Zog I (born Ahmed Muhtar Bey Zogolli; 8 October 1895 – 9 April 1961) was an Albanian statesman and aristocrat who served as the leader of Albania from 1922 to 1939. At age 27, he first served as Albania's youngest ever prime minister (1922–1924), then as president (1925–1928), and finally as king (1928–1939).
Born to an aristocratic beylical family in Ottoman Albania, Zogolli was active in Albanian politics from a young age and fought for Austria-Hungary in World War I. In 1922, he adopted the surname Zogu. He held various ministerial posts in the Albanian government before being driven into exile in June 1924, but returned later that year with Yugoslav and White Russian military support and was elected prime minister. He was elected president in January 1925 and vested with dictatorial powers, with which he enacted major domestic reforms, suppressed civil liberties, and struck an alliance with Benito Mussolini's Fascist Italy. In 1928, he proclaimed Albania a monarchy and acceded to the throne as Zog I. He married Geraldine Apponyi de Nagy-Appony in 1938, and their only child, Leka, was born a year later.
Albania fell further under Italian influence during Zog's reign, and by the end of the 1930s the country had become almost fully dependent on Italy despite Zog's resistance. In April 1939, Italy invaded Albania and the country was rapidly overrun. Mussolini declared Albania an Italian protectorate under King Victor Emmanuel III, forcing Zog into an exile from which he never returned. He lived in England during World War II. After Albania was liberated in 1944, he was barred from ever returning to the country by the new, Communist-dominated government of Enver Hoxha. He was formally dethroned in 1946. Zog spent the rest of his life in France and died in April 1961 at the age of 65. His remains were buried at the Thiais Cemetery near Paris, before being transferred to the royal mausoleum in Tirana in 2012.
Background and early political career
Zog was born as Ahmed Muhtar Bey Zogolli in Burgajet Castle, near Burrel in northern Albania, third son to Xhemal Pasha Zogolli, and first son by his second wife Sadije Toptani in 1895. His landowning family was of beylical rank, with feudal authority over the region of Mati. His grandfather was Xhelal Pasha Zogolli. His mother's Toptani family claimed to be descended from the sister of Albania's greatest national hero, the 15th-century general Skanderbeg. He was educated at Galatasaray High School (French: Lycée Impérial de Galatasaray) in Beyoğlu, a district of the capital of the Ottoman Empire. Upon his father's death in 1911, Zogolli became governor of Mat, being appointed ahead of his elder half-brother, Xhelal Bey Zogolli.
In 1912, he participated in the Albanian Declaration of Independence as the representative of the Mat District. As a young man during the First World War, Zogolli volunteered on the side of Austria-Hungary. He was detained at Vienna in 1917 and 1918 and in Rome in 1918 and 1919 before returning to Albania in 1919. During his time in Vienna, he grew to enjoy a Western European lifestyle. Upon his return, Zogolli became involved in the political life of the fledgling Albanian government that had been created in the wake of the First World War. His political supporters included many southern feudal landowners called beys, Turkish for "province chieftain" with title variations including Beyg, Begum, Bygjymi. The Bey title refers to the social group to which he belonged, which was also used by noble families in the north, along with merchants, industrialists, and intellectuals. During the early 1920s, Zogolli served as Governor of Shkodër (1920–1921), Minister of the Interior (March–November 1920, 1921–1924), and chief of the Albanian military (1921–1922). His primary rivals were Luigj Gurakuqi and Fan S. Noli. In 1922, Zogolli formally changed his surname from Zogolli to Zogu, which sounds more Albanian.
In 1924, he was shot and wounded in Parliament. A crisis arose in 1924 after the assassination of one of Zogu's industrialist opponents, Avni Rustemi; in the aftermath, a leftist revolt forced Zogu, along with 600 of his allies, into exile in June 1924. He returned to Albania with the backing of Yugoslav forces and Yugoslavia-based General Pyotr Wrangel's White Russian troops led by Russian Gen Sergei Ulagay and became prime minister.
Zogu was officially elected as the first President of Albania by the Constituent Assembly on 21 January 1925, taking office on 1 February for a seven-year term. A new constitution vested Zogu with sweeping executive and legislative powers, to the point that he was effectively a dictator. He had the right to appoint all major government personnel, as well as one-third of the lower house.
Zogu's government followed the European model, though large parts of Albania still maintained a social structure unchanged from the days of Ottoman rule, and most villages were serf plantations run by the Beys. On 28 June 1925, Zogu ceded Sveti Naum to Yugoslavia in exchange for Peshkëpi (Pëshkupat) village and other concessions.
Zogu enacted several major reforms. His principal ally during this period was the Kingdom of Italy, which lent his government funds in exchange for a greater role in Albania's fiscal policy. His administration was marred by disputes with Kosovo Albanian leaders, primarily Hasan Prishtina and Bajram Curri, among others.
On the debit side, Zogu's Albania was a police state in which civil liberties were all but nonexistent and the press was closely censored. Political opponents were imprisoned and often killed. For all intents and purposes, he held all governing power in the nation.
On 1 September 1928, Albania was transformed into a kingdom, and President Zogu declared himself to be Zog I, with the title King of the Albanians. He appointed as his advisor Mehmed Orhan Efendi, a prince of the recently abolished Ottoman Empire. He took as his regnal name his surname rather than his forename since the Islamic name Ahmet might have had the effect of isolating him on the European stage. He also initially took the parallel name "Skanderbeg III" (Zogu claimed to be a successor of Skanderbeg through descent through Skanderbeg's sister; "Skanderbeg II" was taken to be Prince Wied, but this fell out of use).
On the same day as he declared himself king (he was never technically crowned), he also declared himself Field Marshal of the Royal Albanian Army. He proclaimed a constitutional monarchy similar to the contemporary regime in Italy, created a strong police force, and instituted the Zogist salute (flat hand over the heart with palm facing downwards). Zog hoarded gold coins and precious stones, which were used to back Albania's first paper currency.
Zog's mother, Sadije, was declared Queen Mother of Albania, and Zog also gave his brother and sisters Royal status as Prince and Princesses Zogu. One of his sisters, Senije (c. 1897 – 1969), married Shehzade Mehmed Abid Efendi, another Ottoman prince and son of Sultan Abdul Hamid II.
Zog's constitution forbade any Prince of the Royal House from serving as Prime Minister or a member of the Cabinet, and contained provisions for the potential extinction of the royal family. The constitution also forbade the union of the Albanian throne with that of any other country, a term which would later be violated with the Italian invasion. Under the Zogist constitution, the King of the Albanians, like the King of the Belgians, ascended the throne and exercised Royal powers only after taking an oath before Parliament; Zog himself swore an oath on the Bible and the Quran (the king being Muslim) in an attempt to unify the country. In 1929, King Zog abolished Islamic law in Albania, adopting in its place a civil code based on the Swiss one, as Mustafa Kemal Atatürk had done in Turkey in the same decade.
Although nominally a constitutional monarch, in practice Zog retained the dictatorial powers he had enjoyed as president. Thus, in effect, Albania remained a military dictatorship.