German Orientalism in the Age of Empire

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Thread Orientation: In this thread we consider the detailed portrait of early German Orientalism present by Suzanne Marchand, and consider how these important pioneers have shaped the field today

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Considering the book:


German Orientalism in the Age of Empire


By Suzanne Marchand, 2009


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The following comments from the March enenuru periodical serve to introduce this thread:

c) "The Glass half empty: Orientalism as a Career": This very interesting sentence is the title of a chapter from a book I recently happened across - the book is entitled "German Orientalism in the Age of Empire" and it is a very thorough study of field of Orientalism in Germany by Suzanne Marchand. The author has done an excellent job with this study which focuses not just on the field, but really on the person and practice of the early German Oriental scholar, for all his severe work ethic and inexplicably dense motivation. As some of you may know, I have an ever increasing admiration for German scholarship and for good reasons: they are widely held to have been the driving force behind the philological advancement in Oriental language, not so much the finders but often the major decipherers of the texts we now find so interesting. I therefore think that insights from the German Oriental epoch may instruct the aspiring Orientalist, just as much as they may inform him of the limits. I have taken notes on Marchand's introduction to the book, and plan to sum other interesting parts of the book below, including that titled "The Glass had empty: Orientalism as a Career". Notes on the introduction:



What lies at the heart of German Orientalism? They were the pacesetting European scholars in this field from 1830 - 1930, but have often been overlooked in recent commentaries which attempt to associate orientalism with imperialism (specially, British imperialism - see Edward Said, 1978). German Orientalism can be defined, roughly, as the study of kulturvolker, those peoples with high learning (readable ancient texts) not in the classical milieu. The author writes that the German Orientalists were the ones who dedicated the effort to learning one or more Oriental languages, they choose "knowing the Orient" as a career - they were the ones that nineteenth and early twentieth century Germany consider most worthy to write and speak about Eastern cultures. In writing this book, Marchand seeks to explain the ways in which they the techniques German Orientialists pioneered were used to explore new areas or to shore up old prejudices, to advance ambitions, and to undermine conventions, to exploit others or to attempt to liberate them.



Interestingly, the author observes that academic verve of the German Orientalists was skewed in a certain unpractical direction - that is to say, that they considered contemporary political or diplomatic matters with the east as the domain of journalist or businessman etc, none of whom had the same cultural respectability as did the academic. In other words, "they choose to speak about things of less utility and more permanance" than for example the current price of land in Egypt or how to draw up a contract in China. Not only impractical and unconcerned with the needs of the modern state, Orientalism, seeking other sources of identity, tradition and authority in the east, has often been a means throughout the ages by which counter-hegemonic positions have been articulated. It can therefore be a means to unmaking, as well as making, western identities, the author states.



Marchand believes that too often in the rediscovery of the east the role of the philologist has gone unrecognized - she therefore undertakes in her work to "plunge the reader into the world of those who laboured, largely unsung, at orientalism's philological face over the course of the eventful era between 1750 and 1875." She endeavors to avoid big names like Nietzsche, Freud or Weber who are often cited as having Oriental interests and instead reserves interest for those "practically unknown" academics who nonetheless are the most important in the field itself. The author shows what I believe is a fundimental, and a very important, direction to inquire when she determines: "One of the things I want to know is what was it actually like to be an orientalist...Why did some well-educated Germans choose this field of study, especially when it was largely unfashionable, and usually unprofitable, to do so? For it was never particularly easy or popular to be an orientalist."

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To follow... Notes from "The Glass Half Empty: Orientalism as a Career [in mid-1800s Germany]

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The Glass Half-Empty: Orientalism as a Career

[in mid-19th century Germany]

The following note comes from a review of a subsection of chapter two of Suzanne Marchand's "German Orientalism in the Age of Empire". The is a sketch of the lives and careers of Orientalists in mid-1800s Germany, and I have summed carefully but not at length - I believe in this period we can observe the intellectual and political climate that would soon led to the dawn of the elite Assyriological philologist, however, this chapter deals with the period before Assyriology itself was practiced.. and so I am somewhat brief in my notes presently. Later chapters include "The Lonely Orientalist" and also focuses on early Assyriology itself which will of course be of great interest as well. For now, the early Orientalist (I have split the information into specific headings):




Overall Mission/


In the early to mid 1800s, academic orientalists were still very much a part of the Theological faculties in German universities - in fact, in 1830, 38.5% of all students were still enrolled in theological studies, demonstrating the eminence such studies still enjoyed in those times. Despite the fact that they were at their core trained theologians, the relationship between orientalists and the orthodox clergy and official churches was "tense", and some orientalists tried to seek jobs in philosophical faculties hoping to liberate themselves from church interests. While in earliest stages the orientalists were indebted to traditional sources such as Herodotus, Marco Polo or even Jesuit records from trips made to the east; Marchand writes that the breaking from traditional sources and finding of new canons of scholarship began to be possible in Europe, and around this time, due to Europe's new economic and political status in the world - "Imperial power made it possible for Europeans to travel, collect, and interact with indigenous intellectuals on an unprecedented scale"...as well as of course having the wealth to acquire ancient artifacts and texts from all over the ancient world. The author quotes a remark made by Jules Mohl in 1855, who on noting the large number of Europeans at work collecting manuscripts in the east said:

"Once upon a time, when civilization had its center in Baghdad, the caliphs sent missions to Europe to buy the Greek manuscripts which the barbarian Occident was neglecting, and now Europe sends literary missionaries to save the remains of the ancient literature of the Arabs, which these same caliphs had sought out and reunified."

Marchand continues: "It was on the stuff acquired in these imperious trawling actions, as well as on the rhetoric of "saving civilization from barbarism," that all modern European-oriental studies, German orientalism included, were built."





General Character/


A sketch from Acton's "German Schools of History" is provided which neatly illustrates the typical mid-ninteenth century German scholar, particular the Orientalist. Acton relates:


"Those were the days in which the familiar type of the German scholar was generated, of the man who complained that the public library allowed him only thirteen hours a day to read the man who spent thirty years on one volume, the man who wrote upon Homer in 1806 and who still wrote upon Homer in 1870, the man who discovered 358 passages in which Dictys has imitated Sallust...Primarily, he was a Greek scholar, bounded by ancient horizons.... More rarely he carried the dry powder of philology into the early Christian conflicts, or the chaos of the first, the Teutonic, middle ages. On the modern world, with its unsettled and unsettling questions, and its inaccessible information, he sternly turned his back.... He remained frugal and austere, cultivating humble obscurity and the golden gift of silence... "


Due to its somewhat close relation to religious studies, a fair number of converted Jews took up the study, as did a number of pastor's sons. Another portion of scholars were the sons of Gymnasium teachers. Additionally, due to certain demands, the body of Orientalists in the nineteenths century often had something of aristocratic backgrounds - for one, Marchand says, many diplomats (at the time almost entirely nobles) in the East took up the study "to fill their hours and occupy their minds". Additionally, the prospects of study could be expensive - books were expensive, as was travel to the libraries in Paris, Leidon or London (and for such a challenge as resurrecting dead languages, Europe's best libraries would often have been necessary); as well, in those times non-Europeans were still an important source for eastern language acquisition and the well to do were better positioned (financially) for such research travels of any sort.

Philological aptitude was a hallmark of the German oriental scholar and some were veritable "linguistic machines" according to the author - the example of Austrian scholar August Pfizmaier is given, the son of an innkeeper who was trained as a medical doctor, but nonetheless succeeded in teaching himself Japanese and Chinese. He would go on to translate some 6500 pages of these languages, teach himself yet other languages, write essays on the languages of Greenland and on Turkish grammar, and translate Russian and Ainu poetry. However, it may be instructional to note, that due to his status as one self taught, he was deemed even still "amateur" by German university scholars and Pfizmaier earned little respect throughout his career. So while, yes, the route to academic success was through linguistic virtuosity, respect was something rather prudishly dolled out, something of course still observable in today's universities.




Access to the Study/


Beginning and maintaining a career in Orientalism in the early 1800s was very difficult. A portrait of the typical career in early 19th century Orientalism is given the life of Justus Olshausen, who as a student in 1819 found only one Semitist at the University of Berlin, a professor who, however, steadfastly refused to lecture to an audience of one student (unfortunately for Olshausen). After eventually finding a professor willing to instruct him, he progressed well and also had the help of Alexander von Humboldt, and was appointed to a lectureship at the U of Kiel even before he had finished his doctorate. Olshausen spent his life attempting to free the Scriptures from slag, and typically his plans for large scale studies were deferred until he could complete foundational linguistic work which he considered incumbent on the real scholar. He lectured on both Semitic and Indo-Aryan antiquity and only gradually moved away from the Old Testament - he lost his job during the revolutionary period of the 1800s due to his liberal leanings. Eberhard Schrader, an important and early Assyriologist would later remark in admiration about Olshausen "even in the last weeks before he became fatally ill he occupied himself... with a study of sound-shifts in Pahlavi."




Access to Materials/


Orientalists in the 1800s were pressed for materials, which in some cases could prove a very limiting factor in the scope of their studies - I find this particularly interesting as access to materials remains all important for the researcher today even as it is much improved. In fact, with the digitization of many volumes, we should consider ourselves blessed in comparison to early days (though of course these are secondary - but there is CDLI for primary source) - Marchand explains how the problem could be dire in those days: "Orientalists were also dependent on foreign scholars and colonial officials for access to relatively arcane sources. For Lassen, the problem was working around the French scholar Leonard Chezy, who was notoriously jealous as well as increasingly ill-disposed toward German scholars and who kept crucial library books at home in order to restrict the channels of scholarship. Numerous orientalist projects were made possible or impossible by this question of access; in the early 1850s, Paul de Lagarde, for example, was forced to shelve his planned edition of the New Testament based on oriental sources when he was denied access to the Syrian manuscripts held by the British Scholar William Cureton. The same scholar was so desperate to get his hands on manuscripts held in Paris that a week after Prussia's victory at Sedan, he requested that the Prussian Cultural Minister force the French to lend Legarde the texts indefinitely. Cost also was a factor; some of the early, essential grammars were very expensive and not available to scholars in far-flung places, like Peter von Bohlen in Konigsberg. Fredrich Ruckert responded by writing out, by hand, copies of such works as H.H. Wilson's massive Sanskrit dictionary."




On Patrons and the Public/


Advantages and disadvatages of the German school system: The first chairs for Orientalism created in Germany were those made for the study of Sanskrit texts - there we established in 1818 (Bonn), 1822 (Berlin), and 1826 (Erlangen, Konigsberg, Munich). Others were established for geography, consider "the other great oriental discipline" of the mid 18th century. All of these developments were inspired by the efforts of Wilhelm and Alexander von Humboldt, brothers who were devoted to oriental studies and also happened to be friends of the Prussian king Friedrich Wilhelm IV. The other subdisiplines were much slower to gain official inclusion in German universities, yet this setback was mediated by one of the German university principal strengths: the author writes that German universities had the convention of "allowing those certified as Privatdozenten to offer unpaid courses on subjects of their choosing. Indeed, this practice is surely the reason for Germandom's far better ability to create specialists than any other university culture of the time. By using these unsalaried young scholars to teach specialized language courses - often for long periods of time - German universities were able to diversify their students' skill sets with no cost to themselves." However once these language experts were produced there were few chances for employment in Germany and many of them relocated to the Netherlands, to Russia, to the United States and so on. For those that managed to find work and funding, the process was by means quick or direct and may rely on whether a man may or may not be "credentialed", that is recognized and supported by dignified persons in the high academia or nobility - more than one of the orientalists described by Marchand are were dependent in fact on sponsorship from the king of Prussia himself.


An important development in the history of German Orientalism was the founding of the DMG (Deustche Morgenlandische Gesellschaft) in 1845, a national league for the advancement of Oriental studies. In its founding year it had 54 members mostly professors and diplomats and high ranking pastors etc. - but 1880 this number had increased to 976 full members to include now librarians, military men, private scholars etc. The DMG sponsored Germany's first major Oriental journal ZDMG, appearing in 1847 - this journal was for a long time the only in Germany of its kind and was essential for focusing and encouraging German scholarship.

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Still to come... Notes on "The Lonely Orientalists" and the dawn of German Assyriology.