Nikos Veis

Nikos Veis , detailed form of the name Nikolaos Athanasiou Veis , even in the transcription Bees ( Greek Νίκος Βέης or Νίκος Αθανασίου Βέης , * 1882-1887 in Megalopolis or Tripoli ; † 12. October 1958 in Athens ) was a Greek Byzantinist and Neogräzist and politicians .

Life

The information on the date of birth varies between 1882 and 1887, those on the place of birth between Megalopolis and Tripoli. The father, whom he lost at the age of nine, was a philology teacher in Tripoli. His mother was Evgenia Petropoulou. He had two older brothers, Agis and Konstantinos. Agis studied medicine and settled in Egypt, while Konstantinos took the same path as Nikolaos and also became a university professor in Athens and a member of the Academy of Athens . In 1892 the family moved to Athens, where Nikos visited the Varvakeio. Veis showed an interest in palaeography and codicology as a schoolboy and, when she was barely eighteen, volunteered in the manuscript department of the National Library and the Epigraphic Museum .

In 1901 he began studying philology at the University of Athens . From this time on he traveled to the Peloponnese in search of archive material and published his first work in the magazines Numas (Νουμάς) and Panathenaia (Παναθήναια). He also dealt with folk poetry, sigillography , cataloging and describing manuscripts and inscriptions. In 1908 he received his doctorate from the University of Athens. He published studies on inscriptions, manuscripts and codes of various monasteries, as well as on popular tradition and ethnographic topics.

From 1908 to 1909 he stayed in the Meteora monasteries and studied their manuscripts and codes. He published his work in the magazine Byzantis (Βυζαντίς), the magazine of the Society for Byzantine Studies, of which he was one of the founding members. Influenced by socialist ideas, he ran in 1910 as a member of parliament for the districts of Karditsa , Trikala and Kalambaka for the People's and Workers' Party (Λαϊκό και Εργατικό Κόμμα), but was not elected.

In 1911 he went to Germany for postgraduate studies and settled in Berlin , where he stayed until 1925 and taught Byzantine philology. There he met German scholars and the Greek politician Alexandros Svolos . From 1920 he published the Byzantine Modern Greek Yearbooks .

In 1925 he was appointed to the chair of Medieval and Modern Greek Philology at the University of Athens and returned to Greece. In 1929 and 1932 he ran again as a member of parliament. In 1935, during the Metaxas dictatorship , he was dismissed from the university for political reasons, but was reinstated the following year at the request of his students. At the beginning of the Second World War in Greece, he went to the front in northern Epirus in the area of Argyrokastro , where he made significant contributions to the salvation of Greek cultural heritage by locating, studying and describing inscriptions and manuscripts from Argyrokastro and the monasteries of northern Epirus. In 1941 he was elected a member of the Academy of Athens.

He was active in politics after the liberation of Greece, but was finally discharged from the university in 1946 due to his political activity. From 1945 to 1947 he was again active in the Meteora monasteries. In 1950 he ran again, this time for the socialist party of Alexandros Svolos, and was elected MP for Athens. From 1948 to 1952 he was chairman of the Society of Greek Writers (Εταιρεία Ελλήνων Λογοτεχνών).

Linos Politis was one of his students . For his work on the cultural heritage of the Meteora monasteries, he was elected a member of the Bavarian Academy of Sciences .

Fonts (selection)

• Η Τρίπολις προ του δεκάτου εβδόμου αιώνος. Εκ της τυπογραφίας Π. Δ. Σακελλαρίου, εν Αθήναις 1907. - ("Tripoli before the seventeenth century")
• The inscription record of the Codex Sinaiticus Graecus 508 (976) and the Maria Spilästissa monastery church near Sille (Lycaonia) ... / with excursions to the history of the Selkid Turks. Berlin, Wilmersdorf 1922.
• The French-Middle Greek chivalric novel "Imberios and Margarona" and the founding legend of the Daphni monastery near Athens. Publishing house of the Byzantine-Neo-Greek yearbooks , Berlin, Wilmersdorf 1924
• Τραγούδια και μοιρολόγια Γιώργου Ν. Καλαματιανού. Με κρίσεις των κ.κ. Νίκου Βέη και Ι. Ζερβού. Αριστ. Ν. Μαυρίδης, Athens 1931. - ("Songs and Moirologies of Georgios N. Kalamatianos")
• Corpus of the Greco-Christian inscriptions from Hellas. Volume I: The Greco-Christian Inscriptions of the Peloponnesos. Delivery: Isthmos-Korinthos. Christian Archaeological Society, Athens 1941; Reprinted by Ares Publishers, Chicago 1978.

Posthumous publications

• Τα Χειρόγραφα των Μετεώρων. - ("The manuscripts of the Meteora")
  • Τόμος Α: Κατάλογος περιγραφικός των χειρογράφων κωδίκων των αποκείμενων εις τας μονάς των Μετεώρων. Εκδιδόμενος εκ των καταλοιπών Νίκου Α. Βέη. Center de recherches médiévales et néo-helléniques (Academy of Athens), Athens 1967 - ("Volume 1: Descriptive catalog of the manuscript codes in the monasteries of Meteora. Edited from the estate of Nikos A. Veis")
  • Τόμος Β: Τα Χειρόγραφα της Μονής Βαρλαάμ. Εκδιδόμενος εκ των καταλοιπών Νίκου Α. Βέη. Academy of Athens, Athens 1984. - ("Volume 2: The manuscripts of the Varlaam monastery. Edited from the estate of Nikos A. Veis")
• Chronicon Monembasiae. A study of its sources and its value as a historical source. With introduction, notes and commentary in modern Greek by Nikos A. Bees. Ares Publishers, Chicago 1979.

literature

• Κώστας Σαρδέλης: Τα Μοναστήρια των Μετεώρων και ο Νίκος Βέης. In: Νέα Εστία, Volume 128, 1518 (1-10-1990), pp. 1297-1300. - ("The Meteora Monasteries and Nikos Veis")
• Μάχη Παΐζη – Αποστολοπούλου: Νίκος Βέης. Από την φιλολογία στον κοινωνικό στίβο, vlioras.gr - ("Nikos Veis. From philology to the social arena")
• Απέθανε και εκηδεύθη ο ακαδημαϊκός Ν. Βέης . In: Μακεδονία (newspaper), October 14, 1958, p. 4 nlg.gr - ("Academician N. Veis has died and was buried")
• Μαίρη Ν. Βέη: Ιστοριοδιφικά ταξίδια του Νίκου Βέη εις την Θεσσαλίαν και άλλαι προσωπικότητες συνδεόμεναι προς αυτόν και την Θεσσαλίαν . Athens, 1971. - (“Research trips by Nikos Veis to Thessaly and other personalities connected with him and Thessaly”; is mentioned by Kostas Sardelis).

Web links

• Literature by and about Nikos Veis in the SUDOC catalog (Association of French University Libraries )
• Bees, Nikos A .  Publications in the bibliographic database of the Regesta Imperii .
• upatras.gr: Νίκος Βέης (with photographs)

Individual evidence

1. ↑ According to tradition, the official documents stated 1882 as the year of birth, while 1886 was the year that Veis himself stated in his biographical note for the Academy of Athens.