1. First publication of the journal and collaborators
The journal Pontus was first published as a manuscript in 1909 by Orthodox students of the “Anatolia” college in Merzifon. Next year the sports club “Pontus” decided to make the review its official journal and to undertake its printed publication.1 The editing committee comprised Dimitrios Theocharidis, Kallisthenis G. Chourmouziadis and Leonidas M. Kazezoglou. In order to express the intellectual quests of the students and the graduates of the college, but also to challenge them to extend the field of their interests outside their courses and in other fields of social life, the journal invited the students, the graduates of Anatolia college, and also their friends to collaborate. 2. Themes and positions of the journal
Pontus dealt with historical, archaeological, sociological and philosophical issues. It also contained translations of foreign philological works, poems and moral-religious articles, as well as news from the club’s activity and the life of the urban class of the Pontus. In order to inform its readers the review also mentioned the conference of the Orientalists in Athens in 1912. It should be stressed that the review contained articles related to the intellectual avant-garde of the time and touched important issues such as the language problem and the position of women. The opinions of the authors on these issues could be considered characteristic of the ideology of the literate middle strata. The recognition, for example, of the right of women to be considered political beings –with any reservations indirectly expressed by the author of the relative article in the issue of May 1911- is consistent with similar opinions of the middle strata all around Europe, whereas the proposition for a moderate prevalence of the demotic language as the language “of the national soul” echoes views of the lingual problem in Greece (see quotation). |