Athens First Cemetery in English: Panagiotis Kanellopoulos

Panagiotis Kanellopoulos ΠΑΝΑΓΙΩΤΗΣ ΚΑΝΕΛΛΠΟΥΛΟΣ

Born in 1902 Died in Athens, 1986

Section 6, Number 157

Panagiotis Kanellopoulos is not a great practical mind, but his honesty and his patriotism are as unquestionable as his energy and he has become at least more conspicuous a figure than any other politician of his generation. (1)

Panagiotis Kanellopoulos lived his life during a dizzying kaleidoscope of events: the National Schism, The Asia Minor Catastrophe, the Metaxas dictatorship, the Greco-Italian war, the German Occupation, the civil war, the 1967 military dictatorship, and more. It was a century full of reversals, defeats, and political passions as Greece lurched towards political stability after 1974. But he was no mere spectator. He was a player in the fast moving political drama, not always a major one, but no Polonius either. Kanellopoulos was most often cast in the political role of ‘second in command” although he did start his own political party in 1936, and was prime minister twice. He was a man who had a clear idea in his own mind of what the term ‘Greek identity’ meant. Almost always described in terms such as honourable, modest and open to dialogue, his integrity was a vital element in many political situations that were all too often viewed in terms of black or white.

His Life

Panagiotis was born in Achaia in 1902. His father, Kanellos was a Pharmacist and his mother, Amalia, nee Gounari was a member of a well known family in Patras. As he was growing up, his uncle, royalist politician Dimitrios Gounaris, was in opposition to liberal Prime Minister Eleftherios Venizelos. Gounaris became Prime Minister in 1915 and again in 1917 during a division which saw Venizelists create an alternate government in Thessaloniki in opposition to the king who wished to remain neutral during the First World War. When Venizelos, with British help, returned to Athens in 1917, Gounaris, along with the king and other royalists, was exiled to Corsica by the Venizelists. Panagiotis would have been at the impressionable 15 year old when his uncle was banished.

Panagiotis in his uncle’s arms

At 17, he enrolled in the University of Athens to study law. His studies then took him to Heidelberg for the next three years. After graduation he continued his studies in the School of Philosophy at the University of Munich. During those six years abroad, his uncle had returned and become Prime Minister yet again, just in time to agree to the Greek Army taking the offensive in Asia Minor that led to the 1922 Asia Minor catastrophe and Greece’s humiliating defeat. (2) When a military coup took over the reins of the defeated country, his beloved uncle was summarily executed after a military trial that shocked the world.

As a young man

By the time Kanellopoulos did return to Greece in 1926, it had become a republic. Strange times.

Such events might have made anyone else bitter, but Panagiotis was cut from a different cloth. He became a general secretary in the Ministry of National Economy under the ecumenical government of Alexandros Zaimis, a politician who had spent his career trying to bring warring Greek factions together. (3) In some ways his role would echo Zaimis’ but a generation later.

In 1927, Kanellopoulos caused a rift with his own staunchly royalist family when he announced publically: I have stopped being an anti-Venizelist and I have stopped being a royalist. He wanted a national identity that would transcend such labels.

1929- 1944

Philosophy, writing, and the academic life had a great appeal to Kanellopoulos, especially the new discipline of sociology which he had studied abroad. When a department of Sociology was created in the University of Athens in 1929, Panagiotis was hired, first as an associate professor and then as a full professor in 1933. In the beginning, his students referred to him as the “nephew of Gounaris, but soon they were pleased to say they were attending lectures from Professor Kanellopoulos. His lectures were popular.

During those years, along with his school friends from Germany, Constantinos Tsatsos and philosopher Ioannis Theodorakopoulos he published the Archive of Philosophy and Theory of Science (Αρχείον Φιλοσοφίας και Θεωρίας των Επιστημών). I might be tempted to call the views of these three men as ‘Hellenism on steroids’. For them, Hellenism was a metaphysical ideal, Platonic in nature, and their goal was to foster a cultural and political renewal of ancient Hellenism in contemporary Greece.

In 1935 when the royalist faction brought back the king, Kanellopoulos published an article in the newspaper Acropolis advocating for those against the return of the monarchy to refuse to take an oath of allegiance to the king. That proposal cost him his job at the university.

On a happier note, 1935 was the year he married Nitsa Poulikakou

In 1935, he started his own party : the National Unionist Party (Εθνικόν Ενωτικόν Κόμμα) with a progressive agenda that supported economic liberalism. He declared: I don’t want to bridge over the national schism, I want to transcend it - to go to another level of organization and public life. (4)

Brave words.

It was the first time a politician had said that since royalists and Venizelists had become sworn enemies. His new party did not receive a single seat in parliament in 1936 elections. It seems that no one was ready to ‘rise above’ anything in 1936, a fact that led to the harsh dictatorship of royalist Ioannis Metaxas.

Of course, Kanellopoulos opposed the dictatorship, so It was his turn to be banished, not to Corsica , but to the islands of Kythnos, Thassos and then Karysto, Those years of exile gave him time to write. (5)

When the Italians invaded Greece in 1941 he was allowed to leave his island and join the soldiers at the front. He fought with 19^th division which managed to push the Italians back as far as Pogradec in Albania before the Germans invaded and Greece was occupied by the Nazis.

In Albania

Metaxas was dead, the king had fled, and Kanellopoulos, was now back on the mainland, no longer in exile but not free either. He did manage to publish the first volume of his History of the European Spirit (Ιστορίας του Ευρωπαϊκού Πνεύματος), a project that he would continue to work on for the rest of his life.(6)

With a price on his head because of his resistance activities, he and his wife fled, first to Turkey and then on to Cairo and the Greek government in exile. In spite of the fact that the Cairo government was royalist and chock full of Metaxas’ followers he joined the government of Emmanuel Tsouderos as vice-premier and defence minister. In those roles, although he never spoke against the king, he did support the idea of a plebiscite to be held in Greece after the war to decide on the fate of the monarchy. The idea of such a plebiscite was anathema to royalists at the time.

In Egypt

As defence minister, he tried to find way to deal with the growing dissent in the Greek armed forces in Egypt, many of whom supported EAM, the leftist guerrilla organization in Greece, and believed, quite rightly, that the royalists did not. Feelings ran high and a mutiny in the Greek armed forces in Egypt was the result in April of 1944. It was quickly quashed. Kanellopoulos got part of the blame and resigned. Tsouderos had to resign also. The mutineers sat out the war in an internment camp meant for German prisoners of war.(7)

Georgios Papandreau became Prime Minister in exile on April 26, 1944, and Kanellopoulos again took part. He was present at the Lebanon Conference (May 1944) when representatives of all political parties and resistance groups agreed to a ‘National Contract’ for a Government of National Unity upon liberation. Six of the 24 ministers were to be EAM members. It seemed like a possible solution…

With Georgios Papandreau

Kanellopoulos returned to Greece as Papadreau’s minister of reconstruction. In September of 1944 he travelled to EAM controlled Tripoli in the Peloponnese to discuss the situation face to face with its local leader Aris Velouchiotis. But it all came to nothing because In December EAM, believing that they were being betrayed by Papandreau and the British, resigned from the government. Riots ensued – the infamous Dekemvriana- and the first shots of the civil war to come began that month.

1944- 1949

Kannelopoulos briefly became Prime Minister in November of 1945 but his government fell, partly due to mistrust on the part of the British and partly because of confusion in his own ranks. When the elections finally did occur on March 31, 1946, the Communist Party (KKE) had opted out of the vote entirely and a right wing party under Konstantinos Tsaldaris won partly because the more liberal elements, including Kanellopoulos were backing different centre-liberal parties. There followed a revolving door of 5 different prime ministers until the civil war ended in 1949.

1949 - 1967

When the civil war ended, Kannelopoulos became the vice premier and Defense minister under the leadership of Sophocles Venizelos. As happened to many liberal politicians in the aftermath of the bitter civil war, Kanellopoulos found himself moving to the right. In 1952, he became a member of Parliament for Achaia under the Premiership of Alexandros Papagos’ right wing and vehemently anti-communist Greek Rally party. In 1953 Kanellopoulos wrote that communists were like the ‘barbarians who”(had) threatened the Greco-Roman world’. He saw them, especially their internationalism, as a threat to Greek identity. His experiences during the civil war and his observations of the communist party in action led him to go along with the internment of thousands of leftist and communist citizens on the island of Makronissos for ‘re-education”. Once ‘civilized’, the idea was that they would be returned to the general population. Makronissos remained an internment camp from 1947 to 1955 and no one would argue today that it was any kind of a success. ( 8)

With Karamanlis

In 1955, Constantinos Karamanlis re-launched Papagos’ party as The National Radical Union or ERE and won the elections in 1956 . Kannelopoulos, did not immediately join ERE until 1959 but when he did, he became Karamanlis’ number two man. (9) He and Karamanlis would prove to be an odd couple. He found Karamanlis too austere and Karamanlis considered him a dreamer. Kanellopoulos was second in command when Karamanlis signed the treaty of association with the European Economic Union in 1961, thus tying Greece more closely to Europe This was an alignment that Panagiotis saw as a very important.(10)

The Writer and the Man

Kanellopoulos was a prolific writer all during his life and his writings covered many fields: philosophy, history, sociology, art, poetry, fiction and even theatre. In 1957 he was awarded by the prestigious Athens Academy for his work I Was Born in 1402 and in 1959 he was voted onto the Academy as a lifetime member. In person, he was apparently mesmerizing and charming. One woman who knew him recounted:

“I knew Kanellopoulos. When I finished my degree and returned to Greece I learned that he had set aside Fridays in his office at 33 Academias Street as a kind of open house for visitors. Some went to get to know him, others for some favor or other, and some just to hear the man speak. I went and got to know him; he invited me to join in the conversation. From that time onwards, I went every Friday, eager to listen to him. He never spoke of political events – no! And when I left I always felt I was walking on air.”( 11)

1963

When Karammanlis resigned in 1963 because of a disagreement with King Paul, Elections were held a few months later and ERE lost. Karamanlis went into self imposed exile and Kannelopoulos found himself leading ERE in opposition to social democrat Georgios Papandreau. When Papandreau resigned, in turn, over a dispute with the king in 1965, Greek political life was again in chaos. At one point the king appointed Kannelopoulos Prime Minister but he could not win a vote of confidence in parliament. Elections were called for in 1967, elections that never happened because a group of disgruntled Colonels staged a Military coup on April 21, 1967.

The Dictatorship 1967-1974

With his tanks and the actions of his 16 co-conspirators, Papadopoulos led Greece once more into a period of dictatorship. He immediately put Kanellopoulos under house arrest where he remained until the dictatorship ended in 1974. Other politicians and citizens were exiled, sent to remote islands, or worse, thrown in jail and tortured. Kanellopoulos was one of the first to speak out against the colonels in the fall of 1967 and he would offer himself as a witness in the trials of many dissenters.

House arrest seems to have given him time to reflect and he was one of the few politicians of that era who openly acknowledged his own past missteps. That alone sets him apart. When the junta imploded in 1974, he was one of the politicians called upon to help form a temporary government. Karamanlis was consulted in Paris and declared his willingness to take on the role of leader during the transition to democracy.

The meeting where the Junta decides to turn power over to Constantinos Karamanlis

In the difficult years after 1974, perhaps Karamanlis was the better choice. Apparently he offered Kanellopoulos the presidency but he deferred to his lifelong friend Constantinos Tsatsos.

The Rest

Kanellopoulos became member of parliament in Karamanlis’ conservative New Democracy Party in 1977 and again 1981 when PAS0K, a centre-left party, won the elections. In 1982, when the PASOK wished to pardon the communist fighters who had been exiled in the civil war, Kanellopoulos spoke on their behalf saying that it was inconceivable that all of the other freedom organization were recognized, but not EAM, the largest group and the group which had the greatest number of casualties – and this in spite of the fact that his fellow New Democracy Party members had exited the chamber en masse in protest…

His Death

Panagiotos Kannelopoulos died in 1986 at the age of 84 and was buried with the full honours given to a Prime Minister. He is not buried in the Plaza as so many politicians are but quite far back in the cemetery near the grave of his uncle Dimitrios Gounaris. That cannot be accidental, that and the fact that his uncle was himself brought to the new grave where he rests with the rest of his family.

Afterword

Historian Thanos Veremis believed that Kannelopoulos had a major flaw as a politician: Events overtook him and he struggled to understand what was happening It was a singular problem of Kanellopoulos that he did not have the facility that other politicians had to understand what was the core issue in a particular instance. (12)

If that was a flaw, it was because Kannelopoulos tended to look at complex issues from more than one angle, whereas most politicians in Greece have favoured a black or white approach as easier to present and more pleasing to the electorate. In a way, you might say that Kannelopoulos represented their better selves. It is to their credit that so many of them realized that they needed his voice.

His bust sits on a walkway between Acadamias and Panepitimiou Streets. It is by Maria Oikonomou

The Grave

Section 6, Number 157

The Map

Footnotes

(1) Reginald (Rex) Leeper was the British ambassador to the Greek government from 1943 to 19 46, first in Cairo and then in Greece. In Greece he played a critical role in Greek political developments, especially in his support of the Greek monarchy .

(2) Ironically, Gounaris was carrying out a plan begun by Venizelos when he was prime minister. When it came to expanding Greece’s territories, even politicians who hated each other agreed – until Smyrna put an end to the dream.

(3) Alexandros Zaimis (1855-1036) was able to navigate the sharp political divides that characterized the Greek political scene during his 39 year career. One observer nicknamed the emollient Mr Zaimis. See

https://athensfirstcemeteryinenglish.blogspot.com/2019/07/aleaxandros-zaimis.html

(4) «Δεν θέλω τη γεφύρωση του διχασμού, θέλω την υπέρβασή του - να πάμε σε άλλο επίπεδο οργάνωσης της δημόσιας ζωής.»

(5) Exile on islands has gone out of style. but it was a popular tactic from ancient times fight up until the 50s. We seem to have run out of Islands suitable for banishment.

(6) There would eventually be twelve volumes.

(7) The 1944 Greek naval mutiny was a mutiny by sailors on five Royal Navy ships in April The 1st Brigade of the Greek Armed forces also suffered a EAM-inspired mutiny on 6 April 1944.

(8) The official argument, according to the Army general staff was that Makronissos constituted a national civilizing capital. It was maybe Greeces first and last attempt to set up Chinese-like ‘reeducation centres’. See:

(9) Karamanlis had married Panagiotis’ niece in 1951, so he was actually Karamanlis’uncle.

(10) Apparently, once Greeks had achieved (or ‘re-achieved’) their metaphysical Greekness, they would spread the spirit back to Europe which, although it’s culture had stemmed from ancient Greece, had somehow lost its way.

(11) See https://athensfirstcemeteryinenglish.blogspot.com/2016/12/normal-0-false-false-false-el-x-none-x.html

(12) From: Παναγιώτης Κανελλόπουλος - ΄Ενας Ιδεαλιστής στην Πολιτική» (27/03/2016)" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-V2F8ixZjV0&t=3021s