Germanos Karavangelis

Who was Germanos Karavangelis?

Germanos Karavangelis was born in Stipsi, Lesbos.

He was a metropolitan bishop of Kastoria, in communion with the Ecumenical Patriarchate of Constantinople, from 1900 until 1907, appointed in the name of the Greek state by the ambassador of Greece Nikolaos Mavrokordatos and was one of the main coordinators of the Greek Struggle for Macedonia that had an aim to defend the Greek and Greek Orthodox clerical interests against the Turks and the Bulgarians in then Ottoman Turkish-ruled Macedonia.

He organized armed groups composed mainly of Greek army officers, volunteers brought from Crete, Peloponnese and other parts of Greek populated areas, as well as recruited local Macedonian Greeks such as the chieftain Vangelis Strebreniotis from the village of Srebreni, and Konstantinos Kottas, a former member of Internal Macedonian Revolutionary Organization from the village of Rulya.

Karavangelis succeeded to strengthen Greek aspirations in Macedonia and thus helped the later incorporation of the major part of Macedonia by Greece in the Balkan Wars, for which he is praised as a national hero of the Greek Struggle for Macedonia. He is the author of the book of memoirs "The Macedonian Struggle".