German Orientalism in the Age of Empire Religion, Race, and Scholarship

Cambridge University Press
978-0-521-51849-9 - German Orientalism in the Age of Empire: Religion, Race, and Scholarship
Suzanne L. Marchand
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German Orientalism in the Age of Empire
Religion, Race, and Scholarship
Nineteenth-century studies of the Orient changed European ideas and cultural insti-
tutions in more ways than we usually recognize. ‘‘Orientalism’’ certainly contributed
to European empire-building, but it also helped to destroy a narrow Christian-classical
canon. This carefully researched book provides the first synthetic and contextualized
study of German Orientalistik, a subject of special interest because German scholars
were the pacesetters in oriental studies between about 1830 and 1930, despite entering
the colonial race late and exiting it early. The book suggests that we must take
seriously German orientalism’s origins in Renaissance philology and early modern
biblical exegesis and appreciate its modern development in the context of nineteenth-
and early twentieth-century debates about religion and the Bible, classical schooling,
and Germanic origins. In ranging across the subdisciplines of Orientalistik, German
Orientalism in the Age of Empire introduces readers to a host of iconoclastic char-
acters and forgotten debates, seeking to demonstrate both the richness of this intrigu-
ing field and its indebtedness to the cultural world in which it evolved.
Suzanne L. Marchand completed her BA in history at the University of California,
Berkeley, in 1984 and her PhD at the University of Chicago in 1992. She then served as
assistant and associate professor at Princeton University (1992À9), before moving to
Louisiana State University, Baton Rouge, where she is now professor of European
intellectual history. She is the author of Down from Olympus: Archaeology and
Philhellenism in Germany, 1750À1970 (1996) as well as numerous articles on the
history of art, archaeology, anthropology, classical studies, and the humanities gen-
erally.
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Cambridge University Press
978-0-521-51849-9 - German Orientalism in the Age of Empire: Religion, Race, and Scholarship
Suzanne L. Marchand
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p u b l i c a t i o n s o f t h e g e r m a n h i s t o r i c a l i n s t i t u t e
Edited by Hartmut Berghoff
with the assistance of David Lazar
The German Historical Institute is a center for advanced study and research whose
purpose is to provide a permanent basis for scholarly cooperation among historians
from the Federal Republic of Germany and the United States. The Institute conducts,
promotes, and supports research into both American and German political, social,
economic, and cultural history; into transatlantic migration, especially in the nine-
teenth and twentieth centuries; and into the history of international relations, with
special emphasis on the roles played by the United States and Germany.
Recent books in the series
Manfred Berg and Bernd Schaefer, editors, Historical Justice in International Perspec-
tive: How Societies are Trying to Right the Wrongs of the Past
Carole Fink and Bernd Schaefer, editors, Ostpolitik, 1969–1974: European and
Global Responses
Nathan Stolzfus and Henry Friedlander, editors, Nazi Crimes and the Law
Joachim Radkau, Nature and Power: A Global History of the Environment
Andreas W. Daum, Kennedy in Berlin
Jonathan R. Zatlin, The Currency of Socialism: Money and Political Culture in East
Germany
Peter Becker and Richard F. Wetzell, editors, Criminals and Their Scientists: The
History of Criminology in International Perspective
Michelle Mouton, From Nurturing the Nation to Purifying the Volk: Weimar and
Nazi Family Policy, 1918–1945
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Cambridge University Press
978-0-521-51849-9 - German Orientalism in the Age of Empire: Religion, Race, and Scholarship
Suzanne L. Marchand
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German Orientalism in the Age of Empire
Religion, Race, and Scholarship
SUZANNE L. MARCHAND
Louisiana State University
GERMAN HISTORICAL INSTITUTE
Washington, D.C.
and
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Cambridge University Press
978-0-521-51849-9 - German Orientalism in the Age of Empire: Religion, Race, and Scholarship
Suzanne L. Marchand
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cambridge university press
Cambridge, New York, Melbourne, Madrid, Cape Town, Singapore, Sa˜o Paulo, Delhi
Cambridge University Press
32 Avenue of the Americas, New York, ny 10013-2473, usa
www.cambridge.org
Information on this title: www.cambridge.org/9780521518499
GERMAN HISTORICAL INSTITUTE
1607 New Hampshire Avenue nw, Washington, dc 20009, usa
Ó Suzanne Marchand 2009
This publication is in copyright. Subject to statutory exception
and to the provisions of relevant collective licensing agreements,
no reproduction of any part may take place without the written
permission of Cambridge University Press.
First published 2009
Printed in the United States of America
A catalog record for this publication is available from the British Library.
Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data
Marchand, Suzanne L., 1961–
German orientalism in the age of empire : religion, race, and
scholarship / Suzanne Marchand.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
isbn 978-0-521-51849-9 (hardback)
1. Orientalism – Germany – History – 19th century. 2. Middle East – Study and
teaching – Germany – History – 19th century. 3. Asia – Study and
teaching – Germany – History – 19th century. 4.
Orientalism – Germany – History – 20th century. 5. Middle East – Study and
teaching – Germany – History – 20th century. 6. Asia – Study and
teaching – Germany – History – 20th century. I. Title.
ds61.9.g3m37 2009
950.072#0943–dc22
2008053038
isbn 978-0-521-51849-9 hardback
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for external or third-party Internet Web sites referred to in this publication and does not
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Cambridge University Press
978-0-521-51849-9 - German Orientalism in the Age of Empire: Religion, Race, and Scholarship
Suzanne L. Marchand
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For my mother who insisted we go to Istanbul;
my husband who cheerfully moved to Berlin;
my sister, who cherishes the ancients’ idiosyncracies;
And in memory of my father, who marveled at the contradictions
of the modern world
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Cambridge University Press
978-0-521-51849-9 - German Orientalism in the Age of Empire: Religion, Race, and Scholarship
Suzanne L. Marchand
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Contents
Acknowledgments
page xiii
Introduction
xvii
1.
Orientalism and the Longue Dure´e
1
Individuals, Institutions, Iconoclasms
6
The Discrete Charm of Chronology
11
Orientalism and the Enlightenment
15
Oriental Civilizations in the Enlightenment
21
The Peculiarities of German Orientalism
28
Herder and Michaelis: The Fate of the Enlightened Old Testament
38
2.
Orientalists in a Philhellenic Age
53
Friedrich Schlegel: Renaissance and Revelation
58
Orientalism and Classicism in the Wake of the Creuzer Streit
66
To Be a German Orientalist, 1820–1870
72
The Long Road to Wissenschaftlichkeit
74
Classics-Envy and Its Intellectual Consequences
78
The Glass Half Empty: Orientalism as a Career
84
On Patrons and the Public
95
3.
The Lonely Orientalists
102
Biedermeier Bible Criticism or How to Study Jews – and Greeks
105
The (Even Longer) Road to ‘‘Scientific’’ Judaism
113
The Lonely Arabists
118
The Indo-Europeanists
123
Positivism and the Origins of the Aryan-Semitic Divide
124
Fetishizing the Vedas
131
Buddha and the Young Hegelian
134
Poetic Wisdom’s Last Proponent: Friedrich Ru¨ckert
138
Carl Ritter: Oriental Geography in Western Libraries
141
ix
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Cambridge University Press
978-0-521-51849-9 - German Orientalism in the Age of Empire: Religion, Race, and Scholarship
Suzanne L. Marchand
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x
Contents
Germans Abroad: Neither Conquerors Nor Friends
143
Ferdinand Von Richthofen: An East Asian Encounter
153
4.
The Second Oriental Renaissance
157
Orientalism as a Career, 1870–1900
162
Three Against the Churches: Paul de Lagarde,
Theodor No¨ldeke, and Julius Wellhausen
167
Paul de Lagarde: The Orientalism of the Future and the
Positivism of the Present
168
Theodor No¨ldeke: Liberal Semitist
174
Julius Wellhausen: Hebraism and Realism
178
An Islamic Renaissance?
186
New Power, New Sources: The Flourishing of Indology in
the Era of the Raj
190
Beyond the Bible? Assyriology and Egyptology in the High
Liberal Age
194
Assyriology’s Escape from Infancy
196
Egyptology for Realists: Adolf Erman
203
Eduard Meyer: Universal Historian in a Specialized Age
206
5.
The Furor Orientalis
212
To Be a (Furious) Orientalist
216
Return to Diffusionism, or the Problem of Universalism in a
Philological Culture
227
Panbabylonism: An Assyriological Revolt and Its Cultural
Consequences
236
Babel und die Bibel Revisited
244
After the ‘‘Affair’’
249
6.
Toward an Oriental Christianity
252
Liberal Theology in Crisis
256
The Religious-Historical School
259
The Oriental Origins of New Testament Christianity
267
Buddha versus Jesus; or, Fin de Sie`cle Christians and the Problem
of Parallels
270
Persia and Hellenistic Judaism
279
Orientalizing Saint Paul
284
7.
The Passions and the Races
292
On Aryans and Semites
295
Paul Deussen, Schopenhauerian Christian
300
Popularizing the Aryan Indian: Leopold von Schroeder and
Houston Stewart Chamberlain
311
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Cambridge University Press
978-0-521-51849-9 - German Orientalism in the Age of Empire: Religion, Race, and Scholarship
Suzanne L. Marchand
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Contents
xi
Semitistik in the Post-liberal Period
321
Ignaz Goldziher: Man between Two Laws
323
8. Orientalism in the Age of Imperialism
333
The Culture of German Imperialism
335
German Orientalists and the Actuality of Empire
339
Colonialism and Its Orientalist Institutions
348
Martin Hartmann, Enlightened Arabist
356
Carl Becker: Colonialism and Kulturgeschichte
361
East Asia’s Place in the Sun
367
Otto Franke: Orientalism in the Age of ‘‘Indirect’’ Colonialism
377
Erwin Baelz: The Orientalism the Kaiserreich Could Not Use
383
9. Interpreting Oriental Art
387
Oriental Art and the Ethnographic Museum
393
Oriental Carpets and Austrian Art Historians
398
Josef Strzygowski: The Art-Historical Furor Orientalis
403
Exhibiting the Orient in Munich and Berlin
410
The Turfan Expeditions and the Intellectual Consequences
of the Central Asian Antiquities Race
416
10. Orientalists and ‘‘Others’’
427
Orientalists and Others, 1900–1918
429
The Orientalists and the Great War
436
Declaring Jihad
438
Utility, at Last
446
Losing the Eastern Propaganda War: Turks, Armenians, and Jews
454
Richard Wilhelm, German Mandarin
463
Epilogue
474
Orientalism’s Indian Summer: Weimar Scholarship and Its
Discontents
476
Orientalism and Nazism
487
Why German Orientalists Laid the Foundation for Multicultural
Thinking, but Could Not Develop It
495
Select Bibliography
499
Index
513
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978-0-521-51849-9 - German Orientalism in the Age of Empire: Religion, Race, and Scholarship
Suzanne L. Marchand
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Acknowledgments
It would be the height of insolence, not to mention an act of inexcusable ingratitude,
to open a book that offers a contextual, critical history of the practice of scholar-
ship without acknowledging that this book too ‘‘came from somewhere.’’ It came
chiefly from my very cluttered office in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, but it was also
shaped by my visits to German archives and libraries, my years as a faculty
member at Princeton University, and by my encounters, personal and electronic,
with a large number of people who provided me with crucial references or made
helpful criticisms. This book – very long in gestation – was also made possible by
grants from various patrons, who have been extremely supportive without being
at all intrusive, or even impatient. In what follows, I will try to express my
appreciation to those who have been most important in helping me put together
this long and complicated study, but the fact remains: a book that takes a dozen
years to research and write will owe debts to many people and circumstances,
debts the author will never entirely manage to acknowledge, much less repay.
Let me begin at the beginning, and thank, first of all, my wonderful Princeton
colleagues amongst whom I was living and working when I first began this project.
Here especially I would like to thank Hans Aarsleff, Peter Brown, Natalie Zemon
Davis, Lionel Gossman, Anthony Grafton, Peter Lake, and Anson Rabinbach, as well
as the members of the team with whom I wrote Worlds Together, Worlds Apart,
Jeremy Adelman, Stephen Aron, Stephen Kotkin, Gyan Prakash, Robert Tignor, and
Michael Tsin; the rich (and contentious!) discussions we had about how to conceive
this world history textbook greatly influenced my thinking on many things, one of
which was German orientalism. In 1997, I profited greatly from a Humboldt Stiftung
fellowship, which I used to begin my archival research in Berlin and to discover just
how enormous and complex the topic I had chosen to write on really was. In 2000–1,
I was lucky enough to be chosen to be a Fellow at the Wissenschaftskolleg zu Berlin;
this year was vital both to my further exploration of the libraries and archives and
to my reshaping of the project. At the Wiko, I benefited particularly from my
conversations with Philippe Burrin, Deborah Shuger, and Jacques Waardenburg,
and from my interactions with the members of the ‘‘Indische Schwerpunkt,’’ Partha
Chatterjee, Navid Kermani, Velcheru Narayana Rao, David Shulman, and Sanjay
Subramanyam, all of them ‘‘orientalists’’ of the most distinguished and insightful
kind, and all of them delightful iconoclasts too, each in his own way.
I am very grateful also to the staff members of the Geheimes Staatsarchiv in
Berlin, the Museum fu¨r Indische Kunst, and the Handschriftsabteilung at the
xiii
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978-0-521-51849-9 - German Orientalism in the Age of Empire: Religion, Race, and Scholarship
Suzanne L. Marchand
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xiv
Acknowledgments
Staatsbibliothek Berlin for their assistance in locating and using archival materials;
I have also used in this book some material I gathered in researching my previous
one, then located in the Auswa¨rtiges Amt Archiv in Bonn and the Zentrales
Staatsarchiv in Potsdam (I have indicated new locations for this material in the
bibliography). But I found that most of the subjects I was dealing with were so
under-researched that the published primary and secondary material on them had
not yet been put into synthetic form, or properly contextualized, and so there are
many individuals or topics surveyed herein for which an exploration of archival
sources is still needed; in fact, it is one of the author’s hopes that this book will stir
interest in some of these long-forgotten subjects and that other scholars will now
seek out unpublished letters, diaries, and documents. In any event, I discovered
that the printed primary source material left behind by modern German oriental-
ists was vast and, to really get to know it, I would need, first of all, a great library
and, secondly, some time to read it.
Here is where the ACLS and LSU played critical roles. The ACLS offered me a
Burkhardt Fellowship, which I took in 2003–4; LSU very generously gave me a
year off then as well as another year off in 2005–6 to read and to begin writing my
book. The second year off was supported by an Atlas Grant from the LSU Board
of Regents, a marvelous program, which, like the Burkhardt Fellowship, helps
busy associate professors get that second book finished. I owe the completion of
this volume to these granting agencies and to Paul Paskoff and Gaines Foster, my
excellent departmental chairmen, who have helped me organize leaves and sup-
ported my research in every possible way. As for the library – though LSU’s isn’t
world-class, the Interlibrary Loan Office made it seem like it is, and I cannot
fail to include them in my thanks. Finally, I would like to thank Cambridge
University Press for its willingness to publish this long manuscript, and the
German Historical Institute in Washington, D.C., for its generous support for
its publication. It has been an honor to work with both of these great cultural
institutions.
Of course, books are also the products of personal exchanges of ideas and
information, and I have many people to thank as well. Among those who provided
me with very helpful references I would especially thank Mustafa Aksakal,
Margaret Anderson, Ali Anooshahr, David Armitage, Tuska Benes, Nina Berman,
Thomas Broman, Peter Brown, John Connelly, Natalie Zemon Davis, Omnia El-
Shakry, Anthony Grafton, Anselm Hagedorn, Ludmila Hanisch, Stefan Hauser,
John Henderson, Susannah Heschel, Steven Korenblatt, Anthony La Vopa, Kris
Manjapra, Peter N. Miller, Klaus Mu¨hlhahn, David Mungello, Perry Myers,
Lynn Nyhart, Elisabeth Oliver, Ju¨rgen Osterhammel, Reza Pirbhai, Till van
Rahden, Karl Roider, Dietmar Rothermund, Martin Ruehl, David Schimmel-
pennick von der Oye, Ismar Schorsch, Jonathan Sheehan, Harvey Shoolman,
Helmut Walser Smith, Jacques Waardenburg, George Williamson and Margherita
Zanasi. I have also benefited greatly from exchanging work with Nina Berman,
Heiner Feldhoff, Nick Germana, Alexander Haridi, Wolf Liebeschu¨tz, Douglas
McGetchin, Peter Park, Indra Sengupta, Sergei Stadnikov, and my own students,
Roshunda Belton, Eva Giloi, Heather Morrison, Martin Ruehl, and Derek Zum-
bro from whom I learned so much about their subjects, and about mine.
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