Isn’t it amazing how chasing your heritage can lead you to unbelievable things and history that will make you feel special?
My great-great-grandfather was a journalist working for a Greek satirical newspaper called “Aristophanes”; at some point he had a clash with the CEO and head of the newspaper so he decided to leave. One might think that he lost his career; on the contrary, he made his own satirical newspaper called the “New Aristophanes.” His newspaper was the first to be printed with color in Greece.
The newspaper was only four pages long and the inside has sketches and captions created by him and turned into color lithography by a printmaker in Bologna, Italy, named Grossi. Since the Italians did not speak Greek, Grossi would spell some words wrong, but instead of firing him my great-great-grandfather made it a trend for the satirical newspapers to have spelling mistakes in their illustrations as a part of their jokes and “‘roasting.”
He would make abrasive comments to the government, and thank God for freedom of press or else he would have probably ended up imprisoned. It is amazing how a lot of the things in the newspaper are similar if not identical to the situation in Greece now! A lot of people referred to the newspaper as a “One Man Show” since he did everything besides the color lithography.
From 1884 to 1887 the newspaper was printed every week, but the most interesting thing is that even though they were printed, they could not always be handed to the people because a lot of the ships containing them sank. People could only get their hands to the newspaper if they were subscribers; he would deliver them to all of Greece and to Alexandria, Egypt, since a lot of people there knew Greek.
We found part of his collection in a collector’s home in the island of Santorini and we then understood and found out more about who he was, his work and how respected he was.