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Portraits of Hope

Portraits of Hope

Huberta v. Voss

(2007)

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Abstract

Elie Wiesel called the genocide of the Armenians during the First World War ‘the Holocaust before the Holocaust’. Around one and a half million Armenians - men, women and children – were slaughtered at the time of the First World War. This book outlines some of the historical facts and consequences of the massacres but sees it as its main objective to present the Armenians to the foreign reader, their history but also their lives and achievements in the present that finds most Armenians dispersed throughout the world. 3000 years after their appearance in history, 1700 years after adopting Christianity and almost 90 years after the greatest catastrophe in their history, these 50 ‘biographical sketches of intellectuals, artists, journalists, and others…produce a complicated kaleidoscope of a divided but lively people that is trying once again, to rediscover its ethnic coherence. Armenian civilization does not consist solely of stories about a far-off past, but also of traditions and a national conscience suggestive of a future that will transcend the present.’ [from the Preface]


Huberta v. Voss worked for many years as a political correspondent for various German dailies, before becoming spokesperson of the Speaker of the Bundestag. During the diplomatic assignment of her husband to Beirut and Nicosia, she edited and translated amongst others the Lebanese poet Nadia Tuéni from French into German. She has earned a M.A. in Political Science, Modern History and French Philology. She has three children and now lives as a freelance journalist and author in Berlin.


“…certainly a well-put together and edited compendium of Armenian socio-political and cultural essays ...And it has a great deal to offer both the educated and altruistic reader alike about the passionate and fatalistic woven threads that compose Armenian life and identity today.”  ·  Armenian Weekly

“…highly informative and important for the understanding not only of an ignored past…One reads with astonishment how much creative potential the oldest Christian people still has.”  ·  Die Welt

“In this book Armenia…is not so much a nation rather than a landscape of remembrance, broken up and held together by violence and expulsion and through an eternal ‘traveling’ culture. Huberta von Voss allows us to experience this culture through the portraits of members of this culture who are dispersed throughout the world.”  ·  :die tageszeitung

Table of Contents

Section Title Page Action Price
Title Page iii
Copyright Page iv
Dedication v
Illustrations vi
Table of Contents vii
Preface xiii
Prologue xvii
Acknowledgments xxv
Part I. Introduction 1
Chapter 1. Between Ararat and the Caucasus 3
Chapter 2. The Armenian Genocide 19
Chapter 3. The Turkish Denial of the Armenian Genocide in its European Context 36
Chapter 4. The Silent Partner 45
Part II. Portraits from Around the World 59
History 60
Chapter 5. The Investigator 61
Chapter 6. A Foundation of Facts and Fiction 67
Chapter 7. The Memory of Cilicia 72
Chapter 8. Lord of the Books 77
Words 81
Chapter 9. Shadows and Phantoms 83
Chapter 10. The Ashes of Smyrna 88
Chapter 11. The Tracker 93
Chapter 12. Difficult Truths 99
Chapter 13. A Seedbed of Words 104
Chapter 14. La Femme Revoltee 109
Chapter 15. Vocation Azgayin Gortsich 113
Faith 119
Chapter 16. The Catholicos of All Armenians 121
Chapter 17. The Modernizer with the Miter 126
Chapter 18. Referee on a Slippery Pitch 130
Chapter 19. With Cellphone and Habit on Lord Byron's Island 134
Arts and Architecture 141
Chapter 20. Son of an Amazon 143
Chapter 21. Seismograph of Different Worlds 146
Chapter 22. Fitzcarraldo in the Olive Grove 149
Chapter 23. Ibis Eyes 153
Film and Photography 157
Chapter 24. Screening Histories 159
Chapter 25. Hollywood in Downtown Cairo 164
Chapter 26. Beyond All Limits 168
Music 173
Chapter 27. The Voice of France 175
Chapter 28. Under the Stars 180
Commitment 185
Chapter 29. Ways to Identity 187
Chapter 30. Daily Bread of Resolutions 193
Politics and Diplomacy 199
Chapter 31. From Diamonds to Diplomacy 201
Chapter 32. Armenia's Attorney on the Banks of the Seine 205
Chapter 33. In the Mission Quicksands 209
Chapter 34. The Man with the Mirror 214
Life Images 219
Chapter 35. Courier of the Czar 221
Chapter 36. End of a Long Journey 227
Chapter 37. The Skeptic of the Jaffa Gate 232
Chapter 38. \"Excuse Me, How Do I Get To the Front?\" The Brothers Monte and Markar Melkonian 237
Chapter 39. The Everyday Life of a Hero 243
Chapter 40 The Magic of the Opal 247
Chapter 41. Hablas Armenio? Rosita Youssefian, Teacher of Armenian 252
Chapter 42. Portrait of Survival 256
Chapter 43. Grande Dame of the Myths 262
Chapter 44. A Perfectly Normal Story 265
Part III. Symbolic Places 269
Chapter 45. Swan Song in the Holy Land 271
Chapter 46. Last Stop 275
Chapter 47. Gangway to Life 282
Chapter 48. Struggle for Survival 287
Chapter 49. An Eye for an Eye 292
Chapter 50. Inch Piti Asem? What Should I Say? 298
Epilogue. The Dichotomy of Truth and Denial and the Remembrance of a Courageous Turk 305
Key Dates in Armenian History 313
Glossary 325
Additional Reading Material 327
Notes on Contributors 333