Alexandros Schinas

Athens

Thessaloniki

Serres

Volos

Kanalia

Kalavryta

Greece (present day)

Very little is confirmed about Schinas's life before he assassinated King George I.[1] He was born in the 1870s, possibly in Volos,[2] Serres,[3] or Kanalia.[4] He had two sisters, one older and one younger, and may have had a brother named Hercules who ran a chemist shop in Volos, where Schinas may have worked as an assistant. Schinas told an interviewer that he suffered from an unspecified "neurological condition" beginning at age 14.[5] Schinas may have studied or taught medicine in Athens, possibly at the National and Kapodistrian University of Athens. After leaving Athens, Schinas and his sisters taught in the Greek village Kleisoura before a dispute with his older sister forced him to resign. Schinas then moved to Xanthi and practiced medicine without authorization until stopped by authorities.[6]

The Orta Çarşı (Central Market) in Serres, then an Ottoman town known as Serez, c.1915. The domed-roof building seen in the background now houses the Archaeological Museum of Serres.

Schinas's life after Xanthi is the subject of some dispute. Demetrios Botassi, the Greek consul general for New York in 1913, and other New York Greeks, told The New York Times that Schinas moved to Volos to open a school called the Centre for Workingmen with a doctor and a lawyer. The school was closed down by the government within months for "teaching anti-government ideas", and the doctor and lawyer were sentenced to three months in prison. For reasons unknown, Schinas was not punished. According to Botassi, during this period, Schinas also stood unsuccessfully as a candidate for the office of deputy from Volos in the Greek legislative body.[7]

Botassi's account was disputed by Bazil Batznoulis in a letter to Atlantis, a Greek paper in New York, which was republished by The New York Times shortly after the assassination. Batznoulis claimed that Schinas was born in Kanalia, not Volos. According to Batznoulis's letter, it was not Alexandros Schinas who ran for office in Volos, but another person named George Schinas. Batznoulis disputed that Alexandros Schinas was involved in the Centre for Workingmen school in Volos, writing: "Schinas had nothing to do with any school and had no idea of entering politics. He was known as a man who loved isolation and his backgammon. He wore a beard and was an anarchist."[8]

Dimitriados Street, Volos, Greece, c.1907

In the years prior to the assassination, Schinas reportedly lived in New York City and worked at the Fifth Avenue Hotel and Plaza Hotel. Schinas stated in a 1913 interview that in 1910, he was deported from Thessaloniki (then under Ottoman rule) by the Young Turks "because I was a good Greek patriot".[9] Botassi suggested another explanation for Schinas's departure to the US: that he was evading the police following the closure of the Centre for Workingmen school in Volos. Batznoulis, on the other hand, wrote that Schinas left because of a family quarrel with his brother Hercules.[10]

No known immigration or other records document Schinas's deportation from Thessaloniki or arrival in New York in 1910. However, immigration records document the arrival of a 36-year-old man named Athanasios Schinas (approximately the same age as Alexandros Schinas would have been at the time), a former resident of Kalavryta, Greece, arriving at Ellis Island aboard the ship La Gascogne from Le Havre, France on October 30, 1905. It is unclear whether Athanasios Schinas was the same person as Alexandros, or whether Alexandros travelled under an assumed name to avoid detection by Greek authorities.[10] In apparent contrast to reports of his emigration in 1910, a 1913 article in The New York Times reported that Schinas was still in Greece in 1911, stating that he applied that year for assistance at the king's palace but was refused and driven off by palace guards.[11]

Although it is uncertain when, why, or even whether he moved to New York City, Schinas was back in Greece by February 1913. According to post-assassination newspaper articles, about three weeks before the assassination, he traveled from Athens to Volos, then to Thessaloniki, possibly subsisting by begging. In an interview while in custody, Schinas stated that some weeks prior the assassination, he had contracted tuberculosis, and a few days before the assassination, he was suffering from "severe high fevers" and "deliriums", and "was being taken over by madness".[12]

A contemporary lithograph of the assassination with the White Tower of Thessaloniki in the background

George I was elected King of Greece at age 17 and ruled for nearly 50 years. By the time Schinas arrived in Thessaloniki, George had been staying there for several months, planning a celebration following the city's liberation from the Ottomans during the First Balkan War.[13] On March 18, 1913, George took his usual afternoon walk, accompanied by Greek Army officer Ioannis Frangoudis. Against the urging of his advisers, the king refused to travel the city with a large number of guards; only two gendarmerie police officers were permitted to follow at a distance.[14] George and Frangoudis walked by the harbor near the White Tower of Thessaloniki, discussing the king's upcoming visit to the German battleship SMS Goeben. At approximately 5:15 p.m., on the corner of Vassilissis Olgas and Aghias Triadas streets,[15] Schinas shot George once in the back at point-blank range with a seven-cylinder revolver.[16] The bullet entered below the shoulder blade, pierced the heart and lungs, and exited the abdomen.[17] George collapsed and was taken by carriage to a nearby hospital. He died before arriving.[18][19]

Assassination

White Tower

Central Thessaloniki

According to The New York Times, Schinas had "lurked in hiding" and "rushed out" to shoot George.[2] Another version described Schinas emerging from a Turkish cafe called the "Pasha Liman", drunk and "ragged", and shooting the king when he walked by.[20] Schinas did not attempt to escape afterwards and Frangoudis immediately apprehended him. Additional gendarmerie arrived quickly from a nearby police station. Schinas reportedly asked the police to protect him from the surrounding crowd.[21] At the hospital, George's third son Prince Nicholas announced that George's eldest son Constantine I was now king.[22] Newspapers reported "sorrow" in Thessaloniki following the assassination[23] and "spectators burst[ing] into tears" at the king's funeral procession the following day.[2]

Schinas in custody

Schinas was tortured or "forced to undergo examinations" while in gendarmerie custody.[24] He did not name any accomplices. In a 1913 interview, Schinas was asked if his assassination of the king was premeditated, to which he replied:[9]

No! I assassinated the King by chance (it just happened). I was walking as a dead man (as a zombie) without knowing where I was going. Suddenly by turning my head I saw behind me the King with his adjutant. I slowed my pace. The King walked by me, very close to me. I let him walk by me and immediately, I fired.

On May 6, 1913, six weeks after being arrested, Schinas died by falling thirty feet (nine metres) out of a window from the office of the Examining Magistrate of the gendarmerie in Thessaloniki. He was approximately 43 years old.[25] The gendarmerie reported that Schinas, who was not handcuffed at the time, ran and jumped out of the window when the guards were distracted.[26] Some suggest Schinas may have committed suicide to avoid further gendarmerie "examinations" or a slow death from tuberculosis; others speculate that he was thrown from the window by the gendarmerie.[27] Greek newspaper Kathimerini has reported that Schinas gave depositions before his death, but they were lost in a fire aboard a ship while being transported.[28] After his death, his ear and hand were amputated and used for identification, then stored and exhibited at the Criminology Museum of Athens.[29]

A 1920 postcard depicting the assassination

Schinas is understood to have been, in his later life, a homeless alcoholic with anarchist beliefs.[30] Accordingly, his motivation for the assassination is commonly ascribed to his anarchist politics (as propaganda of the deed)[31] or to mental illness (without political motivation).[32][33] Ultimately, the historical record is inconclusive.[34]

Political

Schinas has been described as an anarchist[31] and a socialist.[35] The March 19, 1913, initial report of George's assassination in The New York Times described Schinas as "a Socialist" who declared that "he is against governments". However, it also described him as a "feeble intellect" and "of low mental type", "who states that he was driven to desperation by sickness and want", concluding: "The crime, therefore, was without motive."[23]

March 19, 1913 New York Times headline describing Schinas as a "socialist"

The following day, The New York Times published an article from its Baltimore and New York bureaus, quoting three witnesses. The first was Eratosthemus Charrns, a waiter who said he worked with Schinas at the Fifth Avenue Hotel in New York and who described Schinas as a "socialist", a "communist", a "radical", and an "atheist". The second was the Greek consul general for New York, Demetrios Botassi, who told the newspaper that Schinas was a "man of education", an "anarchist", and an "atheist", according to "Greeks who knew him well".[36] The same day, The New York Times published a statement from the Greek Minister in London that Schinas was "a victim of alcoholism" and that "the assassination cannot be ascribed to any political motive".[37]

March 20, 1913 New York Times headline describing Schinas as an "anarchist"

A third article published in the March 20, 1913 New York Times stated that Schinas "is not a madman, but apparently is weak-minded", and that he "led a wretched existence, subsisting almost entirely on milk". According to the article, Schinas visited Volo shortly before the assassination and "declared that in a short time he would succeed in establishing equality; that there would no longer be either rich or poor, and that work which was now accomplished in one hour would be spread out over two." The article stated that Schinas told interrogators he assassinated the king because, "I had to die somehow, as I suffer from neurasthenia, and therefore wished to redeem my life."[2]

On March 21, 1913, The New York Times published Batznoulis's letter to Atlantis generally disputing Botassi's earlier account (but nevertheless describing Schinas as an "anarchist"), along with a statement from Solon Vlasto, editor of Atlantis, endorsing Batznoulis's account and suggesting that the many conflicting stories concerning Schinas's identity may be due to the fact that Schinas is a common surname in Greece and there were likely multiple people named "Aleko Schinas".[4]

Schinas was interviewed in March 1913 and asked the question, "Are you an anarchist?" to which he replied:[9]

No, no! I am not an anarchist, but socialist. I become a socialist, when I was studying medicine in Athens. I do not know how. One becomes a socialist, without realising it, slowly (one step at a time). All people that are good and educated are socialist. The philosophy towards medicine, for me it was the socialism.

One recent scholar has doubted that Schinas was an anarchist or that his actions were an example of propaganda by deed.[38] Writing in 2018, Michael Kemp noted that both "socialism" and "anarchism" were used interchangeably at the time, and that reports of Schinas as having run for political office or invested in a stock market do not support theories that Schinas was either a socialist or an anarchist.[39]

Others have suggested the Schinas was a foreign agent[40] acting on behalf of Austria-Hungary,[3] Bulgaria,[41] Germany,[42] the Ottoman Empire,[43] or Macedonian nationalists.[44] No evidence supporting these theories has emerged.[45] The Norwich Bulletin reported that there were fears of Bulgarian involvement, "but a message received at midnight dispelled such apprehensions by identifying the assassin as a Greek degenerate".[46]

Personal

Schinas, 1913

Some have asserted that the motive for the assassination was revenge for the king's refusal of request for assistance in 1911, or simply that Schinas had lost an inherited fortune in the Greek stock market, was in poor health, and despondent prior to the attack.[2][33] Schinas has been described as an alcoholic,[37] "weak-minded",[2] a "madman",[33] "irresponsible",[46] and of "unstable mind".[47] The Greek government released statements claiming that Schinas was an alcoholic vagrant.[48] The Rural New-Yorker stated: "It is believed that the assassin is mentally unbalanced, and that the crime was not the result of any political conspiracy."[49] Other reports referred to him as "a man of education" or "an educated anarchist".[50]

In a 1913 interview after his arrest, Schinas himself blamed "deliriums" brought on by tuberculosis, saying:[9]

During the night I was waking up, like I was being taken over by madness. I wanted to destroy the world. I wanted to kill everybody, because the whole of society was my enemy. Luck wanted that during this psychological condition to meet the King. I would have killed my own sister if I had met her that day.

More than a year after Schinas's death, The New York Times printed a retrospective article regarding recent political assassinations. The article did not list Schinas among "anarchists who believe in militant tactics", instead describing George I's "murderer" as "a Greek named Aleko Schinas who probably was half demented".[51] A more recent scholar has written that, "Rather than being part of a wider conspiracy, whether political or enacted by a state, Alexandros Schinas may have simply been a sick man (both mentally and physically) seeking an escape from the harsh realities of the early twentieth century."[52] Another describes the gendarmerie's torture of Schinas as producing "a confused confession that mixed anarchist sentiments with a claim that 'he had killed the King because he refused to give him money.'"[53] Some sources have described him simply as "a Greek named Aleko Schinas".[54]