North Aegean Stories

Postcards as keys to an Ottoman Greek’s Global Imaginary

Dimitris Krallis, Aytek Soner Alpan, Mariza Krallis, and Naz Vardar travel from Vermont to Lesvos on a postcard.

Two colleagues, Aytek Soner Alpan and Naz Vardar, whose expertise in all things Late Ottoman has been invaluable in our explorations of Molyvos’ local history, have been studying with me this postcard in the collection of Ioannis Krallis. The postcard caught Naz’s eye and stirred her imagination as she was perusing recently scanned documents from the archive, which Mariza Krallis has been exploring for a while now. It was Mariza, in fact, who had pointed to us Ioannes’ interest in postcards. She has herself framed a number of them, which now hang on her wall. At first glance, this card bears a familiar subject. With Hagia Sophia in pride of place, it depicts an imperial centre, which Ioannis had been focused on since his birth in the Komninakis Krallis mansion, where the Great Church appears in a prominent place in the depiction of Constantinople on a large room’s painted walls.

Each viewer’s gaze will be caught by different elements in the composition but in our case the next thing to attract our attention were the stamps on the front. Two French stamps, overstruck with information on their value in Spanish, bear references to the rights of man and are an attestation to the French presence in colonial Morocco (did anyone notice the irony back then?). They appear under post-stamps from Casablanca on the very top right corner of the postcard. The stamps immediately exoticize the card, sending one’s imagination much further than Constantinople, the imperial centre so familiar to the Ioannis’ family, an imperial centre that he was to visit α year after this card was dispatched, when he came to Robert college to study English.

The possible entry of this card into Europe by way of colonial Morocco takes us into territories, which we know fascinated Ioannes, who, at age 11, had drawn a detailed map of Africa. The postcard, however, spoke of much wider geographies; it was sent from Brattleboro, Vermont, and therefore took Ioannes, all the way to the New World, which, we know excited the imagination of his uncle Ioannis Kralis, who had donated to the Brotherhood of the Muses (Αδελφότης των Μουσών) in Molyvos a book on the life of Christopher Columbus. [1]

It is to the back of the postcard, in the space left for writing, that our gaze turns as our discipline falters and the visual analysis of the image on the postcard comes to a temporary halt. Here we see that the card was addressed to “Demetrius S. Mallides,” whose name is written in English next to a number of official Ottoman post office stamps and notations. Aytek notes that one of those lines elaborates on the recipient in Turkish and places him in Molyvos: “Molova’ya Dimitraki Malidi Efendi’ye” affirms a hand in sepia ink under the name in English, in case the person delivering was a Turkish speaker without Greek. Absent confirmation by chemical analysis, we can say that the ink colour appears to be the same as that used on the Greek text addressed to Demetris. Could it be that the sender was bilingual, not an uncommon trait in Molyvos? He was certainly educated enough to have written Greek and Turkish and in that sense was not all that different from Ioannes himself, whose Gymnasion graduation certificate lists Turkish as one of the school subjects. There are another two notations, this time in purple ink: “Molova’ya” (to Molova) affirms one, “Midillu Ceziresinde” (On the Island of Midilli) notes the other. A third Turkish notation in purple, just under the aforementioned sepia reference to the name of the recipient, refers, once more, to Molyvos, only this time the Ottoman script phonetically spells the town’s Greek name, not its Ottoman rendering, Molova, which also appears on two final destinations stamps, one monolingual dated in the 3-5-1325 (in the Rumi calendar) and one undated bilingual one in both Turkish and French. It is as if the postal employee bows to local spelling and linguistic realities to ensure accurate delivery, dancing between official terminology and realities on the ground.

We know from other documents in the collection that Demetrios Mallides is a local lawyer. He appears on Krallis family documents and even signs on behalf of the unlettered Kataxinouda (whom you have already encountered) on a loan application dated to 1906. His name also appears under that of Kataxinouda’s son, Komninakis, on the list of notables signing Molyvos’ declaration of independence in 1912. He was therefore a person of some significance, who also appears later in local affairs. How soon after receiving the postcard did Dimitraki Efendi pass it on to Ioannis? We cannot safely say. We only know that at some point it joined all the other postcards in Ioannes’ collection.

Our eye, however, continues to wonder and considers the stamps and postmarks where we note the various waystations of the card on its way to Molyvos. Malgara in Thrace features. It was a town with a mixed Greek and Armenian population that was to suffer much in the aftermath of the Balkan wars. Its stamp is next to one from Rodosto, which appears also on the other side of the card. Then we have Galata in Constantinople, and we begin to trace a trajectory that leads us to Mytilini. In this Odyssey, where Malgara fits is unclear. One might imagine ostensibly starting with arrival in the port Raidestos (Ottoman Rodosto or Tekfur Dağı, modern Tekirdağ), where there was also a French post office, and onwards to Constantinople (perhaps via Malgara on postal coach?), whence to Mytilini and, finally, Molyvos. Alternatively (depending on stamped dates), Constantinople is the first port of call from the western Mediterranean, and from there Malgara and Raidestos become way stations to a more local journey towards Lesvos.

This inconclusive but intriguing postal information is stamped on the messy handwriting of the sender, which we read with some difficulty:

B[r]attleboro Vermont 19/2 -1909

To my esteemed brother-in-law

As I wrote to you I am working.

I worked in Spring

field until 17/30 / 11 – 09 and

the association of cooks send me to

another town…

There I was registered member

I am very well and you should not

worry yourselves at all. The letters

you should send at [illegible]

Here, we learn that prior to Vermont and Brattleboro, Dimitraki Efendi’s brother-in-law had worked in Springfield. It is likely this was not the cornfield territory of mid-Illinois, but rather the more proximate location in Vermont, much closer to Brattleboro, marking a purely New Englander experience for the unnamed correspondent of our Molyvos denizen. If Demetrios Malides was well-established in Molyvos, offering lawyerly or notary public services to the Krallis family, his brother-in-law was seeking a better life in the US working in restaurant kitchens. He was at least moderately educated, as his writing in two languages suggests, though, in the US, his movements were coordinated by an association of cooks (ένωσις των μαγείρων). If the whereabouts of our unnamed postcard sender may not be firmly pinned, the card itself speaks of a wider American world. The postcard was produced by James (Demetrios) P. Vafakos, of Chicago, Illinois, who is registered in the Library of Congress as the copyright claimant [2]. It is directly contemporary to the postal stamps on it and first appeared in the US in 1909, when it caught the attention of our cook. In the 1910 Ελληνο-Αμερικανικός Οδηγός: Greek-American Guide, Aytek tracked down Vafakos’ advertisement for this postcard. The advertisement presents the postcard as “the most appropriate gift for Americans” and describes as follows (in translation):

THE GREAT CEREMONY OF THE EXPECTED PANHELLENIC RESURRECTION

In twelve colours

This image is recommended as the most appropriate gift for Americans

This image symbolizes the resurrection of the Panhellenic world into a great and mighty Greece. The background of the image is God’s magnificent temple, St. Sophia, with the Parthenon on the right and Constantinople on the left. At the center stands the Oecumenical Patriarch surrounded by the Holy Synod and having the future kings Constantine and Sophia before him. Encircling him are all the kings of the world in formal uniform.

[…]

Postcards of the same image are sold 50 for 75 cents, 100 for 1.00 dollar. Orders must be prepaid.

Seller: James Vafacos, 42 W Huron St., Shicago (sic) Ill.

The description we see here suggests that it is not just a simple memento, but a piece of art/propaganda that encapsulates the historical pride and future glory of Greece, it does not do justice to the composition. No reference is made to Konstantinos Palaiologos in the right-hand corner, covered by our Moroccan stamps in Ioannes’ copy. Nor is there any reference to the Sultan Abdul Hamid II who sits on the top left corner, emperor and sultan marking from right to left, much in the direction of Ottoman script, the expected duration of the Ottoman Empire, presumably to be ended by the anticipated resurrection of the Hellenic world and its reemergence as a large and strong Greece. This is a peculiar representation of the Megali Idea, the Greek aspiration for a larger, more influential, imperial Greece that we have come to associate with Venizelos, who at the time was still in Therisos on the island of Crete, plotting the island’s integration in the Greek state. Smyrna is nowhere to be seen, and the expected timeframe for the Panhellenic Resurrection is indicated by reference to the future Kings (μέλλοντες βασιλεῖς) Konstantinos and Sophia, each in dialogue with the past, Konstantinos with the last Palaiologos and Sophia with the Great Church herself. Ironically George I is nowhere to be found, though still very much alive, only murdered in 1913 in Thessaloniki, four years after the postcard was sent. The gaze to the future implied by reference to Abdul Hamid, who at the time when the postcard was created was still Sultan, and by the firm placement of Konstantinos and Sophia in a time yet to come, offers a gaze on the national imaginary of Vafakos and his Greek-American peers.

What did Dimitraki Malides make of all this? Why are the flags of the European monarchs missing from the bottom of the card, neatly cut it appears, as if they were never there? Does their absence make the postcard’s meaning safer? How did the 15 year old Ioannes, who was already in correspondence with a Greek serving as manager in the Officers’ messhall of Camp du Boucheron in Morocco, read this postcard, after Malides passed it on to him or his father, no doubt aware of the teen’s keen interest in and collection of such instruments of global communication? One way or another, we have here a small window into the wide world of a young person in early twentieth century Molyvos.

[1] From the Entry Book of Donated Books to the Library of the Brotherhood of the Muses, p. 7 (page numbering according to the digitally scanned PDF available here: http://dspace.cplm.gr/handle/123456789/8130). Please note the instability of surname conventions at the end of the 19th c. Ioannes Kralis was uncle to Ioannes Krallis, who was son of Komninakis Krallis. The two brothers, Ioannis and Komninakis, spelled their surname in a different way.

[2] Vafakos (James P.), Chicago Ill. [3922 Pan-Hellenic Rising © Dec. 15, 1909]; 2 c. Dec 16, 1909; K 4971. In Library of Congress Copyright, Catalog of Copyright Entries – Part 4, c. 5, New Series (Washington: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1911), 62.

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