There is no way to exaggerate the destructive nature of war and the price that must be paid by the societies caught up in its horrors.
Clearly, the desperate toll paid in the currency of human loss and suffering is the greatest, and great human loss was exacted from Greece during World War II.
This lecture, however, focuses on how the country’s antiquities, ancient and medieval, fared during this period of upheaval, death, and displacement.
What were the attitudes of the occupying forces (German, Italian, and Bulgarian) to Greece’s cultural heritage? How did the perceived role of Greece as one of the major sources of Western civilisation impact on the occupiers? How did the Greek authorities prepare during the run-up towards war? What was their stance during the subsequent Occupation? What symbolic role were the antiquities called to serve by the Greeks during these dark years? How did the antiquities themselves fare?
Nazi soldiers on Acropolis, Athens. Source: Dr. Stavros Paspalas
This presentation will look at a number of case studies against the backdrop of the Occupation in order to elucidate these and other questions, as well as to offer some explanation for what was lost and what was saved. This is a free event presented online via Zoom, but booking is essential. The lecture will be given in English.
About the speaker
Dr Stavros Paspalas is the Director of the Australian Archaeological Institute at Athens. His research interests primarily focus on the Archaic and Classical periods in the northern Aegean, and the regions contacts with the eastern Aegean, Lydia and the Achaemenid Empire; the excavations of the Early Iron Age settlement of Zagora on the island of Andros; the Australian archaeological survey of northern Kythera; and ceramic and iconographic studies.
The Nazi propaganda picture shows tanks of the German Wehrmacht on the Acropolis of Athens. The photo was taken in July 1943. Source: Getty/ Berliner VerlagArchivpicture
