Selection: Michalis Katsigeras

ALEXANDROS DELMOUZOS: One of Greece’s two or three greatest educators of the past 50 years, Alexandros Delmouzos, died the day before yesterday. Raised in the best of the demotic Greek literary tradition and gifted with a questing and radical spirit, Delmouzos studied philology at Athens University and then pedagogy in Germany before taking up a post as head of the Volos Girls’ Academy from 1908 to 1911. It was during that time that he developed his radical methods, introducing demotic Greek as the language taught and transforming the education system while also being active in society with lectures at Volos’s Labor Center. Naturally, these activities provoked opposition from the city’s conservative elements, with the result that Delmouzos stood trial in the Nafplion criminal court, along with several others accused of atheism, immorality and undermining the regime. In the controversial trial that shook Greece to the core, all were acquitted in April, 1914. In 1917, Delmouzos was appointed senior inspector of primary education. In 1920, he was dismissed but three years later was given the job of headmaster of the Marasleio School, and in 1929, became a professor of pedagogy at Thessaloniki University.