Talk:Jakob Philipp Fallmerayer

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Untitled[edit]

The theory of Jakob Fallmerayer is not based on scientific facts. On the other hand, there have been no researches to prove the opposite. There must be a gene study, that will compare the gene type of modern greeks with the one of ancient greeks and see if there is any link between them.—Preceding unsigned comment added by [[User:{{{1}}}|{{{1}}}]] ([[User talk:{{{1}}}|talk]] • [[Special:Contributions/{{{1}}}|contribs]])

Whatever, the funny thing is that Austria had always been on the border of the Slavic-German world, just like northeastern Germany (ex-western Poland), i.e. regions with significant Slavophone population to the present day. Fallmerayer himself may have easily been a Germanized Slav, like half of Austria was. Anyway what the article doesn't mention is the German interest on keeping a strong Ottoman state in order to limit Russo-British sphere of influence in the region. If it weren't for that, Fallmerayer would have probably never published those works. He may have believed in it, but he wouldn't have advocated it with such passion. Miskin 21:22, 20 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Perhaps -- but at the same time Fallmerayer was far more Slavophile than Turkophile. Furthermore there was no "Germany" at the time; Fallmerayer lived in Bavaria, a state which had of course very close ties to the new Greek state. And then one must add that he was at times a vocal opponent of the Wittelsbachs, and a participant in the 1848 movements -- which is already mentioned in the article. My hunch is that much of his work is best understood as a reaction against the romantic Hellenism of the Wittelsbachs, and in that sense not really allied with the political interests of any particular 19th century state. But I agree that a bit more historical context would be useful; there is a fair amount of recent secondary literature on Fallmerayer in German, but I haven't gotten around to reading it yet. --Javits2000 10:16, 23 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Yes I meant the region of today's north-eastern Germany. He was by no means a Turkophile, he was more of a Russophobe. The speculation of his being politically motivated is a popular one. I believe politics was nonetheless a factor, without denying that he believed in what he wrote. Miskin 12:16, 23 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Fair enough, but it must be said that Fallmerayer had hardly any ties to Prussia (=NE Germany); he was Austrian-born and his career was carried out in Bavaria. So I would suggest that that particular political connection might be difficult to establish, without denying that political factors played a role in shaping his thought (for example, the very fact that a Bavarian scholar in his age took an interest in Greece has to be seen in the context of the ties between the two states). There is, as I mentioned, some recent literature on Fallmerayer, including a biography (T. Leeb, Jakob Philipp Fallmerayer: Publizist und Politiker zwischen Revolution und Reaktion [Munich, 1996]) that might provide some analysis of the political/historical roots of his thought, but as it's hardly bedtime reading it could well be a while yet before I get around to it. --Javits2000 09:27, 24 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Observations:[edit]

It is my guess that the article contains a good deal of original research, or at least, uncited claims. E.g. what is the deal with the "ignored Latin texts"? Were there some hidden Latin texts which contradicted the Chronicle of Monemvasia? Can this statement become more specific? On the other hand the genetics section supposedly proves that Greeks and Slavs have unrelated genetic backgrounds or whatever. Fair enough but is this specific research generally linked to the Fallmerayer thesis or is it just the conclusion of the person who made the edit? And why does the section talk about genetics stuff that most people don't have a clue about? In addition, the article states in the lead that Fallmerayer was refuted by genetic research only in 1991 or so. The validity (or degree of validity) of Fallmerayer's theory is a question restricted to the historians of the 19th century (and of the 3rd Reich). Fortunately, modern historiography is advanced to the point of treating ethnology in terms of cultures/nations rather than "races". To imply that such a question was finally answered in 1991, as if it had been the world's major concern 'till recently, assigns an outdated degree of importance to the question at hand. It's true that Fallmarayer may be cited even by modern scholars every now and then, but such a practice is common trash-scholarship which should not affect the imagine of mainstream scholarship. It doesn't take a genetic research or a PHD in history in order to realise that peoples such as Poles, Russians and Ukranians are physically different to Greeks. So maybe the article should not be trying so hard to disprove a 19th racist theory. The only thing it achieves is to give it more credit. Miskin 13:48, 23 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Yes, the genetic research stuff is unnecessary. It would be as if, mutatis mutandis, an article on Ptolemy devoted three paragraphs to Copernicus. --Javits2000 16:38, 23 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks for that meaningful contribution Javits. I think that if we remove the genetics section some people will eventually complain about it and add it back. In order to balance it out maybe it would be wiser to provide some arguments from the works which have refuted Fallmerayer. Douglas Dakin promotes some concrete arguments: Fallmerayer firmly advocates that the Greek language had disappeared from the Greek peninsula during the Slavic invasions, and it was re-introduced by the Greek church which hellenised the Slavs. But why would the Church Hellenise the invaders by imposing the vernacular language instead of the erudite? Fallmerayer's thesis "requires the assumption of an absurdity - that the Greek Church had at its disposal an elaborate organisation of schools and a veritable army of teachers for teaching the Greek language to the Slavs". Dakin ellaborates on this and continues about Greek folklore, which is the only non-genetics counter-argument mentioned in the article (yet unsourced). Other crucial flaws emerging from modern historiography:

  • Fallmerayer's ignorance on the Tsakonian language which made him believe that Tsakonians (forming 1/3 of the population of Peloponnesus) were a foreign people, speaking a foreign idiom.
  • Fallmerayer's ignorance (possible consciously) of mass-expulsions of Slavs from Greece (up to 200,000 according to some authors) to central Asia Minor by Justinian II and other emperors.
  • Fallmerayer's ignorance on the forceful resettlements of various parts of Peloponnese by Greek-speakers from Southern Italy and Asia Minor (by order of emperor Nicephorus I).
  • Fallmerayer's abiding by the outdated view of late Antiquity Greece being a poor and depopulated peninsula (modern scholarship, based on recent archaeological findings, supports the opposite situation - see Corinth: The First City of Greece).
  • Fallmerayer's assumption that the handful of Tosk Albanian settlers who came from Northern Epirus/southern Albania, a region that was ruled and settled by Greek-speakers in ancient, Hellenistic and Byzantine times, were of alien "racial background" to the "Hellenic race" [sic].

Those arguments seem to me much more meaningful than the gibberish genetic conclusions which simply refute him with a "no". Miskin 12:42, 30 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Better yet -- if there were a good entry on the Balkan peninsula in late antiquity / the early middle ages, that would of course be the place for most of this information (perhaps Roman and Byzantine Greece, although the terminology there is a bit restrictive), and it could easily be linked from here. Our picture of this period is indeed becoming a lot clearer, in large part due to archaeology.
My inclination is to draw a sharp line between the legacy / reception of Fallmerayer's writings (this section of the article could also use some work, but the basic outline is there in the "Political impact of Fallmerayer's Ethnic Theories" section) on the one hand ; and the general historical questions relating to his "Greek theory" on the other. If such a distinction were to be rigidly applied, then the genetic studies would have no place here -- so far as I can tell from the links referenced the studies make no mention of Fallmerayer.
A good comparison is Henri Pirenne, where brief mention is made of the fact that "the Pirenne thesis" is not generally accepted, but no ink is spilled on trying to "debunk" it. --Javits2000 18:37, 30 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Nazis[edit]

Let's deal with this Nazi question. I've found no reference to suggest that Nazi propaganda during WWII made direct reference to / use of Fallmerayer's work. The one source I have found by searching JSTOR (cited in the article) suggests that they rather followed the "party line" (Rosenberg) according to which the modern Greeks were "Levantine." That's obviously completely different from Fallmerayer's theory, and the simple fact that the Nazis promoted a concept of "discontinuity" doesn't mean that they were following F. -- he was hardly the first nor the last to suggest such a thing. For the time being I'm placing a "fact" tag on the following sentence: "The Nazis espoused and promoted Fallmerayer's theories, as a means of reconciling their admiration of Ancient Greece and their atrocities against modern Greeks." I'm sure there's a good history of the Nazi occupation of Greece that could answer this question -- it's just way outside my own ken. --Javits2000 10:21, 4 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Is this the JSTOR source in question [1]? It explicitely mentions that this propaganda "was in part the revival of Fallmerayer's theory". I guess the removed edit deserves to be restored and maybe rephrased. Miskin 14:11, 4 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]


In addition, the theory about Levantines was probably one out of many, but its existence does not imply that Fallmerayer's Slavic theory had not been revived. I doubt that nazi scholarship had a consensus on the subject, there were most likely many theories with a common objective. I recall reading about a German booklet that had been distributed to all German soldiers and officers in Greece. It may have been called "Von Soldaten für Soldaten herausgegeben von einem Generalkommando" (Athen 1944), and I think it included the Fallmerayer thesis. Miskin 14:20, 4 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Yes, that's the article. It strikes me as ambiguous -- Loader could be saying that the propaganda represented a revival of the Fallmerayer thesis (understood as "discontinuity") in general, or that it specfically cited / endorsed the theory of the Slavic origin of the Greeks. In any case it's not a scholarly study of the Nazi occupation of Greece, rather an elegant lead-in to a review of a new translation of Homer. That was why I had preferred to insert a fact tag, instead of removing the sentence, in hopes that we could find something less ambiguous. A search of the local libraries for the pamphlet mentioned finds no hits, but it would be great if we could track down a copy. I imagine that a general history of the Nazi occupation would also shed some light. To that end I've ordered H. Fleischer, Im Kreuzschatten der Mächte. Griechenland 1941 - 1944 ; (Okkupation - Resistance - Kollaboration) (Frankfurt, 1986), & will report back once it's arrived. --Javits2000 16:28, 4 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Noted in passing -- there's also a modern Greek translation of the same, Stemma kai sbastika: hē Hellada tēs katochēs kai tēs antistasēs, 1941 - 1944(Athens, 1988-95). --Javits2000 16:32, 4 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Erfolg! The pamphlet is called Der Peloponnes. Landschaft, Geschichte, Kunststätten ; von Soldaten für Soldaten (Athens, 1944), and I was able to order a copy. Should arrive early next week.--Javits2000 16:53, 4 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Thanks Javits. I'm quite certain this booklet cites Fallmerayer. Miskin 17:22, 5 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]
The "partial revival" meant by Loader's JSTOR paper is, in context, that part of Fallmerayer's theory whicn asserts a complete discontinuity. (The rest of his paper goes on to assert cultural continuity, without mentioning Slavs or Levantines.) This, like the assertion that the Ancient Greeks were somehow Germanic, was widely held in Germany around 1900, and it is not clear to me that Fallmerayer is solely responsible for either. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 18:53, 5 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]
It seems to me that the paper goes on to assert the elements of cultural continuity which are connected to racial continuity, like Darkin does above. There's a more philhellenic than nazi character. Miskin 13:14, 6 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]

I've glanced through the booklet that Miskin cited (Der Peloponnes etc.), and I find no mention of Fallmerayer or of the disappearance of the Greek race from the peninsula. The Slavic invasions are discussed, but conclude with Der Sieg des Griechentums über das Slawentum (807-1204) (The victory of the Greeks over the Slavs -- which would imply that there were still some Greeks around). On the whole it's pretty banal stuff (cf. Hannah Arendt). I also note that in Veloudis, "Fallmerayer," 89-90, as cited in the article, the booklet is mentioned in the following context: Unmittelbar nach dem zweiten Weltkrieg wurde ein deutscher Historiker, der keinesfalls Pro-Fallmerayersche Ansichten vertrat, als "neuer Fallmerayer" gebrandmarkt [Footnote:] A.D. Keramopoulos, Hoi hellenes kai hoi boreioi geitones, Athen, 1945, S. 94-97, gegen G. Stadtmüller, Die Geschichte, in Der Peloponnes... von Soldaten für Soldaten, hrs. von einen Generalkommando, Athen, 1944, S. 42-158.

Translation: Directly after WWII, a German historian, who by no means championed pro-Fallmerayer views, was denonunced as a "new Fallmerayer." [Footnote:] Keramopoulos, The Greeks and their northern neighbors, Athens, 1945, pp. 94-97, against [precisely this booklet].

Therefore Keramopoulos could be the source of the belief that the booklet cited, or otherwise made use of, Fallmerayer. I'll take a more careful look at the booklet when I get the chance, but for the time being it seems not to corroborate the claim that Fallmerayer's theories were cited in Nazi propaganda. --Javits2000 13:39, 8 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Two more sources. In Fleischer, Kreuzschatten, cited above, Fallmerayer does not appear in the index. The other history of the Nazi occupation that I've found is M. Mazower, Inside Hitler's Greece (New Haven, 1993). Here Fallmerayer does appear in the following paragraph, pp. 157-58: "As the resistance spread, some familiar racial stereotypes were beginning to overlay the quite powerful philhellenism of Nazi ideology. Germany army officers were no less ardent admirers of ancient Greece that the Reich's archaeologists, architects, and other professionals, and from Field Marshal Brauchitsch downwards many of them visited the classical sites as dutiful 'war tourists'. But this sort of vague classicism was accompanied by considerable ambivalence towards Pericles' modern descendants. Historians speculated about the malign effects of Phoenecia, and hence Semitic blood, upon classical Greek stock. Fallmerayer's thesis that racial continuity with the ancients had been interrupted by the seventh-century Slavic invasions found adherents in the Third Reich. Though the Greeks stood well above the Serbs in the Nazi racial hierarchy, Hitler's initial admiration for the brave performance of the Greek army in April 1941 wore off under the pressure of sabotage attacks on occupation forces. 'The Germans harbored no hatred against the Greeks,' wrote General Hubert Lanz. 'On the contrary they admired the great past and lofty culture of Hellas. But how would they react to guerilla warfare?' [Footnote: sources on Philhellenism of various German officers; source for Lanz quote.]"
This suggests that there is something there, but is a bit too vague for my tastes. (E.g., who were the "adherents," and how did their adherence manifest itself? One senses the spirit of "academic folklore"....) It does not suggest use of Fallmerayer's thesis in official propaganda. --Javits2000 14:05, 8 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Points for improvement[edit]

I've largely finished with the re-write of the biographical & legacy sections from the Britannica article, although I'm sure they could still use some tidying up. Moving on now to the remainder.

  • I think the "political impact" section is useful and should be retained, although it needs a lot of clean-up. The "early critics" section seems to me now redundant. "Philhellenism" is important but needs citations, especially for the stuff about "Austrian desire for expansion." "Macedonia" is of course extremely important, both the 19th & 20th century manifestations, but likewise needs citations. I know from anecdotal evidence (mainly websites) that F.'s name is cited by (FYRO) Macedonian nationalists, but it would be nice if we could track down something more substantial. "Racism" seems to me largely unfounded, unless a citation can be found (these views existed, but I can't see how they hinge on F.), and certainly the stuff about Budge & the etymology of epic Greek is completely off-topic. WWII should stay, if only because the allegation comes up fairly often, but should be relatively critical; the stuff about Vasmer, for example, came originally from some lecture notes posted online by Florin Curta, but it's far from clear to me that Vasmer had much to do either with F. or with Nazi ideology; in any case that book is still fairly regularly cited & shouldn't be made to sound like a piece of Nazi propaganda.
  • I still maintain that "gene studies" should be completely excised, for reasons stated above: this is an article about F., not about the ethnic composition of the modern Greeks, and the articles cited make no reference to F. But as there's been some suggestion that removal of this material might be touchy, I prefer to hold off and invite conversation on the subject.

That's all for now. Thoughts? --Javits2000 09:52, 19 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Quick addendum: have gone ahead and implemented the changes suggested above.--Javits2000 17:33, 21 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]
We shouldn't be in a hurry deleting content about F. on the ethnic composition of modern Greeks. If there's a thing F. is known in Greece and the Balkans, that's his supossed theory of non-continuity of Greeks. 71.229.167.215 17:45, 21 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]
First, the material on "gene studies" cites material that makes no reference to Fallmerayer, and is therefore irrelevant in a biographical encylopedia entry. Fallmerayer's "Greek theory" is indeed a large part of his notability, and not just in the Balkans. For that reason it is fully discussed in the article; its early critics are also mentioned; and it is finally stated that it is no longer accepted by Byzantinists (indeed, it was never really accepted in its entirety by very many, if any, historians). Note also Miskin's remarks above (under "Observations"): "... the genetics section supposedly proves that Greeks and Slavs have unrelated genetic backgrounds or whatever. Fair enough but is this specific research generally linked to the Fallmerayer thesis or is it just the conclusion of the person who made the edit? And why does the section talk about genetics stuff that most people don't have a clue about? [...] maybe the article should not be trying so hard to disprove a 19th racist theory. The only thing it achieves is to give it more credit." Briefly stated: contemporary genetic research is irrelevant to the subject.
Second, please be more careful in your edits. By reverting in one fell swoop you've removed new references, a stream-line of the "political impact" section, the correction of a typo, the insertion of fact tags on important but uncited sections, etc., all things to which, if I understand your comment correctly, you do not object. Reverting back. --Javits2000 18:08, 21 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]

This article is waaaay to long[edit]

Why devote so much space to such a marginal figure? His ideas influenced a tiny minority. Also, why isn't the word 'racism' mentioned in the article? He clearly drew on racist germanic notions of 'racial purity' that unfortunately persist to this day.

Of historical interest. Claims that F. was 'racist' would require a citation. --Javits2000 11:15, 1 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Quotes on Fallmerayer being a racist[edit]

  • Dream Nation: Enlightenment, Colonization, and the Institution of Modern Greece, Stathis Gourgouris

p.142 Fallmerayer’s thesis is most often received as an example of the general racist conceptions that dominated the discourse of nineteenth-century colonialist Europe, more or less akin to the racist philosophical musings of Arthur Gobineau. Though there is an undeniable discursive affinity between Fallinerayer and the racist—colonialist spirit of his time, , it is important to understand that Fallmerayer’s specific pronouncements about Greece are essentially tied to a wider political framework, the international balance of power in mid- nineteenth-century Europe. As Veloudis points out (1982: 39—42), Fallmerayer was the first historian among his contemporaries to forward an uncompromising Realpo1itik on the so-called “Eastern Question,” namely, the concern of Western European powers over the apparent dissolution of the Ottoman State and the expansionist visions of czarist Russia. In this context, Fallmerayer’s contention that Greece was in effect a de-Hellenized culture was meant to thwart the ideology of those European politicians who, as a result of their Philhellenism, actively promoted the dismantling of Ottoman control over the Balkans. He argued vehemently that only a strong Ottoman State could prevent Russian expansion into Western Europe.

In this respect although refining certain tendencies in Western European political thought that hearken back to Rousseau, Fallmerayer certainly stood in the vanguard. But he was not the only one who promoted these ideas, which indeed soon became the prevalent policy of Western Europe more or less until the First World War. In a series of newspaper articles for the New York Daily Tribune (March 1884), Karl Marx meticulously retraced this same problematic with respect to the posturing of English foreign policy,

p.143 using Fallmerayer as a trustworthy reference. Marx’s contiguity to Fallmerayer in this case is not surprising. As a wider reading of Marx’s work on the European political situation would testify Marx was, like many of his contemporaries. Slavophobic. Certainly Fallmerayer shared this prejudice, even though ironically he was perceived by the entire Neo-Hellenic intelligentsia as a Slavophilic enemy. This misapprehension is crucial in understanding the profound effect of Philhellenism as an internalized condition of the modern Greek national-cultural psyche.

  • Sociolinguistic Variation and Change, Peter Trudgill

p.131 Particular controversy was also aroused in Greece by the well-publicised claim of the Austrian right-wing politician and doubtless racist historian Jakob Fallmerayer, who argued that modern Greeks ‘did not have a drop of genuine and pure Greek blood’ in their veins and that they were instead descended from Slays, Albanians, Turks, Rumanians and others. Genetically, of course, this is obviously nor without some truth, but its effect on Greek public opinion was enormous, not least because it seemed to directly contradict all the positive sentiments associated with Hellenism.

  • The Fragments of Death, Fables of Identity: An Athenian Anthropography, Neni Panourgia - Social Science - 1995

p. 28 minor essays of Jacob Philipp Fallmerayer and their echoes in the racist writings of the Third Reich

I am adding this epithet as it is sufficiently substantiated from multiple sources. I will also add the first source on the paragraph describing the motivation behind his work. I haven't been able to find anything to substantiate the claim that he had an incestuous relationship with his mother though so I agree that it be dropped for now. Obviously anyone that has information about it please don't be shy. He wasn't. Xenovatis (talk) 22:17, 19 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Many thanks for these references. I would take strong issue with Trudgill's assertion that F. was "right-wing"; from his involvement in the events of 1848 it is clear that he was, in his contemporary German context, very much on the left. Panourgia is right that F.'s essays found "echoes" in later racist writings, but of course that has nothing to do with his own position -- there are countless cases of misappropriation of the dead (cf. Nietzsche). Gourgouris' analysis seems spot-on to me, and it is important to note that his observation of "an undeniable discursive affinity between Fallinerayer and the racist—colonialist spirit of his time" is placed in a concessive clause -- he's actually interested in developing a more precise analysis of F.'s work, which results in the discovery of closer affinities to (the decidedly left-wing) Marx. I would argue that there is a strong distinction between being a "Slavophobe" -- which F. of course was -- and a racist. The latter would usually mean that he believed in the innate superiority of a given (and nearly always one's own) "race," but F. clearly did not believe the Slavs "inferior," he rather feared the potential of the Russian empire to dominate world politics (see esp. refs gather under the last paragraph of "Contributions" in this article).
All of this is to say that, of the citations gathered here, only one actually asserts F. to have been "racist," and that is a rather misinformed source (Trudgill). They do indicate that the question should receive more attention in the article; I do not, however, perceive sufficient consensus to brand him an unqualified racist in the article intro. --Javits2000 (talk) 13:06, 22 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]
  • Removed right wing as it is probably an anachronims, i.e. I agree that we would call this rw today but probably wouldn't be seen so at his time.
  • Are the travel writings actually notable? Almost all references I've seen are with respect to the theory and the Trebizond histories.
  • Qualified the statement and will eventually write a separate piece discussing this and unless better sources turn up will remove the epithet from the lead.
  • Thanks for your time.

Xenovatis (talk) 16:50, 22 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks for your quick response, that all seems fair to me. As for the travel writings, I drew that from the entry in the Kindlers neues Literatur-Lexikon, which is the major reference work for German literature -- it's cited in the article under the first paragraph of "contributions." The travel writings (especially the Fragments from the Orient and the essays on Athos) are even today continually reprinted in paperback and I think count as classics of the genre. Outside of a really pricey reprint of the Trabzon book they are, I'm pretty sure, the only works of his still in print in German. --Javits2000 (talk) 18:00, 22 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]

the bio article is very much clearer DGG ( talk ) 01:16, 3 January 2020 (UTC)[reply]

One is a book, another is an author. Moreover, it is precisely this historical and ethnographic work that is the impetus for the formation of modern Greek historiography, and in this sense it is significant and should be an independent article. Angel Angel 2 (talk) 19:03, 3 January 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Support. The book has some notability on its own, but is part of Fallmerayer's wider work. And the treatment provided in the article right now is definitely not in any way neither a comprehensive nor a neutral, nor even a readable treatment of the subject. "The ethnographic Falmeryer substantiates the theory that, for the most part, the population of that Greek kingdom had no ancient ethnic origin since the beginning of the nineteenth century" is indicative of the entire article: unreferenced, badly written, and entirely lacking context or even the indication that Fallmerayer's theories of a complete population replacement have been mostly dismissed today... "During Ottoman Greece, the whole area was called Livadia, the Russian royal residence of Livadia Palace. " is another gem of stupendous (and wilful) ignorance: the Livadia palace was named after the town of Livadeia, not vice versa, and more importantly, what has this to do with Fallmerayer's work? This is simply thrown in by the author to substantiate his point which (as far as one can tell, given the mangled English and jumbled syntax) is that many placenames in Greece in the 19th century were not the ancient ones (hardly surprising after 2000 years of intervening history) and that therefore modern Greeks are in reality Bulgarians? The notion that modern Greeks are pure and direct descendant of Pericles is of course to be laughed at, but the author clearly has an entirely different fringe POV that he serves. Constantine 13:43, 5 January 2020 (UTC)[reply]
I have redirected the article to the relevant section here, which deals with this topic. It definitely needs more work, esp. on the impact on, and rebuttal in, modern Greek historiography, but the present treatment here is definitely far more accurate and neutral. Constantine 12:21, 1 February 2020 (UTC)[reply]