Ion Dragoumis
This article needs additional citations for verification. (August 2009) |
Ion Dragoumis | |
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Ίων Δραγούμης | |
agnostic thought) | |
Military career | |
Allegiance | Kingdom of Greece |
Service/ |
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Battles/wars | Greco-Turkish War (1897) Macedonian Struggle |
Ion Dragoumis (Greek: Ίων Δραγούμης; 14 September 1878 – 31 July 1920) was a Greek diplomat, philosopher, writer and revolutionary.
Biography
Born in
Ion Dragoumis studied law at
In 1902, Dragoumis was made deputy consul in the Greek consulate at Monastir (present-day Bitola). In 1903, he became head of the consulate at Serres and later went on to serve in Plovdiv, Burgas, Alexandria and Alexandroupolis. In 1907, he was assigned to the embassy in Constantinople.
In 1905, during his time as the Vice-Consul of Greece in Alexandria, Dragoumis met and started a love affair with the writer Penelope Delta, who was married to the businessman Stephanos Delta. Out of respect for her husband and children, Dragoumis and Delta eventually decided to separate, but continued to correspond passionately until 1912, when Dragoumis started a relationship with the famous stage actress Marika Kotopouli.
Dragoumis became instrumental in the
In 1907, he published the book Martyron kai Iroon Aima (Martyrs’ and Heroes’ Blood), which presented his views on the situation in Macedonia and on what the Greek government should do to more properly defend the Greek element there. During this period, he also toyed with the idea of a Greek-Ottoman Empire, believing that Greeks, already having control of commerce and finance, would also gain political power in such an arrangement.
In 1909, the
In 1910 he founded, collaborating with philologists and writers (Vlasis Gavriilidis, Nikos Kazantzakis, Alexandros Delmouzos, Alexandros Papanastasiou, Manolis Triantafyllidis, Lorentzos Mavilis), the Educational Club (Εκπαιδευτικός Όμιλος), an organization for the promotion of Demotic Greek language, while he was writing also articles in the philological magazine "Noumas" (with the nickname Idas).
When the First Balkan War broke out, Dragoumis travelled to Thessaloniki as an attaché to Crown Prince (later King) Constantine.
In 1915, he resigned from the diplomatic corps; having entered Greek politics as an independent, he was elected to the Greek Parliament for
With the outbreak of the
On 30 July 1920 an attempt was made by two royalists to assassinate Venizelos at the Gare de Lyon railway station in Paris. The next day, 31 July, Dragoumis was stopped by a Venizelist Democratic Security Battalion (Δημοκρατικά Τάγματα Ασφαλείας) in Athens and was executed as a form of payback.
Though her relationship with him ended many years before, Penelope Delta (herself a supporter of Venizelos) deeply mourned Dragoumis, and after he was killed wore nothing but black until her own death two decades later. In the late 1930s she received Dragoumis' diaries and archives, entrusted to her by his brother Philippos. She managed to dictate 1000 pages of manuscripted comments on Dragoumis' work, before deciding to take her own life in 1941.[2]
Ideas and legacy
Dragoumis's thought was a mix of romantic communitarianism and nationalism. He considered that the nation is superior than the state, which must serve the nation. He was a supporter of Greek irredentism, to include as many Greek lands and population as possible in the Greek state, but did not embrace the Megali Idea, with the capture of Constantinople, which he regarded as an anachronistic concept.
He believed that
Dragoumis is now honoured for his patriotism and significant contribution during the
In 1986, the journalist
Works
- The Path (Το Μονοπάτι), 1902
- Martyrs and Heroes Blood, 1907
- Samothrace, 1908
- All Those Alive (Όσοι Ζωντανοί), 1911
- Hellenic civilization, 1914
- Stop (Σταμάτημα), 1918
- My Hellenism and the Hellenes, 1927
References
- ISBN 978-1-000-33200-1.
- ^ , Modern library of Alexandria (BA), Cairo. Bibliotheca Alexandrina News, Conference about Penelope Delta at the BA, at 2009-05-04 [1][dead link]
Sources
- ISBN 960-05-0072-X
External links
- Greek Wikisource has original text related to this article: Ίων Δραγούμης
- Works by Ion Dragoumis at Project Gutenberg