FOLLMERAYER (1790–1861)
By Pilo Zyba, Greece
Towards the end of 1833, a professor of world history and classical languages at the town gymnasium of Landshut in Bavaria came to Greece for two months. He was the author of two books on the life and culture of medieval Greece. He wrote the first book about the rule of Trebizond and published it in Munich in 1827 under the title “Geschichte des Kaisertums von Trapezunt”. He wrote the second book on the history of the Morea, titled “Geschichte der Halbinsel Morea während des Mittelalters” (Stuttgart - Tübingen, 1830).
This professor was named Kaisartums Von Follmerayer (1790–1861). He was accompanied by the high-ranking Russian military officer Alexander Tolstoy. He took an interest in the toponyms of the areas and places. He wrote an enthusiastic article about the history of Athens. His article was well received and widely echoed.
Enthusiastic, the Greeks asked him to give a lecture in the history department, but he modestly declined.
He returned to Greece again in 1842 for his second visit. By now he also held the title of Academician of Munich and was the director of the largest German newspaper, the “Augsburger Allgemeine Zeitung”.
In the meantime, he had published two books on the past and present-day Greeks: “Welchen Einfluß hatte die Besetzung Griechenlands durch die Slawen auf das Schicksal der Stadt Athen und der Landschaft Attika?” (Stuttgart - Tübingen, 1835), and the second volume of the history of the Morea (1836). He stayed for fifteen days and left with the impression that his work was very little known in Greece.
Five years later, in May 1847, he came to Greece for the third time. The Bavarian gentleman was by then great and famous. He had put out two more volumes in Stuttgart (1843), “Fragmente aus dem Orient” (Stuttgart – Tübingen, 1843), or “Fragments from the Orient”. He was an honorary member of the Academy of the University of Tübingen. This was a few days before he became a doctor at the University of Munich and was elected as a deputy for Frankfurt.
His reception in Greece was very bad; in Athens they “stoned” him, and the newspapers caricatured him. Seven professors, academicians, and historians wrote openly against him: B. Bubilaqis, Dh. Surmelis, G. Pendadhis, S. Ikonomu, A. Lefkias, A. Vretos, and others.
What had happened?
The Greeks had understood his writings and thoughts about the Greeks and Greece. Follmeayer wrote, “The Greeks of today are not the heirs of the ancient Greeks.”
It is true, Follmeayer had signed his name to the opinion that the Greeks are not the heirs or descendants of Greek history. Page 94.
The Greeks did not know the work of Follmeayer, who in an 1860 study laid out facts about the Albanians and their history, toponyms, and the Albanian language in Greece: “Das albanesische Element in Griechenland” (1860). In 1872, he published a study of his on the Peloponnese. It was no more than two or three pages long and was appended to the book “History of the Morea”; it can also be found translated by Hopf (1872, pages 39–41).
The Greeks would not acknowledge his work and its idea that the overwhelming majority of the population in Greece was Albanian; it would not be translated in Greece. And this was on only two pages of his work. Just two pages of his thoughts were enough for the Greeks to swear against him, reject him, and ensure that none of his works were published in Greece.
It would take 147 and 172 years since the time of the heretics, Kostandinos Romanos and Pandeli Sofxoglu, for them to be translated and published in Greece. Follmeayer would be the first European scholar to state with certainty the lack of connection between the ancient Greeks and those of the new era.
Mayer would be the first scholar to state with certainty the continuity of the ancient Greeks and modern Greece. The German Pauw, the Prussian Bartholdy, and the Englishmen Gell and Thornton, who wrote before him, called them “Half-Greeks” (Simopulos, 1975, page 180).
Within the Greek state, there were internal contradictions regarding the antiquity of Greece. For example, Nikolaos Saripolos, in his lectures at the University of History in Athens, wrote on October 21, 1848: “After the Battle of Chaeronea, a curtain of slavery covered the population of Greece and Greece itself” (Zakinthos, 1974, page 100).
Follmerayer called the defeat at Chaeronea a severe trauma, accompanied by the fall of Corinth and the catastrophe caused by Mummius, as well as Byzantium’s turn against the ancient religion. These brought about the wounding and death of ancient Greek politics.
“Biological death came as a result of the Arab and Slavic invasions, invasions that lasted for two centuries” (Follmerayer, pages 170–225).
Mayer used the Byzantine historians to found his convictions. He used the names and toponyms that still survive today. According to him, after the Slavic invasion, the Greek-speaking people scattered across Byzantium united, along with the population of the Morea and the Romans, today’s Italians. Mayer’s data was a direct arrow at the truth of Greece’s antiquity and its present. This made Greek culture and its historians view him as a destroyer of their history. The enslavement of Greece and the Greeks in the Middle Ages became a fact of their genetic and national disintegration.
Today, his work has been translated into Greek; it is acceptable in what it says, and it seeks to clarify to world opinion the acceptance of the fact that Greece is inhabited by Albanians. This is shown by toponyms, names, language, their unique art which has no connection to Greek art, their national or traditional dress, as well as the various rites that are part of their lives, their society, or the cult of the individual. It took several generations of Greek scholars to accept what Mayer was saying 175 years ago, with convincing facts and relying on the true foundations of the way of life of the Albanians, whom they call Arvanites… wanting to deny their simple and beautiful name: ALBANIAN.
