Macedonia History

 We actually know almost nothing about Lucius Ampelius, the author of the Liber Memoralis . Nevertheless, his work has survived the years and is accessible to us. He is the author of the textbook of ancient mythology, geography, and history, and that's pretty much all we know about him—and, of course, that he was a Roman who lived either in the time of Trajan or Constantine. Researchers therefore consider a rather long period of more than two hundred years in which he could have lived—according to Wikipedia, from 98 to 337 AD. But, let's turn to his work Liber Memorialis and jump straight into chapter six, which could be titled "On the Planet Earth". There, Ampelius lists various "most well-known peoples" in a list that, according to him, represents three inhabited continents out of a total of four: Africa (located between the Tanais and the Nile), Libya (between the Nile and the Gulf of Gades), and Europe (between the Strait and the Tanais). We quote the f...

  The work "Friedrich August Wolf's Lectures on Ancient Studies, Volume Four", published in 1835, is the subject of our short article today. Friedrich August Christian Wilhelm Wolf, as he was known in full, was a German classical philologist and scholar of antiquity. He is considered the founder of classical and modern philology. The following is a quote from page 28 (translated): Macedonians should not be considered Greeks; the ancients did not count them among them and called them barbarians; in fact, Macedo was a derogatory name . They differed from the Greeks in their customs and had many barbaric characteristics long after the Greeks were already civilized. The first time we see Macedonia shine is in the time of Archelaus in Socrates. He had a court where Greek culture prevailed and a lot of young people around him. There was no culture in the country itself; this was only achieved in Philip's time. The Greeks did not easily count among themselves peoples who had...

 Again we have a nice map relevant to Macedonia. This German map dates from 1925.  The title of the map, of course, immediately reveals what the map is supposed to represent: The peoples of Europe in linguistic structure (Die Völker Europas in sprachlicher Gliederung). The map was designed by Prof. Dr. Arthur Haberlandt. It was drawn by E. Monzert. The map was published by Strecker and Schröder in Stuttgart.  The map is part of the "Illustrierte Völkerkunde" (Illustrated Ethnology, second volume) published in 1926. Publisher was the physician, ethnologist and ethnographer Dr. Georg Buschan. On this map we see the peoples of Europe listed, as well as their languages they used to speak. The authors make a rough grouping based on the language families. See the following image, which shows the Balkans as well as the description for the languages. There we can see that Macedonia is marked in the Slavic-speaking area. And also that the area is marked with the number 67. The leg...

 In the ongoing debate about whether the ancient Macedonians or Alexander the Great were Greeks, we would like to recall the Lexicon of Lost Peoples. There we find a concrete reference to this question. But first, let's look at a short bio about the author of the work. About Harald Haarmann Harald Haarmann (born April 16, 1946 in Braunschweig) is a German linguist, cultural scientist and author. He studied general linguistics, various individual philological disciplines and prehistory at the universities of Hamburg, Bonn, Coimbra and Bangor. Haarmann received his doctorate from the University of Bonn in 1970 and completed his habilitation at the University of Trier in 1979. He has taught and researched at various German and Japanese universities and is a member of the research team at the Research Centre on Multilingualism (Brussels). Since 2003 he has been Vice President of the Institute of Archaeomythology (headquarters in Sebastopol (California), USA) and Director of its Europea...

  Excerpt and english translation of  a part of  "Geschichte des byzantinischen Staates": Nothing definite is known about the early history of the Cometopuli. The contemporary Armenian historian Stephen of Taron (Asolik), trans. Gelzer and Burckhardt (1907), 185 f., says that they were of Armenian descent. In spite of N. Adontz, 'Samuel l'Armenien' 3 ff., it remains doubtful how much weight can be given to the statement of this Armenian historian whose information on Samuel is full of obvious errors. N. P. Blegmv, 'Bratjata David, Moisej, Aaron i Samuil' (The brothers David, Moses, Aaron and Samuel), Godisnik na Sofijsk. Univ., Jurid. Fak. 37, 14 (1941-2), 28 ff., considers that Count Nicholas was a descendant of the proto-Bulgar Asparuch, and his wife Ripsimia, the mother of the Cometopuli, a daughter of the czar Symeon, which is entirely without foundation. His 'Teorijata za Zapadno bulgarsko carstvo' (Theories on the West Bulgarian Empire), ibid...

  In his work on the peoples of Europe by the German ethnologist Dr. Richard Karutz, published in 1926, the Macedonians were already listed as an independent people alongside Greeks, Bulgarians and Serbs. Let's take a look in his work. Richard Karutz (born November 2, 1867 in Stralsund, Germany; died February 10, 1945 in Dresden) was a German ENT doctor and ethnologist. Peter Staudenmeier classifies him as a " leading anthroposophical author on questions of races " with openly anti-Semitic writings, according to Wikipedia as an introduction. He discovered his interest in ethnology on his trips abroad as a ship's doctor, and in Lübeck he began to study ethnology. As a military doctor, Karutz experienced military service in the First World War. In 1920, after the war, he met Rudolf Steiner, the founder of anthroposophy (science for understanding nature, spirit and human development). He turned to his teaching and tried to use his ethnological work anthroposophically wit...

 Again and again, one hears false theories that the Macedonian language was "invented after the Second World War by Josip Broz Tito and the Comintern". Greek and Bulgarian propaganda in particular is keen to spread such theories and present them as fact.  These theories are often based on the late political recognition of the Macedonians and their language. However, there are evidences which refutes such theories. Because political recognition of a language does not mean that this language existed and is in use from then on. In addition to many other documents on our blog that refute such theories, today's article is devoted to a work published in 1767 entitled "New Slavic and German Grammar".  The work was written by the Croatian pedagogue and Habsburg military officer Antun Relković. This book was printed more than a century before Tito's birth and the founding of the Comintern. New Slavic and German Grammar Macedonia is one of the areas that the author me...

 Today we have another important piece of evidence from Austria. In 1913, a cadet leader reported from and about Macedonia after a trip to the Balkans. The short article entitled "P. Miljukow on the Macedonian Question" was published in the "Russian Review" on February 1, 1913. In this short report, Miljukow (anglicized Milyukov) reports on the position of the Macedonians themselves. They are against the division of Macedonia. And the Macedonian position is that of a unified and indivisible autonomous Macedonia, a Macedonia for the Macedonians! The original wording of the report: P. Miljukow on the Macedonian question Petersburg. The cadet leader P. Miljukow, who recently returned from a trip to the Balkans, reports in the "Rjetsch" on the Macedonian standpoint, which, as he explains, undoubtedly exists, but which all interested parties, with the exception of the Macedonians themselves, are trying to forget.  The Macedonian standpoint is that of a unified ...

 Once again we will quote an excerpt from the works of the ancient Greek historian Diodorus Siculus. In an earlier post we wrote about how Diodorus separated Macedonians from Greeks based on "race" . Today's example fits seamlessly into Diodorus' view. In addition, the following quotes come from the same work and the same book as the example mentioned above. Brief info about Diodorus Siculus Diodorus Siculus was an ancient Greek historian who lived in the 1st century BC. Almost nothing is known about his life. He came from Agyrion (Agira) in Sicily and spent a long time in Rome and Egypt (during the time of the 180th Olympiad, i.e. in the period 60/59 to 57/56 BC). Diodorus' historical work, written in Greek, is called Diodori Siculi Bibliotheca historica and is a universal history in 40 books, of which books 1–5, 11–16 and 18–20 have been preserved. As far as we know, it is the most comprehensive historical work written by a Greek in antiquity and which has been...

 Another testimony in the ongoing debate about the Macedonian language and its origins. Attempts are made again and again to negate the Macedonian language or to construct a descent from Bulgarian. But this is logically not possible. Before a Bulgarian language ever existed from which the Macedonian language could have descended, there was already a dialect that was similar to or close to today's Macedonian. Generally, it is referred to as Church Slavonic or Old Slavonic. And this dialect was the first Slavic dialect that served as the basis for the first translations of the Bible into Slavic! There are also two short excerpts or quotations from History of the Christian Church. from the Election of Pope Gregory the Great to the Concordat of Worms by James Craigie Robertson. Second volume. St. Cyril either invented the Slavonic alphabet, or improved that which had before existed …the translations were in the Macedonian dialect of the Slavonic… Source: History of the Christian Church...

 Serge also recorded encounters with Macedonians in his work "Memoirs of a Revolutionary". He described the Macedonians as "proud, destitute and dumb, who are simply Macedonians and were ready to fight against the whole world for their primitive mountain freedom ...". His work "Memoirs of a Revolutionary" was published in 2012 as an English translation, translated by Peter Sedgwick in cooperation with George Paizis. The original, which was published in French in Paris in 1951, was called "Mémoires d'un révolutionnaire, 1901–1941". About the author: Victor Serge , real name: Wiktor Lwowitsch Kibaltschitsch, born on December 30, 1890 in Brussels; died November 17, 1947 in Mexico City, was a Russian journalist, writer and radical left-wing revolutionary. Kibaltschitsch's parents were political refugees from Russia who belonged to the revolutionary organization Narodnaya Volja. First, the young Viktor Kibaltschitsch joined the Belgian sociali...

 Michael A. Padev originated from Bulgaria, but in his early he moved to the USA - where he also completed a college degree and later made a career. Before World War II he reported from Sofia for the Times of London and Manchester Guardian. He left a number of works on the subject of communism in the Balkans. In his 1944 work "Flight from the Balkans", Padev describes some impressions of Macedonia when the country was occupied by German ally Bulgaria. In one passage we read: "Once we reached Macedonia, what struck us most was the ease and zest with which the Macedonian underground battled against the Bulgarian occupying authorities . There was a curfew in Skopje from seven in the evening. We stayed there a week and not a night went by without fighting in the streets. It was the same in Bitolj which the Bulgarian nationalists claim as 'the most Bulgarian of all Macedonian towns.' We found the people there as anti-Bulgarian as they are everywhere in Macedonia . The...

 Victor Roudometof examined the statistics of the Ottoman Empire in relation to "Ottoman Macedonia". According to him, in these three Ottoman provinces, only 10 percent of the total population spoke the Greek language. In a nutshell: Victor Roudometof is visiting professor at the Institute of Sociology, Gerontology and Anthropology at Miami University, Oxford, Ohio. His earlier publications include nationalism, globalization, and orthodoxy (Greenwood, 2001), which is quoted here. In that work, Roudometof briefly comments on the language distribution in Ottoman Macedonia, e.g. on all three vilayets (Ottoman administrative districts) that made up Macedonia's territories, these are also called "Macedonian vilayets". The author claims that in these three administrative districts, probably only 10% of the population spoke Greek. Quote: The 1905 Ottoman statistics recorded only two of the three provinces (vilayets) of Ottoman Macedonia. Moreover, various statistics pr...

 An excerpt from a compiled german paper titled "Greek history up to 336 BC - a first overview up to the appearance of Alexander the Great" by Norbert Froese. Taken from the german website antike-griechische.de ("ancient-greece") We have taken/translated a passage from page 24: The rise of Macedonia - The relationship between Macedonians and Greeks Historians argue about whether Macedonians are actually Greeks. In this form, I don't think the question is very productive. What is interesting, however, is the question of how the inhabitants of the Greek heartland perceived the Macedonians and whether the Macedonians themselves felt like Greeks. From the perspective of the mainland Greeks, the Macedonians are at most something like half-Greeks. On the one hand they are connected to the Macedonians through a related language (23), but on the other hand they are separated from them by a number of features of culture and tradition. Conversely, according to the evidenc...

 For most of early Macedonian history, kings struggled constantly to maintain their independence while simultaneously striving to assert their preeminence over the local dynasts. Macedonia consisted of two distinct geographical regions: Lower Macedonia, which supported a large agricultural population, and Upper Macedonia, mountainous hinterlands which held extensive forests and rich mineral deposits. In antiquity, neither Macedonians nor Greeks considered the Macedonians to be Greek. Macedonian and Greek culture had little in common. Most Macedonians were farmers or seminomadic pastoralists living in scattered villages. War and hunting were central to the life of a Macedonian noble. The monarchy was the central institution of Macedonian society. Macedonian kings were autocrats, but they were not all-powerful. In the late sixth century BC, Amyntas I made an alliance with Persia and the kingdom was shielded from attack by its neighbors. In the fifth century, Alexander I, Perdiccas I...

  In 1539 Theseus Ambrosius Albonese already mentioned the Macedonian language in one of his works. Several words and passages (translations) we can find in his work. Theseus Ambrosius Albonese (1469-1540) was an Italian humanist from the Italian Renaissance period, a representative of Christian Kabbalah and a pioneer of Orientalism, born in Pavia in 1469, he probably died in the same city in late 1540 or early 1541. Ambrosius also has the nickname Albonese, but not because he came from Albania but one of the Albonese family from a northern region in Italy. One of his best-known and most important works is " Introductio in Chaldaicam linguam, Syriacam, atque Armenicam and decem alias lingua " from 1539.  In this work, Ambrose translates several ecclesiastical psalms into various translations and languages, it also provided an overview of the languages of that time Alphabets. From a Macedonian point of view and for Macedonian history, this work represents an important testimon...

  In the late summer weeks of 1920, the german social democrat Hermann Wendel undertook a trip from Maribor to Bitola. He recorded his experiences in his book "From Marburg to Monastir. A South Slavic Journey". On his journey through the Balkans after the First World War, Wendel not only visited Bitola in Macedonia, which was back then called Monastir. Among other things, he reports in his work from visits in Skopje, Veles, Prilep, Ohrid, Struga, Debar, Gostivar and Tetovo. Who was Hermann Wendel? Hermann Wendel was a German politician, historian, Balkan researcher, journalist and writer. He was born on March 8, 1884 in Metz, Lorraine, as son of a Prussian civil servant, and died on October 3, 1936 in Saint-Cloud near Paris. Wendel was a supporter of the labor movement and an advocate of Franco-German understanding. From 1910 to 1918 he was a city councilor in Frankfurt am Main and an SPD (social democrat party) member of the Reichstag. During the Balkan wars he stayed a...