Vienna’s “Little Greece” and the First Newspaper in Greek

Holy Trinity Greek Orthodox Church, Vienna’s “Little Greece”. Credit: afagen/CC BY-NC-SA 2.0

When we see cardinal communities of the Greek diaspora, Vienna seldom comes to mind. However, if we are to see historically important communities for modern Hellenism, the Austrian superior should surely beryllium connected the shortlist with its ain Greek enclave, Little Greece.

Like different Greek communities successful the erstwhile Austrian Empire, the Greeks’ large-scale migration to the spot of Hapsburg powerfulness followed the wars betwixt the Austrian and Ottoman Empires.

After the Ottomans’ 2 failed attempts to seizure Vienna, the Austrians, astatine the caput of a multinational European force, pushed the Ottoman Turks southward and eastward to the gates of Belgrade, which contiguous is the superior of Serbia.

Greek merchants acceptable up store successful Vienna’s Little Greece

After the Treaty of Passarowitz, signed successful 1717, the borders stabilized. There was a propulsion to reopen commerce and reconstruct a immense country devastated by decades of war.

Along with fixing the boundaries betwixt the 2 empires, different cardinal proviso of the statement was that Ottoman and Austrian subjects had the close to prosecute successful commerce successful the territory of the other.

However, the Austrians lacked cognition of the Ottoman Empire, and the Turks themselves disdained commerce.

Hence, arsenic a applicable matter, the accidental fell connected Ottoman minorities—Orthodox Greeks and Serbs, arsenic good arsenic Jews and Armenians—to capable the gap.

As the superior of a ample multiethnic state, Vienna was a cardinal halfway for these “Ottoman” merchants.

The members of the Greek diaspora successful Vienna hailed chiefly from Macedonia and Epirus, arsenic good arsenic from Thracian cities, such arsenic Constantinople and Philippopolis (the modern Plovdiv, Bulgaria).

Bulk goods, peculiarly cotton, were the lifeblood of the trade.

Though fable has it that Greeks acceptable up the archetypal coffeehouse successful Vienna, Dr. Theophanis Pampas, a section Greek Viennese doc with an encyclopedic cognition of the community, informed Greek Reporter this singular grant goes to the Armenians.

The Greek assemblage there, arsenic it did everyplace it acceptable down roots, grew and prospered.

But successful emblematic Greek fashion, factions soon appeared. Some Greeks took Austrian nationality and, successful immoderate cases, adjacent entered the Austrian aristocracy.

Others retained Ottoman nationality, which had the payment of little taxation but restricted their activities to the mercantile sphere.

Vienna’s “Little Greece” and the archetypal paper successful Greek

Each faction past founded its ain church, some wrong a 100 meters of the other, successful Vienna’s Griechenviertel (Greek Quarter).

These churches stay to this day, and liturgy alternates each Sunday from 1 religion to the next.

Education and literacy successful Greek were cardinal endeavors of the Greek community, careless of faction. The Vienna Greek schoolhouse is adjacent older than the Greek authorities itself, having been founded successful 1804.

Standing successful a religion older than the modern Greek authorities and watching Greek-language acquisition classes which person been held continuously since 1804, is an acquisition ne'er to beryllium forgotten.

Greek appeared successful people for the archetypal clip successful Vienna

Aside from the acquisition efforts that were ongoing since that time, Vienna is wherever the Greek language archetypal appeared successful people successful the modern world.

The existent tract of the archetypal Greek printing property is gone. Still, wrong the Greek Quarter, a stately baroque Viennese gathering houses the 2nd Greek printing press, wherever Rigas Pheraios, the protomartyr of Greek independence, edited the Greek newspaper Ephimeris.

All Greek publications, peculiarly those successful the diaspora, successful a genuine consciousness descend from this press.

By the clip of the Greek War of Independence successful the 1820s, the Vienna Greek assemblage was astatine its highest with astir 5,000 members and an progressively divers socio-economic structure.

The members of the educated and prosperous assemblage people longed for Greece’s liberation from the Ottoman yoke. Still, astatine the aforesaid time, they were conscious that the Austrian Empire, a bundle of nationalities nether a comparatively benign but implicit autocracy, was violently opposed to and fearful of revolution.

Austrian Greeks, therefore, had to locomotion a precise bladed enactment betwixt joyousness astatine Greece’s prospective independency and their idiosyncratic information and livelihood successful the Austrian Empire.

After all, it was the Austrians who had arrested the Greek revolutionary Rigas Pheraios successful the cardinal Austrian larboard of Trieste and handed him implicit to the Turks, who strangled him successful Belgrade successful 1798.

Greek assemblage successful Vienna is simply a shadiness of its erstwhile self

Greek independency did not effect successful the ample repatriation of Austrian Greeks.

A fewer returned, but the impoverished small kingdom could connection thing compared to the immense Austrian Empire.

The inexorable tide of assimilation began to sorb the Greeks into Austria’s taste goulash.

Other Greek Austrians began to determination to Britain oregon France oregon adjacent New Orleans successful the United States, wherever the economies were much dynamic than Austria.

However, a trickle of caller immigrants arrived successful Austria done the years, which, on with the long-established members’ efforts, kept the assemblage intact.

The 2 satellite wars accrued unit connected the Greeks to assimilate, peculiarly during the barbaric Nazi era, but their spiritual assemblage survived.

After the war, Austria had nary of the wide migration of Greek “Gastarbeiter” oregon impermanent workers, similar successful neighboring Germany. Still, a just fig of Greeks went to Austria, peculiarly for study, and afterward, they often stayed successful the country.

Like Austria itself, Vienna’s Greek assemblage is simply a shadiness of its erstwhile size, but it is inactive prosperous and elegant. Like the “Greektowns” of America, today’s Viennese-Greeks seldom unrecorded successful the archetypal country wherever their ancestors settled.

Still, immoderate bash person businesses there, and the religion and assemblage center, arsenic always, relation arsenic the community’s halfway of gravity.

Greek nine successful Austria witnessed and participated successful cardinal events successful the past of Hellenism.

For those of america who are Diaspora Greeks successful America oregon Australia, the singular endurance of specified long-established communities should beryllium a root of pridefulness and anticipation that our communities, too, volition walk the trial of time.