List of the donors of the greek communities of St. George and Holy Trinity in Vienna (1796-1918)

Stefano Saracino/Nathalie Soursos/Maria A. Stassinopoulou

The list of the donors of the greek communities of St. George and Holy Trinity in Vienna is based on the analysis off the sources, which have been identified through the FWF-Projekt „Soziales Engagement in den Wiener griechischen Gemeinden (18.-20. Jh.)“ (AP2714021). The endowments were established by the Greek-Orthodox of Vienna during the period 1769-1918 and they were managed by the communities of St. George (founded in 1723/1726 by subjects of the Ottoman Empire)  and Holy Trinity (founded in 1787 by subjects of the Hapsburg Empire). The evaluation of the sources made the cataloguing and the historical reconstruction of the endowments of the Greek communities in Vienna (St. George, Holy Trinity) possible.  These sources include the testaments, the deeds of endowments, the documents and the wills of the donors along with their correspondence. The source material is a result of a research, which was carried out from November 2014 until August 2016 and included the following archive collections: the archive of the community of St. George (AHG), the archive of the community of Holy Trinity (AHD), the state archive of the city of Vienna (WStLA), the provincial state archive of lower Austria (NÖLA), the austrian national archive (ÖStA), the archive of the metropolis of Ioannina, as well as the archive of the Society for the studies of Hepirus (Εταιρεία Ηπειρωτικών μελετών).

The present endowments are analyzed on the basis of the multidimensional approach, which was developed through the recent research on endowments. As a result, endowments should not be considered as one-dimensional legal institutions, but as institutions which are being involved in almost all the social subsystems (such as economy, society, law, religious, politics, art). Under this broad and wide concept, it is investigated how important and vital was endowments' role to the attempts for economic success, for social integration, to perpetuate remembrance, and to form cultural and religious identity. In addition, endowments are being considered as social institutions, through which on the one hand the donors are being involved in a socioeconomical relationship with the managers and the receivers of the endowments and on the other hand the deceased interact with the living. According to Michael Borgolte, the exciting relationship between the "donor's will" on the one hand and the "endowment's reality" - created by the endowment's managers - on the other has been a fundamental characteristic of endowments since the ancient times (Borgolte 2000, 2012, 2016). In this sense, not only independent endowments are being included in the present list, whose establishments is approved through deeds of endowments, but also those which are merely documented in wills and other documents, and at the current point of the research are (still) not provable. Legacies are also listed. However, only endowments and legacies with a charitable purpose are listed, ie for non-related poor as well as for institutions, which were promoting welfare and education in the wider sense, such as churches, hospitals, institutions for the poor, schools and universities. Endowments and legacies for relatives, friends, services, etc., are not taken into account.

This list is the first attempt to assemble all the information and does not claim to be exhaustive. Nevetheless, we invite the users of this list to contribute with their supplements and comments, which we will be able to integrate into the resulting database, which will be available online at the end of the project in October 2017. 

Annotation of the list

The list is divided into the following columns: Name, Date, Purpose, Sources, Endowment's Investment, Endowment's manager. 

Name

In most of the cases the names of the donors, who are included in this list, are found both in German and in Greek (rarely in other languages). The form of the names is primarily based on their appearance through the sources and their reference in other languages is based only on secondary adaptations of the secondary literature. Other variants of the names are included in a separate list of names. Both forms - German and the Greek (if this is available) - are presented. The family name of women is given in brackets after their name, as long as it is known. In the case of aristocratic donors, for the purpose of simplification, the nobility titles are mentioned only with the preposition ("von"), while longer nobility titles (such as "Edler von", "Freiherr von", "Ritter", etc.) are omitted.

Date

The date of donor's death (marked with †), has been chosen as the date of the endowment - whenever this date is available. These dates derive from the registries of the community of St. George and the community of Holy Trinity, the burial book of the cemetery of St. Marx, the Austrian press as well as the secondary bibliography. If this is not known, the list mentions the date of the opening of the will or the deed of endowment; finally, in cases where information on foundations and legates is obtained only from correspondence, the list mentions the date of the correspondence (marked with brackets []). 

Purpose

This column mentions the purpose of the endowment or donation. In many cases one donor made more than one endowments, which are included in separate fields. Additionally, endowments for charity are also included in separate fields. The various names of geographical places, which are included in this column, are listed in the form of their appearance in the sources, as well as with their modern names. 

Sources

This column lists the archive sources that provide information on the endowments or charitable legacies. In some cases, printed sources (eg. printed testaments) were taken also into account. 

Investment

It is mentioning which investment for the funding capital was chosen and includes the endowments, which their establishment is being confirmed through deeds of endowments or official correspondence. The information on the capitals, which were established for endowments or charitable legacies through the wills of the donors, were not taken into account in this column.

The size and value of the endowment's capital are being mentioned in the sources in the various currencies, which were used by the Habsburg monarchy (Pammer 2002, 281f.):

In addition, Also endowments' currency units, which were used in the Ottoman Empire (Kuruş, Piaster, Groschen / γρόσια) are listed, as well as the currency, which was introduced by the Greek state in 1831 (Greek drachma, ελληνική δραήμή) along with the short-lived Phoenix (1827-1831).

The Habsburg as well as the Ottoman currencies, as they are being mentioned in the  sources, went through considerable changes during the period we are investigating (1769-1918), due to the development of monetary value. Also, the exchange rate between the currencies of the Ottoman and Hapsburg empires (Liata 1996, 237) was also affected, which was greatly reflected on the value of the endowment's capital in Vienna and the rest of the Habsburg territory and on their interests, which had to be send either to the Ottoman Empire or to the Kingdom of Greece.

Foundation body

Here the persons / institutions operating as a foundation organ are recorded, as defined in the wills and wishes of the founders, or as they appear in monographs or official correspondences.

Endowment's manager

This column mentions the persons and the institutions, which were considered as the manager(s) of the endowment. This information derives from the testaments, the wills of the donors, the deeds of the endowments and the relative correspondence.    

Bibliography

Borgolte 2000: Borgolte, Michael (Hrsg.): Stiftungen und Stiftungswirklichkeit. Vom Mittelalter bis zur Gegenwart (Stiftungsgeschichten 1), Berlin 2000.

Borgolte 2012: Borgolte, Michael: Stiftung und Memoria (Stiftungsgeschichten 10), hrsg. v. Tillmann Lohse, Berlin 2012.

Borgolte 2016: Borgolte, Michael: Fünftausend Jahre Stiftungen. Eine Typologie von Mesopotamien bis zu den USA, in: Historische Zeitschrift, 301 (2016), 593-626.

Liata 1996: Λιάτα, Ευτυχία: Φλωρία δεκατέσσερα στένουν γρόσια σαράντα. Η κυκλοφορία των νομισμάτων στον Βενετοκρατούμενο και Τουρκοκρατούμενο Ελληνικό χώρο, 15ος – 19ος αιώνας (Κέντρο Νεοελλ. Ερευνών, Εθνικού Ιδρύματος Ερευνών 58), Αthen 1996.

Pammer 2002: Pammer, Michael: Entwicklung und Ungleichheit. Österreich im 19. Jahrhundert (Vierteiljahresschrift für Sozial- und Wirtschaftsgeschichte, Beiheft 161), Stuttgart 2002.