Avra Theodoropoulou ( el, Αύρα Θεοδωροπούλου; 3 November 1880 – 20 January 1963) was a Greek music teacher, pianist, suffragist and women's rights activist. She founded the
League for Women's Rights in 1920 and served as its chairperson from 1920 to 1957. She was married to the poet .
Early life
Avra Drakopoulou was born on 3 November 1880 in
Edirne
Edirne (, ), formerly known as Adrianople or Hadrianopolis (Greek: Άδριανούπολις), is a city in Turkey, in the northwestern part of the province of Edirne in Eastern Thrace. Situated from the Greek and from the Bulgarian borders, ...
, Ottoman Empire, to Eleni and Aristomenis Drakopoulos, who was a consul official for Greece in Turkey. Her sister, , was a well-known poet and actress. In their childhood, the family was posted in Turkey and then Crete before settling in
Athens
Athens ( ; el, Αθήνα, Athína ; grc, Ἀθῆναι, Athênai (pl.) ) is both the capital and largest city of Greece. With a population close to four million, it is also the seventh largest city in the European Union. Athens dominates ...
. Completing high school, Drakopoulou learned English, French and German and became involved as a volunteer nurse during the
Greco-Turkish War of 1897
The Greco-Turkish War of 1897 or the Ottoman-Greek War of 1897 ( or ), also called the Thirty Days' War and known in Greece as the Black '97 (, ''Mauro '97'') or the Unfortunate War ( el, Ατυχής πόλεμος, Atychis polemos), was a w ...
. In 1900, she graduated from the
Athens Conservatoire
The Athens Conservatoire () is the oldest educational institution for the performing arts in modern Greece. It was founded in 1871 by the non-profit organization Music and Drama Association.
History
Initially, the musical instruments that were ta ...
and that same year she met Spyros Theodoropoulos, who would become a politician and writer, using the pen name Agis Theros. They would marry in 1906, after overcoming her father's objections to the match.
Career
Theodoropoulous received the
Andreas
Andreas ( el, Ἀνδρέας) is a name usually given to males in Austria, Greece, Cyprus, Denmark, Armenia, Estonia, Ethiopia, Eritrea, Finland, Flanders
Flanders (, ; Dutch: ''Vlaanderen'' ) is the Flemish-speaking northern portion of B ...
and Iphigeneia Syngros Silver Medal for her piano skill in 1910 and was appointed to teach
music history
Music history, sometimes called historical musicology, is a highly diverse subfield of the broader discipline of musicology that studies music from a historical point of view.
In theory, "music history" could refer to the study of the history o ...
and
pianoforte
The piano is a stringed keyboard instrument in which the strings are struck by wooden hammers that are coated with a softer material (modern hammers are covered with dense wool felt; some early pianos used leather). It is played using a keyboa ...
at the conservatoire. During this early period, seeking different methods to express herself, Theodoropoulous wrote at least two plays. One, entitled Chance or will ( el, Τύχην ή θέλησιν) (1906), which was not performed as it was semi-autobiographical, and Sparks dying out ( el, Σπίθες που σβήνουν), which was performed in 1912 by
Marika Kotopouli
Marika Kotopouli ( el, Μαρίκα Κοτοπούλη; 3 May 1887 – 11 September 1954) was a Greek stage actress during the first half of the 20th century.
Biography
Kotopouli was born on 3 May 1887 in Athens to actor parents, Dimitrios Kot ...
. In 1911, she became involved with establishing the Sunday School for Working Women ( el, Κυριακάτικο Σχολείο Εργατριών) (KSE), an organization which demanded for the first time that education for women was a right.
During the
Balkan War (1912–13)
The First Balkan War ( sr, Први балкански рат, ''Prvi balkanski rat''; bg, Балканска война; el, Αʹ Βαλκανικός πόλεμος; tr, Birinci Balkan Savaşı) lasted from October 1912 to May 1913 and invo ...
, she returned to volunteering as a nurse and was
honored for her participation with the Medal of the Hellenic Red Cross, the Queen Olga Medal, the Medal of the Balkan War and the Medal of the Greco-Bulgarian War.
In 1918, Theodoropoulous was one of the founders of Sister of the Soldier ( el, Αδελφή του Στρατιώτη), an association created to address social issues caused by war and give women an active means to participate civically. The organization aimed to
enfranchise women and give them civic and political rights.
The following year, she left the Athens Conservatoire and began teaching at the
Hellenic Conservatory The Hellenic Conservatory ( el, Ελληνικό Ωδείο) is an educational institution for the performing arts in modern Greece. It was founded in Athens in 1919 by the composer Manolis Kalomiris. Kalomoiris was the conservatoire's director unti ...
. In 1920, Theodoropoulous, along with , ,
Maria Svolou
Maria Svolou ( el, Μαρία Σβώλου, ''née'' Desypri; 1892 – 1976) was a Feminism in Greece, Greek feminist and socialist leader.
Maria Desypri was born around 1892 in Athens to George Desypros and his wife. Maria was one of four daught ...
, and other feminists, established the League for Woman’s Rights ( gr, Σύνδεσμος για τα Δικαιώματα της Γυναίκας) and sought an association with the
International Woman Suffrage Alliance
The International Alliance of Women (IAW; french: Alliance Internationale des Femmes, AIF) is an international non-governmental organization that works to promote women's rights and gender equality. It was historically the main international org ...
(IWSA) to further their demands for equality. From the beginning, the organization was one of the most dynamic of the Greek feminist organizations. In 1920, she presented a resolution to the
Greek government
Greece is a parliamentary representative democratic republic, where the President of Greece is the head of state and the Prime Minister of Greece is the head of government within a multi-party system. Legislative power is vested in both the g ...
on behalf of the association demanding that the legal inequalities barring women from voting be addressed. The following year, she became president of the League and would remain so until 1958, except during the
war
War is an intense armed conflict between states, governments, societies, or paramilitary groups such as mercenaries, insurgents, and militias. It is generally characterized by extreme violence, destruction, and mortality, using regular o ...
when the organization was banned.
The KSE ceased operations in 1922 and Theodoropoulous turned her attention toward the Supervision Service and the National Shelter ( el, Εθνική Στέγη), which were both organizations aimed at helping refugees from the
Greco-Turkish War. At the end of the conflict, Greece was flooded with refugees and the League's Supervision Service provided volunteers at fifty settlements to provide aid. The National Shelter was an orphanage, which could house up to 85 girls. In 1923, Theodoropoulous launched the League’s journal ''Woman’s Struggle'' ( el, Ο Αγώνας της Γυναίκας) and participated in the IWSA’s 9th conference held in Rome. She became a board member of the IWSA and served until 1935 and from the contacts she made at the conference, established the
Little Entente of Women
Little Entente of Women (1923–1930) was an umbrella organization for women's groups in the Balkan region and one of the first organizations to try to reunite Eastern European women from the former Austro-Hungarian region to work on changing thei ...
( el, Μικρή Αντάντ Γυναικών) (LEW) which met in Bucharest later that year. At that conference, Theodoropoulous honored with the
King Alexander I of Yugoslavia
Alexander I ( sr-Cyrl, Александар I Карађорђевић, Aleksandar I Karađorđević, ) ( – 9 October 1934), also known as Alexander the Unifier, was the prince regent of the Kingdom of Serbia from 1914 and later the King of Yug ...
Medal for her work for peace.
LEW was made of up feminists from Czechoslovakia, Greece, Poland, Romania and Yugoslavia and she helped co-organized their annual conferences. Theodoropoulous served as the president of the Greek LEW from 1925–27, following the presidency of
Alexandrina Cantacuzino
Alexandrina "Didina" Cantacuzino ( Pallady; also known as Alexandrina Grigore Cantacuzino and ( Francized) Alexandrine Cantacuzène; 20 September 1876 – 1944) was a Romanian political activist, philanthropist and diplomat, one of her country's l ...
. She was extremely active in this period with international conferences and gained some success at home, when in 1930 educated Greek women were allowed the right to elect local officials.
Later career
In 1936, Theodoropoulou left the Hellenic Conservatory and began teaching at the
National Conservatoire. That same year, when
Ioannis Metaxas
Ioannis Metaxas (; el, Ιωάννης Μεταξάς; 12th April 187129th January 1941) was a Greek military officer and politician who served as the Prime Minister of Greece from 1936 until his death in 1941. He governed constitutionally for t ...
assumed his dictatorship over Greece, he suspended activities of the women's organization. Women funneled their activities into the
war resistance effort to the
occupation
Occupation commonly refers to:
*Occupation (human activity), or job, one's role in society, often a regular activity performed for payment
*Occupation (protest), political demonstration by holding public or symbolic spaces
*Military occupation, th ...
and Theodoropolous, as she had in other conflicts, volunteered as a nurse.
In 1946, she became the president of the newly formed Panhellenic Federation of Women ( el, Πανελλαδική Ομοσπονδία Γυναικών) (POG), which was developed to bring all of the women's organizations together and counterbalance left and right positions. The POG organized a conference held in May 1946 with 671 delegates coming together in Athens, but within months the
Civil War
A civil war or intrastate war is a war between organized groups within the same state (or country).
The aim of one side may be to take control of the country or a region, to achieve independence for a region, or to change government policies ...
erupted and Theodoropoulou resigned because she felt that the women's movement should be non-partisan.
She was forced to sign a loyalty oath in 1948 because of her previous involvement with communists and the secret police kept dossiers on she and her husband between 1949 and their deaths, which were not destroyed until 1989. After the conflict ceased, Theodoropoulou resumed her participation in IWSA conferences, attending the conferences held in Amsterdam (1949), Stockholm (1951), Naples (1952), Colombo (1955), Copenhagen (1956), and Athens (1958).
In 1952, Greek women finally won the right to be full voting participants. She retired from teaching in 1957 and from the League for Women's Rights in 1958. During her later years, she worked as a music critic, publishing in newspapers and magazines, and after her husband's death in 1961, she organized their archives. Theodoropoulou died in Athens on 20 January 1963.
See also
*
List of suffragists and suffragettes
This list of suffragists and suffragettes includes noted individuals active in the worldwide women's suffrage movement who have campaigned or strongly advocated for women's suffrage, the organisations which they formed or joined, and the public ...
References
Citations
Sources
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Further reading
* Bonnie G. Smith: ''The Oxford Encyclopedia of Women in World History'': 4 Volume Set
* Uglow, Jennifer S. & Hendry, Maggy, ''The Macmillan dictionary of women's biography'', 3. ed., Papermac, London, 1999
{{DEFAULTSORT:Theodoropoulou, Avra
1880 births
1963 deaths
Greek women's rights activists
Greek feminists
Greek suffragists
19th-century Greek people
Greek pianists
Greek women pianists
20th-century pianists
People from Edirne
19th-century Greek musicians
20th-century Greek musicians
20th-century women pianists