Konstantinos Karamanlis, son of George Karamanli (1880-1932) and Fotini Dologlou (1888-1940), was born in 1907 in the village ‘Proti’ of Serres.

     In 1918, his father was arrested by the Bulgarians and kept in prison.

     In 1919 Konstantinos Karamanlis was enrolled in N. Zihni high school and in 1920 was enrolled in a bigger one in Serras. In 1923 he went to Athens to finish off high school and was enrolled in the private boarding school “Megareos Lyceum” and then to the eighth high school of Kipseli, were from he got his certificate.

     In 1925, Konstantinos Karamanlis got in the Law School of  the University of Athens and in 1929 he obtained a first class degree. Two years earlier, in 1927 he was differed, and during the next two years (1928-1929), he worked as an insurance agent. In 1930, Konstantinos Karamanlis joined the army in the 19th Regiment of Foot in Serras, were from he was discharged four months later (on the plea of being the protector of his family) with an excellent conduct and opened a law office in Serras.
 

     In 1932 he asks from his father to let him go into politics. “I’d like to  devote to the people of my country, for them and through them I’d like to justify my pass through this world”, seems to answer to his father objections that doesn’t want the “curse” of politics to get in his family. The same year (1932) George Karamanlis dies from typhus.

     After the “Movement of  ‘35”( during which Konstantinos Karamanlis gets arrested for two weeks with other members of the Popular Party), he takes part in the elections of June and gets elected for the first time deputy of Serres. On January 1936 elections take place again and Karamanlis get the most votes. Dictatorship of the 4th of August interrupts the evolution of the political route of the young deputy. During the same year his mother dies.

     On the 23rd of the 3rd of 1941, Konstantinos Karamanlis enrolls to the Law  Society of Athens and  becomes part of a team conducted from known scientists (K.Tsatsos, X. Zolotas, A. Aggelopoulos, Gr. Kasimatis). On July 1944 and after an adventurous trip, Konstantinos Karamanlis arrives in Alexandria, where from a few days later he returned to free Athens.

     In 1946 after-war elections occur and K. Karamanlis is elected first deputy of Serres. Later on he became part of the Party Committee in America under Sofokli Venizelo, while November of the same year, Panagis Tsaldaris nominated him for Minister of Labour in the age of 39.

     In between the years 1948-1950 he became Minister of Transport as well as Minister of National Defence.

     In 1951 he became a member of the party of the Marshal Alexander Papagos and in 1952 he got married the niece of Panagiotis Kanelopoulos, named Amalia. During the years 1950-1952, Kostas Karamanlis became Minister of Public Work and for a little while, Minister of Transport.

     In 1955 following the death of Alexander Papagos, Konstantinos Karamanlis  became Prime Minister in the age of 48, and a year later he formed his own party, named ERE. After that he went on elections and gathered 47,38% against 48,15% of the opposite party named “Republic Union”. Even so, ERE won the elections and formed a government having won 165 seats.

     In the following year, Greece goes on elections again, and ERE won for a second time with a percentage of 41,11 and 171 seats.

     1961: ERE forms a government with 50,8 percentage and 176 seats. In the summer of 1963 Konstantinos Karamanlis resigned and in the elections of the spring (3 November), ERE lost towards the “Union of the Center”. Afterwards, he left Greece and went to Paris. Meanwhile, Greece was under the Dictatorship of  “21st of April”, to which he was opposite.

     After the fall of junta, the “Solution-Karamanlis” becomes ideal for Greece’s political situation. Two hours after the midnight of 24th of July of 1974 he arrived in Athens where he  had a reception in a delirium of joy. He was accepted by common consent . He legalized the Communist Party of Greece (KKE), organized the reactivation of the parties and prepared the elections. A few months later (30/9/1974) he formed the “New Democracy” and in the elections of 17th of November of the same year he gathered an unprecedented majority of votes (54,37%) and elected 219 deputies.

     This “painless transition from dictatorship to democracy” has been characterized (according to his biographers) internationally as a “miracle”.

     Konstantinos Karamanlis kept on governing Greece until the 5th of May 1980, when he was elected “President of the Democracy”. He remained in the highest office until March of 1985, when he resigned and reelected in the 4th of May 1990. He constituted a real phenomenon in the political history of Greece as he has been fifteen years Prime Minister and elected twice President of the Democracy.

International Aknowledgment

     Konstantinos Karamanlis has been awarded with the prizes of Karlomagnos and Souman, the gold metal of the European Parliament, as well as the highest metal of Sorbonne and the University of Paris.

What has been said about him

     He formed a modern and progressive democracy and armed the Greek nation with new European institutions, that eventually had constitutional consolidation.
     The Constitution of 1975 is considered as one of the most modern in the European countries.
     He legalized the Communist Party of Greece (KKE), that was not legal for about 40 years.
     He also solved an equally difficult Greek problem, that would be the linguistic problem, with the establishment of the demotic, as the official Greek language.