It was 1832 when the French romantic poet Alphonse de Lamartine saw Athens for the first time – two years before the city was declared the capital of the newly-born Greek nation-state. His description of the city was pitiless. The Athens of his dreams was, in reality, “a dark, sorrowful, black, barren, abandoned city. A weight on the heart”.

Lamartine belonged to the abundant class of western philhellene poets, intellectuals and politicians who adored and idealized the Greece of the past with its ancient ruins but who were disappointed and disdained by its “oriental” reality. It is one of the reasons, I believe, that Greeks hold a “distinct” relationship and simultaneously feel ambivalent towards Europe: “modern Europe” is the ideal which the Greek state has been inclined toward since its inception. However, at the same time, this ideal acts as a source of a victimization and inferiority complex – which usually characterizes the relationship between the colonized and the colonizer.

Greece has always viewed itself through the eyes of Western Europe – since the time of its first contemporary king, the Bavarian Otto Wittelsbach. He chose Athens as the capital city of the new Greek state, in an attempt to make Athens the modern image of the romantic ideals of the European philhellenes such as Lamartine. The Bavarian King of Greece was also one of the pioneers of the “Great Idea” which visualized a “Greece of Two Continents and Five Seas,” the heir of the Byzantine Empire and the glory of Ancient Greece.

The “Great Idea” determined the foreign and domestic policies of Greece for almost a century. Its roots go back to the philhellenes of Western Europe and it was adopted by the populist politicians who governed the newly-formed Greek state. It was the only plan which “united” a fragmented society and “reconciled” the clientelist, conflicting Greek political system.

The “Great Idea” ended tragically in 1922 on the shores of Asia Minor when the Greek army was defeated by the Turkish army. The fateful Treaty of Lausanne which was signed by Greece and Turkey in 1922 with the consent of the Great Powers, called for the “obligatory exchange of populations” between the two countries: the Orthodox Christians had to abandon Turkey and move to Greece and the Muslims had to leave Greece and move to Turkey. It was an era of nationalistic frenzy in Europe and the Balkans always functioned as a mirror where the nightmares of “Europe” were not only reflected but magnified.

In the “population exchange” over one million Christian refugees from Asia Minor and Anatolia flooded into Greece and Athens, and they often were faced with racism by the “natives.” The country entered a flurry of very serious financial problems, and was experiencing social and political conflicts. Nevertheless, at the same time, Greece also experienced a significant intellectual blossoming, mainly by thinkers and writers who had studied in Western Europe.

Among them, I want to mention Yorgos Theotokas (1905-1966), because, I believe, he symbolizes the ideals of an entire generation of Greek intellectuals. He was born in Istanbul/Constantinople, which he was forced to flee for Athens during the “population exchange.” In 1932, a few years after the Wall Street Crash, Theotokas wrote an essay where he envisioned a European Economic Assembly which would lead Europe to a new era of coexistence and prosperity.

Greece, in order to solve its social problems, should completely abandon the old, unsuccessful “Great Idea” and should leave its fate in the hands of this “new Europe.” The great European powers, should, in turn, reserve a “special treatment” for Greece because of its History and its contribution to European culture.

Greece and all of Europe suffered gruesome experiences – WWII and the Nazi Occupation of Greece, the Greek Civil War, the beginning of the Cold War – despite all this, Theotokas maintained his original dream. Only ten years after the Greek Civil War he maintained:

our admission into Europe will bring about in Greece new sources of activity and creative energy, which exist all around us but which are today invisible, because they have never been given the chance, the context, the horizon that they need to express themselves – multifarious sources of life, be they economic, social, cultural. For the young, who feel the lack of contemporary and fruitful ideal which might inspire and activate their creative powers, this could very well be a new Great Idea.

It seems as if this small Balkan country, with its great History, cannot live without some kind of “Great Idea.” Indeed, for Greece, its inclusion in the European Union became the new Great Idea, especially after the fall of the military junta in 1974. It is for this reason, I believe, that the euro entered Greece without any declarations of nostalgia for the national currency, the drachma. For the Greeks, it was the symbolic completion of the new Great Idea, an act of divorce from the difficult “Balkan” past – of which the only reminder was the Balkan immigrants who viewed Greece as the new “El Dorado.”

Thanks to their work, Greece successfully completed its construction projects and infrastructure for the 2004 Olympic Games – in order to organize the Games the country borrowed over 11 billion euro. Back then, self-confidence was high and interest rates for loans were low. Greece was no longer “a poor house on Homer’s beaches” but was rather a modern house on the gulfs of a modern, Unified Europe.

In no other Eurozone or European Union country is the current financial crisis viewed as a national defeat and catastrophe – at least to the extent which it is felt in Greece. I have been living in Athens for 20 years and at the moment it is with surprise, unease and fear that I observe the collapse of the new Greek “Great Idea.” It is like the sudden collapse of a building, where the occupants feel humbled, outraged, terrified and can’t find the emergency exit.

The corrupt contractors never made an emergency exit even though one was included in the building’s design plan. However, many of the building’s occupants, caught up in the clientelistic web of the contractors, looked the other way and tolerated their corruption, believing their promises that the building would never be in danger of collapse.

Putting aside literary allegory – currently in Greece, shops are closing one after another, every day unemployment is rising, the already-problematic social state is dissolving, salaries and pensions are constantly decreasing while taxes are increasing, the standard of living is in a free fall; on city streets the number of homeless people and beggars is growing and young people are preparing to immigrate abroad; xenophobia is reaching new heights especially in run-down, inner-city areas of Athens where thousands of refugees from Asia, abandoned to their fates, try to find a way to get to Northern European countries… Every day the country lives with the nightmare of a possible disorderly default; the concern over a Eurozone exit and return to a nightmarish past is great. Athens is a city in danger of resembling Lamartine’s description: “A weight on the heart”.

Greece’s entrance into the EU brought Greeks economic prosperity and stable democratic institutions. It truly created new sources of activity and creative energy. However, the economic crisis uncovered the black holes of the new Greek “Great Idea” – the administrative chaos; the permanent wound of tax evasion, black market and corruption; the clientelistic and populist political system, based on a few family dynasties that for decades have alternated power back and forth, leaving only little room for meritocracy and reforms. In order to save the new Great Idea, Greeks are now being called upon to make huge sacrifices and to face the “modern evil” inside themselves, to patiently plan a future in an international and European environment which resembles a minefield. Greece possesses a great creative force and this energy must be mobilized - but how can this be achieved by a society which constantly lives with the fear of falling and without hope for the future?

When I travel to other Eurozone countries, the further north I go, the more I hear stories about Greece and the Greeks which resemble stories you hear in Greece about immigrants. Greece is considered something like a “historical accident” in the gulfs of the Eurozone and the European Union.

There are many who believe that by “deporting” Greece, the “problem of the Euro” would be solved. It makes me think, then, that as the economic crisis deepens, the people of Europe are losing their faith in the value of “European solidarity.” Maybe they never had faith to begin with or it was so shallow that it all but disappeared with the first signs of the economic crisis.

If I had to compare the current image of the European Union to a familiar painting, I would choose “Anxiety” by Edvard Munch. In this painting, a group of people is crossing a bridge, each person locked in his own “angst,” looking ahead, without self-confidence but with a look full of concern and bad premonitions. ?t seems as if they are asking “where are we going? What will we find on the other side of the bridge?” A bridge is the preeminent symbol of the Balkans.

A bridge between East and West, between the past and the future. It symbolizes both unification and separation. There are many shocking legends about bridges in the Balkans. The most well-known in Greece is a 17th century tale. There was a builder in Northern Greece who was constructing a bridge. In order for the bridge to stand upright, the builder’s wife had to be sacrificed by being buried alive – built into the bridge’s foundation. The legend of the woman who was sacrificed in the bridge’s foundation is the Balkan version of the scapegoat.

Greeks fear that, despite the sacrifices they are making to remain in the “European family,” they will find themselves in the place of the scapegoat and will be “sacrificed.” But perhaps even this is not enough of a sacrifice to keep the “European bridge” from falling down.

Greece will not be spared by claiming special treatment because of its History. Neither will the Eurozone and the European Union be saved by believing that their historical problem is the Greeks. Instead of scapegoats, the Europeans need a common narrative – economic, cultural, political – one which will create a sense of common European fate. In addition, a declaration is necessary – stating that no country, either “small” like Greece or “big” like Germany and France, is free from responsibility for the current situation.

Despite the market chaos and speculation, the Euro can become the main vehicle of this common European fate. For now, this is not what is happening. The Euro creates cause for concern to those who possess it, and suspicion to those who do not. However, everyone is called to face common concerns. What does it mean today to be in favor of the “European idea”? What does the collapse or reduction of the social state mean for democracy in Europe? What is Europe’s place in the 21st century? How can the “European idea” become a daily experience and democratic practice for its citizens? What and how will the borders of the European Union be? Can the European Union survive if we can’t get past the meaning of national sovereignty as we knew it in the 20th century? The good thing about the current financial crisis is that we no longer have the luxury of putting off the answers.

Perhaps Europe also needs a realistic “Great Idea” for the 21st century. Not to conceal its “black holes” but to get past its breakdown and its inactivity. A “Great Idea” is needed in order to overcome the “narcissism of small differences” of “small” and “big” nationalisms which are resurrected in conditions of economic crisis, along with populism, xenophobia and racism.

The European Union will either truly become federal and supranational, or it will be condemned, sooner or later, to dissolve or to survive divided into countries “outside the Eurozone” and “inside the Eurozone,” into “poor” and “rich,” “South” and “North” “Pigs and Diamonds.”

As a person who has lived under totalitarianism, I can say that nothing is immortal: not even freedom, or the social state, or democracy and human rights, not even the European Union. These are all acquisitions that can suddenly “die” if you neglect and don’t defend them…