Prologue and Acknowledgements
The dream of every historian is at some point in their life to discover an archive, somewhere in a trunk, a basement, an attic, a warehouse, or in dusty and forgotten boxes, which will open a locked door, to shed light on history. My own dream came true when, on a very cold morning in January 2016, I set eyes on not one or two, but hundreds of boxes stacked on pallets in a large warehouse in the Rentis area of Athens. These boxes belonged to the Alexander S. Onassis Foundation. Brown, crumpled but sturdy and solid boxes that had crossed the Atlantic and the Mediterranean Sea, to end up in Piraeus, with ‘MV’ – ‘Montevideo’ – or ‘
The remarkable thing here is that the Alexander S. Onassis Foundation (known as Onassis Foundation) in honouring its founder and its own history, has respected the archives and preserved them with dignity. In the daily struggle for survival, a shipping company usually forgets the past and is indifferent to its history, although this does not belong solely to the company, but is also part of our maritime heritage. The global entrepreneurship of the Greek people shines in the field of international maritime transport. And the warehouses of the over one thousand Greek-owned shipping companies in Piraeus, Keratsini, Nikaia, Tavros, Rentis, and Votanikos are filled with valuable archival material, which gets stacked into piles and thoughtlessly pulped. How will we write the history of the most successful branch of Greek global entrepreneurship if we do not preserve the archives?
Just like its founder, the Alexander S. Onassis Foundation has pioneered through funding the project to create the Onassis Archive. This is essentially the first organised and catalogued archive of a Greek-owned shipping and business group, as is described in detail in Chapter 14 of this book. The creation of the Onassis Archive is the result of a research project that we were commissioned to carry out, by the Alexander S. Onassis Foundation. It was conducted by an academic team of historians and archivists from July 2017 to January 2021, based at the Centre of Maritime History, Institute for Mediterranean Studies, at the Foundation for Research and Technology-Hellas. The project had a dual and interrelated goal: a) the creation of the Onassis Archive; and b) the writing of a study on the Onassis Business History.
I would like to thank from the bottom of my heart the President of the Alexander S. Onassis Foundation, Anthony Papadimitriou, and the Board of Directors of the Foundation, for the wonderful opportunity they have given me to fulfil a life’s goal. Together we have contributed to Greek and global business, shipping, and economic history, not only with this book but also with the Onassis Archive, a legacy for future research, both Greek and international. Anthony Papadimitriou honoured me with his unconditional trust and excellent and unhindered cooperation. The collaboration with the rest of the ‘Onassis family’ was a delight. Effie Tsiotsiou, the Executive Director and Director of Education of the Onassis Foundation, is always good-natured, with a positive outlook and quick to find solutions, and Alkistis Iliadis, the project’s administrator, is always able to manage things in a joyful and helpful way, and provided us with everything we needed. The whole working group extends its warmest thanks.
The discussions and interviews with old and new members of the Onassis Foundation companies provided me with valuable information to complete the ‘mosaic’ of the history of Aristotle Onassis’s businesses. Special thanks are due to Pavlos Ioannidis, the last surviving member of the Foundation’s first Board of Directors, for the hours-long conversations with him during 2017–2019, regarding Olympic Airways, the transition to the Foundation, and the shipping business after Onassis. Pavlos Ioannidis passed away at the age of 97 years in May 2021. I am also grateful for the extremely enlightening discussion with Thanos Krasaris, of the Monte Carlo Technical Department, and subsequently of Springfield, in Piraeus in 2016; unfortunately, he has also passed away in December 2020. In addition, I had an enlightening discussion with Panayotis Touliatos, a senior executive of the Monte Carlo office and today a member of the Foundation’s Board of Directors. Thanks are due for discussions in 2016 and 2017 with the younger generation of managers at the Foundation and the shipping company, who have served in these positions for many years: Ioannis Ioannidis; Dimitris Patrikios; the then heads of the different departments Captain Gerasimos Barkas, Captain Thanasis Apostolopoulos, and Captain Dionysis Siganakis; and the shipbuilder Dimitris Makris. In Montevideo, in March 2019, I had the pleasure of meeting and conversing with the lawyer of the office there, the now 80-year-old Eduardo Albanell Martino. In 2019, in Montevideo I also met, thanks to an introduction from Nicolas Const. Konialidis, Walter Amestoy (1935–2020), the accountant for the Montevideo office, who had been hired in 1954.
From the Onassis family, the person who provided me with valuable information and the most complete family tree was an exceptional lady, Mrs Ritsa Konialidis, wife of Costas Konialidis. Today at the age of 95, she is still sharp and uses computers and the internet with ease. The help she provided was unique and wide-ranging, from identifying people in Archive photographs, answering various questions about the family, to introductions to other family members. Maritsa (Maria) Dimopoulou, now 100 years of age, the only surviving first cousin of Aristotle Onassis (the daughter of Ioannis Ch. Onassis), lives in Buenos Aires. In 2020, I had a long and incredible telephone conversation with her, which cleared up various outstanding questions. Nicolas Const. Konialidis, whom I met repeatedly in Athens, and who in Montevideo guided me around the Greek community, also clarified many aspects of the family history. Marios Nik. Konialidis (1939–2019) provided me with valuable information just before he passed away and sent me digitised archival material that is now incorporated into the Onassis Archive. I thank them all warmly for their time and contributions.
Maria Damilakou, Lars Scholl and Christos Tsakas enriched this volume with their valuable contributions and I thank them all for being “on board”. Despina Christodoulou and Geoffrey Cox undertook the task of translating the whole book, firstly written in Greek (apart from Lars Scholl’s texts). Many thanks for the great collaboration. Patrick McGee “saved” us in undertaking the last final and important editing of the whole volume. Many thanks go to Alessandra Gilberto of Brill who has managed the whole time-consuming task of bringing this book to life.
The organisation, cataloguing, and classification of the Onassis Archive, including this book, are the outputs of the collective work completed by an amazing team, who worked so hard to achieve the final results. The collaboration with the Deputy General Director of the General State Archives (Greece), Amalia Pappa, in the creation of the Archive was invaluable. Without her singular professionalism, great experience and knowledge, there would be no Archive. However, what cannot be expressed in words is the joyous partnership and the ease of communication on all matters. I thank her so much, for everything. Alexandra Papadopoulou, historian, postdoctoral researcher at the Centre of Maritime History at IMS-FORTH, was the other pillar of the project. The knowledge, acumen, and intelligence that distinguish her made the difficult path navigated by this project a voyage with a fair wind. A youthful group of historians – graduates, postgraduate students, and PhD candidates – from the Ionian University, the National and Kapodistrian University of Athens and the University of Crete helped us to tame the huge volume of material. At first, Semina Protopsalti, Nikolas Anastasiou, and Stephanos Rengas, and subsequently, Semina Protopsalti, Kostis Hatzopoulos and Kostas Chalimourdas. Yiannis Diamantopoulos and Angelos Drougoutis helped decisively with the book on the final straight. The dedication to the work, where the Archive and the book became ‘ours’ and there was no clocking off time when it came to completion, was touching. The optimism for the qualities of the younger generation comes from working with young people of such integrity. As Semina and Kostis wrote to us: “Three years after the programme started, watching all this development, we feel very proud that we were able to create a complete archive almost from scratch. The key to this was the archival material itself, which kept our interest alive in various ways. Apart from being a unique source of information for researchers of economic history, the archive is also a resource for political, cultural and social issues. Aristotle Onassis was a global personality of his era and, through his business and personal archive, we felt close to historical events that marked the 20th century”.
Gelina Harlaftis
Professor of University of Crete
Director of IMS-FORTH
Head of the Centre of Maritime History, IMS-FORTH