ABSTRACT
The commemoration of events that occurred from 1833, when King Otto arrived in Greece, to 1930 had two facets: an institutional memory orchestrated mainly by the Crown and a war memory incorporating all military events and canonized by military regimes in the Interwar period. The fourth chapter examines “the new past”, that is, the historical memory and commemorative practices of the period that followed the creation of the state. It explores the staging of monarchial power through ritual acts, depictions of the ruler and monuments and assesses the ultimate success or failure of royal memory politics. The chapter also traces the addition of new heroes, such as Pavlos Melas, to the existing pantheon of the revolution, investigating the transition from eponymous to anonymous commemoration that culminated in the construction of the Monument to the Unknown Soldier in Syntagma (Constitution) Square in Athens. How the Greek state managed the traumatic memory of the Asia Minor Catastrophe during the interwar period is also discussed in this chapter, as is the dispute between rival memories relating to the underlying narrative of the National Schism and, ultimately, the conflict – over historical memory – between two new social groups: war veterans and refugees.
