"About Father and the Era" - Told by Emmanuel SEVRYUGYAN

The article by Emmanuel Sevrugyan, "On My Father and the Era," is devoted to reminiscences of the life of his father — the artist Andre-Dervish Sevrugyan, son of the famous photographer Antoine Sevrugyan — and to the dramatic events of European and Middle Eastern history of the first half of the 20th century associated with it.

Introduction and Methodology

The material is an oral testimony recorded by the journal "ANIV" during two meetings with Emmanuel Sevrugyan in Heidelberg. The author points to the chance discovery of information about an exhibition of Antoine Sevrugyan's photographs and Dervish Sevrugyan's paintings in Frankfurt am Main, which became the occasion for further inquiry and the subsequent conversation with a bearer of this well-known surname.

Key Narrative Threads

The narrative is built around several stages of the father's biography:

• Studying painting in Paris (1912–1914) and forced service in the Foreign Legion after the outbreak of the First World War, due to the loss of contact with his family and lack of funds.
• Return to Iran through the intervention of the "Red Cross" and subsequent service in Bicherakhov's Cossack detachment on the Caucasian front, where the father made use of his knowledge of several languages.
• Participation in escorting Armenian refugees from Vaspurakan in 1918 following the exodus of the population from Van and the surrounding areas.
• Creative work in Tehran: an exhibition of illustrations for the "Shahnameh," recognition from the Shah despite the absence of material success, and the family's dependence on the grandfather — Antoine Sevrugin.
• The family's move via India to Vienna in the 1930s, and connections with the Mekhitarist monastery and, in particular, with the Armenologist scholar Nerses Akinian.

Historical and Cultural Context

Of particular significance in the text is the description of the Armenian diaspora in interwar Europe, the fate of the Mekhitarists, the repressions against Armenologists who had visited the USSR, as well as the everyday and psychological consequences of Armenian émigrés' experience in Nazi and postwar Germany, including the fear of discussing politics that persists among the older generation.

Conclusion

The key conclusion of the material is an affirmation of the historical and memorial value of personal testimonies from representatives of the Armenian diaspora: Emmanuel Sevrugyan's recollections capture not only the private biography of his father but also a broad layer of the collective experience of the Armenian people — war, genocide, emigration, and cultural adaptation in Europe — representing a "fragile thread" connecting the present with the historical past, the preservation of which the editors of the publication regard as a task of paramount importance.