Bert Hodge Hill

 

 

BERT HODGE HILL

                 Born March 7 1874, Vermont            Died December 2 1958, Athens

 

 

 The Protestant Cemetery, ten rows up from the entrance

Bert Hodge Hill was director of the American School of Classical Studies at Athens (ASCSA) for twenty years during the early period of the development of the school which is today an archaeological and research powerhouse. His name will be forever linked to ancient Corinth where his own meticulous methodology led to the adoption of the rigorous documentation of excavations that has become the hallmark of American excavations in Greece. Bert chose to live in Greece until his death in 1958, distinguishing himself during two world wars as well as during the relief effort for refugees after the Asia Minor catastrophe in 1922. He was well liked and hard working. It was his reluctance (or inability) to finalise and publish his Corinth excavation findings that led to his dismissal as director of ASCSA in 1926.  Aside from that failure, Bert Hodge Hill proved to be adept in every other endeavour during his long life.  If his marriage to fellow archaeologist  Ida Thallon was an unusual one, it proved to be happy and, if he never became a super star like his friend and fellow archaeologist, Carl Blegen, his life was nonetheless full of adventure.  His story offers a fascinating glimpse into ASCSA’s early years and into the complex Corinth excavations where Bert found himself deeply mired in mud and local politics.

 

 

His Life

Bert Hodge Hill was born in Bristol Vermont on March 7, 1874. He received his AB degree from the University of Vermont and his MA from New York’s Columbia University in 1900.  From 1901 to 1903, Bert became a Fellow at the American School of Classic Studies in Athens, an institution which had opened its doors for the first time only nine years before his arrival. His sojourn, first as a Columbia Drisler Fellow, then as a Fellow of the Archaeological Institute of America, would change his life in ways he could never have imagined.

Foreign Archaeological Schools in Athens – a Little Background…

When the ASCSA was founded n 1881, it had only two rivals, the French School founded in 1846 and the German School founded in 1872. Until such schools became established, most Greek archaeological sites had been magnets for thieves, visiting dilettantes, and amateur archaeologists /collectors like Heinrich Schliemann and Sir Arthur Evans. The Greek Archaeological Service (founded in 1834) and the Greek Archaeological Society (created in 1837) made up of Greek archaeologists and interested citizens had done their best and had even sponsored some digs but the number of potential sites was vast and the government lacked the means to either excavate intensively or to stem the steady flow of stolen antiquities. Allowing foreign schools to operate offered a solution – especially since the citizens of the nations establishing such institutions considered themselves Greece’s cultural inheritors. Enthusiasm was high. 

Today there are 19 archaeological schools or institutes in Athens(1), all under the aegis of the Hellenic Ministry of Culture and Tourism, all sometime collaborators but also rivals because all have been dependent on the  ministry for assignments to ‘plum’ sites. The government’s choice of who excavates and where has often hinged on who could pay the most, so the funding of these schools was important, as was ensuring a constant flow of publications both to inform and attract donors. The Greek government has always restricted what finds could be taken abroad but there always seems to have been a way to ensure that donor institutions acquired an adequate number of antiquities to display. (2)  

 

When Bert attended the American School, it was in a smallish neoclassical building in a very rural landscape:

 

The School in 1902 when 15 students attended

It had been the brainchild of Harvard’s Charles Eliot Norton(3)  and founded in 1881 by a consortium of 9  American Universities who would then send their graduate students to Greece either as attendees or as Fellows with grants for research. The Greek government, under Prime Minister Charilaos Trikoupis ceded them land in today’s Kolonaki. At that time it was considered a dubious gift because it was deemed too far from the acropolis and the city centre.

 

Athenian public transport in 1882 did not pass by the school.

In 1882, the first group of students arrived; 1885 saw its first woman student; 1896 saw its first site excavation at Thorikos and at Corinth. Students who came to study or work would form friendships and professional networks which would last their entire lives. Most became professors at American universities or institutions so as time passed the ASCSA was also creating a network of experts and backers. (4)  Little did Bert realize that one of the young students also attending the 1901-1902 year would become his wife.  

He returned to America in 1903 to become the Assistant Curator of Classical Antiquities at the Boston Museum of Fine Arts and a Lecturer at Wellesley College.

If the sudden death of Theodore Heermance, the director at the ASCSA had not occurred in 1905, Bert might have remained in Boston. But the death had left the school scrambling for a suitable replacement and Bert’s name was put forward by the chair of the schools’ managing committee. He had received a glowing recommendation from his alma mater, the University of Vermont, but it did mention his inability to hand in written work in a ‘timely manner’.  In those early days, this was not deemed the flaw it would eventually become.  Bert was well liked. ‘Agreeable’ is a word that would always be included any conversation about Bert.  ‘Inventive’ was another.

Bert had to give up his connection at the Boston Museum of Fine Arts because, as director of ASCSA he had, like Caesar’s wife, to be above suspicion in the eyes of the Greek Director General of Antiquities with whom he would have to deal. No foreign museum with a significant collection of Greek antiquities was above suspicion when it came to how they had or would acquire their Greek artifacts.

The role of director included attending Greek social events, remaining in good standing with the Greek Director of Antiquities and, of course, supporting the students’ endeavours. In those typhoid and malarial prone years, attending to the sick and even arranging for a body to be shipped home was part of the director’s job.  It even fell to Bert to personally arrange for screens to be placed on all of the windows in the school, not to mention overseeing the School’s expansion.

 

1922: still isolated but growing.  The two buildings on the left belong to the American School. The British School, founded in 1886, became its neighbour on the right.

 

If he ever found his duties onerous, there was always the dig at Corinth to which the School had been given exclusive rights in 1896. It was then the jewel in the crown of the school’s excavations and Bert’s great love during his directorship.

Corinth

Ancient Corinth’s layout was a bit of a mystery in the 1890s. Pausanias had barely mentioned it partly because, for him, it was just another Roman city and his interest was ancient Greece.  When he was there, Corinth was still being well watered by an 85 kilometre aqueduct from Mount Kyllini, a marvel of Roman engineering, but the venerable ancient Greek Peirene fountain was still doing its stuff and had been enhanced by an imposing facade in Hellenistic and later in Roman times. Pausanias mentions its ‘sweet waters’.

 

The Peirene Fountain after Excavation.

 

The fountain had started out as a grotto with a spring that tapped into an aquifer to the south. The spring was then enhanced by tunnels built deep behind the original cave, tunnels which allowed even more water from the aquifer to accumulate, flow into basins and then into a pool in front of the fountain.

When it was rediscovered in 1898  by the American School, the fountain was buried more than six metres underground and may never have been found at all if Mr Tsellios’ well, on the land above the site, had not been explored. It turned out to be fed, not by the water table itself, but by the ancient tunnels.  The School wasted no time in digging down and had laid bare the façade by 1901. Like Pausanias, they were more interested in Greek structures than any overlying structures or finds. In their haste, the documentation of the layers carted away was not quite up to the standards that Bert himself would insist on when he became director of the site.

 

Here you can see the farm above and just how much dirt and rubble had to be removed.

 

Tsellios’ well was destroyed in the process and he was given a pump in recompense although, being a conservative villager, he was very suspicious of his new pump.  His house was purchased by the School and become the main residence of the archaeologists.

The Peirene fountain find was big news at the time and helped the school to raise funds for more excavations. Its discovery was a starting point for exploring the ruins of Corinth, a palimpsest of eras that has still not been entirely excavated. (5)

Muddy Waters…

What is amazing is that the fountain system, although deeply buried, was still providing water to the town. This was discovered when tunnelers’ boots muddied the waters as they were exploring and the muddy water  began to appear in the water used by the townspeople, including the outlet where village women still washed their clothes!(6)

The American School became responsible, not just for farther excavations, but also for ensuring the safety of the town’s water supply. Luckily, Bert was as fascinated as to how the fountain’s tunnels and catchment basins worked as much as he was with the artifacts being unearthed. Bert was a bit of a Renaissance man – everything interested him. Apparently he hoped to return the fountain to its pristine state and working order – quite a task.

Maybe Don’t Drink Deep…

Like the villagers, Bert suffered from both malaria and typhoid during his water explorations and many suspected the fountain’s water supply although this was not conclusively proven until microscopic analysis in 1932. The very uncovering of the fountain had led to more complications with water purity because its environs were now exposed to flooding after rains.

Carl Blegen and Bert Hodge Hill

Bert got some real help when a former Fellow of the School, Carl Blegen became School Secretary. The two became lifelong friends. Carl was made Assistant Director in 1920. Both remained in Greece all during the First World War, guarding the School which, of course, was shut down.

 

 

Carl and Bert in 1915

 

Bert volunteered for the American Red Cross. In the 1920s he also served as an officer on the Greek Refugee Settlement Commission after the Asia Minor catastrophe brought so many Greek refugees to the country.

 

Bert’s 1918 American Red Cross ID card

1924 and a Marriage

Bert’s marriage came about when he was 50 because Carl Blegen fell in love. A problem arose when Elizabeth Pierce, a fellow classicist and student at the school refused Carl because she felt she could not abandon her relationship with her erstwhile teacher and friend with whom she had already been living for some years. Ida Thallon, thirteen years older than Elizabeth knew Bert from her sojourn at the school in 1901 and they had met again when she visited with Elizabeth. She was a scholar and classicist in her own right.

What to do?

Carl, desperately in love, came up with a plan. He would marry Elizabeth and Bert would marry Ida. Then all four could live together, allowing the ladies their time together without ruffling society’s feathers.  Bert and Ida seemed to have adopted the role of indulgent parents, sometimes referring to Carl and Elizabeth as ‘the children’.  Bert was fifty to Ida’s 49 when they married in England in 1924. The day after their wedding, Carl wrote to Bert:  It is certainly the finest possible solution of the whole problem, best in every way for everybody …. We are going to have a wonderful time together when our Quartet reassembles in Athens.

 

Ida Thallon Hill

 And they did…

1926: Publish or Perish

The first real crisis in the shared lives of the ‘Pro Pars’ as they often referred to themselves (short for in a professional relationship) occurred in 1926 when Bert’s foot dragging on publishing his Corinth notebooks led to his humiliating  (for him) dismissal.  Bert never felt that he had discovered quite enough to publish. It fell to Edward Capps the chairman of the managing committee to tell Bert his days as director of the ASCSA were over. His procrastination had become inexcusable in the eyes of the man whose job it was to keep the school running smoothly, see to the regular publishing of reports, and to keep it well funded.(7)

This setback for Bert caused the indignant Quartet to distance themselves from the ASCSA, but not entirely. In fact Carl became the director for a year after Bert. They lived the rest of their lives near the American School at 9 Ploutarchou Street, a home Elizabeth purchased in 1931. While they were in residence it became an open house for archaeology students, Greek scholars, and American Embassy staff.

 

9 Ploutarchou Street is today the seat of the J.F. Costopoulos Foundation which promotes Greek Culture and Arts within and outside of Greece. Upon their deaths, it was willed to the ASCSA.

 

Bert’s interest in Corinth never waned. He was ever ready to offer advice and help out.  He championed the building of its onsite museum in 1932, a museum that is well worth a lengthy visit, as is the site itself.

Bert would go on to excavate in Cyprus (1932 and 1934 -1952) under the aegis of the University of Pennsylvania and Carl would excavate for the University of Cincinnati  in Troy and in Pylos.

 

Bert at the sacred spring in the 1930s.

 

In 1936  Bert travelled to the United States as the Charles Eliot Norton lecturer at the Archaeological Institute of America. He was, by this time completely enmeshed in Greek life. He had been on the board of the Athens College (8) from its inception in 1925, and during the Second World War, he alone remained in Greece, keeping the home fires burning (9) and again helping in the Red Cross. In 1947, Bert was awarded the title of ‘Director Emeritus of the American School’.

Ida would die during a sea voyage with Elizabeth in 1954. Bert followed her in 1958. Like the others in the Quartet he would leave his papers, personal and professional, to the ASCSA.

 

Afterword

I just can’t help liking Bert. His perfectionism and ability to see the whole picture, I find very sympathetic as was his obvious ability as a teacher. His writer’s block must have caused him a lot of anguish. It might even explain why he is the only one of the Quartet who did not seek or obtain a Phd. He was a doer, a fixer, not a writer. His Corinth papers were finally published in 1964, well after his death. Those who know, say they are pretty much the way he wrote them.

 

The Grave

 

The Protestant Cemetery, about ten row up from the entrance

 

The Map

 

 

Footnotes

 

(1) Austrian, Belgian, British, Danish, French, Finnish, German, Irish, Netherlands, Norwegian, Polish, Romanian, Italian, Swedish, Swiss, American, Canadian, Australian, and a bit of an outlier, Georgian.

(2)   Our article on Dolly Goulandris touches on the issue of stolen antiquities: See https://athensfirstcemeteryinenglish.blogspot.com/2025/02/dolly-goulandris-and-cycladic-art.html

(3) Charles Eliot Norton also founded the Archaeological Institute of America  in 1879, open to archaeologists and all who share a passion for archaeology.  For more on the ASCSA, try 54 Souidias: A History of the American School of Classical Studies at Athens, edited by Jenifer Neils.

 (4)   95% of School graduates have taught at American universities at some point in their career.

(5)  This year, for example, new excavations are happening north and west of the ancient theatre.

(6)  Right up until the mid twentieth century, women like my mother-in-law were still washing clothes in communal wash basins in the village.

(7) Capps had even gone as far in 1923 as to ban Bert from taking part in further excavations at Corinth until he published. It didn’t work.

(8) In 1925, the Founding Committee was granted a charter under the name "Hellenic American Educational Foundation," with an American sister society established in New York. The mission of this School would be to educate and shape the character of Greek boys from Greece and from abroad. It is still going strong and is now co-ed. 

(9) In 1940, the Greek government had appointed a commission, including Bert, to protect the Corinth Archaeological museum from harm. This involved covering the floors with 40 cms of sand and attempting to somehow protect the delicate artifacts.  America entered the war on December 7, 1941 and Bert was arrested in Corinth on December 12, 1941 but was released and allowed return to Athens where he had to share the house on Ploutarchou Street with four German officers.

 

Sources

The best source for Bert Hodge and the Quartet is the ASCSA itself.  They are very generous with their on line Information. Archaeologist Natalia Vogeikoff-Brogan  and her wonderful From the Archivist's Notebook  offers a wealth of information  about the school and its archives. See https://nataliavogeikoff.com From the Archivist's Notebook

 

-https://www.ascsa.edu.gr/uploads/media/Histories_of_Peirene_Sample.pdf   A must read about the fountain with excellent photos and information.

                                                                                                                                   --https://www.archaeological.org/archaeologists-you-should-know-bert-hodge-hill/ 

https://www.google.gr/books/edition/Histories_of_Peirene/8FX9PfBGqPoC?hl=el&gbpv=1&dq=bert+hill,+archaeologist&pg=PA115&printsec=frontcover

https://www.google.gr/books/edition/Carl_W_Blegen/YwhPDgAAQBAJ?hl=el&gbpv=1&dq=carl+blegen,&printsec=frontcover

https://nataliavogeikoff.com/2015/11/01/the-end-of-the-quartet-the-day-the-music-stopped-at-ploutarchou-9/#more-1771

https://nataliavogeikoff.com/2014/02/14/my-heart-is-beating-february-13-1923/  

https://www.brown.edu/Research/Breaking_Ground/bios/Hill_Ida%20Thallon.pdf

https://www.google.gr/books/edition/Carl_W_Blegen/OwdPDgAAQBAJ?hl=el&gbpv=1&dq=ida+thallon+marriage+1924&pg=PT143&printsec=frontcover. 

 

https://chpl.org/blogs/post/tbt-carl-blegen/

https://www.ascsa.edu.gr/index.php/archives/history-of-the-american-school-1882-1942-chapter-i

https://www.ascsa.edu.gr/index.php/archives/history-of-the-american-school-1882-1942-chapter-ii

and

https://www.ascsa.edu.gr/index.php/archives/history-of-the-american-school-1882-1942-chapter-iv

 

 

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   

 

 

 

Sources

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zLRMYnnqYnc Παναγιώτης Κανελλόπουλος (πρώην Πρωθυπουργός) Βουλή - 17/08/1982

 

 https://www.efsyn.gr/stiles/apopseis/307430_koinoboyleytiko-epos#goog_rewar

https://www.google.gr/books/edition/George_Seferis/bSs9uqYuxr4C?hl=el&gbpv=1&dq=kanellopoulos,+politician&pg=PA187-IA39&printsec=frontcover

https://www.google.gr/books/edition/Sociology_in_Greece/BWGdEAAAQBAJ?hl=el&gbpv=1&dq=panagiotis+kanellopoulos,politician+and+philosopher&pg=PA7&printsec=frontcover  P 7 about his app to Soc. Chair from book Sociology in Greece

https://www.athensvoice.gr/politismos/vivlio/691846/panagiotis-kanellopoylos-mia-viografia-mia-olokliri-epohi/  great pics

https://www.google.gr/books/edition/Re_imagining_the_Past/7RCpAwAAQBAJ?hl=el&gbpv=1&dq=kanellopoulos,+Tsatsos,+philosophy&pg=PA135&printsec=frontcover.

https://www.makronissos.org/