Erifyli KONTOPOULOU has made a donation to the University of Vienna in memory of her uncle, Dr Chrysostomos TSITER, the first Greek Orthodox Metropolitan of Austria (1963-1991), for the benefit of the Department of Byzantine and Modern Greek Studies, which is intended to promote outstanding research in the field of Byzantine and early modern Greek culture.
The Department of Byzantine and Modern Greek Studies at the University of Vienna has decided to use the funds from the donation to award the Tsiter-Kontopoulou Prize every two years, as well as to provide project-related support for young academics at the department through regular annual calls for proposals.
Biography of Chrysostomos TSITER
Chrysostomos Tsiter was born on 11 November 1903 in Triglia (now Tirilye) on the southern coast of the Sea of Marmara. He received his theological training at the theological college on the island of Chalki and later at the University of Athens. He was awarded his doctorate there in 1924. After working as a teacher in Athens for a good ten years, he was ordained a priest in 1936 and then appointed pastor of the Greek Orthodox parish of the Holy Trinity in Vienna. Parallel to this activity, he studied philosophy at the University of Vienna, which he completed in 1939 with a further doctorate. He also taught Modern Greek at the University of Vienna. In 1955, he was appointed titular bishop of Thermae by the Ecumenical Patriarch Athenagoras I. In 1963, he was installed as the first metropolitan of the newly established Greek-Oriental Metropolis of Austria (Austria, Italy, Switzerland and Hungary). In addition to building up the metropolis (including through state recognition by means of the so-called Orthodox Law of 1976), Metropolitan Chrysostomos rendered outstanding services to ecumenism with the Christian churches. After 28 intensive years of service, he resigned from his office in 1991 at the age of 88. He died in Vienna on 2 April 1995 and was buried at Marousi Cemetery.
Biography Erifyli KONTOPOULOU
Erifyli Kontopoulou was born on 28 April 1939 in Serres into a learned middle-class family from Triglia near Bursa and grew up in Thessaloniki. At the end of the 1950s, she came to Vienna, where her uncle, Dr Chrysostomos Tsiter, had been in charge of the Greek Orthodox parish of the Holy Trinity since the interwar period. She studied at the University of World Trade in Vienna and graduated with a degree in business administration. Erifyli Kontopoulou initially worked in the private sector in Switzerland and Vienna and later joined the section of administrative officials of the Greek Ministry of Foreign Affairs, where she remained until her retirement. During her time as an active member of the Ministry, she was also temporarily transferred to Vienna, where in the 1970s and 1980s she took a great interest in the courses organised by the Department of Byzantine and Modern Greek Studies and the lectures of the Austrian Byzantine Society and the Austrian Society for Modern Greek Studies.
After retiring, she devoted herself to book and edition projects: in particular, she supervised the three-volume edition of the archives of the last Metropolitan of Smyrna, her great-uncle Chrysostomos Kalafatis (1867-1922), which the Metropolitan of Austria, his nephew and her uncle Dr Chrysostomos Tsiter (1903-1995), had commissioned the archives and publishing house of the National Bank Foundation (MIET) to edit. She also wrote a volume of texts and photographs on the history of the Tsiter family, which was published in Xanthi in 2006. In the last years of her life, she lived in Marousi (Athens) and devoted herself to artistic activities. She died on 22 September 2017 and was buried at Marousi Cemetery.