Pavlos Koundouriotis

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Pavlos Koundouriotis

Pavlos Koundouriotis ( Greek Παύλος Κουντουριώτης , born April 9, 1855 on the island of Hydra ; † August 22, 1935 in Athens ) was a Greek admiral , two-time viceroy and President of Greece .

Koundouriotis came from an Arvanite family from the island of Hydra, which had already excelled in the War of Independence of 1821. In 1875 he joined the Greek Navy . During the Greco-Turkish War of 1897, he took part in the operations of the Greek Navy off Crete .

In 1901 he was captain of the cadet ship "Miaoulis", which made the first Atlantic crossing of a Greek military ship on its voyage to America .

With the beginning of the First Balkan War he was promoted to rear admiral and appointed fleet commander, with the armored cruiser Georgios Averoff as the flagship . In October 1912 he liberated the north Aegean islands of Limnos, Samothrace and Thasos. In two sea battles, on December 3, 1912 and January 5, 1913, the Greek Navy defeated the Ottoman Empire's fleet in the Aegean Sea . These victories secured Greece's sovereignty in the Aegean Sea and also resulted in the East Aegean islands with their predominantly Greek-speaking population being annexed to Greece.

In 1916 Koundouriotis was together with Eleftherios Venizelos and General Panagiotis Danglis leader of the counter-government of the "National Defense" proclaimed in Thessaloniki , which supported the entry of the country in the First World War on the side of the Entente powers. After the death of King Alexander he became viceroy and remained in this office until November 1920. Koundouriotis became viceroy a second time in December 1923 after King George II left the country. He held this office until March 1924, when he was elected President of the new republic by the National Assembly. He resigned this office in 1926 in protest against the dictatorial government of General Theodoros Pangalos . After Pangalos' fall a few months later, he took it up again. In 1929 he was re-elected to this office, but had to resign in December 1929 for health reasons. He died in Phaleron in 1935 and, as requested, was buried on his home island of Hydra.

So far, four warships of the Greek Navy have been christened with the name Koundouriotis. A Kortenaer frigate currently bears this name.

literature

• Friedrich Karl Kienitz: Kunturiotis, Pavlos , in: Biographical Lexicon for the History of Southeast Europe . Vol. 2. Munich 1976, p. 532 f.

Web links

Commons : Pavlos Kountouriotis  - collection of images, videos and audio files

Remarks

1. ^ Richard Clogg: Minorities in Greece. Aspects of a Plural Society , Hurst, 2002, p. XVI.