1. Publication and content
The weekly journal Efksinos Pontos was published in Trebizond in June 1880 by K.D. Xifilinos and D. Ktenidis. It was the first in a series of editions which circulated in the Pontus as a result of the increased freedom and the securing of the collective expression achieved thanks to the Tanzimat reform in the Ottoman Empire.1 Its content was various and organized in the following way: essay, study, portraits of characters or moral stories, mottos, varia, linguistics, internal issues –where issues of the community of Trebizond were dealt with-, songs and riddles.
In August 1880 the publishers and the director of the journal changed: only Xifilinos remained as a publisher, whereas Th.Ch.E. Grammatikopoulos became the director, who set new targets for the journal. Thus, just after assuming his position, he declared that from that time onwards and with the publication of the review the Christian feeling and the patriotism of the community were to be strengthened, the Greek education and the European civilization were to be cultivated and literacy to be diffused, community matters to be commented, the readers to be taught the rights and the interests of their nation and their Church and to be informed and entertained through the various subjects of the review.2
2. The biographies of Trapezountine scholars
In September 1881 the publication of a series of biographies of Trebizondian scholars from the 15th to the 19th century is inaugurated in the review. Starting with Bessarion, who is considered to be the first and the most important scholar of the city by the review, Efksinos Pontos deals with the Pontic intelligence from the end of Byzantium until the 19th century, in order to correspond to the demand for the creation of a unifying national identity. In all the volumes of the review which have been preserved, until September 1882, the influence of its material by the arguments developed in the same period in Europe on the one hand and the emphasis on the idea of the historic continuity of Hellenism on the other hand are clearly visible. The last surviving volume of the review was published in September 1882; it is, however, unknown, whether its publication stopped then. Nevertheless, in 1884, the weekly journal Astir tou Pontou appeared as its continuation.
1. Αγτζίδης, Β., «Ο ελληνικός τύπος στον Εύξεινο Πόντο», Τα Ιστορικά 24-25 (1996), p. 268. 2. Εύξεινος Πόντος 10 (2.8.1880), pp. 1-2. |
|
|