In 1911, Prussian Generalleutnant Eduard von Hoffmeister (1852-1920) published a book titled Durch Armenien und der Zug Xeniphons in Leipzig. Hoffmeister traveled through Pontus to Armenia in 1909 to follow Xenophon’s paths. He spent several months around and gives exact information for the contemporary populations and roads. He had visited several monasteries of Pontus, including Soumela. While at Soumela, he either read or was told interesting stories about the miraculous icon of the Panagia Soumela and wrote about it in his book. On the basis of what he wrote, Polychronis Enepekides (1917-2014), a Pontian by birth and the head of the Institute of Byzantine Studies in Vienna from 1974 until his retirement in 1992, published this in the periodical Pontiaki Estia. Enepekides is regarded as one of the first scholars to bring to light - through his research of the Austro-Hungarian archives - the persecution of Ottoman Greeks and in particular Pontic Greeks.
