When it comes to Jewish surnames, spelling and pronunciation can make strange bedfellows. When the curator at the tobacco museum in Kavala explains that one of the key figures in the Greek coastal city’s once-thriving industry was a man called Pierre “Hershogg”, the penny only drops when I ask her to write it out. It’s spelt Herzog.
“Like the former president of Israel?” I wonder aloud. “Well, yes, he was Jewish,” she agrees. Any relation? No one seems to know.
Kavala from the skies Even if he was, Pierre Herzog has no need for borrowed glory since this Hungarian-born banker-turned-tobacco trader is the person behind a stand-out piece of architecture in Kavala: a miniature Hungarian-style castle with striking arches, apses, crenellated towers and huge gates. Built in the 1890s to house Herzog’s home and offices, today it is Kavala’s town hall having been bought by the municipality in 1937. Amusingly, another Jewish tobacco trader, Adolph Wix von Zsolnay, decided to build his house right next door.
Keeping up with the “Hershhoggs”, Wix von Zsolnay’s building is equally impressive. The two buildings soar above the city’s otherwise low-rise skyline. Symbols of bygone Jewish success and ambition, I guess.
The writer in Kavala Kavala itself is somewhat under the radar for British visitors to Greece, and I don’t quite understand why. Known as the Blue City, it was built in amphitheatre-style along a curved strip of the northern Aegean, an attraction in.