Ethem Haxhiademi, playwright and poet, was born in Elbasan. He finished high school in Lecce (Italy) in 1918. He then completed higher studies in political science in Berlin and Vienna, collaborating with the magazines “Kopështi letrar” (“The literary garden”) (Elbasan) and “Djalëria” (“The Boyhood”) (Vienna). After returning to Albania (1928), he worked first in the local administration (Lushnje, Berat, and Gjirokastër) and then in the central administration as director of the Ministry of the Interior. He was a member of the Institute of Albanian Studies (1941). After the liberation, he was among the participants of the founding meeting of the League of Writers, but soon, for political reasons, he ended up in prison, where he spent the last days of his life. Ethem Haxhiademi’s work was a direct echo of the need that literary life had begun to feel in the first half of the 20th century to develop Albanian drama and theater. Within a short time he published the tragedies “Achilles”, “Alexander”, “Ulysses” (all in 1931), “Pyrrhus” (1934), “Skanderbeg” (1935) and “Diomede” (1936) from biblical and ancient mythology and from the antiquity and the Albanian Middle Ages, with the subjects that dealt with eternal human passions, as well as with their aim to educate through beauty, the tragedies of Ethem Haxhiademi brought to Albanian literature the influence of classicist aesthetics. The subjects of his tragedies retained the principle of unity of place, time, and action; they had few characters. Ethem Haxhiademi was also involved in poetry. He passed away on March 17, 1965. (In the photo: Ethem Haxhiademi)
Text: Albanian encyclopedic dictionary – Vol. 2 , Academy of Sciences of Albania, “Kristalina-KH”, Tirana, 2008, page 894-895.
Photo: © Xhoxhi L., personal archive
Graphic processing: AHCF
