“History does not repeat itself. It simply shows how society can avoid the mistakes of the past in the future. But the political leaders of the country were rarely interested in history. They could not or did not want to teach History properly in public education. And few of us citizens were looking for these knowledge outside of school,” the historian said in an electronic conversation with K at the end of 2016. George Dertiliswho died the day before yesterday, at the age of 84, in his beloved Kitira. That conversation took place on the occasion of the publication of his book Polis. “Seven Wars, Four Civil Wars, Seven Bankruptcies 1821-2016”. In it, he summed up the political history of the country on 150 pages. “It was difficult,” he told us then. But G. Dertilis loved the complex.

“Few of us citizens have sought knowledge of history outside of schools.”

Born in 1939 in Athens. He was an honorary professor of history at the University of Athens, studying public law and economics in Athens, and political theory and history in England (1973-1977). From 1978 to 2000 he taught history at the Faculty of Law of the University of Athens, where he was unanimously elected Vice-Chancellor in 1980 and Professor of Social and Economic History in the Faculty of Political Science in 1983. Oxford Universities, as well as at the European University Institute of Florence, at that time he was a permanent member of the European Academy. In 2000, he was elected professor (director of studies) at the Higher School of Social Sciences in Paris and resigned from the University of Athens. He founded the Historical Archives of the University of Athens and was a member of the National Research Advisory Board and the Scientific or Administrative Boards of the National Research Foundation, the National Bank Educational Foundation and the Schlumberger and Maison Suger Foundations (Paris). ). Twelve of his books and about forty articles have been published or translated into Greek, English, French, Spanish and Italian. Since 1989 he has been elected a full member of the European Academy of Sciences (Academia Europaea). In particular, with regard to his books recently published in Greek, from 2013 to the “Seven Wars” in 2016, two more of his works were published: the autobiographical “Affinities, testimonies, stories” (Polis publishing house), symbolic “History of the Greek State 1830-1920” (reprinted by Crete Publishers).

He had the rare gift of combining documentary historical analysis with the immediacy of the art of storytelling and, above all, reflecting on the philosophy of History and the hidden connections between past and present. “It often seems to me that the “real” almost does not exist. It’s a fleeting moment,” he told us in 2016. “It exists because of our past, individual and collective, and this future is ‘in the making’, again because of the past. And if our past “disappears” with all its traumas, then the present consoles me and renews my hope only because it is precisely this unmanifested future that is “creating”. And it depends, at least a little, on the “act” of each of us. Being an incurable patriot (and sympathizing with postmodernists who consider patriotism a simple and somewhat ridiculous “construct”), I optimistically hope that my fellow citizens are able not only to see the decline of their country, but also to correct it in practice. the irresistible weapon that Democracy offers us: voting.”