“The country had become ungovernable and had fallen into a miserable economic situation. Moreover, there were no schools, no courts, no army to discipline anyone, no navy. The people, divided into parties, were fed only by hatred for their neighbors and the entire country was rapidly moving towards complete disintegration. So, as soon as we disembarked, we issued a proclamation in which we asked the Greek people to give us their trust first of all.”
These were written, among others, by the eminent Bavarian jurist Georg Ludwig von Maurer in perhaps the most important work published at that time about Greece, which was published upon his return to Germany in 1835 and after Maurer had served for two years as a member of the three-member regency that took over the administration of the country until Otto came of age.
This monumental work was largely ignored in Greece and remained untranslated into our language for more than a century. The first Greek translation was published only in 1943, and in 1976 a new translation was published under the editorship of Tasos Vournas. The present, two-volume edition, published by Oxy Publications with the kind support of the Folloe Foundation, is largely based on this 1976 edition.
The publication is prefaced with a note by Mrs. Maria Efthymiou, historian, while the epigraph belongs to the historian, Doctor of Mediterranean and Oriental Studies and professor at the National School of Public Administration, Mr. Stefanos Kavallierakis.
The rights to the translation belong to the Athens Daily Newspaper Editors’ Association (ESIEA) and the photographs were used courtesy of the National Gallery.