Ich brauche mich nicht zu trösten. Natione wurden in der Moderne gebildet. Ob das gut oder schlecht ist, das ist ein anderes Thema.
Aber ich brauche nur zu sehen auf die Tafel von Pella, auf die Münzen aus der Antike, auf die lückenlos präsente griechisch-sprachige Tradition der Kirche im Byzanz, auf die Universitäten die Greacum und Latinum anbieten, auf die Hinterlassenschaften Alexander des Großen, auf die Namen der Menschen und der Städte, auf die Zeit des Hellenismus, das greco-baktrische Reich- es gibt so vieles- was eben für mich spricht ohne ein Wort sagen zu müssen.
Deine Argumente sind fadenscheinig, weil du dir die Tatsache zunutze machen willst, dass es nicht schon immer Nationen gab.
Aber jeder halbwegs Interessierte merkt, dass nach deinem keine Nation eine Geschichte haben müsste.
Aber ausgerechnet Dein Land von der Antike bis heute.
- - - Aktualisiert - - -
Was ist daran falsch. Hätten die Bulgaren mit Delchew, Gruev und wie sie alle hießen gewonnen wäre Thessaloniki Solun und du wärst Bulgare ohne zu murren. Stell dir vor.
Genau das gelabere, deckt sich mit den Artikeln:
Greeks and Albanians in Greece by Alexis Heraclides,AIM Athens, December 7, 2000
"
Well before the upsurge of Greece ultra-nationalism, which manifested itself during the first part of the 1990s with the Greek-Macedonian dispute over "the name of Macedonia" and more recently with the hysterical fundamentalist nationalism of the Orthodox Church of Greece, nationalist sentiments were instilled in Greece by way of the most traditional and effective method: namely primary and secondary education (and in some cases even at university level). Education, as it is well known, has been used as a vehicle of political socialization, the process whereby young individuals learn to become enthusiastic patriots and loyal citizens of their country and state. The Greek educational system is of course not unique in pursuing such aims and hardly the inventor of such forms of socialization to the nation. Similar processes are more than obvious in all the countries of Southeastern Europe and beyond"
"
In the Greek case, the pupils are thought to be intolerant of other nations and ethnic groups (outside and within Greece). The Greek educational system teaches them and makes them believe that the Greeks are superior to all others; that the Greeks are the direct descendent of the illustrious ancient Greeks, who are said to be the greatest civilization of ancient times and the point of departure of Western civilization; and that the Greeks (presumably the ancient Greeks) are the creators of all major human values with an incomparable contribution to world culture. Greek students are also taught that their nation is more than 3000 years old. They do not recognize the well-known fact that nationhood is a very recent phenomenon in human history and that hardly any Greek nation or people existed in the classical ancient Greek cultural-linguistic milieu of antagonistic city-states. Again the attempt at historical depth is characteristic of most national historical narratives, but the Greek case is one of the most extreme, comparable only to the Israeli or Ethiopian cases. Furthermore it is deeply held and provides the Greeks of today with one of the most glorious myths ever conceived. It gives rise to self-esteem but also to arrogance and haughtiness towards all others. "
"But let us focus on the Albanians and how they feature in the Greek national narrative. Throughout the 19th century with the Greek War of Independence ("Greek Revolution" as it is known in Greece) as the point of departure, the Albanian-speakers, notably the Orthodox Christian Albanian-speakers known as "Arvanites" were largely regarded as Greeks by the Greeks and Greeks-speakers, as Greeks in substance, "Greeks and Arvanites: two races, one nation" as some had put it at the time. And indeed this was to a considerable extent the self-definition of the Arvanites themselves at least in the southern part of the Balkan peninsula at a time when no sense of Albanian national self-consciousness had emerged. Albanian nationhood began in the last quarter of the 19th century in Kosovo, particularly as a reaction to the Serbian and Greek threats to those parts of the Ottoman Empire where the bulk of the Albanians lived for centuries. Prior to that the Orthodox Albanians in the Southern Balkans were among the most active and renown "Greek" guerrilla leaders on land and sea during the Greek War of Independence and with the advent of Greek independence and until today, fully assimilated and very prominent in politics, diplomacy, the army, etc. "
Alexis Heraclides is Associate Professor of International Relations at the Panteion University in Athens
Alexis Heraclides (i)
GREECE A LAND OF HEROES - AND DISTORTIONS
The controversy over Macedonia owes much to the Greek mind set, writes ALEXANDER ZAHAROPOULOS
("Sydney Morning Herald", Australia, Wednesday, March 23, 1994)
Although the Australian media have overwhelmingly supported the embattled Macedonians, and although most Australians would do so instinctively, it is unlikely that more than a handful
of people are able to fully comprehend the Greek position. It is far from trivial to say that that is because they have not experienced a Greek education.
In retrospect it is clear to me that my 12 years of Greek schooling, mainly in the 70's, conspired to instil in me precisely one attitude and almost unshakeable belief in the purity and unity of the Greek people, language and culture (to which three, I would add "orthodoxy" if my parents, who once had to bribe a priest to allow my Anglican great-grandmother to baptise my brother, had not thought the religion irrelevant and in bad taste).
The attitude I am referring to was taught to us at school in images. Each year, at the school parade to commemorate the uprising against "the Turk", the story was wheeled out of the
Greek general who had killed so many infidels in a single day that his sword had to be prised out of his locked hand.
Our textbooks exalted those Byzantine kings who had managed to
keep the Eastern riff-raff out of the empire. All epochs contributed Great Cleansers to our list of heroes.
Belief in the continuity of Greece against all odds was enabled also by a method of withholding information and sealing off interpretative paths. We had, as children, neither the capacity nor the inclination to explore disunities and "impurities" in the history of the Greek people, language and culture. The Pelloponesian War of antiquity was never more than a family squabble. We could not have savoured the thought that Sparta might have had more in common culturally with Persia (with which it formed alliances) than with Athens. The long history of the land in which we lived had been reduced for us to the opposition of Greek and non-Greek.
One carried such views to maturity. Melina Mercouri (in 1981 I worked as assistant to her senior adviser, Vassilis Fotopoulos) used to tell me that the importance of the Elgin marbles rests in the fact that they are the heart of a body of Greek culture inherited from the ancient past. Until her recent death she believed that modern Greece, as the sole inheritor, had a duty to preserve the organic coherence of that body. When the bishop of Florina (a town just south of the Macedonian border) said that the very stones he stood on testified to their Greekness, he was, sadly, echoing the opening lines of a popular epic revered modern Greek poet Giannis Ritsos.
It was not until I left Greece that I understood that our education resulted only in intellectual arrogance and moral poverty. I came to know of the strong African and Asiatic influence that operated upon early Aegean culture. I understand that Alexander spread eastward not Greek civilisation but terror and misfortune. I learnt that Salonika had a Jewish culture to rival Vienna's before local Greeks collaborated in its extermination. I was ashamed to discover that in the Greek provinces of Macedonian and Thrace live communities who in this day and age are treated as outcasts because Greek is not their first language. I was horrified to realise that for decades they had resisted policies of forced "hellenisation".
Away from the country I quickly learnt not to use the words "gyfots" (gypsy), "vlachos" (Romanian) and "Arvanitis" (Albanian) for the common swear-words that they are in today's
Greece. When the Greek Government used "Skoupa" ("broom" or "broomsweap") as the code name for the massive drive to remove destitute Albanians from Greece in 1993 I seriously considered changing my surname.
Needless to say, it has not been my intention to suggest that the stifling, chauvinistic education we received cannot be overcome. Not that Greeks are presently incapable of accommodating difference. When the grave of Karolos Kuhn, the genius of the modern Greek theatre, was covered with anti-Semitic slogans in 1992, the Athenian press was swift to condemn the action. Yet even as Greeks are expunging old racisms, in respect of the Macedonian issue there has been precious little dissent from the official government line, and none that I have heard of among Greek Australians. One would like to believe that dissenters are keeping low out of fear. The rest must realise that the conventional method of perpetuating their identity as Greeks -- a method never of their own choosing -- has no place in a modern, tolerant, culturally diffuse world.
Note: Dr Alexander Zaharopoulos left Greece after completing
his secondary education, but returned frequently while
studying at University College, London. He settled in
Australia in 1992.
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