For every 'Hellena' (=citizen of Hellas) the place of birth brings out a part of the history of the nation. Konstantinos was born in the region of mount Pangeo, Eastern Macedonia, on 7^th March 1907, and was the eldest son of Georgios and Fotini's family. It is widely known that during the 4^th century the mines of Paggeo provided gold and silver for the financial support of the Macedonian nation, in the days of both Phillipos and his son Alexander the Great. Moving ten miles to the south-west of the village where Karamanlis was born, we find Amphipolis, a place that brought to war the Athenians and the Spartans during the Peloponnesian War. To the east, and at the same distance as Amphipolis we find Phillipus, where Marcus Antonius and the future emperor Augustus, defeated Brutus and Kasio, the murderers of Julius Caesar in 42 BC. Apostle Paulos (Paul) first preached the Gospel in Europe at the same place, a century later. Thirty miles to the north-west, there is Serres, a town where the Ottoman Sultan Vagiazit lived who used to call the Christians of the area "Masters of the Balkans".

The village where Karamanlis was born, was once called "Kiupiui", i.e. the village of urns, that used to be a famous local product. The region was liberated from the Turks during the Balkan Wars in 1912-13, a period young Karamanlis barely recalls. The village was then renamed into "Proti" ("the first in row"); history has it that the name comes from a Byzantine princess that spent her summer there. As we can see, history was quite alive in the birthplace of Karamanlis; what is more, this part of history had to do with Turkish and Bulgarian history as well, apart from its connection to the Hellenic and Roman history. Karamanlis was born while the country was still under the Ottoman Domination, like many of the great men in the history of Hellas, e.g. Venizelos. Karamanlis was six, when he became a free citizen of the Hellenic Kingdom -the treaty of Bucharest ended the Balkan Wars in August 1913. Despite the treaty, Karamanlis' family didn't feel safe: Bulgarians, who had been an ally during the first Balkan War and an enemy during the second, never stopped desiring the region of Eastern Macedonia to come under their own dominion. They even tried to act in realisation of that purpose, during the two World Wars in the years that followed.

Although "Kiupiui" was a Turkish name, the village was entirely Hellenic; a few Turks that lived there were poor, and worked as servants or day-labourers, while the Turkish officials (policemen or soldiers) rarely came to supervise the village. Once in a while they tried to arrest the Nationalists -Karamanlis' father was one of them- but never succeeded, for the wanted men were always escaping through the labyrinth of the narrow village streets. The Bulgarian Nationalists, however, were even a greater danger.

The irregulars "comitatji" (i.e. the men of the "committee"), in charge of whom was Karamanlis' father, caused a nationalistic reaction among the Hellenic people. Georgios Karamanlis (1880 - 1932) was also born in 'Kiupiui'. He started working as a teacher in Kerdylia, in 1903, a small town twenty miles to the south of his village. In the same year, he was enlisted as "First in the row Agent" by the Hellenic Nationalist Organisation; the Turks soon became aware of his actions and dismissed him from his post in 1904. His fellow villagers never stopped calling him "teacher" when he returned to the village, even though he never worked as a teacher again. He began cultivating tobacco fields -the basis of the Macedonian economy at the time- and managed to prosper. In 1905 he decided to get married to Fotini Dologlou, a girl from ‘Kiupiui’ as well, and since her parents didn’t agree to this marriage, they eloped. A year later, Georgios Karamanlis started building a new house, at the building site next to the house he had been born. The old house was used as a storehouse and stable, before it was brought down, while the new house was getting bigger; the eldest son, Konstantinos, could hardly recall that first house of the family. The number of children in the family was eight; Konstantinos, born in 1907-1998, Athena, born in 1909 (who died in 1914), Olga, born in 1911, Alekos, born in 1914-2005, another girl named Athena in 1917, Antigoni, born in 1921, Grammenos, born in 1925-1990, and Achilleas, born in 1929. In the beginning, the children stayed in the same room; later on, there was a separate bedroom for the boys and another one for the girls. Konstantinos enjoyed the rights of the eldest son: his own room and a desk for his books.

In the mean time the father of the family continued his patriotic action. The early remembrance of Konstantinos was closely connected to the turbulent life of the Macedonian land. His father was secretly keeping guns for the guerrillas, in a cellar below the stable. The young boy pretended he would look after their cow in the stable and took close looks at the guns. He could still remember the men that used to get the guns out of the cellar, the slaughter of Turks in 1913, «the glow of fierceness in the eyes of our fellow villagers» and the conversion to Christianity of some Ottoman women. «My heart is still aching when I think of it, even after all those years» Konstantinos told his French biographer. War and violence used to be a way of life for the peoples

of Macedonia, and they all believed that it was the only way to keep the nation alive. The same was true for the children of the village; they organised fake battles against the children of the nearby villages, using stones instead of guns.   The «teacher’s» son soon became a leading figure in these stone-throwing battles; at the same time the young boy realised that the ‘guerrilla-war’ was not at all like their stone-throwing battles. In 1908, his father was assigned the leadership of the "Committee of Freedom" in the region of mount Pangeo by the bishop of Drama (a town 20 miles to the north-east of the village). The man mainly responsible for the organisation of the movement in Eastern Macedonia, known as "Kapetan" (i.e. Captain)Tsaras, came to the village at some point, to see Konstantinos' father. The young boy was presented to the Captain, and when asked, he said that he would like to become a "Kapetanios" himself when he grew older. This ambition was slightly changed, when after the Balkan Wars, the guerrillas became more like normal soldiers and the title of "Kapetanios" slowly vanished: «I am going to become a leader», he used to say. It was truly a dangerous ambition; he himself had witnessed his father's "punishment" for being a leader: Georgios Karamanlis had been twice arrested, imprisoned and abused -once by the Turks in 1908, and another time by the Bulgarians in 1917. The first time that father Karamanlis came in conflict with the Bulgarians was when they occupied the village and he refused to issue orders in their language. During that incident the young boy clung to his father feet and desperately shouted at the Bulgarian officer to let his father go. The second time was when the First World War reached the region of Macedonia, and the Bulgarians arrested Georgios Karamanlis and kept him hostage for eighteen months, in the years 1917-18. His wife refused to get any financial support, strongly believing that her husband would manage to survive. Georgios Karamanlis was awarded a metal for his action during the Macedonian War in 1936, after his death.

Nevertheless, happier memories in the life of young Konstantinos existed, especially after the end of the war, when his father returned to the village, which was then renamed into "Proti". Life for a young child ,however, was not at all easy at that time; at the age of ten, when his father was still a prisoner, he was climbing up the mountain in order to gather tea, and as he grew older, to kill hares or quail for their meals. He learned how to ride a horse, and how to swim during his excursions to the sea.

He also had to help the family with the tobacco crops, along with the rest of the children, when he didn’t go to school in the summer. The planting of tobacco needed three workmen in every row; the first one opened a hole in the ground, the next one planted the sapling, and the third one covered the hole and watered the plant. The same, old and hard procedure is now done by a single machine. Georgios Karamanlis' business grew bigger after the war; his land reached 40000 m2, thus creating the need of a truck to help in the transportation of goods to the nearest rail station. He also provided "generous" loans to friends, to help them in their business. He was, in a way, the master of the village, who owned one of the biggest houses. Since he was formerly a teacher, he wished to educate his elder son in the best possible way (the daughters of a family were not entitled to hardly any education, according to the beliefs of the time). There was only a small primary school in Proti; so, in 1919 Georgios Karamanlis sent his eldest son, aged 12 at the time, to live with friends in N. Zichni (15 miles from the village), where a high school for children up to the age of 13 existed.

The young boy was desperate at the beginning; he even tried to run away and get back home; he finally compromised with his fate. He stayed in N. Zichni for a year, before he moved to Serres, where he stayed for three years studying at one of the largest schools of the town. At that time he started enjoying his studies; his father, though, had some reservations concerning the quality of local education, and having in mind a higher form of education for his son, he decided to sent him to Athens; Konstantinos was 16 when he was sent to the capital to end his studies, in 1923. His father and his brother Alekos accompanied him to this journey and since the family had no relatives there, the two boys enrolled at a boarding school -known by the name of its headmaster: ‘Megareos Lyceum’. In September 1924, Konstantinos went to another school (8^th High School of Kypseli) and soon his brother followed, but they remained boarders at their former school. The daughter of the famous headmaster, could recall Konstantinos as always being a model for the other students. The same picture was in the mind of other people as well: a handsome, and stubborn young man, who was always dressed well.

The young man himself enjoyed his life in Athens, and made friends that would stay with him for a long time; the Prime Minister himself was sometimes present at the meals the schoolmates organised. Two classmates though, were Konstantinos' best friends for more than fifty years; all three came from parts of the country where people still had to fight in order to keep their national identity. The first one was Iordanis Propatoridis; he escaped from Smyrni in 1922, when the Turks took over the town.

The other was T. Theodoridis; he had raised the Hellenic flag in Rhodes, and the Italians who still controlled the island, sent him away in 1924. Konstantinos was moved by the lives of these two persons, whom he always called "palaioprosfiges" ("old refugees"). Propatoridis became an excellent sergeant, while Theodoridis had his own chemist’s in the centre of Athens; it was a place that even when he became a minister, Konstantinos used to go, and sometimes talk about politics with the other customers. A fourth member of this company of young men, N. Giannopoulos, was also a sergeant, but died tragically; he was shot in the street by the husband of one of his patients, who never recovered after an operation he had attempted on her. Close friends of the four young men said at the time that Giannopoulos was Konstantinos' closest friend during their younger years.

A saying of the people has it that ‘if you tell me who your friend is , I'll tell you who you are' -but sometimes this is not true. The case of Konstantinos for example: he was quick tempered and aggressive, in contrast to his close friends. He once admitted that he «had become the terror of the region»; and he was not a model student, as the headmaster’s daughter believed. During their University years he rarely attended the lectures, and his friends could not understand how he always managed to get the best grades. His secret method had to do with «reading too much» when he was on vacation; when the time of the final exams came, he withdrew to a quiet monastery on mount Paggeo and «studied in four months time, every thing I had not studied in the previous four years». The four friends had entered the University in 1925; while Theodoridis enrolled in the Pharmacy department (requiring four years of attendance) and the other two in the Medical department (requiring five years), Konstantinos enrolled in the Law department (requiring four years); despite their different interests, they still remained inseparable.

Karamanlis had already shown his interest in politics, and quite often attended the discussions held in the House of Parliament. It was then that his friendship with A. Argyro started; the latter came from Serres and was a member of the Parliament with great influence, supporting the Popular Party. Karamanlis shared a common background, since his father supported the Popular Party as well. His refugee friends, though, having come from regions outside the borders of the country,

supported the Liberal Party. The conflict of Political Parties concerning the system of government, was in the front line of publicity: King George II, was exiled and monarchy was banned, the year that Karamanlis got to Athens to study. Numerous military coups occurred during the following years of Republic. In addition, Hellas had to deal with problems concerning its national relationship with neighbour countries: a war with Turkey in 1921-22, the occupation of Kerkyra (Corfu) by the Italians in 1923, and an attack against Bulgaria that ended in disaster. The conflict between those who were favourably disposed towards the return of the King and those who preferred the Republic began in 1915, when Karamanlis was eight, and lasted until 1935.The argument still existed even after the return of the King. All the above made Karamanlis form a pessimistic way of political thinking for himself. His friend Propatoridis, however, said that at that time Karamanlis was considered by his fellow students a successful politician of the near future.

Taking into consideration the political status of his time, Karamanlis reached the conclusion that the State, which he would like to be in charge of, had to be based on stability, continuity, patience and sensibility. He believed that rebellion and change that occurs for the sake of rebellion or change, were the usual enemies of constitutional governing. He dreamed of restructuring Hellas as a country,but not the same-old-country of his University years

. So, although he used to call his friends "refugees" because they were in favour of Venizelos, he never argued with them, since he was in favour of Venizelos, too. Karamanlis used to have no trouble in establishing friendship with political "enemies". He tried hard, though, to do so because he was serious in his consideration of politics, in contrast to his friend Propatoridis, who thought of it less seriously.

The two friends had even more differences; Propatoridis believed that Karamanlis’ tastes were quite primitive: he preferred listening to opera, while Karamanlis was fond of detective stories, and night life. Concerning opera Karamanlis used to wonder «how can somebody sing and at the same time kill somebody else». Propatoridis once persuaded him to go to the performance of "Toska". During the first act, he closely observed Karamanlis to see whether he liked it or not. At the first intermission, Karamanlis admitted that it «it wasn’t that bad»; this time he stayed until the end, but he never came back to listen to opera. He still enjoyed going to the cinema, and more often than not he politically examined the plot of the films he attended.

Despite his close friendship with some people, the fame of the "lonely wolf" followed him everywhere. He never compromised with the conventions of life, not even with his friends; he once admitted that saying "thank you" was too typical for him to tell in each and every occasion. So, he made a decision not to be obliged to anyone in his life. Due to a disease that first appeared in 1935 he became even more secluded: he suffered from an -incurable at the time- ear disease. Moreover, more problems arose when the family business faced difficulties: in 1925, the production of tobacco in Macedonia decreased; the competition was great since American tobacco had appeared in the European market. Georgios Karamanlis had taken major risks during the more prosperous years; he had borrowed money at high interest and had enlarged his land from 40000 m2 to 160000 m2. His antagonists in the village were very envious of him and his well educated children. The financial state of the family was at a turning point in 1927.

Under normal circumstances Karamanlis would have to join the army in 1927, but since he was still in University he could delay that obligation. Before the end of his studies he started working for an Italian insurance company; he worked there during 1928-29 and took advantage of the experience in many different ways. Apart from the fact that he was well-paid and managed to help his father repay some debts, he made contact with the real world and kept the knowledge for his later years of political life.When he graduated on December 13th 1929, his qualifications were far more than University studies could offer. Three months later, on March 8th 1930, he joined the 19th Regiment of Foot in Serres.

  His being the eldest son of a family with many children, allowed him to serve fewer months: 4 instead of 18, taking with him the degree of corporal, and a "quality paper" that ended in the phrase «Excellent Behaviour». During his military service he also practised his profession; so when he left the army he was ready to start working as a lawyer.

His first customer was a shepherd accused of murder; the case never reached the court house, because the defendant escaped to Romany. It was quite normal for a lawyer to encounter such disappointing cases in the beginning of his career. Karamanlis, however, soon became widely known, and within the next three years he could financially support himself. He then moved to a new office and managed to gather for his own library major law books, as well as books of great writers of the time. His house was taken care by Olga, the eldest from the family"s daughters, who had moved to Serres to help him. Her task was rather easy since her brother ate a little; his meals usually lasted a few minutes, thus allowing enough time for meditation and political discussion. His favourite dish was spinach-pie, that Olga used to cook in the traditional way her mother had taught her.

His success as a local lawyer could not please the restless mind of Karamanlis; he knew he had an inclination to politics. So, as soon as he became 25, in 1932, he offered himself as a candidate for the Popular Party in Serres. His father, though, strongly objected to his actions and declared that «If you became a politician, even I, won’t give you my vote». He also emphasised the fact that his son had to continue working as a lawyer, making clear to him that politics involved numerous traps: «You'll either betray some people or remain an honest man and consequently fail; in both cases, you will suffer a lot».The young man must have been very brave to reject his father’s advice;

he was totally convinced about his inclination, though, and that fact only gave him the courage to react in that manner. Much later, he could still remember the meaning of his actual words to his father: «If you expect me to settle down and live a normal life, I must tell you that I will not be reasoned with by your advice; I have great ambitions for things much more important than myself; I might be naive, but I believe that our presence on earth is not justified when we seek our own happiness; every man should offer himself in his own way, depending on chance and the circumstances; I would like to devote myself to my people, and justify my existence in this world by serving those people and through them». Despite all that, his father’s objections were too strong: «It’s different to say something from actually realising it into actions», he once said, believing he could change his son's mind. His last words on the subject were quite bitter: «I won't have this "disease" contaminate our home». Alekos was the only child old enough to understand what was going on, and could recall the scene even after 50 years. Georgios Karamanlis' resentment towards politics was based on the political misfortune of the 1920s. The only time when the political stability was obvious, was in the years that Venizelos was in charge, i.e. 1928-1932. The decisive discussion between the father and the son occurred in 1932, and for a while it changed Karamanlis' mind: he withdrew from the general elections of September and returned to Serres to work. He met his father two months later when he visited his village. That was their last meeting, because his father died few weeks later, on November 21^st . The son then said: «I have the impression that my father died in bitterness; he was sure that some day I would ignore his advice». And so was done. In 1974, a group of admirers, added to his father’s grave inscription that his son had made a great decision to disobey the advice and get involved with politics.

Karamanlis didn't take part in the elections in 1933, though; after his father death he became in charge of the family. He had to take care of three sisters, who were at an age ready to get married, and three brothers, who had to be educated. Two years later, thanks to his success as a lawyer, the financial state of the family changed to the better. It was rather impossible for a candidate of the Popular Party to be defeated in the elections of June 9th 1935: three months before, a group of officers that supported Venizelos, fearing that the state of Republic would be overthrown, had attempted a military movement; they temporarily succeeded in some north-eastern regions, and Karamanlis was among the "Populars" that were arrested and held in Serres.

His brother Alekos brought him blankets and some food in prison; the officers of the movement were soon defeated by the government and Karamanlis was released after two weeks of imprisonment. So, the outcome of the elections was pretty much predetermined: the supporters of Venizelos and the Republic didn’t even have any candidates. Even though there was some disagreement between the candidates of the Popular Party in Serres, they easily won the 8 seats in the area, having A. Argyro as their leader. In the whole country, the Popular Party and their allies won 287 out of 300 seats. The remaining seats were taken by two smaller right wing Parties; one of them was the "Union in favour of the King", in which I. Metaxas was in charge -former chief of the General Staff- whose name was destined to be widely known some years later.

Karamanlis, though, was not at all satisfied by this success; his first political steps were not as he imagined them to be. His return to Athens, not as a student any more but as a member of the Parliament, was accompanied by new types of relations. Argyros was his political mentor, but Karamanlis soon gathered two or three young members of the Parliament around him, creating his own "political cycle". L. Eutaxias was one of them; he was a rich, single man, owner of one of the few remaining 19th century mansions, situated in Klafthmonos Square.

Opposite this mansion, Karamanlis used to rent a more humble room in the "Athens Hotel". It was from this hotel that he delivered his last pre-election speech in1963, as a leader of his Party. It was not long before other politicians paid attention to him, including P. Tsaldaris -the Prime Minister. Georgios Oikonomopoulos, a young lawyer who would later become his close friend, first met Karamanlis at Tsaldaris' office, and heard the Prime Minister describing him as a man with great future. Even though Karamanlis still looked like a peasant man, he could made himself be noticed by everyone with his natural dignity and the direct way of expressing himself. One of his ministers once called him a "nobleman", himself being an aristocrat by birth. Nevertheless, Karamanlis would never forget his Macedonian origins, and would never abandon his Macedonian accent.