averoff Prison.

After the death of her husband in 1956, Svolou ran for the leftist Eniea Dimokratiki Aristera for a seat in parliament and was elected twice to the Greek parliament. She was also a member of her party's central committee.

literature

  • Janet Hart: New Voices in the Nation - Women and the Greek Resistance 1941-1964 . Cornell University Press, New York 1996, p. 32 ff.

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Dimitra Samiou: Svolou, Maria (born Desypri) (1892? - 1976) . In: Biographical Dictionary of Women's Movements and Feminisms in Central, Eastern, and South Eastern Europe: 19th and 20th Centuries . Central European University Press, New York 2005, ISBN 9637326391 , pp. 552–557 ( online at Google Books )
  2. ^ A b Paul Morris: Svolou, Maria (d. 1976) . In: Anne Commire (Ed.): Women in World History: A Biographical Encyclopedia . Yorkin Publications, Waterford 2002, ISBN 0-7876-4074-3
  3. ↑ Krasimira Daskalova: Balkans . In: The Oxford Encyclopedia of Women in World History . Oxford University Press, Oxford 2008, ISBN 0-19-514890-8 , pp. 188-189 ( online at Google Books )
  4. ↑ Francisca de Haan, Krasimira Daskalova, Anna Loutfi (eds.): Biographical Dictionary of Women's Movements and Feminisms . CEU Press, Budapest / New York 2006, pp. 552–557 ( partly online at Google Books )
  5. ↑ a b Svolou, Maria (1892-1976) , Memorial Sites in Europe 1933–1945, Study Group German Resistance 1933–1945 , accessed on March 24, 2020
personal data
SURNAME Svolou, Maria
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Svolos, Maria; Desypri, Maria (maiden name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Greek suffragette and politician
DATE OF BIRTH around 1892
PLACE OF BIRTH Athens
DATE OF DEATH 3rd June 1976