Jakob Philipp Fallmerayer, Austrian historian, byzantine, publicist, and member of the Bavarian Academy of Sciences, passed away in Germany; he made a series of trips to the eastern countries, to Turkey, Macedonia, and Greece, where he got to know the Arbëresh population. He was born in Berlin, Germany, in 1790. Fallmerayer expressed in his works extremist views about the origin of the Greek people, which made him one of the most contested figures in Greece: that the Greek people did not have “a single drop of blood from ancient Greeks”, that there was a mixture of Albanians and Slavs and that in its culture there was no trace of continuity of the ancient cultural heritage. For the history of Albania, the works ” Geschichte der Halbinsel Morea während des Mittelalters” in two volumes (“History of the Morea Peninsula during the Middle Ages”, Munich 1830-1836) are still important , as well as “Das albanesische Element in Griechenland” in three volumes (“Albanian element in Greece”,Munich 1857-1861). These works primarily address the history of migration and the widespread dispersion of Albanians in Greek territories. In order to understand this, Falmerajer also deals with the history of the Albanians in the territories from where they started, in the framework of the Byzantine Empire and in their encounter with the Ottomans, which he calls a historical tragedy, the “acts” of which he follows through the war led by Skanderbeg. Jakob Philipp Fallmerayer highly appreciates the war of the Albanians as people with great vitality and “fantastic freedom-loving”, he also appreciates Skanderbeg as a fighter for freedom. Although he does not know archival sources, he relies on narrative sources like Marin Barleti. Fallmerayer’s second work draws attention to a series of original perspectives in assessing the people’s war of the Albanians as a guerilla war with all its characteristic features. (In the photo: Portrait of Jakob Philipp Fallmerayer)
Text: Albanian encyclopedic dictionary – Vol. 1 , Academy of Sciences of Albania, “Kristalina-KH”, Tirana, 2008, page 644.
Photo: © https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jakob_Philipp_Fallmerayer
Graphic processing: AHCF
