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Fan Noli

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Fan Stilian Noli
14th Prime Minister of Albania
In office
June 16, 1924 – December 23, 1924
Preceded byIliaz Vrioni
Succeeded byIliaz Vrioni
Personal details
Born
Theofan Stilian Noli

(1882-01-06)January 6, 1882
Ibriktepe, Ottoman Empire
DiedMarch 13, 1965(1965-03-13) (aged 83)
Fort Lauderdale, Florida
Alma materHarvard,[1] Boston University
OccupationWriter, Bishop, Translator, Composer, Politician
ProfessionPriest

Theofan Stilian Noli, better known as Fan Noli (January 6, 1882 – March 13, 1965) was an Albanian-American writer, scholar, diplomat, politician, historian, orator, and founder of the Albanian Orthodox Church, who served as prime minister and regent of Albania in 1924 during the June Revolution.

Fan Noli is venerated in Albania as a champion of literature, history, theology, diplomacy, journalism, music and national unity. He played an important role in the consolidation of Albanian as the national language of Albania with numerous translations of world literature masterpieces.[2] His contribution to the English-language literature are also manifold: as a scholar and author of a series of publications on Skanderbeg, Shakespeare, Beethoven, religious texts and translations.[2]

He acquired his education at Harvard[1] and was ordained priest in 1908, establishing thereby the Albanian Church and elevating the Albanian language to ecclesiastic use. He briefly resided in Albania after the 1912 declaration of independence. After World War I, Noli led the diplomatic efforts for the reunification of Albania and received the support of U.S. President Wilson. Later he pursued a diplomatic-political career in Albania, successfully leading the Albanian bid for membership in the League of Nations.

A respected figure who remained critical of corruption and injustice in the Albanian government, Fan Noli was asked to lead the 1924 June Revolution. He then served as prime minister until his revolutionary government was overthrown by Ahmet Zogu. He was exiled to Italy and permanently settled in the United States in the 1930s, acquiring U.S. citizenship and agreeing to end his political involvement. He spent the rest of his life as an academician, religious leader and writer.

==Origin

Noli was born in the Albanian community of Ibrik Tepe, Eastern Thrace, as Theofanus Stylianos Mavromatis.[3] As a young man Noli wandered throughout the Mediterranean Basin, living in Athens, Greece; Alexandria, Egypt; and Odessa, Russia, and supported himself as an actor and translator. He knew 13 foreign languages. Through his contacts with the Albanian expatriate movement, he became an ardent supporter of his country's nationalist movement and moved to the USA in 1906. He first worked in Buffalo, New York, in a lumber mill and then moved to Boston and worked as an operator on a machine which stamped labels on cans.[4] At that time, in Boston, some Albanian Christians were part of the Greek Orthodox Church, which was vehemently opposed to the Albanian nationalist cause. When a Greek Orthodox priest refused to perform the burial rites for Kristaq Dishnica, a member of the Albanian community from Hudson, Massachusetts, because of his nationalist activity, Noli and a group of Albanian nationalists in New England created the independent Albanian Orthodox Church. Noli, the new church's first clergyman, was ordained as a priest in 1908 by a Russian Orthodox bishop in the United States under questionable circumstances.[4] In 1923, Noli was consecrated as a bishop for the Church of Albania.

Further information: Hudson Incident

Political activities

Main article: June Revolution

In 1908, Noli began studying at Harvard, completing his degree in 1912. He returned to Europe to promote Albanian independence, setting foot in Albania for the first time in 1913. He returned to the United States during World War I, serving as head of the Vatra organization, which effectively made him leader of the Albanian diaspora. His diplomatic efforts in the United States and Geneva won the support of President Woodrow Wilson for an independent Albania and, in 1920, earned the new nation membership in the fledgling League of Nations. Though Albania had already declared its independence in 1912, membership in the League of Nations provided the country with the international recognition it had failed to obtain until then.

In 1921, Noli entered the Albanian parliament as a representative of the liberal pro-British "People's Party" (Albanian: Partia e Popullit), the chief liberal movement in the country. The other parties were the conservative pro-Italian "Progressive Party" (Albanian: Partia Përparimtare) founded by Mehdi Frashëri and led by Ahmet Zogu, and "Popular Party" (Albanian: Partia Popullore) of Xhafer Ypi. The conservatives of Zogu would odminate the political scene.[5][6] Noli served briefly as foreign minister in the government of Xhafer Ypi. This was a period of intense turmoil in the country between the liberals and the conservatives. After a botched assassination attempt against Zogu, the conservatives revenged themselves by assassinating another popular liberal politician, Avni Rustemi. Noli's speech at Rustemi's funeral was so powerful that liberal supporters rose up against Zogu and forced him to flee to Yugoslavia (March 1924). Zogu was succeeded briefly by his father-in-law, Shefqet Vërlaci, and by the liberal politician Iliaz Vrioni; Noli was named prime minister and regent on July 17, 1924.

Noli was consecrated in 1923 as the senior Orthodox bishop of the newly proclaimed Orthodox Autocephalous Church of Albania out of the Congress of Berat.

Downfall and exile

Despite his efforts to reform the country, Noli's "Twenty Point Program" was unpopular, and his government was overthrown by groups loyal to Zogu on Christmas Eve of that year. Two weeks later, Zogu returned to Albania, and Noli fled to Italy under sentence of death.

File:Fan S. Noli.JPG
Monument of Fan S. Noli in Tirana

Conscious of his fragile position, Zogu took drastic measures to consolidate his reassert in power. By the end of the winter, two of the main leaders of the opposition, Bajram Curri and Luigj Gurakuqi, were assassinated, while others were imprisoned. Noli founded the "National Revolutionary Committee" (Albanian: Komiteti Nacional Revolucionar) known as KONARE in Vienna. The committee published the periodical called "National Freedom" (Albanian: Liria Kombëtare). Some of the early Albanian communists as Halim Xhelo or Riza Cerova would start their publicist activity here. The committee aimed in overthrowing Zogu and his cast and restoring democracy. Despite the efforts, the committee's access and influence in Albania would be limited. With the intervention of Kosta Boshnjaku, an old communist and KONARE member, the organization would receive unconditioned monetary support from the Comintern. Also Noli and Boshnjaku would make possible for exile members of the Committee for the National Defence of Kosovo (outlawed by Zogu) to get the same financial support.[7]
In 1928, KONARE changed its name to "Committee of National Liberation" (Albanian: Komiteti i Çlirimit Kombëtar). Meanwhile in Albania, after three years of republican regime, the "National Council" declared Albania a Constitutional Monarchy, and Ahmet Zogu became king.[8]

Noli moved back to the United States in 1932 and formed a republican opposition to Zogu, who had since proclaimed himself "King Zog I". Over the next years, he continued his education, studying and later teaching Byzantine music, and continued developing and promoting the autocephalous Albanian Orthodox Church he had helped to found. While in exile, he briefly allied with King Zog, who fled Albania before the invading Italians in 1939, but was unable to set a firm anti-Axis, anti-Communist front.

After the war, Noli established some ties with the communist government of Enver Hoxha, which seized power in 1944. He unsuccessfully urged the U.S. government to recognize the regime, but Hoxha's increasing persecution of all religions prevented Noli's church from maintaining ties with the Orthodox hierarchy in Albania. Despite the Hoxha regime's anticlerical bent, Noli's ardent Albanian nationalism brought the bishop to the attention of the U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation. The FBI's Boston office kept the bishop under investigation for more than a decade with no final outcome to the probe.

In 1945, Fan S. Noli received a doctor's degree in history from Boston University, writing a dissertation on Skanderbeg. In the meantime, he also conducted research at Boston University Music Department, publishing a biography on Ludvig van Beethoven. He also composed a one-movement symphony called Scanderbeg in 1947.

Toward the end of his life, Noli retired to Fort Lauderdale, Florida, where he died in 1965. The branch of the Albanian Orthodox Church that he had governed eventually became the Albanian Archdiocese of the Orthodox Church in America.

Writing in his diary two days after Noli's death, Albanian leader Enver Hoxha gave his analysis of Noli's work:

As we are informed, Fan S. Noli died from an operation done last week in which, because of his age, he did not survive. A cerebral hemorrhage caused a quick death.

Noli was one of the prominent political and literary figures of the beginning of this century. The balance sheet of his life was positive. . . .

Fan Noli today enjoys a great popularity in our country, deserved as a literary translator and music critic. He was a prominent promoter of the Albanian language. His original works and translations, especially of Shakespeare, of Omar Khayyám and Blasco Ibáñez, are immortal. But especially his anti-Zogist, anti-feudal elegies and poems are beautiful jewels that have inspired and will inspire our youth, especially in creativity. He was also respected as a realistic politician, as a revolutionary democrat in ideology and politics.

The Party has assessed the figure of Noli. As is deserved, we have had a patriotic duty to point out the really great merits of his in literature, the history of the arts, and his merits and weaknesses in politics.

I think we will do our best in bringing his body to Albania, as this distinguished son of the people, the revolutionary patriot, deserves to bask in his homeland, which he loved and fought for his entire life.

— Enver Hoxha[9]
100 Lekë

Fan S. Noli is depicted on the obverse of the Albanian 100 lekë banknote issued in 1996.[10]

Poems

The following poems were written by Fan Noli:[11]

See also

References

  1. ^ a b Thernstrom, Stephan (1980). Harvard Encyclopedia of American Ethnic Groups. Belknap Press of Harvard University. p. 26. ISBN 978-0674375123.
  2. ^ a b Avni Spahiu, Fan Noli's American Years: Notes on a Great Albanian American (Houston: Jalifat, 2009), tr. Getoar Mjeku.
  3. ^ Ference Gregory Curtis. Chronology of 20th-century eastern European history. Gale Research, Inc., 1994. ISBN 978-0-8103-8879-6, p. 465
  4. ^ a b Robert C Austin (26 September 2012). Founding a Balkan State: Albania's Experiment With Democracy, 1920-1925. University of Toronto Press. p. 3. ISBN 978-1-4426-4435-9. Retrieved 9 May 2013. Cite error: The named reference "Austin2012" was defined multiple times with different content (see the help page).
  5. ^ Adrian Brisku (August 28, 2013), Bittersweet Europe: Albanian and Georgian Discourses on Europe, 1878-2008, Berghahn Books, p. 75, ISBN 978-0857459848, Two political groupings: the proBritish People's Party, headed by the colourful leader, Fan Noli, and the pro—Italian Progressive Party, led by Mehdi Frashéri, came to dominate the political scene.{{citation}}: CS1 maint: date and year (link)
  6. ^ Mirela Bogdani, John Loughlin (May 15, 2007), Albania and the European Union: The Tumultuous Journey Towards Integration and Accession, Library of European Studies, I. B. Tauris, p. 122, ISBN 978-1845113087, The first Albanian political parties, in the western meaning of the word, appeared in the early 1920s, the most prominent being: the Progressive Party led by Ahmet Zogu, the People's Party led by Fan Noli, and the Popular Party led by Xhafer Ypi... {{citation}}: Cite has empty unknown parameter: |1= (help)CS1 maint: date and year (link)
  7. ^ Sejfi Vllamasi (2000), Marenglen Verli (ed.), Ballafaqime politike në Shqipëri (1897-1942): kujtime dhe vlerësime historike, Shtëpia Botuese "Neraida", ISBN 9992771313, Një pjesë me rëndësi e emigrantëve, me inisiativën dhe ndërmjetësinë e Koço Boshnjakut, u muarrën vesh me "Cominternin", si grup, me emër "KONARE" (Komiteti Revolucionar Kombëtar), për t'u ndihmuar pa kusht gjatë aktivitetit të tyre nacional, ashtu siç janë ndihmuar edhe kombet e tjerë të vegjël, që ndodheshin nën zgjedhë të imperialistëve, për liri e për pavarësi. Përveç kësaj pjese, edhe emigrantët kosovarë irredentistë, të grupuar e të organizuar nën emrin "Komiteti i Kosovës", si grup, u ndihmuan edhe ata nga "Cominterni".
  8. ^ Ersoy, Ahmet; Gorny, Maciej; Kechriotis, Vangelis (November 30, 2010). Modernism: Representations of National Culture. Discourses of Collective Identity in Central and Southeast Europe. Vol. 3/2. Central European University Press. p. 155. ISBN 978-9637326646. Retrieved 2013-11-29.
  9. ^ Enver Hoxha. Ditar: 1965. Tirana: 8 Nëntori Publishing House. 1989. pp. 172-174.
  10. ^ Bank of Albania. Currency: Banknotes withdrawn from circulation. – Retrieved on 23 March 2009.
  11. ^ Book:Noli, p.403 (year:1987)

Further reading

Wikimedia Commons has media related to Fan Stilian Noli.
Political offices
Preceded by Prime Minister of Albania
June 16, 1924 – December 26, 1924 		Succeeded by

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