Forsaken Albania

By Artan Lame
After centuries of being used, medals and decorations still remain one of the most effective forms of appreciation of work, valour or other deeds of human perfomance. However, it goes without saying that in the Land of the Albanians even this noble form of personal pride underwent its own distortions.
With the advent of Prince Vid to the throne in the newly created kingdom of Albania, in the first months of 1914, several dozens of different post-cards were printed bearing portraits of Prince Vid and of his family, which were distributed throughout Albania to introdice this foreign Sovreign to his local subjects.Of course in the majority of the photographs the Prince was shown in German Military uniform with rows of medals on his chest, but, on the other hand, in a backward Muslim environment, the decorations of the Prince did not go down well. Photo retouchers came up with the solutuion. In the first photograph, the retoucher has painted a half-moon over the top of the decoration that fastens the collar of the uniform. This would pacify the Muslims. Its true that the Prince wore a number of crosses as medals, but he did wear the blessed half-moon too.
In the second photo is the World Head of the Bekteshi Salih Njazih Dedei, taken in the thirties’. On his head he wears the characteristic hat with the green band wound around it. Everything would be absolutely normal in this photograph if it were not for the medal of distinguished Ottoman pilots of World War I pinned onto his chest. Nothing links the Honourable Spiritual Leader with such a distinction, apart from the goodwill of a faithful follower who probably removed the medal from the jacket of a downed pilot and gifted it to Sali Dedei, who must have thought it was an appropriate thing to pin to his cloak, especially because it bore a half-moon.
In the third photo is one of the more entertaining figures at the Court of King Zog, Osman Gazepi. In memoirs of his comtemporarians he is portrayed as a very frivolous, unschooled person, who managed to remain at Court solely because of his blind obedience and ability to make everyone laugh, particularly the King, he was like the Court jester. He wore shoulder distinctions and medals on his chest according to the whim of the moment, and these memoirs record that he never stopped pinning all sorts of distinctions on his uniform, wherever he found them. In fact, in this quite solemn photograph, he is wearing the Decoration of the Order of Skenderbeg, the Order of the Crown of Italy, a Rumanian Order, The Legaliteti Medal, the Ottoman Order of Mexhid, the Franz Joseph Cross, the Medal of the Autocephaly Congressand the Ottoman Medal of Combat. It is somewhat difficult to imagine that the Sultan of Turkey, the Emperor of Austria, the King of Italy and the Monarch of Romania had come up deeds of such distinction carried out by our very own Gazepi, that they felt he had to be decorated. However, sadly, in Albania where there is decpetion over far greater things, this case of a little deception over some medals seems unobjectionable.