Nikolaos Politis (1872-1942)

Nikolaos Politis was a diplomat and a politician of the Greek state in the early 20th century. Born in Corfu in 1872, he studied law at the Faculty of Law in Paris and had dual Greek-French citizenship. His academic career as a professor of International Law at the Universities of Aix and Poitiers established him as a prominent figure in the Greek diaspora. He was also a close associate of Eleftherios Venizelos and played a key role in the diplomatic developments of the era. He participated in the London and Bucharest Conferences, and in 1920, he became Greece's first representative at the League of Nations. He also left his mark on the Treaty of Lausanne (1923) and the Greek-Turkish population exchange agreement of the same year. On September 29, 1924, he signed, as Greece’s representative to the League of Nations, the Politis–Kalfov Protocol, named after him and his Bulgarian counterpart. The protocol implemented a clause of the Treaty of Neuilly, concerning the mutual and voluntary exchange of populations between Greece and Bulgaria. Throughout his political career, he served as Minister of Foreign Affairs three times, in 1917–1918, 1919–1920, and 1922, making a decisive contribution to the shaping of Greek foreign policy. Pictured: Letter from the Board of Directors of the Iraklis Gymnastics Club of Thessaloniki, dated April 8, 1917, addressed to Nikolaos Politis, Minister of Foreign Affairs in the Government of National Defence. ©Iraklis New Gymnastics Club of Thessaloniki 1908.