German Orientalism

The Study of the Middle East and Islam from 1800 to 1945

Ursula Wokoeck

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2009
• Print ISBN: 9780415847957
• eBook ISBN: 9781134039371
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Geschichte
• Subtopic: Baltische Geschichte

During the nineteenth century and the first half of the twentieth, German universities were at the forefront of scholarship in Oriental studies. Drawing upon a comprehensive survey of thousands of German publications on the Middle East from this period, this book presents a detailed history of the development of Orientalism.

Offering an alternative to the view of Orientalism as a purely intellectual pursuit or solely as a function of politics, this book traces the development of the discipline as a profession. The author discusses the interrelation between research choices and employment opportunities at German universities, examining the history of the discipline within the framework of the humanities. On that basis, topics such as the establishment of Oriental philology; the process of institutional differentiation between the study of Semitic languages and the study of Sanskrit and comparative linguistics; the emergence of Assyriology; and the partial establishment of Islamic studies are explored.

This unique perspective on the history of Oriental studies in the German tradition contributes to the understanding of the wider history of the field, and will be of great interest to scholars and students of Middle East studies, history, and German history in particular.

1 Introduction

[The reader] will hardly learn anything about revolutionizing achievements in the field of Oriental studies; instead [he will learn] much about the turbulent, even tragic lives of scholars, who were destined to live during that long period of time, but who have long since been forgotten.¹

(Babinger 1957: 241)

In the introduction to his account of the history of Oriental studies at the University of Munich, from the mid-nineteenth to the mid-twentieth centuries, Franz Babinger (1891–1967) felt it necessary to lower the expectations of his readers: there are hardly any great achievements to report, and most of the scholars, who appear in his account, have been forgotten. Babinger’s comment may come as a surprise, given that German scholarship has a long tradition in the field and that it can be credited with impressive achievements, also by international standards. The discrepancy does not appear to be just a function of local particularities. Munich has been one of the major German universities throughout the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Therefore, it seems more likely that Babinger’s comment refers to the difficulty of adhering to the conventions of historiography, while narrating the history of a discipline. Conventionally, history tells the story of great men (and, more rarely, women) and their great achievements. This was certainly the case when Babinger wrote his account in the 1950s (Iggers 2005), and it is also today not totally out of fashion (e.g., Irwin 2006). But telling the story of a discipline at a university may require a different narrative strategy. If the aim is a comprehensive chronological account, the story has to include at least all scholars holding an appointment to a chair in the field, irrespective of their “greatness” or the lasting importance of their work.

In this study, I suggest that this problem in historiography arises not only with regard to the developments at a single university, but also for the history of the entire discipline. More specifically, I assume that a history that focuses on outstanding scholars and their work may be a great work in historiography (especially intellectual history), but it is not necessarily a history of the discipline as a formalized field of specialization at universities. This is not to deny that scholars like Joseph von Hammer-Purgstall (1774–1856) and Ignaz Goldziher (1850–1921), for example, made very valuable contributions to the German scholarly discourse and beyond. But the fact that neither of them were employed at German universities raises the question what the interrelation between their work and the formalized discipline may have been. It is at least thinkable that the institutional framework did not encourage or even discouraged such work. Of course, the examples cited could be just a matter of chance (Hammer-Prugstall having independent means; Goldziher being Jewish and Hungarian). There are further indications for the possibility of institutional limitations, however.

According to the generally accepted assessment, Middle East studies are a well-established research tradition in German scholarship, defined as Arabic and Islamic studies and distinguished not only by an impressive number of outstanding scholars, but also by a heavy and persistent focus on issues of language (in its classical form) and the early Islamic period. This raises the question why an academic field comprising so much knowledge and erudition should be so conservative, seemingly lacking in drive for innovation. Of course, also such “conservative” research projects as text editions, contributions to lexicography and grammar studies can lay claim to novelty, and often rightly so. But why were these persistently chosen over other projects? Why did history not attract more attention although more than a millennium could surely provide historians of all trends in historiography with ample opportunity for innovation? Why did the contemporary Middle East remain outside the scope of academic study?

In order to answer these questions, the present study suggests to change the perspective and to look at the field from the position of the practitioners, who made Middle East studies their profession; those who made the East (at the university) a career to use one of Edward Said’s themes (1978: 5). The underlying assumption is that, if work conditions in the colonial service can influence research, there is no reason why work conditions at the university should have no bearing on academic pursuits. Shifting the focus from the research tradition to the researchers leads to the realization of a fact which has not yet received any serious attention, namely that the majority of scholars in the research tradition worked in academic positions, the delineation of which was not congruent with their field of research. Although the modern German research tradition in Middle East studies began in the first half of the nineteenth century, an investigation of university positions reveals that not even a single chair for Middle East studies, defined as Arabic and Islamic studies, existed at any German university throughout the nineteenth and the first half of the twentieth centuries. In other words, Middle East studies were not a discipline. This does not preclude the possibility that the disciplinary framework in which many of its scholars were employed had a major impact on the development of the field. Therefore an investigation on the institutional setting has to focus on that discipline.

In institutional terms, Middle East studies were part of university positions which were initially defined as morgenländische/orientalische Sprachen (Oriental languages), potentially including the entire “Orient,” i.e., Asia and Africa, in practice mostly languages from a region stretching from the Middle East to India (Babinger 1957; Preissler 1995). In the course of time, the region expanded; and the terminology shifted towards Oriental studies by the end of the nineteenth century. My investigation of the establishment and development of the discipline of Oriental languages/studies will show that discipline was by no means as static as might be expected in light of the remarkable “conservative” trend in the research tradition in Middle East studies and that the latter can even be explained by the transformations which the discipline underwent. Moreover, I wish to draw attention to the possibility that Middle East studies and its development may not have been the function of considerations regarding the Middle East. The conception of the field may have been a “side effect.” Before discussing the present project in greater detail, a review of the literature seems to be in place.

The debate on the history of Middle East studies

For the last 25 years, the field of Middle East studies and its traditions have been more frequently topic for debate and investigation than ever before. Edward Said’s critical book Orientalism (1978) and the controversy it sparked off (for an overview: Halliday 1993; Lockman 2004: 182–214) was certainly a major trigger for that heightened concern, but not the only one. At least two other interrelated factors contributed considerably. One is the more general debate in the humanities and social sciences regarding methodology and disciplinary boundaries, in particular the wide range of issues discussed under the headline of post-modernism/ structuralism (e.g., Harvey 1990), which deeply effected also deliberations on the constitution and future of individual disciplines (for history: e.g., Appleby et al. 1994; Jenkins 1995, 1997; Wood and Foster 1997; Bentley 1999; Southgate 2001; Cannadine 2002; Iggers 2005), including Middle East studies (e.g., Ismael 1990; Sharabi 1990; Hourani 1991a; Ismael and Sullivan 1991; Gershoni et al. 2002). The other influential factor is a growing interest in the history of the sciences and academic disciplines, which again is in part inspired by the post-modern (e.g., White 1973) and critical approaches (for Middle East studies: e.g., Kerr 1980; Hussain et al. 1984; Rodinson 1987; Hourani 1991b; Naff 1993; Gallagher 1994; Turner 1994; Kramer 1999, 2001; Mitchell 2003; Lockman 2004; Gershoni et al. 2006; Irwin 2006).

In the current debate on the history of Middle East studies, these three lines of inquiry tend to converge on suggesting a double focus for investigation: political aspirations and/or interests in combination with the concept/notion of Middle East studies (e.g., Lockman 2004: 1–7). Given that colonialism and the modern academic pursuit of Middle East studies emerged at roughly the same time, the dual focus on concepts and interests may seem an obvious choice, especially with regard to British and French research traditions. By contrast, the German scholarly tradition might have followed a different development in light of the comparative lack of German colonial interests in general, and in the region in particular.

The history of Middle East studies in the German tradition has received considerable attention in the literature. Apart from studies on the live and work of individual scholars, works dealing with the developments at individual universities (e.g., Babinger 1957; Fleischhammer 1958; Rotter 1974b; Heine 1974, 2001; Preissler 1979; Nagel 1998) or a specific aspect of the field (e.g., Haarmann 1974, Hagen 2004), and brief overviews on the history of the field (e.g., Fragner 2001), there are a number of extensive studies, four books (Fück 1955, Hanisch 2003; Mangold 2004, Ellinger 2006) and an extended essay (Johansen 1990), that discuss the developments of the entire field during specified periods. In the following, I shall review the debate and consider the implications for the present study.

In 1955, Johann Fück’s study was published, in which he traces the tradition of Arabic studies in Europe. Fück began his research on the topic in the early 1940s. His study originally covered the history of Arabic studies until the beginning of the nineteenth century (1944). In his book (1955), he added an account of the developments until the beginning of the twentieth century. He kept the title, but explained that in the course of the second half of the nineteenth century, the field expanded to include also Islamic studies. Combining biographical with bibliographical data of individual scholars, the book provides an overview of the field throughout Europe from its beginnings in the twelfth century until the First World War. Two stages are identified in the development. The pre-modern traditions are shown to have usually been part of a “Christian agenda”: facing and fighting Islam, the rival religion. The rare exceptions were individual scholars who remained outside the establishment, and their efforts had no immediate consequences. The transition to the modern tradition is thought to have occurred only by the end of the eighteenth century and especially at the beginning of the nineteenth century. In particular, Antoine Isaac Silvestre de Sacy (1758–1838), teaching at the École spéciale des langues orientales vivantes (established in 1795), is credited with the inauguration of modern scholarly studies of Arabic (1955: 140–52).

Though very thorough and informative, Fück’s account aims at intellectual history rather than the history of the discipline. The format of bio-bibliographical sketches of scholars chosen for his account of the pre-modern period entails that concrete university practice is not systematically investigated. That such an investigation might add important aspects is illustrated by Stanislav Segert and Karel Beránek’s history of the chair for Oriental languages at the University of Prague from 1348 until the university reform in 1848 (1967). There, all those who held the appointment are listed and for most of them a brief biographical sketch is provided. Judging from this not necessarily representative sample (a Catholic university), the appointment to the chair was for the vast majority a brief stage in a career that was neither centered on the university nor on the fight against Islam. In exceptional cases, someone appointed to the chair showed a greater interest and skill in Oriental languages, which tended to lead to a career change: employment at the censor’s office.

A more serious methodological problem arises for Fück’s account of the modern period, and in particular with regard to the German tradition. The bio-biographical approach which is employed both for pre-modern and modern periods, is based on the assumption that one person or very few and his/their work represent the field (or are the rare exception to it). If there is a trickle of diachronic developments, the story of the field can thus be told in the succession of these persons’ stories. When the number of scholars increases and different developments occur contemporaneously, it becomes much harder, if not impossible, to present a narrative. That is what increasingly happens to Fück’s account from chapter 28 (Silvestre de Sacy) onwards to the last chapter, no. 87 (Arabic studies in Holland at the beginning of the twentieth century), that ends with the Dutch-based international project of the Encyclopaedia of Islam.

Fück’s study is certainly very thorough. It is a real treasure box of information, though the sketches of individual scholars and their work became shorter and thus less lively as the account progresses towards the end of the nineteenth century, not least due to the growing number of scholars in the field and to considerations of space. Obviously aware of the problem, Fück tries to employ also structuring principles other than mere chronology, namely the concept of a “center” in combination with tabaqat, in the sense of teacher–student lineages in the order of generations. In addition, the academic discourse became more clearly set within the national context, not least due to the fact that it was conducted in the respective national languages rather than Latin commonly used until the late eighteenth century. The combination of the three structuring elements, national setting, “center,” and tabaqat, works fairly well for the accounts of all European research traditions, apart from the German one. The success with regard to the other traditions may be attributable to a relatively small number of scholars in the (national) field and/or the existence of a “center”, i.e., one eminent scholar or a group of such scholars working at the same location.

For his discussion of the German tradition, Fück employs the same structuring devices: the national frame (chapter 60), the concept of centers (chapters 63, 71; and partly, 79 and 81), and tabaqat (a main structuring device for many, but not all chapters on individual scholars). Each one only allows integrating a part of the tradition into a story, and also in combination with each other, they cannot account for what could be considered to be a substantial part. Fück cannot solve the problem, even though he resorts to removing those aspects that disturb the order most, by introducing a fourth structuring principle, namely a thematic one (chapters 35, 41, 61, 86). The respective success and failure of Fück’s approach may partly be due to differences in the degree of centralization that characterized the various European university systems (Jarausch 1983b). More specifically, the decentralized German system comprising a large number of universities may have prevented both individual scholars and single institutions from achieving a position of hegemony over the entire system. By the same token, Fück is unable to integrate the relatively large number of players, be they scholars or institutions, into one story without such a hegemonic structure.

Rudi Paret’s account, The Study of Arabic and Islam at German Universities: German Orientalists since Theodor Nöldeke (1966/1968), adopts another strategy, but appears to suffer from a similar problem. While Fück presents Arabic studies as the major tradition and Islamic studies as an addition, Paret shifts the emphasis from Arabic studies to the study of Islam. Though the beginning of modern Arabic studies from Sacy onwards is mentioned, as a sort of pre-history, in a section including also the Enlightenment and the Romantic period (1968: 5–8), the main part of the first chapter is dedicated to the study of Islam. Afterwards Arabic studies reappear, always in second place. The dry, factual account of past scholarly achievements might obscure the programmatic nature of the text. As, for example, Reinhard Herzog shows (1983: 281–82), the account of the history of a discipline can be part of a bargaining process over its redefinition. Middle East studies defined as Arabic and Islamic studies were not an institutional reality at the time of writing. In passing, Paret laments the hardship encountered by a scholar specializing in Arabic and Islamic studies: he is not only expected to know all Semitic languages, but is also obliged to teach them (1968: 70–71). If Islamic studies are at the center of the field, Arabic studies are also required, whereas if Arabic studies are at the center, Islamic studies are an option, just as other Semitic languages are.

While the purpose of the account is discernible, the actual history of the field remains unclear. Judging from the headlines of the chapters, Paret’s main ordering principles appear to be thematic categories and chronology. On first sight, Paret seems to distinguish in chronological terms three major periods: “the beginnings,” “further development,” and the development “since 1933.” Closer inspection shows that Paret does not or cannot consistently adhere to the chronological principle. Also his second ordering device, namely thematic categories, does not seem to be sufficient in order to provide the narrative with a consistent structure. Following Fück’s example, the first chapter dealing with Islamic studies is structured around individual scholars (A. von Kremer, T. Nöldeke, and J. Wellhausen; M. Hartmann, and C. H. Becker) in loose chronological order. Then Paret shifts modes. From the second chapter onward, he adopts thematic categories within Islamic and Arabic studies respectively, as the main structuring principle. Thus the account takes the form of a subject catalogue, or that of a “review of the literature.” Given the format one expects that scholarly publications will be the main units and that their arrangement within each section will be determined by further thematic subcategories, chronology and/or formal (e.g., alphabetical) criteria. However, another category is introduced, namely the author/scholar, under the name of whom his various publications belonging to the thematic category of the section appear disrupting both chronology and the differentiation into thematic subcategories within the section.

Given Paret’s considerable experience in professional scholarly writing, the disorder is not likely to be just a matter of an oversight. The idea may have come from Jean-Jacques Waardenburg’s L’Islam dans le miroir de l’Occident (1963). Waardenburg investigates research on Islam, which is thought to consist of a set of research issues. These thematic categories provide the basic structure of the study, in relation to which he investigates the lives and work of five scholars (I. Goldziher, C. Snouck Hurgronje, C. H. Becker, D. MacDonald, and L. Massignon). Despite their differences, both Paret and Waardenburg subscribe to the concept of objectivity, in the sense that the issues raised in research (the thematic subcategories) are considered a function of the object (e.g., Islam). Such a perspective allows comparing different answers given to the various research questions, as Waardenburg’s study impressively illustrates. It also allows identifying, though not necessarily explaining, “failure” in the sense that specific research questions have not been addressed by individual scholars. However, by considering the thematic categories as objectively given, this concept does not allow to question them as such and investigate why they have been raised as research issues. Due to the difference in scope between the two studies, with regard to both themes and the number of scholars investigated, Waardenburg contributes most to discerning differences between individual scholars, whereas Paret uses the concept to construct an apparently coherent account of the great achievements of the German research tradition in Middle East studies. Undoubtedly there are great achievements. What is missing is an explanation as to why these thematic issues have been raised. Thus Paret’s study presents an inventory rather than a history of the field.

As its title indicates, Gernot Rotter’s collection on Middle East studies at the University of Tübingen (1974a) may be an attempt to break the methodological deadlock by shifting the focus of the inquiry to local history. But that framework has inherent limitations. It does not allow to tell a story, in the sense of a narrative account of the development of the chair (and institute) of Middle East studies. The local framework provides a basis for recounting the scholars who held the chair in chronological order, to which a sketch on each scholar’s life and work may be added. These sketches may be very good as biographical texts, but their assembly does not make a story. This does not imply that Rotter or other scholars who wrote such local accounts did not do their jobs properly. The missing story at a single university is much rather consequence and illustration of the decentralized academic system that comprised all German universities (e.g., Ben-David and Zloczower 1962; Baumgarten 1997). That means that the development at a single university can only be told as part of a story that comprises the entire system.

The “linguistic turn” in intellectual history hits the historiographic debate on the development of Middle East studies like a tidal wave...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• List of figures
• List of tables
• Acknowledgments
• List of abbreviation
• 1 Introduction
• 2 Working at the university
• 3 Writings and writers on the Middle East
• 4 The establishment of modern Oriental studies
• 5 The beginning of differentiation: Sanskrit and Semitic languages
• 6 The emergence of Assyriology
• 7 Islamic studies: the emergence of a (sub-)discipline?
• 8 The primacy of political factors: 1933–45
• 9 Conclusion
• Appendix 1: German universities
• Appendix 2: writers on Middle East subjects with more than ten publications
• Appendix 3: university appointments
• Appendix 4: appointments at the SOS (established in 1887) and at the faculty for the study of foreign countries/University of Berlin
• Notes
• Bibliography