Karl Krazeisen: The hagiography of the struggle

Item

Title

Date

24 March 2021-31 January 2023

Date Issued

2021

Abstract

To the philhellenic lieutenant Karl Krazeisen (1794-1878) we owe the hagiography of the fighters of 1821. At least those who had survived the bloody conflicts and heroic sacrifices that had preceded it until November 1826, when the Bavarian officer arrived in Greece. This is how it is explained that from its "iconostasis" the venerable figures of Athanasios Diakos, Markos Botsaris or Papaflessas are missing, as Pantelis Prevelakis observed in his moving foreword to the precious 1971 anniversary edition of the Academy of Fine Arts, made for the 150 years since the declaration of the Greek Revolution. The twenty portraits of legendary figures of the struggle presented in that edition, drawn in pencil, then revealed to us the authentic forms of the heroes who had haunted our imaginations since they adorned the schoolrooms in their falsified lithographic version. From November 1826 to the end of August 1827 Krazeisen with a rare and quick historical consciousness managed to capture on paper the physiognomy of the main protagonists of that crucial moment of the struggle. It was the moment when his outcome was at stake, while civil strife threatened to blow up what had been achieved up to that point. Krazeisen went around the camps in Nafplio, Poros, Aegina, Salamina, Athens, Piraeus, to end up in the camp of Faliro, in April 1827.

(Edited and translated description from organiser’s website)