The "Orient" and "Us": Making Ancient Oriental Studies Relevant during the Nazi Regime
Germany has long been known for its outstanding work in the linguistic, historical, and archaeological study of classical and ancient Near Eastern antiquity. With Hitler’s rise to power, the prestigious German discipline of Oriental Studies (Orientalistik) faced enormous challenges. Would a field he...
| Main Author: | |
|---|---|
| Format: | Print Article |
| Language: | English |
| Check availability: | HBZ Gateway |
| Fernleihe: | Fernleihe für die Fachinformationsdienste |
| Published: |
Indiana University Press
2022
|
| In: |
The betrayal of the humanities
Year: 2022, Pages: 64-113 |
| Further subjects: | B
History 1820-1918
B Orientalismus <Kulturwissenschaften> B Germany B Oriental philology |
| Summary: | Germany has long been known for its outstanding work in the linguistic, historical, and archaeological study of classical and ancient Near Eastern antiquity. With Hitler’s rise to power, the prestigious German discipline of Oriental Studies (Orientalistik) faced enormous challenges. Would a field heavily populated by scholars of Jewish ancestry, and focused heavily on the languages of the ancient Near East and South Asia, survive in the Nazis’ anti-Semitic, xenophobic, and anti-intellectual world? During the Great War, at least, Orientalists could claim their relevance on the basis of Germany’s alliance with the Ottoman Empire; but now the question of relevance became urgent. In her essay, “The ‘Orient’ and ‘Us’: Making Ancient Oriental Studies Relevant during the Nazi Regime,” Suzanne L. Marchand describes the immense toll that Nazi purges took on the field. She demonstrates how scholars employed in the diverse subfields of Oriental Studies (Islamic studies, Egyptology, Assyriology, Iranology, and more) undertook a variety of strategies to save both themselves and their discipline from further decimation. The essay demonstrates the intellectual and moral costs of these attempts to establish an enduring relationship between ‘the Orient’ and ‘us’. |
|---|---|
| ISBN: | 0253060796 |
| Contains: | Enthalten in: The betrayal of the humanities
|