Nikolaus Dumba (1830-1900): A Dazzling Figure in Imperial Vienna

By Elvira Konecny and John Tzafettas

Nikolaus Dumba, was a most inspired and enthusiastic Viennese who became Maecenas of the Arts and national benefactor for Austria and Greece. He was most prominent in Vienna’s cultural life in the 2nd half of the 19th century and was acclaimed as a ‘genius of the Muses’, although he also distinguished himself in other fields, such as those of politics and finance. He had a leading role in the shaping of New Vienna. «...without Dumba many of the Vienna monuments would have never been created, neither of Schubert, Schiller, Beethoven or Grillparzer, nor that of Motzart and Makart»(Neue Freie Presse 25.03.1900). His personal friends Johannes Brahms and Johann Strauss extolled the legendary role he played in music and the arts and in the ‘expansion and embellishment’ of the city of Vienna by dedicating the choral waltz Neu Wien (New Vienna) to him. The ‘immortal’ Donauwalzer (Blue Danube Waltz), may have not existed without his personal intervention as President then of the ‘Vienna Men’s Choral Society’.He is best known as «founder of the Musikverein in its present form...» in the Dumba Strasse. He donated the ‘Dumba-Schubert collection’, the largest in the world, to the Vienna Library. Nikolaus Dumba made a distinct political career as Member of the Austrian Parliament for 30 years (1870-1900) and served as personal adviser to the emperor Franz Josef. His name was registered in the Golden Book of Vienna’s Honorary Citizens and his tomb is included among those of the great composers in the Vienna’s Central Cemetery.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Publishdrive
• Release date: May 9, 2015
• ISBN: 9781910714188

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Copyright © John M. Tzafettas MD, PhD, FRCOG, Professor of Gynaecology, 2015

Copyright © †Elvira Konecny, PhD in German Literature, 2015

Published in England by AKAKIA Publications, 2015

Prof. J.M. Tzafettas - Dr. E. Konecny

Nikolaus Dumba (1830-1900)

A dazzling figure in imperial Vienna

ISBN:978-1-910714-18-8

A copy of this book is kept in the National Library in Vienna (Österreichische Nationalbibliothek)

Copyright © John M. Tzafettas MD, PhD, FRCOG, Professor of Gynaecology, 2015

Copyright © †Elvira Konecny, PhD in German Literature, 2015

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Contents

CHAPTER 1

THE NOTABLE GREEK PRESENCE IN EUROPE

CHAPTER 2

TRACING THE ROOTS OF THE DUMBA FAMILY

CHAPTER 3

THE NATIONAL BENEFACTOR STERIO DUMBA

CHAPTER 4

NIKOLAUS DUMBA

CHAPTER 5

THE DUMBA PALACE: ‘PALAIS AM PARKRING’

CHAPTER 6

NIKOLAUS DUMBA AND THE SHAPING OF MODERN VIENNA

CHAPTER 7

NIKOLAUS DUMBA AND THE WORLD OF MUSIC

CHAPTER 8

NIKOLAUS DUMBA AND FRANZ SCHUBERT

CHAPTER 9

DUMBA’S POLITICAL ACTIVITIES

CHAPTER 10

DUMBA’S OTHER ACTIVITIES

CHAPTER 11

THE DEATH OF NIKOLAUS DUMBA

CHAPTER 12

NIKOLAUS DUMBA’S FAMILY AND ITS GREEK DIMENSION

CHAPTER 13

CONSTANTIN THEODOR DUMBA (1856-1947 DISTINGUISHED DIPLOMAT

CHAPTER 14

PORTRAITS, STREETS AND MONUMENTS ASSOCIATED WITH NIKOLAUS DUMBA

AND OTHER MEMBERS OF THE DUMBA FAMILY

CHAPTER 15

THE DUMBA CONCERT (DUMBAKONZERT) VIENNA, 23 MARCH 2000

CHAPTER 16

VLASTI (BLATSI OR VLATSI): THE HOME TOWNOF THE DUMBA FAMILY

THE AUTHORS

FORWARD

Amongst the vast number of books that are in circulation nowadays, it is a rare and pleasant surprise to come across one that succeeds in combining sound scholarship – and in the tired field of history at that – and ‘elegy’.

Works of this kind are few and far between in this age of volatile information, which fills our lives with baseness, violence, moral degradation, barbarity and so forth, and serves only to offend human dignity and scar our already ailing humanity.

We have reached the point where we now seem to share the tacit belief that the history of mankind is a ‘great’ one, a view based of course on what has so far been achieved as a result of man’s labours. These achievements have been attained by fine and brave human beings who, in the arts and sciences, and particularly the fine arts, have always had a revitalizing effect and helped to inspire progress and development and release life’s creative energies.

The authors of the present work had to carry out painstaking research, collect informationfrom a wide variety of sources, and assemble a rich collection of suitable illustrative material in order to give us, through the science of history that is so cherished by philosopher-physicians, a glimpse of greatness.

In doing all this, they remind us –and we are grateful to them for this– that maintaining close ties with one’s birthplace and the people that made it legendary constitutes one of the last magical experiences that can be had in the modern world.

For me, apart from the historical virtues that are to be found in this work, such as objectivity, simplicity, expressive prose, clarity and insight, which gets right to the heart of things and situations, the work also provides an encounter with something noble and beautiful that cries out to be expressed in poetic terms. For this work, though essentially historical in character, is also a lyrical creation, an elegy, one that possesses its own distinctive ‘metre’ and constitutes a hymn to ‘lost civilisation’, a kind of lament for the loss of forgotten purity and innocence, and a humanity that believed in striving and sacrificing itself for the good of society as a whole.

It is thus evident that our burden of debt is constantly increasing. Fortunately, there are still some individuals who are willing to shoulder this burden. They perform the highest kind of duty: a duty to themselves, to others, to history and to mankind.

There is no doubt that in tracing the lofty achievements of others, one will, in a sense, attain the same heights oneself. This is what the present work appears to be attempting, and this seems to be the effect the whole endeavour will have on anybody approaching the work.

At the summit of Artemis’ grove there are no fierce winds; only cool fragrant breezes to caress you. The present endeavour has the same distinctive quality.

As a historian, I am filled with awe and admiration for this fine example of erudition and service to one’s country, both on the part of the man who originally demonstrated these qualities and also the individuals who brought him back to life for us.

Nick. G. Zacharopoulos

Emeritus Professor, Aristotle University of Thessaloniki

Former Special Secretary, Ministry of National Education and Religious Affairs in Greece

It gave me great pleasure to learn that the research on the Dumba family, has aroused great interest, and that there is a call for the biography of Nikolaus Dumba to be written.

The university professor Dr. John Tzafettas, who, like Dumba, hails from Vlasti-Greece, gladly undertook the task of completing further, in close co-operation with me for more than ten years, the research on the life of the man who played such an impressive role in the cultural-and not only- life of nineteenth-century Vienna.

Although Nikolaus Dumba was active mainly in the city where he was born –Vienna– he never forgot Greece, the land of his forefathers.

I hope that this book will play a part in bringing nations closer together and help to forge stronger bonds between Austria and Greece.

I wish this publication great success!

Dr. Elvira Konecny

Vienna, 2007

INTRODUCTION

The publication of this study will bring to the attention of the international public one of the greatest expatriate Greeks to have lived in the last two hundred years. So great were the things that this rare individual achieved for both Austria and Greece that this publication can do no more than provide a humble record of them. While it cannot completely make up for the huge lack of published information that exists about his life and work, it is hoped that it may inspire further research and help Dumba to gain his rightful place in history.

This publication is essentially the first biography to appear in English of Nikolaus Dumba, the enthusiastic Viennese who played such a prominent role in the life of imperial Vienna during the second half of the nineteenth century. Many of the photographs presented here have never appeared in an English-language publication before.

Dumba, whose family came from the town of Vlasti (or Blatsi) in the mountains of western Macedonia in northern Greece, was most prominent in Vienna’s cultural life; so much so, in fact, that he was acclaimed as a ‘genius of the Muses’, although he also distinguished himself in other fields, such as those of politics and finance.

Polychronis Enepekidis, Professor of History at the University of Vienna, characteristically states that: ‘No-one else exerted such a strong influence on developments in the field of music in Vienna, the musical capital of the world,’ a city which accorded him greater honour than any other Greek before him. ‘Without Dumba’, states the Director of Vienna City Library, Herwig Würtz, in an album dedicated especially to him, ‘very little would be known about Schubert’. The ‘Schubert Collection’, which is the largest of its kind in the world and of inestimable worth, was donated by Dumba to the City of Vienna. Recently (2001) it was included among the UNESCO World Heritage Sites under the title ‘Dumba’s Schubert Collection’.

Dumba’s greatness is perhaps best expressed in a letter written by Victor Tilgner, the professor of sculpture who produced the famous statue of Mozart. Writing to Dumba before the unveiling ceremony, he declared that: ‘…nobody in our empire today is more deserving of the title of Excellency than yourself…!’

Nikolaus never forgot the debt he owed to Greece, his parents’ homeland, and helped it in many different ways, ‘supporting all Greek causes’. In this he was partly assisted by the position he held as a leading member of parliament in the powerful Hapsburg capital. From this high position of influence (he was probably the most powerful politician among the expatriate Greeks at that time) ‘…not once did he turn a deaf ear on the cries of the (Greek) islands and regions that were struggling for their freedom, including that of Crete…which he was secretly invited to govern’, as Theagenis Livadas, then a professor at the University of Athens, declared. It shows just how well-known Dumba was amongst the Greeks at that time. Indeed, in 1872 he was proclaimed an honorary member of the Athens Music and Drama Society and in 1891 honorary president of the Athens Philharmonic Society.

For decades he, his father Sterio and other members of the Dumba family circle, headed the Greek community in Vienna – probably the most powerful Greek expatriate community at that time. This was the community that had not only been the ‘powerhouse (after Venice) of the new learning of the Greeks’, as Adamantios Koraïs had described it, but also the ‘hotbed of the struggle for national independence’. It was the centre of Greek diaspora where in the 18th century, historical national figures, like Rigas Pheraios, Anthimos Gazis, and Neophytos Doukas, among others, prepared the 1821 Greek revolution.

After Nikolaus Dumba’s death in 1900, the world’s press – from The Manchester Guardian in the UK to the Buffalo Independent in the USA – portrayed Nikolaus Dumba as one of the most distinguished figures of the nineteenth century (see Appendix 1). Indeed, for the most part the press also stressed his Greek origins, of which he himself had been so proud. This is probably due to the fact that, after losing his mother when he was just two-and-a-half, he was brought up solely by his father Sterio, an inspired and industrious man born in Macedonia in 1794 who, according to his contemporary, the philosopher-physician Anastasios Goudas, would characteristically declare: ‘I would rather divine providence stripped me of wealth and honour, or even life itself, than of the love I bear for my homeland Greece, for if I have acquired anything in this world, I have acquired it as a Greek; take this quality away from me and I would be a mere nobody.’

It is still a mystery, however, why Nikolaus Dumba – who has been universally hailed as an eminent and prolific figure – remains little known in Greece, his ancestral homeland. There may be many reasons for this. If one sought to justify this state of affairs, if any such justification can be found, then perhaps it can be attributed to Dumba himself, since, like his father Sterio, ‘he never wanted his left hand to know what his right hand was doing.’ To illustrate this, in an obituary written for him in 1900, the famous Viennese music critic Prof. Edward Hanslick said of his characteristic modesty: ‘Nikolaus Dumba rejected the honours, titles and distinctions that were offered to him and chose to remain an ordinary citizen who was useful to society and his fellow citizens, many of whom he himself had assisted in gaining these very titles…’ His father Sterio and brother Michael also declined similar offers.

This publication serves as a kind of atonement for our unfulfilled debt, a tribute to this rare man, albeit a whole century overdue.

It is, however, an acknowledged fact that history does not always describe exactly what happened in the past but is often based on what was recorded by human beings at the time the events took place, on whatever material happened to be preserved and in the form in which it was passed down to later generations. It creates a picture that does not necessarily reflect reality but rather – as a result of historical circumstances, a lack of motivation or even for reasons of expediency – alters or obscures it. The case of Nikolaus Dumba, is without doubt a blatant example of this.

If, under the light of the spectacular evidence revealed during this long-term research, if one steeps oneself in the society in which Dumba lived, and becomes acquainted with the characters who dwelt in nineteenth-century Vienna and the types of lives that they led, one feels that they begin to come to life. One can imagine the Emperor Franz Joseph’s crack troops, with their colourful red-and-white uniforms, parading in the Karlsplatz to the strains of Johann Strauss’s famous Radetsky March. When it is dark and the lights are down low, one fancies that one can hear the trotting of horses drawing carriages along the cobbled Ringstrasse, lined with luxurious buildings. Indeed, when the carriage moves downhill towards the Stadtpark, one can make out the sound of a serenade wafting from the open windows of the Dumba Palace in Parkring, a common meeting-place for Viennese high society. The music «is being performed» by this society’s illustrious trio, the distinguished composer Johannes Brahms, the celebrated surgeon Theodor Billroth and Nikolaus Dumba, who, in an informal recital at one of the numerous social functions held at this mansion, are singing Johann Strauss’s allegorical song ‘Who loved not women, wine and song has been naïve all life long.’

I should like to express my gratitude to Dr. Elvira Konecny who accompanied me to explore the inner sanctum of the National Library in Vienna, to handle Schubert’s closely guarded original scores, now yellowing with age, and to hear the strains of his music, as it was played two hundred years ago. Her original research on the Dumba family, extended by our close cooperation for no less than fifteen years, is, amongst other things, of great national interest to both Austria and Greece and not only.

I’m also very thankful to her and to Dr. Franz, the Director of the Museum of Applied Art in Vienna, for accompanying me on a visit to the normally inaccessible rooms which now house the historic pictures that were painted for the Dumba Palace by the popular artist Hans Makart. Viewing them, in my own humble artistic opinion, I was able to confirm what Dumba had once said: ‘Makart painted like Schubert sang’.

Many thanks also to the English literature graduate Andrew Hendry for the time and his earnest consideration of the final text and Alex Stefanatos MD, for the special care of certain photos presented in this book.

It should be noted that in the rendering of the various letters and texts from the nineteenth century that are presented here several syntactic amendments have been made in an attempt to preserve the style of the original.

In conclusion, it is worth mentioning that immediately after Nikolaus Dumba’s death, in an extraordinary meeting convened by the Mayor of Vienna at the time and attended by most of the city’s leading bodies, including representatives of the Greek community, it was unanimously decided that a statue should be set up in his honour in the city of Vienna. This decision, however, was never implemented, perhaps because the members of the committee responsible for doing so, now lacked the driving force that would have been able to carry through such decisions…this dynamic spirit of Dumba was no longer alive. Decisions that layed the foundations for Vienna to be declared «The best capital of Europe for the year 2012».

Yet knowing how well Vienna recognises and knows how to honour those of its citizens that have brought it international acclaim, I believe that it is never too late. The same, of course, holds true for Dumba’s ancestral homeland, Greece, which Dumba and his family held so dear and assisted so generously when it was struggling to rise as a newly-founded nation.

Dr. John M. Tzafettas, MD, PhD, FRCOG

Professor of Medicine

Aristotle University of Thessaloniki

Thessaloniki, May 2015

Please note that, the original name «Nikolaus» refers to the main character that this book is dedicated to: «Nikolaus Dumba» in order to distinguish him from the other family members under the same name. The latter are written as «Nicholas» (Dumba).

CHAPTER 1

THE NOTABLE GREEK PRESENCE

IN EUROPE

The long history of the Greeks is inextricably bound up with the national ‘ Diaspora ’, a particularly dynamic phenomenon that has always had a rejuvenating effect and an amazing impact on the life and activity of the Greek nation. ¹ It is safe to say that the Greeks have never found it easy to leave their homeland. Yet circumstances have often forced them to leave, frequently on quite a large scale, in order to seek a better and more prosperous life elsewhere. ², ³

The Greeks have never been daunted by new or unfamiliar experiences; on the contrary, such things have always spurred them to take on fresh challenges in their pursuit of beauty, freedom and perfection and their desire to be progressive and productive and to create things of lasting benefit to society. Since time immemorial they have colonised coasts and islands and penetrated inland, exploring and settling in promising places, and in many cases achieving great things. An indisputable proof of this historical fact can be seen in everything that the Greeks have produced – through their intellect, thought, industry and wealth – in the places where they have been active.

It is noteworthy that even in alien environments and adverse conditions they have somehow managed to assert themselves economically, intellectually and artistically.⁴ Thus thriving pockets of Hellenism came into existence in different areas⁵, forming communities that brought splendour to the places where they lived, promoted certain basic values and through their indissoluble bond with the motherland helped both their native towns and villages and the nation as a whole to make progress.

This phenomenon became more pronounced after the Fall of Constantinople in 1453⁶ and the migration of Greeks abroad, mainly to Italy⁷, where they took their interest in the study of philosophy and their love of learning in general. The contribution of Greek scholars and the Greek spirit to the Renaissance is regarded as an indisputable fact, as is the significant role that these played in mankind’s transition from the barbarity of the Middle Ages to a new era that marked the dawn of modern European civilisation.⁸

The adverse socio-economic conditions that prevailed in Turkish-occupied Greece as a whole⁹, particularly during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, created a wave of migration of considerable size, including many eminent Greeks, to other Balkan and European countries. The Ottoman yoke had created such unfavourable conditions that almost the only way for the Greeks to make real progress was to leave. During the eighteenth century in particular new Greek communities came into existence, adding to those of Venice and central and southern Italy.

Important capitulations between the European states and the Ottoman Empire¹⁰ enabled numerous Greeks from Macedonia, Thessaly, Epirus and Asia Minor to abandon the land of their birth and seek a place where they could enjoy the freedom to live and work as they pleased. The Treaty of Karlowitz in 1699¹¹ and in particular that of Passarowitz in 1718¹² between Austria and the Sublime Porte (the Ottoman court in Constantinople) enabled merchants on both sides to move and trade freely within the boundaries of their great empires.

For the Greek merchants and other nationals living at the crossroads between the two empires, these treaties provided, for the first time in centuries, an excellent opportunity to prosper. In a way this marked the beginning of a new era, which eventually paved the way for their independence.

It was natural, then, that the enterprising Greeks should take advantage of this situation, migrate to countries in the Hapsburg Empire and elsewhere, settle there and move around freely – as far as conditions allowed – in order to engage in trade, shipping and the growing fields of light industry and manufacturing. With their keen business acumen, they soon succeeded in gaining control of the widest markets in existence at the time and forming notable communities. Their establishment of close-knit communities abroad arose from their need to base their lives more firmly on their own customs and traditions and to express their national and religious identity. They built churches, founded schools and ran institutions; they published books, compiled community codes¹³ and developed a social life and activity that was based on the customs of their native regions. This, moreover, increased their nostalgia for their homeland and their desire to enjoy its beauty and charms, and intensified the way in which they promoted certain homegrown values to the foreigners who gave them the freedom to move, live and act where and how they pleased. Typical examples of such communities were those in Trieste, Budapest, Iasi, Bucharest, Vienna, Munich, Sibiu, Nezhin, Belgrade and Odessa.

Amongst the Greeks who migrated abroad were members of the illustrious Dumba family, who settled in Vienna and distinguished themselves there, although, in true Greek fashion, they never forgot their homeland. The whole way in which the Dumba family behaved, as we shall see later, is a clear example of what the expatriate Greeks thought and felt about their native regions and Greece as a whole. This mentality was more pronounced in the Macedonian Greeks, particularly in the inhabitants of the Dumba family’s home town and the surrounding region, western Macedonia. It was a mentality which they had, of course, inherited from their ancestors, from way before the eighteenth century, and which they had preserved intact, despite their subjugation by the Venetians, Franks and, above all, the Turks.

THE GREEK COMMUNITY IN VIENNA

The preservation of the Greek character of Macedonia is an indisputable fact¹⁴, one that has not been affected either by the foreign invasions it has suffered or the pressing need to migrate and live for long periods or a whole lifetime in foreign lands, some of them hospitable and others not. The engagement of Greek emigrants in trade and generally in the professions they themselves practised did not alter their temperament and did not prevent them from experiencing the joys of their own distinctive traditional lifestyle. Thus, as Prof. Polychronis Enepekidis, a historian at the University of Vienna, notes¹⁵, after the Turkish conquest of the Balkans they streamed into the Balkans and beyond¹⁶, working as dealers in hides (mainly Morocco leather), tannins and pigments, saffron¹⁷, tobacco, sheep’s wool, cotton and hand-made objects, particularly ‘red yarn’, which was a highly-sought-after commodity¹⁸, having won the trust of all and acquired considerable wealth, they never forgot their homeland and took steps to support it in many different ways…

This wave of migration was considerably assisted by the victorious wars waged by Prince Eugene of Savoy. In warding off the Eastern threat, he forced the Sublime Porte to sign the treaties of Karlowitz and Passarowitz, which included trading and customs concessions in favour of the Austrians (Fig. 1.1). As the Austrians had no external trading relations with any distant countries or regions (Fernhadel)¹⁹, up until the eighteenth century their trade, along with that of the Ottomans, was conducted by the Greeks, Armenians and Jews – highly experienced traders who could be described as born businessmen. Indeed, when the Oriental Trading Company (Orientalische Handelskompanie) was set up in Austria on 27 March 1719, a large number of Greeks, mainly from Macedonia, flowed into Vienna and formed the main Greek Orthodox community in central Europe, enjoying numerous social and religious privileges. The Oriental Trading Company died a natural death during the ensuing Austro-Turkish Wars because of a lack of capital and other business problems.²⁰

In 1723, in a private residence (Demifinger Hof) especially rented for the purpose by the first Greek brotherhood (later community) to be established in Vienna, the Hapsburg capital, the first Orthodox liturgy was celebrated.²¹ However, it was not until fifty years later that the Greek Orthodox Church of St. George, the spiritual home of Vienna’s Greek Ottoman subjects, was able –through a privilege granted by Empress Maria Theresa on 2 March 1776– to operate independently and break free from the autocratic control of the Archbishop of Karlowitz²² and the authorities of the Serbian Orthodox Church.²³ The Code of St. George’s Greek Orthodox Community in Vienna was ratified by a further three chrysobulls issued by the emperor Joseph II (1782)²⁴, emperor Leopold (1791) and emperor Francis II (1794).

Fairly soon afterwards the Holy Trinity Brotherhood was also founded in Vienna, this time by Greeks with Austrian citizenship, in a district near the meat market (Fleischmarkt), where most of the Greeks lived and St. George’s Community was situated.

The two communities mentioned above²⁵ formed the nucleus of the Greek colony in Vienna, enjoying administrative and financial independence and boasting a high level of cultural and philanthropic activity and a form of local government of Byzantine origin.²⁶

These Diaspora Greeks, these ‘parfaits négociants’, represented a new class of Greeks that were alive to the social and ideological currents then prevailing in Western Europe. Most of them were educated, refined, spoke foreign languages and were well informed about current economic and political developments. Yet at the same time, in order to keep abreast of developments in the Ottoman Empire and their homeland, subjugated Greece, they studied and tried to learn their mother tongue as best they could. This created favourable conditions for the cultivation and dissemination of Greek culture, particularly after 1781, when books began to circulate freely in the territories of the Hapsburg Empire.²⁷

The first Greek newspaper²⁸ was brought out by the Zantiote publisher Vendotis in 1784, while in 1790 the Ephimeris appeared, issued by the Markidis-Poulios brothers from Siatista in western Macedonia, who were friends and colleagues of the revolutionary Rhigas Velestinlis (Fig. 1.2). The Ephimeris remained in circulation only until 1794 because of Rhigas’s arrest and the deportation of its publishers. This historic newspaper, as well as a whole host of Greek books, was published by the Baumeister Press, which was one of the most important printing-houses in Vienna. This came to be run by the Markidis brothers and remained under Greek management until 1798 (Fig. 1.3, Fig. 1.4).

After Rhigas’s death, the ruling Greek class continued its systematic support of the efforts then being made to educate and enlighten the Greeks, particularly the young, in order to bring about a national revival. An active role in this endeavour was played by the Greek merchants, who had rallied to the cause and financially assisted the dissemination of Greek books, which they had sent to all corners of the globe, wherever Diaspora Greeks were to be found. In this way they spread the message of the Greek national awakening, encapsulated in Rhigas’s revolutionary the Thourios hymn.

The Greek community in Vienna was not only ‘the powerhouse of the new learning of the Greeks’, as Adamantios Koraïs put it, but perhaps also the most important centre in the organisation of the Greek liberation struggle (Fig. 1.5). It is clear that Vienna took over the reins from Venice, which had been a thriving and traditional centre of Hellenism²⁹ in the preceding centuries, virtually since the Fall of Constantinople. It was the Greeks in these communities that were active in setting the nation on its path to freedom. Characteristically Prof. C. T. Dimaras (1965) notes that before the Greek Revolution a shift occurred in Greek society and culture: ‘the revolution was prepared and took place at a time when power was passing from the hands of the old leadership to the new. The Phanariots (influential Greeks based at the Greek Phanar quarter in Constantinople) baulked at the consequences of their initial reforming zeal; the bourgeois consciousness, strong, vigorous and vibrant, carried on their work and brought it near to completion.’

The rebirth of Greece was a vital goal of the Greek community in Vienna, just as it was of so many other important Greek centres, like Constantinople, Odessa, Bucharest, Smyrna, Alexandria in Egypt, Ioannina, Moschopolis, Siatista and Serres, to name but a few.

Although almost all the Greek centres were active in this respect, the movement towards national revival was most pronounced and long-lived in Vienna, the gateway between the Balkans and central Europe and without doubt the most powerful city in terms of manpower and financial and political influence. During this period the capital of the mighty Hapsburg Empire proved to be the ‘hotbed’ that produced the right mix of forces to spark the Greek War of Independence in 1821.

The large-scale emigration of Greeks to the lands of the later Austro-Hungarian Empire in the first few decades of the eighteenth century led to the creation of thriving communities in many cities in the region, such as Semlin, Biskoletz, Budapest, Györ and Kecskemét. However, it was the colony that was founded at the heart of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, in Vienna, that perhaps became the most firmly established and bore rich fruit for the Greek cause.

The parish records of Holy Trinity Church, which is situated at Fleischmarkt 13, in Vienna’s 1st municipal district and is now the metropolitan seat of the Greek Orthodox Church in Austria, begin in the year 1790, while those of St. George’s Church, which is situated in Griechengasse (Greek Street), begin in 1775 (Fig. 1.6 - Fig. 1.7 - Fig. 1.8 - Fig. 1.9 - Fig. 1.10). However, many decades before these two dates a brotherhood had been founded in Vienna by Greek merchants in the city and from other parts of the Danubian Monarchy.

The Greek merchants had been particularly favoured by Hapsburg imperial policy, especially during the reigns of Maria Theresa (Fig. 1.11) and Joseph II.³⁰ The policy that had been pursued in Austria since 1700 was one of protectionism, which aimed to secure economic self-sufficiency for the empire. This extreme regime of protectionism and mercantilism in the external trade of the Hapsburg Empire was of more benefit to the Greeks and merchants of other nationalities than to its own citizens. The former, with their foreign protection, the special privileges they enjoyed as Ottoman subjects, and their connections with the Ottoman administration, benefited so greatly that they came to play an important role in both the Hapsburg and Ottoman economies. Under such conditions the Greek merchants became important forces in the economy, competing with rival traders of other nationalities, such as Serbs, Italians, Swiss and Germans. This phenomenon reached its peak during the Napoleonic Wars, when the blockade effected by the French closure of the Mediterranean ports dealt a serious blow to the trading activities of the empire’s Austrian subjects. As Prof. Enepekidis notes, the Greeks proved to be not only theoretical supporters of mercantilism but also its most suitable exponents in practice.³¹ Their endeavours during this period were so significant that they could be likened to the progressive forces at work in the free market today. The most important thing, in this particular case, was that through their enterprise the Greeks showed the Austrians and Turks, who for centuries had been engaged in warlike activities, that trade had the power to bring peace and unite mankind by helping to improve relations between different peoples. Through such opportunities, notes Prof. Enepekidis, ‘the massive fortunes of Sinas, George Stavrou and the Dumba family were made, along with those of merchants of comparatively smaller stature, such as Kourtis (Sterio Dumba’s father-in-law), Doukas, Gyras, Skanavis, Galatis, the Christomanos family, Manousis, Panadis, Vlastos, Skaramangas and many others.’ All these enterprising Greeks, along with their businesses, formed a kind of ‘higher business school’, since, as the nineteenth-century Austrian economics expert Alexander Peez writes³², ‘the offices and warehouses of the Greek merchants (in Vienna) formed a training school where young ambitious Austrian merchants could receive thorough instruction in the science of commodities and learn all there was to know about monetary and banking science.’

The Greeks, however, played a role not only in the development of trade within the Austrian Empire but also, as Peez maintains, in the fields of light industry and manufacturing. The Viennese Greeks helped to develop the textile, spinning and tanning industries, as well as other branches of industry, throughout the Austrian dominions, using mainly raw materials imported from the East.

The extent of the role played by the Greeks is shown by the fact that in the early nineteenth century at least a hundred large Greek-owned trading houses and light industrial or manufacturing concerns were officially recorded. The largest of them belonged to the Sinas, Tirkas, Doukas and Kapras families.³³

One is still impressed today by the way in which the select Greek Macedonian families who settled outside the boundaries of the Ottoman Empire, in an arc extending from Bucharest (home, for example, of the Germanis family and Baron Bellios, who will be discussed later) to Livorno (the Tositsas family), systematically renewed the ties that bound them together³⁴, as a study of their family trees will show (see Ch. 12). The arc mentioned above almost becomes a circle, centred on Constantinople, if one includes the Greek communities in Moscow and Odessa to the north and Alexandria to the south.

The ‘Dumba Bros.’ firm worthily continued the work of the long line of distinguished companies that had operated in both Europe and elsewhere. The Dumba family produced notable sons, who were to achieve great things in the spheres of culture, finance, politics and international diplomacy (on the latter see Ch. 13 on Constantin Dumba).

Perhaps it should be stressed here that the Dumba family, like most of the other leading members of the Greek Diaspora, were particularly interested in promoting learning in their homeland. Like other wealthy Diaspora Greeks, they founded Greek schools, mainly in their native region, and offered children of Greek families scholarships to study abroad. The Dumba also gave enthusiastic support to the rising city of Athens, both before and after the Greek War of Independence, which reveals how they and their fellow Macedonians perceived their national identity. Thus it is possible to see what the Greeks, and the Macedonians in particular, felt about what needed to be done in terms of public works to raise their