Today is the birthday of Johannes Karl Fix (February 24, 1832-1895). Johannes Karl Fix, which was probably Fuchs (for “Fox”) in his native Germany, was born in Freistadt, which at that time was part of Bavaria (but today is part of Austria). He founded the Fix Brewery in 1864 in Athens and was the first major brewery in Greece. “About 30 years earlier, his father had started brewing beer in Greece. As purveyor to the court of the Greek king, the company was able to maintain a monopoly position in the Greek market for about 100 years. After the bankruptcy of the company in 1983 and several failed attempts to revive it, Fix beer has been brewed again in its own brewery since 2009. The reason for this is the relatively high popularity of beer in Mediterranean countries.”
Here’s a history of the brewery, from Wikipedia:
The brewery founder’s father, Johann Adam Fix, a miner from Edelbach in Spessart, had followed the call of King Otto to Greece and had – like other Bavarians – settled in Iraklion near Athens.[2] He was responsible in the management of the mines in Kymi, Euboea. Earlier, he had left his son Johann Georg behind with his mother. When Johann Georg traveled to his father at the age of twenty, he was to be picked up in Piraeus; but his father was murdered on the way by robbers. After the event, Johann Georg Fix was rescued in Iraklion, he stayed there and started to import barrels of beer from Bavaria. Later, he decided to produce beer himself and launched a small enterprise selling his home-made beer in Kolonaki (today a expensive and celebrated shopping area in the heart of Athens), which was a good place for socialising for the Athenian Bavarian community. Joseph von Ow, who was in the service of the Athenian royal court in 1837–39, wrote in his memoirs:
“The Bavarian compatriots have company among themselves. – A brewery has been in operation in Athens for two years and is being used heavily. Professor G. Everus from Oldenburg rightly notes how excellent it must be for a Bavarian soul to have his patriotic drink here – on the border of the Orient! A society – To the Green Tree – (with garden, bowling alley, stone beer steins, singing and loud conversations) reminds of the far bank of the Isar! “
Around 1840, the beer is said to have prevailed throughout Greece. Johann Ludwig’s son Karl Johann Fix (Karolos Ioannou Fix) in 1864 founded the Fix brewery in Athens,[6] coinciding with the appointment of the next king of Greece, George I, from beer-loving Denmark. The new royal court encouraged Charles’s efforts, and Fix Company soon became the official purveyor to the Greek Royal Court, and has been the only major in the country till the middle of the 20th century. It was located at the foot of Lycabettus also in Kolonaki and competed with small breweries such as Gulielmos (Wilhelm) and imported beer from Trieste and Vienna (Schwechat). The German brewers (including Fix) are said to have barely met the demand for beer and “became wealthy in a short time.” Beer was therefore more expensive than wine. Around 1905, 89,000 hectoliters were produced in eleven breweries.
This is an account of the history of Greek brewing beginning with Fix’s brewery, from Food & Dining.
Modern brewing in Greece dates to the period just after Greece became independent of the Ottoman Empire in 1832 following a decade-long war of liberation. The new Mediterranean nation acquiesced to the persuasiveness of Europe’s empires, which paraphrased Frank Zappa by insisting that all real countries need a king in addition to beer and a football team.
So it was that a member of the Bavarian royal family set up court in Athens, soon to be followed by brewers and sausage makers. After all, all kings were not Bavarian, but all Bavarians (including their kings) needed beer and brats. Some things never change.
A Bavarian miner named Fix was among the early arrivals in Athens, intent on serving royalty by making money. He began dabbling in brewing, but it was his son Johann Karl Fix who founded the eponymous brewery in Athens in 1864.
By this point the Greek Royal Court had become Danish on grounds of Bavarian kingly ineptitude, but as we know Danes are beery to the core, and Fix the younger, being a well-read capitalist, began his pursuit of the new monarch’s favor. This quest resulted in the Fix brand becoming “official” purveyor to the royals, and subsequently a quasi-monopoly in Greek brewing for decades to come.
By the time of my 1985 visit to Greece, Fix was acknowledged as the must-drink Greek beer by all those who had preceded me on the backpacker’s circuit. But as I soon discovered, Fix no longer existed, having passed from the scene two years earlier following a multitude of setbacks.
The reasons for the decline of Fix in Greece were quite similar to those afflicting post-Prohibition family breweries in America. For one, bigger breweries (in Greece’s case, European multinationals) wanted a piece of the action and expended their resources to achieve it by hook or crook.
Also, the Fix family’s younger generations proved far less adept at brewery management than their elders had been. The Fix brewery also came to be seen as aligned with the right-wing military junta that ruled Greece from 1967 through 1974, and when the junta fell, paybacks were hell.
Tragically, Georg [Johannes Karl’s father] was shot and killed by robbers in 1862 while awaiting the arrival of his son Johannes from Bavaria. His grave can be found in Iraklio’s Roman Catholic cemetery. In spite of that terrible event, Johannes decided to remain in Greece. Informed sources have him working at the palace briefly, gaining the concession for the importation of ice from Mount Parnitha to Athens and/or apprenticing at the brewery of Melcher and then taking it over around 1864 when Mr. Melcher died. However much of that beginning is solid fact, it is true that he had begun his own small brewery and moved it from Paleo Iraklio to Kolonaki in the late 1860s. His business grew, partly because of hard work and partly because his beer had a reputation for consistent quality.
Thursday’s ad is for “Coors Extra Gold,” from 1990. This ad was made for the Coors Brewing Co., who did not do as much advertising as their competitors. In part, this was because they were not sold nationwide until the 1980s. This one is interesting because it’s ad for the Greek market positioning Coors as an “American Imported Beer,” and more to the point, “The” American Beer.
Last year, for the members of the North American Guild of Beer Writers, I set up a post-CBC symposium the day after the Craft Brewers Conference ended in Philadelphia. We’ll be doing it again in DC this year, on Friday, April 14. Essentially it’s a mini-CBC and we had six speakers, one hour each, including one panel of three, over the course of the day. When I was putting it together, I wasn’t sure what to call it, but liked the sound of symposium. Merriam-Webster defines “symposium” as “a formal meeting at which several specialists deliver short addresses on a topic or on related topics” and Dictionary.com states it’s “a meeting or conference for the discussion of some subject, especially a meeting at which several speakers talk on or discuss a topic before an audience.”
Symposium scene: a reclining youth holds aulos in one hand and gives another one to a female dancer. Tondo from an Attic red-figured Kylix, c. 490-480 BC. From Vulci.
But I just learned that it has an older, original meaning that made my choice of naming our symposium even more perfect than I’d realized. That meaning, according to Merriam-Webster is “a drinking party; especially: one following a banquet and providing music, singing, and conversation.” And dictionary.com defines it “(in ancient Greece and Rome) a convivial meeting, usually following a dinner, for drinking and intellectual conversation.”
Here’s the Etymology:
Borrowing from Latin symposium, from Ancient Greek συμπόσιον (sumpósion, “drinking party”) from συμπίνω (sumpínō, “drink together”) συν- (sun-, “together-”) + πίνω (pínō, “drink”).
A fresco taken from the north wall of the Tomb of the Diver (from Paestum, Italy, c. 475 BC): a symposium scene.
This is from the Online Etymology Dictionary:
n. 1580s, “account of a gathering or party,” from Latin symposium “drinking party, symposium,” from Greek symposion “convivial gathering of the educated” (related to sympotes “drinking companion”), from syn- “together” (see syn- ) + posis “a drinking,” from a stem of Aeolic ponen “to drink,” cognate with Latin potare “to drink” (see potion ). The sense of “meeting on some subject” is from 1784. Reflecting the Greek fondness for mixing wine and intellectual discussion, the modern sense is especially from the word being used as a title for one of Plato’s dialogues. Greek plural is symposia, and the leader of one is a symposiarch (c.1600 in English).
And this is the “Did You Know?” section of Merriam-Webster:
It was drinking more than thinking that drew people to the original symposia and that gave us the word symposium. The ancient Greeks would often follow a banquet with a drinking party they called a “symposion.” That name came from “sympinein,” a verb that combines pinein, meaning “to drink,” with the prefix syn-, meaning “together.” Originally, English speakers only used “symposium” to refer to such an ancient Greek party, but in the 18th century British gentlemen’s clubs started using the word for gatherings in which intellectual conversation was fueled by drinking. By the 19th century, “symposium” had gained the more sober sense we know today, describing meetings in which the focus is more on the exchange of ideas and less on imbibing.
So that sounds about right, but with more emphasis on the imbibing, at least that was the goal. But I think I need to attend a lot more symposiums.
How to Say “Beer”: mpíra (bira), zýthos / μπύρα / μπίρα / ζύθος
How to Order a Beer: Mee-a beer-a paraka-loh
How to Say “Cheers”: Eis Igian / Gia’sou / Jamas / Stin igia sou or Stin ijiasas
Toasting Etiquette:
The host gives the first toast.
An honored guest should return the toast later in the meal.
The most common toast is “to your health”, which is “stinygiasou” in informal situations and “eis igían sas” at formal functions.
The typical toast in Greece is “ya mas” meaning “to our health.” You may also make a toast to your hosts, as well as to a successful business relationship.
