Phanariotes

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As Phanariotes ( Greek Φαναριώτες ) all Istanbul Greeks are referred to in the broader sense, who today only have a few thousand heads. While numerous Greeks still lived in Istanbul after the First World War and the founding of the Republic of Turkey in 1923 , after the so-called " Pogrom of Istanbul " on September 7, 1955, a massive exodus began.

The term Phanariotes is understood in the narrower sense, especially in the countries of the former Ottoman Empire in the Balkans, a small circle of wealthy and politically influential Byzantine or Ottoman noble families who lived in the Ottoman Empire in the 17th and 18th centuries. Century formed the upper class in Phanar , a district of Constantinople .

Above all, Greek merchants and priests of noble Byzantine origin, who had acquired economic prosperity and political influence, settled in the extreme northwest of Constantinople, where Greek interests were concentrated. The Ecumenical Patriarch had built a house here near the Church of St. George, which had been assigned to him, and set up his headquarters (after Hagia Sophia had been converted into a mosque). The Greeks were considered particularly loyal non-Muslim subjects in the Ottoman Empire until the Greek War of Independence . Later on, Bulgarian and Hellenized Bulgarian families also joined the Phanariotes.

Phanariot period

Alexander Ypsilantis (1792-1828)

The Phanariot period is understood to mean the epoch between 1711 (Moldova) or 1715 (Wallachia) and 1821, when the Moldovan and Wallachian boyars no longer had the right to choose a prince from their ranks. During this time Phanariots were appointed Gospodars of Wallachia and Moldova by the Ottoman Empire , took on important posts in the army and government and were sometimes active as ambassadors in European countries. The Phanariot period ends with the elevation under Tudor Vladimirescu or Alexander Ypsilantis in 1821.

The Phanariots in the Greek struggle for freedom

They contributed to the Greek struggles for freedom of the 1820s in two ways: The right to collect taxes from Christians, for which the Phanariots were responsible, was often abused for personal gain by increasing taxes from the Christian peoples of the province, Greeks and non-Greeks alike were collected. However, not all Phanariots followed this practice, some contributed significantly to the financing of the uprising. There were many Phanariots among the freedom fighters who played a major role in the struggle for the ideals of an independent democratic nation-state. Alexander Ypsilantis is one of them. Nevertheless, ironically, it was precisely large sections of the educated classes of the Greeks who could not gain much from the enlightened idea of ​​their own national state based on the French model.

After the Greek state gained its independence, Phanariots played an important role in the newly established state. With Alexandros Mavrokordatos they appointed the first Greek prime minister.

Important phanariotic families

Significant persons of phanariotic descent

Even today there are people of Phanariotic origin in Romania who hold important positions in the country's public life. In the first cabinet of the government of Prime Minister Emil Boc was about Theodor Paleologu , the son of the writer Alexandru Paleologu , 2008-2009 Minister of Culture.

See also

literature

  • Pompiliu Eliade: De l'influence francaise sur l'esprit public en Roumanie. Les origines; étude sur l'état de la Société Roumaine à l'époque des règnes phanariotes , Leroux, Paris 1898.
  • Grèce - Roumanie. Héritages communs, regards croisés , pub. Langues O ', Paris 2014, ISBN 978-2-85831-218-4 .
  • Hans Walther Held: The Phanariotes , their gradual development to the princely aristocracy until their fall in 1821 , dissertation Bern 1920.
  • Cornelia Papacostea-Danielopolu: Convergences culturelles gréco-roumaines , Inst. For Balkan Studies, Thessaloniki 1988, ISBN 960-7387-32-5 .
  • Eratō Parē: Marseille et Hellénisme (XIXe et début du XXe siècle). Les Phanariotes et les Néo-phanariotes dans le monde , Grapheion Dēmosieumatōn tēs Akadēmias Athēnōn, Athēnai 2013, ISBN 978-960-404-270-8 .
  • Christine May Philliou: Biography of an empire. Governing Ottomans in an age of revolution , Univ. of Calif. Press, Berkeley 2011, ISBN 978-0-520-26633-9 .
  • Symposium l'époque phanariote: 21 - 25 October 1970, à la mémoire de Cléobule Tsourkas , Inst. For Balkan Studies, Thessaloniki 1974.

Web links

Commons : Phanariotes  - collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Gerhard Ernst, Herbert Ernst Weigand, Martin-Dietrich Glegen, Christian Schmitt , Wolfgang Schweickard: Romance language history ; Berlin, New York: Walter de Gruyter, 2006; ISBN 3-11-017150-3 ; P. 1615 ff.