The historic developments and political turmoil after the liberation of 1913, combined with the lack of Greek literary tradition, immobilized intellectual life in Macedonia until the inter-war period. Nevertheless, columnists writing on current events flourished impressively in Thessaloniki's numerous newspapers.
The first noteworthy publication appeared in 1920, when G. Modis of Monastir, inspired by the acts of the fighters during the Macedonian Struggle (1904-1908), began to publish his "Macedonian stories".
The founding of the University in 1925 by Alexandros Papanastasiou and of the Society for Macedonian Studies in 1939 gave a decisive boost to the cultural life of the region, while from the 1930s on, Thessaloniki, dominating the intellectual horizon of Northern Greece, earned a name for its own idiosyncratic and multifaceted literature.
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