Demetrios Vikelas

Vikelas was born in Ermoupoli, on the island of Syros in Greece. His father was a merchant, originally from Veria (then part of the Ottoman Empire, today capital of the northern Greek province of Imathia in Central Macedonia) and his mother, Smaragda, was a member of the rich Melas family. He was educated at home by his mother,[2] possibly due to his fragile health.

When he was six, the family moved to Constantinople, and ten years after that to Odessa. There he started working for his father's business.

Already he showed signs of his literary potential. At the age of 17 he translated Esther, a tragedy by Jean Racine.[2]

While aged 17, in 1852, he left home to live in London with his uncles Leon and Vasileios Melas, where he worked for their business, Melas Bros, first as a bookkeeper and then as a partner. He also began to maintain a weekly correspondence with his mother.[2]

This correspondence, which was kept, is one of the most important in establishing his biography. He also kept a journal in which he recorded not only facts about his daily life but also advice from his uncle Leon and his thoughts on books he had read and plays he was able to attend.[3]

After his day's work at his uncles' business, he took evening classes at University College London (the only university in London which did not require students to be Anglican). There, he obtained a degree in botany (the only subject which offered evening classes).[4] He learned German and Italian. He also took part in fencing, horse-riding and rowing, although circumstances did not allow him to keep these up.[5] He had also become very scholarly, and started to publish — an anthology of poems in 1862 and numerous articles in London periodicals, on the British press and the growing of cotton in Greece.

A portrait of Vikelas by Nikolaos Xydias Typaldos.

During the political events of 1863 in Greece, following the revolution which led to the eviction of Otto and the enthronement of George I, Vikelas led fundraising efforts in support of the provisional government. He also wrote letters to the main newspapers of the time to demand that Greece's rights be respected.[6] He became definitively known in the British intellectual world in 1866 when he contacted authors and academics to gain their support for the Cretan cause during the Cretan Revolt of 1866-1867, for which he raised more fundraising.[7][8]

Also in 1866, he married Kalliope Geralopoulou, a young sister of Katerini, the wife of one of his uncles, also a member of a rich merchant family in London.[7] He also became a titular partner in his uncles' business.[8]

He also met and became friends with Charilaos Trikoupis - the son of the Greek ambassador to Britain Spyridon Trikoupis, himself destined to become Prime Minister of Greece. At the time they met, Charilaos Trikoupis was just starting his diplomatic and political career as an attaché, then chargé d'affaires, of the Greek legation. The two men kept a busy correspondence.[7]

Demetrius Vikelas continued to gain favour in Greece — in 1868 he published a 30-page statistical article on the Kingdom of Greece following a conference at the Royal Statistical Society; in 1870 he founded a school for Greek children living in England. All his work — polemic, political, journalistic, historical or literary — had a double objective: to elevate the morals and level of intellect of his country but also to change its reputation with respect to the rest of the world. In his historical essay of 1874, On the Byzantines, he wrote that he wanted to restore the reputation of the Byzantine Empire.[8]

In 1876, in the wake of the economic crisis that had started in 1873, and in order not to lose the profits of their work, Vikelas and his uncles dissolved their business (now called "Melas Bros - D. Vikelas"). He thus found himself in command of a comfortable fortune, which allowed him to fully dedicate his time to literature.[9]

In 1874, following the death of her father, Vikelas' wife Kalliope began to suffer from mental problems and showed a number of suicidal tendencies.[7] The couple tried travelling to ease the illness. In Paris, following another scare, doctors declared Kalliope mad and she stayed for seven and a half months in Jules Bernard Luys' asylum in Ivry-sur-Seine. True to his character, Vikelas recorded the progress of his wife's mental health daily during the twenty years which followed.[7]

In his journal, from 1872 Vikelas expressed the wish to move to Athens. In 1877, while Kalliope's condition was in remission, they took the opportunity to make the move. Vikelas started to build a home around the corner from the streets of Panepistimiou (on which the University was situated) and Voukourestiou.[10] However, his wife's health worsened again and he accompanied her to France where she again stayed in Ivry-sur-Seine.[7]

During his stays in Paris, Vikelas embarked on translating Shakespeare plays into Greek: King Lear, Romeo and Juliet and Othello during his wife's first stay (1878), and Macbeth and Hamlet during the second (1881). The public readings of his translations received an enthusiastic welcome in the literary community in Athens. He then also wrote his main literary work: Loukis Laras.[7] The book first appeared in Athens as a series starting in 1879. The same year, it was translated into French and German. The French translation (which had its first republication in 1880) was included by the Education Minister Jules Ferry in the list of works which could be given as prizes to good students.[11]

Juliette Adam

Vikelas spent the following fifteen years in Paris, building up contacts with the surrounding intellectuals and literati of the French capital. Consequently, Juliette Adam dedicated her anthology Poètes grecs contemporains ("Contemporary Greek poets"), published in 1881, to him, and he published in her Nouvelle Revue.[12] He wrote for it, as before, numerous articles (on Byzantine history, Eastern issues and Greek political life), novels (a compendium in French and Greek came out in 1887) and even travel guides.[13]

In the linguistic controversy in Greece between Katharevousa and Dimotiki, Vikelas chose the middle ground, rejecting the excesses of the Dimotikists just as much as the fierce defenders of the more intellectual language. He suggested using Katharevousa for parliamentary proceedings, for example, but popular language for poetry.[14]

Between 1877 and 1892, he travelled, since at the worst of her crises, his wife could not bear his presence. He returned to Greece, visited Scotland, Switzerland, Spain and Constantinople.[13]

In 1892, he bought a new plot in Athens (between the streets of Kriezotou and Valaoriti) where he built a new residence which was also his final home.[13]

In 1893, he helped finance the construction of the Greek Orthodox church in Paris.[15]

In May 1894, he received a request from the Pan-Hellenic Gymnastic Club, asking him to assist at a congress on amateurism convened the following month by Pierre de Coubertin. After hesitation, he agreed to represent the association.[13] Following the congress it was decided to recreate the Olympic Games and to organise them in Athens.

Originally, it had been De Coubertin's idea to hold the first celebration of the modern Olympics in Paris in 1900, but Vikelas convinced him and the newly created International Olympic Committee that they should be held in Athens, in order to symbolically link them to the original Games. As the constitution of the IOC at that time required the IOC president to be from the country which would host the next Games, Vikelas became the IOC's first president.

With his responsibility for the 1896 Summer Olympics, Vikelas returned to Greece for just ten days in autumn 1894. On October the 14th, he received a telegram from doctor Luys informing him that the condition of his wife had worsened. She had œdemas in her thighs, calves and stomach. She could no longer feed herself. He urgently returned to Paris.[16] It seems that she then died.

In November 1894, a number of young nationalist officers, advocates of the Megali Idea, created a secret society, Ethniki Etairia, whose aim was to revive the morale of the country and prepare the liberation of Greek peoples still under the Ottoman Empire.[17] In September 1895, they recruited civilians, all linked to the organisation of the Olympic Games, including Vikelas himself, although he claimed only to have given in to friendly pressure, playing a solely financial role and then quickly resigning from it.[18] At this point he was still attracted by the possibility of rebuilding his country.

After the Games, which proved a success, Vikelas withdrew from the IOC, replaced as a member by the Count Alexander Mercati and as president by Coubertin. The defeat in the Greco-Turkish War which came soon after dealt a serious blow to his morale. He decided to leave Paris to move permanently to Athens. There he dedicated himself to popular education. In 1899 he founded the "Society for the Spread of Useful Books" in Athens, to help the country to recover from its defeat.[19]

In 1905, he represented the University of Athens at the third Olympic Congress and seventh IOC Meeting in Brussels.[20] He also remained an active member of the Hellenic Olympic Committee.[21] He died in Athens on 20 July 1908 "from an afflicting illness".[22]

He had been made a knight of the Legion of Honour on 31 December 1891, and honorary doctor of the University of St Andrews in November 1893 (the first Greek to receive this honour).[15] He was a member (from 1874, and Vice-President from 1894[15]) of the French "Association for the Promotion of Greek Studies", and of the Society for the Promotion of Hellenic Studies in London.

He left his immense library collection to the city of Heraklion in Crete, founding the Vikelaia Municipal Library.[23]

Though in fact he did not live much of his life in Syros, the island counts him among its most well-known sons. Today, the Sports Center (Stadium) in Ermoupoli bears Demetrios Vikelas' name. The stadium seats 2000 people, and has an Olympic-size swimming pool, four tennis courts, two gym halls, basket and volleyball courts, track and field, floor football court and soccer field.

Also the Syros Island National Airport is named for him.

• Llewellyn Smith, Michael (2004). Olympics in Athens 1896: The Invention of the Modern Olympic Games. Profile Books Limited. ISBN 1-86197-342-X.
• Llewellyn Smith, Michael (2006). "The exemplary life of Dimitrios Vikelas (1835-1908)". The Historical Review / La Revue Historique. III. Institute of Neohellenic Research.
• Dolianitis, George (1995). The IOC's Centenary 1894-1994. The Contribution of Demetrius Vikelas to the Revival of the Olympic Games (PDF). Ancient Olympia: International Olympic Committee. pp. 93–120. Archived from the original (PDF) on 2012-04-20. Retrieved 2009-07-01.
• Basch, Sophie (1995). Le Mirage Grec. Grèce moderne devant l'opinion française. (1846-1946). Paris: Hatier. pp. 229–231. ISBN 2-218-06269-0.CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link)
• Miller, William (1941-07-04). "Notices of books: "Εύλλογος πρὸς διάδοσιν ὠφελίμων βιβλίων. Χρονικὰ τῆς τεσσαρακονταετίας 1899-1939"". The Journal of Hellenic Studies. London: The Society for the Promotion of Hellenic Studies. 60: 117. JSTOR 626292.
• "Demetrius Bikelas" (PDF). Revue Olympique (in French). Paris: International Olympic Committee (33): 131–132. September 1908. Retrieved 2008-02-02.
• "Greece and Olympism" (PDF). Olympic Review. Lausanne: International Olympic Committee (127): 253. May 1978. Retrieved 2008-02-02.

• Biography of Demetrius Vikelas on the IOC website
• Works by Demetrios Vikelas at Project Gutenberg
• Works by or about Demetrios Vikelas at Internet Archive

Civic offices
New title	President of the International Olympic Committee 1894–1896	Succeeded by Pierre de Coubertin