Basil Zaharoff. The mystery man of Europe

Jewish-born Richard Lewinsohn-Morus (Richard Lewinsohn, 1894-1968), who studied medicine and political science, was, however, mainly distinguished for his career in journalism as an economic and political editor in the German press in the 1920s and 1930s. Alongside his work, he became well known for his studies of politics and economics, as well as biographies of world-class businessmen such as Basil Sakharov. It is with this text by Lewinsohn (first edition Paris 1929), the first biographer of the “mysterious man of Europe”, as the Anatolian Greek Basil-Bazil Zacharoff was called, that Kyriakos St. In their new book, Cyria X. Chatzikyriakides and Eustratia S. Tsapanidou have chosen to write about the life of Zarathiros, the man who was the first to be called Zarathiros.

Starting with research first on Lewinsohn (information about his life and professional career), they then moved on to Zacharov himself, both in the search for similar known or unknown references to him in foreign and Greek historiography, and in the narration of the fascinating life of the man who from “the hammer of the Tataulas” became one of the richest men in the world through “war-making” and the sale of arms. As the editors note, “using as a ‘guide’ the first book published about the wealthy Greek, while he was still alive,” they comment on parts of the translated book mentioned, “confirming, supplementing or refuting Lewinsohn’s accounts, through the Greek and foreign press, the published and unpublished archival material and the existing relevant bibliography”; “Let it become an occasion to examine in depth the multifaceted personality of the Greek Croesus and to assess his role in the Greek affairs of the early 20th century”.