Griechenland als „Orient im Okzident“
Greece as “Orient in the Occident”

On the Historical Background of a Stereotype

Summary/Abstract: The completion of the third financial assistance program in the summer of 2018 doesn’t yet mark the end of the Greek debt crisis. But it may provide the beginning of a new phase that can turn out less dramatic than the previous ones. Thus an opportunity for a retrospective is available: How has the European and especially the German public perceived the crisis in the past years? A phase that was dominated, more than in any other former program country of the Eurozone, by culturalist interpretations. References to factors such as the “Greek mentality” and “political culture”, though plausible in principle, often relied on biased and even stereotypical historical images. The paper undertakes a critical discussion of culturalist stereotypes about Greece by exploring their ideological roots and confronting them with historical information which, despite being well-known in specialized scholarship, remained largely neglected in the broader public discourse. The critical discussion of stereotypes doesn’t aim at downplaying the peculiarities of modern Greek history and culture. On the contrary it pleads for a more substantial examination in order to get a better understanding of a crisis that continues to concern Greece as well as the EU.

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