Who hasn't thought growing up, "Who am I" or "Where am I from"?
I am the third child of our parents. My older brother and sister are both rosy cheeked, blue eyed Aryan children. My father liked to say "You are German, 100% German". However, I was olive skinned and dark eyed so our parents joked that they found me in a garbage can left by the gypsies. I've always had a pretty secure personality and was not particularly bothered by this information. In the 1950s, when I began elementary school, our teacher engaged the students asking "Where are you from?". There were all sorts of answers about neighborhoods, cities, or immigration history. One smart aleck kid said "a hospital". When they got to me I confidently told her what my parents always said, "I was found in a garbage can left by the gypsies". When I didn't change my answer after being admonished for making fun of the process, they were convinced I believed it. They called my parents in for a conference.
Afterward, my parents clarified that I was their child and my grandparents immigrated to the US in the early twentieth century. They were German on my dad's side and Bohemian (Czech) and Austrian on my mother's. In the 50s beatnik era there was much disparagement of their Bohemian lifestyle in Chicago and Greenwich, NY. When I heard this as a five year old I took a butter knife and said "What part is Bohemian, I'll cut it out". It got the laugh I intended.
Only photo of multi-generational family in America circa 1963 in Chicago.
L - R: Sister Linda, mom, Uncle Bill (dad's brother), Grand Uncle John (mom's uncle),
brother Paul with me in front, Grandpa and Grandma (dad's parents) and dad.
Influenced by the 60s aftermath of WWII and media representation, I had a great distain for the German culture and people. I did not want to be German. When I learned that my paternal grandparents actually came from Transylvania, not Germany, I decided the reason I looked different than my siblings was that I was Romanian. Plus, I thought Dracula (Vlad the impaler) was a very romantic association (I vant to kiss your neck). My father protested saying that there was a German enclave in Transylvania where his parents came from. He admonished, "If a cat has kittens in the oven do you call them cookies".
Later in the 70s, as I learned more history and biology, I was convinced that, even though Germans lived in Transylvania, and were part of Austria/Hungary before it became Romania, Genghis Khan raped and pillaged his way through the region up to Vienna in the 1200s. Therefore, he must have left some genetic history, and I was a throw-back to that, not German. I was desperate for an acceptable self-identity.
Finally, in the 2000s when genetic testing became affordable, I decided to find out where I really came from as family genealogy stopped at the water's edge in 1911. I sent a salvia sample to 23 and Me.
As previously noted, I traveled to Romania solo in 1980 and with my siblings, Robin, and my distant german cousin, Maria in 2007. Maria provided a detailed family tree on my father's side going back to the 1700s. 23 and Me's analysis correlates with the data she gave me where my great-great-great-grandfather emigrated from Alsace Loraine on the French and German border to Transylvania in the late 1700s. I am 42% French/German. From my father's perspective, he was right for his half of my ancestors.
However, according to the genetic test I am predominantly, more than half, Southern European (including both Italian and Slovenian). I don't have information of my mother's ancestors before the late nineteenth century so can't validate it with a relative. In addition to those two major categories, I am also 4% Neanderthal, as are virtually all Europeans, from assimilation and breeding with our proto homo-sapiens that initially settled Europe. Going further back, 23 and Me genetics can trace humanity's female line to one African woman through what is called the maternal Haplogroup (homo-sapiens migration out-of-Africa). My mother's line came from Ethiopia 65,000 years ago and migrated through Slovenia region about 15,000 years ago. Since I know of no relatives from the area, I assume I have to go back that far for the genetic material to now pop up in me.
While my dad was pro German, he also had a scientific mind, and would probably appreciate all this insight. After all, he did acknowledge I wasn't found in a garbage can left by the gypsies.
Stages of human identity (Who am I?) has evolved from Tribal/Kinship (pre-modern) to Imperial Hierarchical (Kingships and Empires), through Religious Supranational, to Nationalism and Nation State (modern since the mid 1800s), and still in process toward Globalism. This does not occur to all peoples at the same time or with clean transitions. And, as we are currently witnessing, can backtrack. But the Arc of the Universe bends in this direction.
I was inspired to go down the rabbit hole in this blog because on our last trip to the Balkan countries of North Macedonia, Kosovo, Bulgaria, and Northern Greece, these peoples still cling to their identity from 2500 years ago.
In classical times there was no nation of the southern Balkans. There were families, tribes and political city states. The major tribes were Thrace, occupying today's western Turkey, Bulgaria, and parts of North Macedonia; Macedon occupying North Macedonia, and northern Greece; Thessaly middle Greece, and Attica around Athens. There were also many city states, the most famous being Athens and Sparta.
Tribes of Hellas after unification
Today, what we call Greece, they refer to as Hellas and the people Hellenes. This goes back to 338 BCE when King Philip II of Macedon united the southern Balkans into The League of Corinth, by diplomacy and force, to fight off the invading Persians. His son inherited the lands and, after conquering tribes and kingdoms as far east as India, and south into Egypt, became known as Alexander the Great. His legacy lives on in cities named Alexandria or Alexandroupolis throughout the Levant and Middle East, and their cultural development until Islam took over.
When we left Teigan and Jimmy in London we flew to Skopje, the capital of North Macedonia (pronounced and spelled by the locals Makedonia, with a hard K).
Country map of Macedonia
Macedonia is a relatively new nation on the global map becoming independent in 1991 after the fall of Yugoslavia. BCE they were a satrapy of the Persia Empire. After several conquests, including by Bulgarians, they became part of the Ottoman empire in the middle ages, and eventually part of the Kingdom of Serbia. After the fall of Yugoslavia they were named Former Yugoslavia Republic of Macedonia, like the Artist Formerly Known as Prince. It took almost thirty years to resolve their name because Greece, a NATO and UN member, objected to them calling their country Macedonia, the same as the bordering Greek province. The former classical Hellas territory called Macedon now straddles the border between the two countries and each claim Philip II and his son Alexander the Great as theirs. Only in 2018 did the two agree that the country be called North Macedonia.
In Skopje our walking tour guide proudly claimed that Macedonians are a separate people from their neighbors. She predicted that when we go to Bulgaria they will claim Macedonia as part of their culture. But, she went on, Bulgarians are originally Thracians, while they are historic Macedons. True enough, when we went to Bulgaria they acknowledged that 2500 years ago Thrace and Macedon were separate tribes, however, after Slavic invasions they assimilated the previous tribes. In addition, more recent history the region was part of a Bulgarian state.
After visiting Bulgaria we drove south into Northern Greece where they claim that Macedonians are part of historic Hellas, ignoring that they were assimilated by the Slavs, as the Greeks were not.
The Balkans are still struggling to identify Who am I? and Where am I from? Are Slovenes Slavic or Italian or Austrian; is Kosovo part of Serbia or separate identity; are Albanians Christian or Muslim; is Serbia an outcast leader of former Yugoslavia or part of a family of sovereign nations; and are Macedonia, Bulgaria and Greek still tribes from 2500 years ago or separate nation states. Time will tell how they continue with their self-identity.
Next Post: The Balkans, Part Five - Macedonia and Kosovo
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