Wilhelm Thöny and the Grieche Venizeloskämpfer
Wilhelm Thöny was born in Graz February 10, 1888 and died in New York City May 1, 1949. He was an Austrian painter, graphic artist, engraver and illustrator. Thöny first attended the State Art School in Graz, and then he studied from 1908 to 1912 at the Academy of Fine Arts, Munich, where Angelo Jank and Gabriel von Hackl were his teachers. He also learned singing and playing the piano. During his studies Thöny was one of the first founding members of the Munich New Secession-Münchener Neuen Secession.
In the second year of the First World War in 1915 Thöny enlisted as one-year volunteer to the Grazer Rifle Regiment Nr. 3a, and in 1916 attended in the Reserve Officers School in Mürzzuschlag were he was promoted on 1917 to Reserve Lieutenant. During his stay in Berlin in 1916 he was co-operate in the under the patronage of the German emperor book "The enemies of Germany and its allies-Die Feinde Deutschlands und seiner Verbündeten" and thus was allowed in the same year to visit the POW camp of Braunau in Bohemia, Kleinmünchen and Mauthausen and make portrait studies of captured Greek, Italian, Albanian and Romanian soldiers.