Stephanos Skouloudis

Stephanos Skoulidis

Stephanos Skouloudis ( Greek : Στέφανος Σκουλούδης) (born November 23, 1838 in Constantinople ; † August 19, 1928 ) was a Greek banker, diplomat, politician and former prime minister .

Study and businessman

The son of a businessman graduated from the National and Kapodistrian University of Athens in medicine , graduating in 1859. Then he began a commercial activity in the trading house Rallis and rose there in 1863 to head of business relations with Turkey .

Together with the philanthropist Andreas Syngros , he founded the Bank of Constantinople in 1871. In the following years he also took on diplomatic missions to the Ottoman Empire for the Greek government . In 1876 he returned to Athens as a wealthy man. On the recommendation of Skouloudis, Basil Zaharoff was hired as sales manager at the armaments manufacturer Nordenfelt .

In 1880 Skouloudis was appointed a member of the board of the National Bank of Greece . Two years later he founded the first company to drain Lake Kopaïs in order to gain very fertile farmland north of Thebes .

Political and diplomatic career

Diplomatic negotiator

Skouloudis became increasingly politically active. During the crisis of 1877 due to the Russo-Turkish War from 1877 to 1878 , he was sent as a negotiator to negotiate with the Albanian population outside Greece. He represented the city of Ioannina in preliminary talks for the Berlin Congress from June to July 1878, in which, among other things, the borders between Greece and the Ottoman Empire were established.

From 1883 to 1886 he was ambassador to Spain . After the unilateral annexation of Eastern Rumelia by Bulgaria from the Ottoman Empire, he was envoy to the peace negotiations in Constantinople in 1886.

He was later commissioned by the Prime Ministers Charilaos Trikoupis and Theodoros Deligiannis to negotiate foreign loans from wealthier countries.

After the First Balkan War he was appointed in 1912 by Prime Minister Eleftherios Venizelos as a representative at the peace talks in London .

MP

Skouloudis began his political career in 1881 with the election to the National Assembly (Voulí ton Ellínon) . There he represented the interests of the new liberal Fifth Party (Pempto Komma) of Charilaos Trikoupis for the constituency of Syros until 1883 .

In 1892 he was re-elected as a member of the National Assembly, where he now represented the constituency of Thebes. In 1905 he was re-elected as a member of the Thebes constituency.

minister

Prime Minister Trikoupis appointed him from 1892 to 1893, initially as Minister for Religion and Education, and from 1893 to 1895 as Minister of the Navy in his cabinets.

He then belonged to the organizing committee for the preparation of the Olympic Summer Games in Athens in 1896 . He prepared a report to the President of the Organizing Committee, Crown Prince Konstantin , that the costs estimated by Pierre de Coubertin were far below the actual costs and that Greece should therefore refrain from hosting the Olympic Games. After the Crown Prince refused, Skouloudis and some supporters resigned from his position on the Organizing Committee. The Crown Prince prevailed with the execution of the Games, which were far more successful than the Games of 1900 in Paris and 1904 in St. Louis .

The conservative Prime Minister Dimitrios Rallis appointed the experienced diplomat to be Foreign Minister in his cabinet from April to October 1897. In this role he had to be responsible for the first Greek defeat in the Turkish-Greek War in 1897 .

Rise to prime minister and condemned as a royal trustee

Even after the revolt of the Military League in the Athens suburb of Goudi in 1909, his name was often mentioned as a potential reform-oriented candidate for the Prime Ministerial. However, Stephanos Dragoumis was eventually appointed Prime Minister, but he soon resigned in favor of Venizelos, resulting in a definitive end to the political crisis.

After the assassination of King George I and the accession of King Constantine I to the throne on March 18, 1913, tensions grew between Prime Minister Venizelos and the new king. These finally culminated after the beginning of the First World War in the question of the position of Greece: While the pro-German king favored a policy of neutrality, the Prime Minister advocated Greece entering the war on the side of the Allies .

After Venizelos was initially unable to assert himself with his stance, he resigned on October 7, 1915. After a month-long transitional government by Alexandros Zaimis , Skouladis finally became Prime Minister himself on November 7, 1915. He first tried to form an all-party government to achieve national unity. However, Skouloudis also had to deal primarily with the question of entering the war. In addition, after the formation of a counter-government in northern Greece under Venizelos, internal political tensions arose. Ultimately, Skouloudis failed with his policy and resigned on June 22, 1916 from the office of Prime Minister. During his tenure he was also Foreign Minister.

After the abdication of King Constantine I in 1917 and the triumphant return of Venizelos to Athens, Skouloudis was charged with collaborating with the previous king. He was sentenced along with his cabinet. After Venizelos won the November 1920 elections, Skouloudis and his ministers were released from prison and finally pardoned in 1921. Until his death he withdrew completely from political life.

His written estate is in the American School of Classical Studies in Athens.

Biographical sources and background information

• Evi Koukouraki: From the Greek Wars of Liberation to the Present: History of Young Greece. 2003
• Domestic Policy 1897-1922
• List of ministers of governments 1899–1924 ( Memento from May 27, 2007 in the Internet Archive )
• American School of Classical Studies

predecessor	Office	successor
Alexandros Zaimis	Prime Minister of Greece 1915–1916	Alexandros Zaimis