Loukia Droulia

Loukia Droulia was born in 1931. She studied history at the University of Athens and then earned a doctorate at the Sorbonne in Paris. She came from an old Phanariot family, Greeks of Constantinople who had served Greece for many generations, but she never put this forward.

She joined the Centre for Neohellenic Research of the National Hellenic Research Foundation (Εθνικό Ίδρυμα Ερευνών, EIE) in Athens from its first years and worked closely with the historian K. Th. Dimaras, a founding figure of modern Greek studies. From 1969 to 1977 she was general secretary of the Greek Enlightenment study group, and from 1969 to 1986 she sat on the editorial board of its journal Ο Ερανιστής (The Gleaner). She directed the Centre from 1981 to 1996 and served the Foundation for 36 years in all, retiring as an emeritus research director.

Her work also took her beyond Greece. From 1987 to 1996 she represented the Foundation on the humanities committee of the European Science Foundation in Strasbourg, and she sat on the supervisory councils of the General State Archives and the National Library of Greece. She died in July 2019. The Minister of Culture, Lina Mendoni, remembered her as a scholar of international standing with a deep devotion to the humanities.

Droulia’s research followed how Greeks read, learned and argued from the Greek Enlightenment of the 18th century into the 19th century: schools, books, libraries, travellers’ accounts and newspapers. Her first major book, Philhellénisme (1974), written in French, is a bibliography of works inspired by the Greek War of Independence of 1821–1833: poems, plays, pamphlets and other publications by supporters of the Greek cause in many countries and languages. It became a standard reference, and a revised edition prepared by Alexandra Sfoini in 2017 grew to 3,172 entries.

Her largest project was the Εγκυκλοπαίδεια Ελληνικού Τύπου 1784–1974 (Encyclopaedia of the Greek Press, 1784–1974), which she edited with Gioula Koutsopanagou and published in 2008. Its four volumes, 2,421 pages written by about 340 contributors, describe Greek newspapers and magazines, journalists and publishers. The story starts with the first Greek newspapers in Vienna at the end of the 18th century and ends in 1974, a turning point for the Greek daily press. The work includes papers from the Greek state, from Cyprus and from Greek communities abroad, among them bilingual papers. She also edited a collective volume on the history and geography of Thrace, published by the Foundation around 2000.

The encyclopaedia remains a starting point for anyone who studies a Greek newspaper or magazine, and Philhellénisme is still used by historians of 1821. In 2018 her personal library, about 10,000 items (the Ministry of Culture spoke of more than 13,000 volumes), joined the Aikaterini Laskaridis Foundation, where it serves research on the Greek Enlightenment, 1821, philhellenism, travel writing and the history of the Greek book and press. In 2021 the journal Ο Ερανιστής devoted its 30th issue to her memory.

Try this: open an old front page in the digitised newspaper collection of the National Library of Greece, for example the Athens daily Εμπρός (Forward). Find three things and say them aloud in Greek: ο τίτλος (the title), ο τόπος (the place) and η ημερομηνία (the date).

• The four volumes of the encyclopaedia weigh about 8 kilograms together.
• Its entries run in Greek alphabetical order, from Α in the first volume to Ω in the fourth.
• From 1989 to 1996 she coordinated Greek work in UNESCO’s programme Silk Roads, Roads of Dialogue.
• Her book on philhellenism grew by 1,087 new titles between its first edition in 1974 and its second in 2017.