Volume 73, Issue 1

Relations between Greece and Austria-Hungary had never been particularly cordial, despite some brief periods of a certain rapprochement, and Vienna displayed a total lack of consideration for the interests of Athens also during the Balkan Wars. Greek ‘dreams’ were only marginally ‘tangent’ to Vienna’s interests and the Ballhausplatz did not envisage any point of convergence of their political goals. The cooperation, let alone the alliance, between Greece and Serbia proved to be a thorn in the Greco-Austrian relations. All issues of Greek interest met with Vienna’s strong opposition: the drawing of the southern/southeastern borders of Albania; the fate of Thessaloniki and Kavalla; the future of the East Aegean islands. While Austria was aiming at bringing Bulgaria in her sphere of influence, Germany wanted to attract Athens closer to the Triple Alliance, which led to serious misunderstandings between the two empires. Ultimately, this divergence of policy worked in favour of Greece that obtained Thessaloniki and its hinterland, Kavalla, a large part of Epirus, safeguarded her titles on the Aegean islands and secured a common Greco-Serbian borderline. However, the issue of Northern Epirus was left in abeyance until after the First World War. Finally, the Ballhausplatz, re-evaluating the new geopolitical realities in the Balkans, started looking constructively to the future role of Greece in the region.

After Greece had been conquered by the troops of the Axis Powers in spring 1941, they installed a rule of occupation existing until october 1944. The Government in Athens had to finance this occupation by making payments in advance and besides, making a forced credit available. This method led to an exorbitant overloading of the Greek economy and to a galloping inflation. The German Tax and Finance Ministry played an important, yet hardly noticed role as to the concrete implementation of the monetary exploitation. Almost unknown documents throw a light on the financing of the German Wehrmacht during WW II. Besides, the real burden on the Greek economy shall be estimated and connected with the general questions of war financing in the Third Reich.

In 1942, one year after the occupation of Greece by the German “Wehrmacht”, the “Reichswirtschaftsministerium” set up the DEGRIGES (Deutsch-Griechische Warenausgleichsgesellschaft / German-Greek organization for the exchange of goods) for the control of trade between Germany and Greece. The president was Otto Braun, owner of the Berlin-based „Transdanubia“, an Import- Export-Company. Braun organised in the 1920s in Bavaria illegal arms depots, and commanded „Feme“-murders. In Hungary he supported the fascists, and achieves the „aryanization“ of Jewish companies. The focus of the investigation is on the activities of the DEGRIGES in the network of competing organizations like the greek branch of NSDAP, the Sudosteuropa-Gesellschaft, the SACIG (the Italian counterpart of DEGRIGES), and the Mitteleuropaischer Wirtschaftstag (MWT) − and on the competition with Hermann Neubacher, „Sonderbeauftrager“ of the Foreign Office for Greece, and Max Merten, one of the organizers of the deportation of the greek Jews to Auschwitz. In summary, it can be stated that the DEGRIGES was from 1942 until 1944 (when it was liquidated during the withdrawal of the “Wehrmacht”) an „agency for the wellarranged exploitation of Greece“.

This article is dealing with an important chapter in the history of Greece that has hitherto received very little attention by the German research community: the Greek civil war from 1947 to 1949, whose consequences left their mark on the Greek society for a long time. The topic has to be addressed through its classification in two contexts. First in a historical context that comprises the past history and foremost the conflicts without which the armed struggle probably would not have erupted. This also includes the posthistory and the dealings with the civil war in the memory culture and politics of history, from the 1950s to the present time. A comparison with a, in some respects, similar development concerning the Spanish civil war further examines the Greek example. The second context is a theoretical one. Although research rather tends to neglect civil wars vis-a-vis wars between states, there numerous approaches to the topic of civil wars, some of which are dealt with in this article. The summary examines to which degree they apply in the case of Greece.

The government of the Federal Republic of Germany under Chancellor Schmidt and Foreign Minister Genscher supported Greece’s joining of the European Communities which took place at the beginning of 1981, more than every other EC member state. This essay shows that primarily political motives played a role. Under the conditions of the East/West conflict the Federal Government hoped to win a reliable ally and to strengthen the southeast flank of the NATO. Doubts resulted from possible financial burdens and social problems as a result of the freedom of movement agreed on by contract for Greek employees. However, these worries weren’t decisive at the end. Economic aspects not least were disregarded negligently. The question whether Greece was capable of the joining because of serious structural difficulties received little attention. The government Schmidt/Genscher thought to be able to overcome all problems with the transfer of financial resources which especially the Greek government under Prime Minister Papandreou demanded.

It is usually held that by the turn of the millennium Latin Christians stopped enslaving their fellow-believers from within Europe. Scholars have therefore tended to define the late medieval type of domestic slaves in Italian and Iberian households, most of whom had been traded from the Eastern Mediterranean and the Black Sea region to Europe, by their cultural and religious difference. Yet, the numerous Christians from the Balkans who came across the Adriatic Sea to the West (and especially to Venice) clearly complicate the picture. They were mostly under twelve years of age and could be purchased at a very low price. The paper examines the commercial policy of the Venetian Senate in respect of the Adriatic human trafficking and sounds the strategies Venetian merchants used in order to pursue their interests, within and outside the legal framework set by the state authorities East and West of the Adriatic Sea.

This essay examines the roles of notaries as intermediaries between the ecclesiastical and temporal spheres in Zadar, then the capital of Venice’s Adriatic possessions. My focus is on the economic and social relationships between notaries and urban society during the middle of the century. The essay’s main emphasis is not on the city’s archbishops, exclusively Venetian patricians as they were, but instead on notaries and their ecclesiastical customers. By utilising the rich archival holdings of the Croatian State Archives in Zadar, I investigate the interactions of members of the cathedral chapter and examine their membership status, economic activities, and their formal and informal processes of exchange, as well as various linkages between these functionaries and the city’s inhabitants.

The article reconsiders the series of revolts that broke out in the Albanian provinces in 1910, 1911 and 1912 in paying attention to their nature, the place and position of the various actors involved as well as to the processes of repression and negotiation. Because of the changing context, of the harsh repression of summer 1910 and of the violent control of the electoral campaign of spring 1912, the uprisings, which were reactive, turned against the military and fiscal reforms, became active and multifaceted and led by different kinds of actors (local chiefs, former deputies opposed to the CUP, militaries, etc.). Their Albanian or pan-Albanian dimension was part of the contemporary debate and was a stake for their treatment.

The best guarantee of protecting the rights of Christian minorities on the European territory of the Ottoman Empire in the late 19 th century was nothing else but the establishing of own nation-states, where the Christian population could lead his life without being ruled or controlled by the Ottoman Empire. This process found support and was assisted by the Great Powers. It means, that one form of the humanitarian intervention was the state-building instructed or assisted from abroad. One of the unexpected experiences of the Balkan Wars 1912/1913 was that the members of the Balkan League committed genocides and other kinds of mass violence against other Nationalities and the Muslim population of the peninsula. Among other things the Albanian state-building project of the Great Powers aimed to prevent further genocide and other acts of violence against the Albanian population and other refugees from Macedonia and to put an end to the anarchy of the country. The main international organisation to directly represent the great powers in the new Albania and to be responsible for the state-building process was the International Commission of Control.

This paper follows “Balkan Vienna”, a media phenomenon as well as a media construct created both by the Viennese press and from the perspective of the Balkans themselves. The decline of the once brilliant capital of the great empire into a hotbed of revolutionaries and terrorists was recorded in Belgrade with scorn and fear. In Vienna, the press addressed these events in terms that sought to distance the capital from the southeast. However, at the same time the Viennese press admired the political activists from the Balkans, exoticising them as heroes. Thus, the press externalised Austrian domestic contradictions through their discussions of Balkan politics. By reporting scandal and sleaze, the press perpetuated the image of Vienna as a refuge for revolutionary activities and “typical Balkan” violence. “Balkan Vienna” is thus a social and political place, one of local, national, transnational, Balkanic and European linkages. As such, it is part of a new discourse, which relocates the internal and external view of Vienna and Austria on the mental map of Europe.

This article investigates the events of the Frasheri government in interwar Albania. This government, usually described as liberal or as of the “Young” represented a novelty for Albanian society of the time, but lasted only one year. This study seeks to investigate what elements characterised this government, who were the protagonists and what consequences had the Frasheri experiment for the country? Through the study of domestic and foreign politics and the analysis of the relationship with the local press, the paper investigates the Minister’s actions in detail. The Frasheri government, defined by the historiographical literature as a liberal experiment of the zoghist era, has never been thoroughly studied. Through unexplored sources from the Albanian press and archival sources from Rome and Tirana, this study presents a new interpretation of the Frasheri government.

The article presents various survival strategies developed by Slovene Littoral men interned in “special battalions” of the Italian army (10 June 1940 - 8 September 1943). The main aims of the Fascist authorities were to intern and subjugate the Slovene Littoral men, whom they regarded as “unreliable”, and to stem the resistance in the Julian March. By taking into account archival records and various oral/memory-based testimonies, the article sheds light on the life of Slovene Littoral men in special battalions and their individual and above all collective survival strategies divided into the following categories: procurement of additional food supplies, attitude to the superiors, cooperation with the local population, and comradeship.

The article addresses the social differentiation among industrial workforces in two Yugoslav motor-vehicle factories in the period between 1965 and 1985. Along which lines did social inequalities, which were negated in official communist ideology manifest and how were they articulated? How were they dealt with in the complex environments of self-managed enterprises in respect to the official doctrine? Based on archival material from factory archives, the League of Communists and the socialist mass organisations and on published sources such as factory newspapers, the industrial workforces are described as heterogeneous with shifting affiliations between its sub-groups. Three dividing factors (1. blue-collar vs. white collar workers, 2. gender and 3. profession) are examined. Intersectional entanglements can be found, which systematically accumulated social advantages for certain social groups. Serbian and Slovene enterprises demonstrate many comparable tendencies. In reaction, official ideology attempted to detract attention from social stratification, employing symbolic recognition and calls for greater implementation of the principles of self-management.

The author argues that the Transylvanian Romanians participated - at least from time to time - during the 13 th and the 14 th centuries, at the exercise of the power in their country, together with the noblemen, the Saxons and the Szeklers. This participation took place in the framework of the official general assemblies (congregationes generales) of the land of Transylvania (regnum Transilvanum). The gradual exclusion of Romanians as a group from the general assemblies of Transylvania, which took place around 1366–1437, was mainly an act of religious and not of ethnic significance. But this exclusion started to create a special state of mind in the country which has prepared the future ethnic discrimination from the modern times.

The text reviews the book by Marian Coman on Power and territory in medieval Wallachia. The book shows that Wallachia before the late 16 th century has not been organised on the basis of territoriality. The power of its rulers was rather based on a network of social links. Medieval Wallachia did not have clear-cut borders, but rather diffuse frontier-zones that were not closed than in the late 16 th century. The author presents detailed research of the three frontier-zones of Wallachia: the frontier towards neighboring Moldavia, the Carpathian frontier bordering Transylvania, and the Danube, separating Wallachia from the Ottoman Empire, at least symbolically.

Since the Treaty of Adrianople 1829 the Lower Danube underwent major political, economic and territorial transformations. It changed from a quasi-closed river entirely under Ottoman rule into a site of Great Power intervention. This new found international interest mobilised sustained efforts to make the Danube from the Iron Gates to the Black Sea navigable. Within a few years the Lower Danube turned into an important commercial and communication hub of continental dimensions. It also turned into a place of pilgrimage for politicians, diplomats, merchants and hydraulic engineers from all over Europe enabling a vivid exchange of ideas. The goal of this article is twofold: on one hand it sets out to give an overview over the existing body of historical literature that places the Lower Danube into a transnational framework, and on the other it makes several suggestions for further studies.

At the time after Karl Krumbacher had founded the first modern center for Byzantine studies in Munich, the base for development of up-to-date medieval studies in Belgrade was already under construction. In the years before and after the Seminar for Byzantine studies was founded (1906) at the Belgrade University, some young scholars from Serbia were sent in different occasions to Krumacher’s Institute in order to deepen their abilities in byzantine and medieval studies. Among them, six names should be mentioned for their extraordinary contribution to the research progress: Božidar Prokić, Dragutin Anastasijević, Filaret Granić in byzantine studies and Stanoje Stanojević, Vladimir Ćorović, Nikola Radojčić in medieval studies. All of them habe been learning Krumbacher’s sophisticated methodological approach, introducing it in Belgrade either in pure byzantine studies or in medieval studies in a broader sense. Through their publications and teaching work Krumbacher’s influation brought a great support to development of the research in the above mentioned fields.

This essay treats actions of Fritz Gebhard Schellhorn (1888-1982), physician, member of the German diplomatic service since 1920, German consul in Cernăuţi / Czernowitz (Romania) 1934-1944, resident in Jassy in the period 1940/41. It describes his efforts and resulting successes in preventing the continuation of the murder of Jews by a SS-„Sonderkommando“ in Cernăuţi in July 1941 and stopping the deportation of Jews from Cernăuţi saving up to 20 000 human beings in October 1941. In addition, the essay questions the prevailing interpretation of the role of Traian Popovici, lord mayor of Cernăuţi and presents some thoughts on the motivation of Schellhorn and the reception of this incidents.