Celebrating a historic educational institution
Thessaloniki’s Museum of Byzantine Culture is hosting an exhibition on Anatolia College’s centenary
It was just after World War II and young Antonis Papadopoulos was graduating from elementary school. The son of refugees from Asia Minor, he lived alone with his mother, following his father’s death, in Toumba, one of Thessaloniki’s poorest districts. Knowing of his love for letters, the family’s friends and acquaintances encouraged him to apply to Anatolia College. He was accepted and given a scholarship that opened up an entirely different world to him. He dove into the amply stocked library, devoured literature, he joined clubs, which, he says, “taught him about democratic procedures and work ethics,” and he stayed after class to participate in extracurricular activities before making the 5-kilometer walk back home.
Papadopoulos is not the only Anatolia alumnus who believes the college changed his life. Many youngsters from rural parts of Greece who earned scholarships to Anatolia, found themselves in a hospitable educational environment and socialized with other youngsters from different backgrounds who grabbed the opportunity to discover and develop their skills and talents, going on to successful careers in Greece and abroad.
All of their stories are interesting, but at the end of the day, they are pieces in the lengthy history of a nonprofit educational organization, which its president, Dr Panos Vlachos, notes, has foundations set down in three continents (North America, Asia and Europe), over three centuries (from the 19th to the 21st), and on four principles: innovation, excellence, social responsibility, and inclusiveness.
These founding principles drove Anatolia’s establishment in Merzifon, in the Black Sea region known in Greek as Pontus, in 1886, and these helped it re-establish itself in Thessaloniki in 1924, following the population exchange between Greece and Turkey. These four principles also form the main themes of an anniversary exhibition being hosted at the Museum of Byzantine Culture in the northern port city on the occasion of the college’s centennial.
For Alkmini Paka, a graduate of Anatolia who curated the exhibition along with architect Stergios Galikas, the college “offers a structured outward-looking approach throughout every stage of education. The consistent philosophy of the curriculum, along with the libraries, clubs and workshops, the way it propagates a love for the arts and the humanitarian and natural sciences in an experiential way that seeks to foster critical thinking and an understanding of the natural world, provides students with tools that go beyond a standard education, preparing them to become global citizens,” says Paka, who is now a professor of architecture at Thessaloniki’s Aristotle University.
Photographs, archival material, documents, correspondence pertaining to scholarships, memorabilia, special publications, literary magazines, posters from student plays, audiovisual material and much more mark the milestones on Anatolia’s journey and give the audience an intimate glimpse into one of the city’s oldest educational organizations.
“The college has had to deal with two stereotypes: the prevalent anti-Americanism of the previous century and the belief that it is elitist. These stereotypes are quickly dispelled by the exhibition,” notes Paka.
Anatolia College was an initiative that stemmed from the American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions and its first students were mainly Greek and Armenian refugees. In Greece, the college again became a haven for refugees and later, in the 1950s, for teachers who were being persecuted for their political beliefs during the Civil War. Its faculty also boasted celebrated teachers like Yiannis Paparallis, Nikos Papachatzis, Anastasios Georgopapadakos and others who were banned from teaching at public schools by the regime during the 1967-1974 military dictatorship.
Its emblematic president Carl Compton, who took over in the turbulent early 50s, made sure that students like Antonis Papadopoulos got the scholarships they needed and other support such as transportation to and from school and meals.
Anatolia’s students flew the school flag in a protest march in downtown Thessaloniki in the mid-1950s for Cyprus, and after the Turkish invasion in 1974, another president, William McGrew, organized the safe transport, scholarships and campus boarding for 26 Cypriot boys and girls.
These and other moments in Anatolia College’s 100-year history are described in the exhibition, titled “Future Cometh” after the school’s anthem, “Morning Cometh,” which was written in 1916 to mark 30 years of operation in Merzifon, where it had been established by progressive missionaries forwarding the merits of a universal education.
It was transplanted to Thessaloniki seven years later, to a building in a converted World War I military encampment in the area of Harilaou. “We had brought the spirit of the old college 800 miles to a new city, a new country, and a new continent; but the body, the material plant remained behind. Not only were we without any buildings, but we had neither bench, nor bed, nor book, nor bell,” another president, Dr George White, wrote of its reopening on January 23, 1924.
Nevertheless, the staff continued its work in these rudimentary surroundings for a full decade until it relocated again to a modern, purpose-built campus on the hill of Kara Tepe in Pylaia in 1934. Its student population also grew from 13 on day one to 157 by the end of 1924, and as the new campus grew, so did its faculty and student body.
Facts & figures
The Anatolia College campus now covers 22 hectares, with 33 buildings and facilities, 112 extracurricular clubs, 23 science workshops, 15 art spaces and three libraries. The school consists of the Anatolia elementary and high schools and the American College of Thessaloniki, its tertiary division. By the end of the 2023-2024 academic year, it boasted a total of 18,769 graduates from all the different levels.
Today, 27% of its students receive financial support and scholarships, which benefited more than 2,250 students in the 2019-2024 period.
“Future Cometh” runs through December 1 at the Museum of Byzantine Culture, 2 Stratou, tel 231.330.6400, mbp.gr.
