In 1893 Mary Weber, a German governess at the palace of King George I of Greece, fell in love with a Greek army surgeon Mihalis Mimikos, who practiced in the military hospital built on the old property of General Makriyiannis.
Though at first Mary could speak no Greek and Mimikos could speak no German they soon leant each other’s languages and started writing letters to each other. The lovers met every afternoon on the nearby Acropolis. When Mary’s father learnt of this romance he ordered his daughter to end it and forbade her to see Mimikos again. Distraught, Mary sent letters to Mimikos urging him to meet her to discuss their predicament, but the doctor abruptly missed their daily rendezvous for three days running. Mary Weber sent Mimikos letters which went unanswered and even tried to signal his house by waving her scarf in his direction. She sent him another note brief and desperate which read
Tomorrow at noon I will go to the Acropolis and if you don’t come I will kill myself.
The next day she waited for Mimikos to respond or to meet her himself and when she knew he would not come she leapt from the Acropolis to her death. Visiting foreign tourists found her body and helped transport it to the nearby hospital where Mimikos was a staff member. He arrived later the same afternoon to discover Mary’s letters none of which had been forwarded to him while he was in bed with a fever at home. Mimikos was guided to a medical officers room where he found Mary laid out for burial holding violets and dressed like a bride as is still the Greek custom when unmarried women die. He is supposed to have said:
I swear to you I will follow.
During the night he shot himself.
The couple were buried separately but on the night of the funerals a group of the doctor’s friends entered the cemetery and reburied Mimikos in Mary’s grave. Generations of Athenians with their still-pronounced taste for tragic romance have commemorated them with poems novels and even a movie.
Beautiful story. The fates were messing with them. I’m sorry how they died, but in the end they were fated to be forever. I’m glad.