Greece · 75th anniversary of the death of Kostis Palamas

Kostis Palamas belonged to the so-called New Athenian School, a literary movement that, towards the end of the 19th century, distanced itself from the Romantic poetry of the preceding generation. He initially worked as a journalist and literary critic and published poems, stories and essays. In works such as *The Twelvefold of the Gypsy* and *The King’s Flute*, he combined themes from antiquity, Byzantine history, the Orthodox tradition and Greek folk culture.

Palamas wrote predominantly in Dimotiki, the spoken vernacular. His work was thus part of the Greek language controversy of the time. In administration, education and some areas of literature, Katharevousa, based on Ancient Greek, was used for a long time, while other authors sought to establish everyday language as the basis of a modern national literature. Palamas contributed to this linguistic and cultural reorientation.

His name is also associated with the history of the modern Olympic Games. He wrote the text of the Olympic Hymn, whose music was composed by Spyridon Samaras. It was performed at the opening of the first modern Olympic Games in Athens in 1896 and was later declared the official Olympic Hymn by the International Olympic Committee (Internationales Olympisches Komitee).

His death occurred during the German, Italian and Bulgarian occupation of Greece in the Second World War. Numerous people attended his funeral in Athens. The funeral ceremony developed into a public demonstration against the occupation; the poet Angelos Sikelianos recited a poem, and the crowd sang the Greek national anthem.

The choice of the occasion therefore refers not only to Palamas’ literary work. It also commemorates the development of the modern Greek language, the cultural self-understanding of the modern Greek state, the Olympic tradition and a historic event during the occupation.