2014/01/01 by Peter Mario Kreuter · 1 citation
Social Sciences · #Balkans: History, Politics, Society #Reign #Throne #Serbian #Politics #Ancient history #George (robot) #History #Historiography #Fatherland #Classics #Law #Political science #Philosophy #Archaeology #Art history
paper · doi:10.1163/9781848882966_006
openalex publication_date 2014/01/01 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2025/11/06
George I, King of the Hellenes from 1863 up to 1913, had the longest reign of a Greek king ever in modern times. And his reign was marked not only by substantial territorial gains that enlarged the Greek kingdom by more than double of its former size, but also by a series of military conflicts. Already a year after his accession to the throne, his original fatherland Denmark was defeated and dismembered by Prussia and Austria. And just a year prior to his assassination, Greek soldiers started to fight together with Montenegrin, Serbian and Bulgarian troops against the Ottoman Empire and gained for Greece Macedonia with its capital Thessaloniki and East Thrace. Still, it remains an interesting and quite disturbing fact that George I never stood in the focus of modern historiography, neither in Greece nor in Denmark, France or the UK. Thereby he is often portrayed in specialised studies about Greek history as a political key figure, but the man and his personality, his family, his thoughts and feelings remain somewhat uncertain, if not be ignored completely due to the lack of biographic studies. This chaptertherefore seeks to shed some light on crucial moments in the life of George I, when war and peace governed his life. And fortunately, the correspondence with his old friend Fritz Peter Uldall provides a lot of information until now unknown in the English speaking scientific community.