Private Archives
This collection consists of the private archives of key figures in the modern history of Greece. Among them are the archives of the architect Pericles D. Photiades (1859-1959), the diplomat Alexandros A. Pallis (1883-1975), the jurist Christoforos I. Christidis (1889-1982), the poet and associate of the Centre Elli Papadimitriou (1906-1993), the archaeologist Anna Marava-Chatzinikolaou and the anthropologist Renée Hirschon.
The archive of the Constantinopolitan architect Pericles Photiades contains his personal correspondence and the architectural designs for the Zografeion Gymnasium for Boys, the Halki Theological School and the Church of St Kyriaki in Constantinople, as well as various public buildings in Greece (Kavala, Xanthi).
Alexandros Pallis, a diplomat and son of the writer Alexandros Pallis, served as General Secretary of the Refugee Relief Committee in Thessaloniki and Greece’s representative to the League of Nations (1936-1940). His archive includes material on Hellenism in Pontos.
The personal archive of the jurist Christoforos Christidis was assembled over a period of 65 years (1917-1982). It contains material related to politics, foreign relations (with a focus on Greek–Turkish relations and the Cyprus issue), language, law, history and philosophy. A large part of the archive consists of Christidis’s personal correspondence. There are also newspaper clippings, notebooks and parts of archives of other individuals, such as Nikolaos Damtsas, Xenophon Lefkoparidis and Evangelos Papanoutsos. The remaining part of the archive has been deposited by his niece, Ioanna Agianoglou, at the Hellenic Literary and Historical Archive.
The archive of the poet and associate of the Centre for Asia Minor Studies Elli Papadimitriou includes family heirlooms, photographs, letters, scientific articles, editions of her works and drawings. It also includes the archive of the poet Fotis Aggoules and photographs of paintings by Fotis Kontoglou and Nicos Engonopoulos.
The archive of the archaeologist Anna Marava-Chatzinikolaou includes material related to Byzantine history, Byzantine minor arts, icons and iconography. Her research notes and publications are also part of the collection, as well as her correspondence and the proceedings from her collaboration with the Centre for Asia Minor Studies.
Renée Hirschon’s personal archive features a rich collection of material from her primary field research conducted in the Germanika settlement in Nikaia in 1972. Her book, Heirs of the Greek Catastrophe: The Social Life of Asia Minor Refugees in Piraeus, published in English in 1989 and in Greek in 2004, represents the outcome of this research, which is a comprehensive ethnographic study of the urban space of a refugee community.
