Emm. Kriaras’ Archive

Emm. Kriaras utilized a large part of the archive material he had collected, mostly the great number of letters he had exchanged with individuals of the country’s intellectual, political etc. world. This effort culminated in the publication of his correspondence volumes (among others, Αλληλογραφία. Επιστολές λογίων του 20ού αιώνα, Thessaloniki, Institute of Modern Greek Studies, 2007, Αλληλογραφία B΄. Γράμματα λογοτεχνών και επιστημόνων του περασμένου αιώνα, Athens, Polytropo, 2007, Αλληλογραφία Γ΄. Νέα γράμματα λογίων του 20ού αιώνα, Thessaloniki, 2008, Γράμματα ξένων μελετητών και άλλων λογίων, 2 vols, Athens, Benaki Museum, 2008-2011, Νέες επιστολές και έγγραφα των ετών 1924-2010, Aikaterini Laskaridis Foundation, 2012, Πρόσφατα γράμματά μου σε πρόσωπα και ιδρύματα, Aikaterini Laskaridis Foundation, 2013). He bequeathed his correspondence archive folders as well as the hand-written letters of Greek and foreign scholars to the Benaki Museum, in Athens. (In his will, Emm. Kriaras also bequeathed to the Benaki Museum plaques, honorary titles, etc. which he had been awarded. However, he had donated these, while still alive, to the Aikaterini Laskaridi Foundation, in Piraeus. In 1997, he bequeathed his archive for the Lexicon of Medieval Greek Demotic Literature (1100-1669) to the Center for the Greek Language, so that it will continue the publication of this work.

To the Institute Emm. Kriaras bequeathed manuscripts of complete and incomplete studies of his, folders containing photocopies of small studies and folders with photocopies of reviews of his work. The part of the Emm. Kriaras Archive made available to the public through the Institute’s ‘Emm. Kriaras Website’ consists of texts of the last two categories. It contains nine folders and two books (with reviews of the Dictionary of Medieval Vulgar Greek Literature), which have been digitized and stored in eleven electronic folders containing: (a) published and unpublished texts of scholars who wrote or spoke about Emm. Kriaras or particular works of his, (b) articles which contain references to him or his work, to his educational and political activity, to events held in his honour or to awards he received (Emm. Kriaras meticulously filed newspaper or journal articles in which even brief references to him were made), (c) articles, proposals, addresses, speeches, open letters and interviews of Emm. Kriaras, (d) presentations, articles, speeches, transcripts of radio programs about Emm. Kriaras’ research interests. In total, after sorting out the multiple photocopies, the original items amount to 687, corresponding to 3,211 digitized pages. The digitized collection ‘Emm. Kriaras Archive’ was catalogued according to international librarian standards and is hosted at the open access site of the AUTH Library ‘Psifiothiki’.

The decision to make this particular section of the archive electronically available to the public is related to the fact that this section most clearly illustrates Emm. Kriaras’ contribution to science, as this was acknowledged by hundreds of individuals who studied and reviewed his work. Some of the manuscripts of complete and incomplete studies were already published while others had been submitted for publication before his death and published posthumously in 2015 by the Aikaterini Laskaridis Foundation (e.g., five short books, [Απόλογος βίου: συμπλήρωμα της αυτοβιογραφίας; Γράμματα συγγενών του Ψυχάρη σ’ εμένα; Πρόσφατες διαπιστώσεις για το Μισέ-Γιάννη, παππού του Ψυχάρη; Βιώματα για το Γιάννη Μηλιάδη και κρίσεις για το φιλολογικό του έργο; Χατζη-Ανδρέας Κριαράς (Ο Σφακιανός επαναστάτης του 1821, πλοιοκτήτης, οργανωτής ναυσιπλοΐας στη Σύρο)]. (The ‘Remains of a thesis that was never completed, but progressed well’, as is written on the box in which it was kept, constitutes an exception. It is entitled Η γαλλική επίδραση στην Ελλάδα πριν από το 1821, and, of course, cannot be publicized before it is thoroughly examined and processed accordingly. The same holds for a few more archive folders, whose materials also need to be studied.)