Border crossers: The life of the forgotten orientalist Karl Süssheim. – Politics

Personnel files do not forget anything, in which the Munich University documents the shame. “At my invitation, Prof. Süssheim came to see me today,” Rector Leo Zumbusch recorded on May 29, 1933. He asked Karl Süssheim, associate professor of oriental studies, whether he “recognized his non-Aryan descent.” With that, the Jew Süssheim, born in Nuremberg in 1878, who stated “Bayer” on forms about his citizenship, was dismissed from the Ludwig-Maximilians-University. The Nazi law to “Restore the Professional Civil Service” ended hundreds of academic careers without significant resistance from the universities.

The man who was robbed of his livelihood here had long fought for recognition, despite an exceptional talent that enabled him to master Turkish, Persian and Arabic to such perfection that he impressed native speakers. For decades he wrote his detailed diaries in the oriental languages ​​in addition to Italian. These diaries are a historical treasure which, after a rather accidental discovery in the Berlin State Library, were unearthed a while ago by two orientalists from the University of Leiden. We owe an excerpted translation into English to your patience as a translator. However, only the impressive, well-sourced biography of the Munich historian and Turkologist Kristina Milz provides an appropriate salvation for the forgotten Bavarian orientalist.

Süssheim was a frequent diarist

She follows in Süssheim’s footsteps with scientific meticulousness and open empathy. So far, 13 of at least 21 diaries have been found, for the years 1903 to 1924 and 1936 to 1940. Milz also uses correspondence from the prolific writer Süssheim, including with prominent figures in the Young Turk movement that swept away the Ottoman Empire, and private letters from the family and circle of friends. A leitmotif of the biographer is Süssheim’s existence as a border crosser who manages to endure political and personal contradictions in a world that increasingly demands clarity.

This applies to his area of ​​interest in the Middle East as well as to his Bavarian environment, where he sensed early on what it means to be a Jew and belong to a minority. The diaries are kept in a sober tone, as if Süssheim were the reporter of his life. That doesn’t take away from the force of the events. An experience from 1916: on a train trip to Lake Chiemsee, a fellow historian uses Süssheim’s hat as an ashtray. When asked what he was doing there, he replies: “It’s not my hat.” Years later, the man will boast of acquaintance with Hitler.

During World War I, Berlin flirts with Islam

In 1916, in the middle of the First World War, Middle East experts are needed, it could be Süssheim’s heyday. Berlin flirts with Islam, with a “Jihad made in Germany”. Uprisings from Morocco to India, devised by the Foreign Office, are intended to weaken the colonial powers of France and England. But Süssheim mistrusted any political use of a religion, and he was also suspicious of the German-Turkish brotherhood of arms. Precisely because he knows the powerful in Istanbul better than almost any other German of his time. When Ottoman delegations visit – to Herrenchiemsee Palace – he is in demand as a brilliant translator. He notices the “disrespect” of the German officers, who gossip “long and loudly” behind the Turks’ backs about their alleged “ignorance”.

How did it happen that a Bavarian knew the Orient so well? Karl Süssheim was born into a liberal Jewish family. The father was a hop dealer, the maternal grandfather, David Morgenstern, 1848 the first Jewish member of the state parliament in Bavaria. The wealthy family made it possible for him to study history at several German universities. During language studies in Istanbul and Cairo, he finally met the leading young Turkish revolutionaries. He supports her criticism of the despotism of the sultan.

Mehmed Talat also becomes a “friend”. Talat, who later ruled dictatorially as interior minister in Istanbul and was responsible for the genocide of the Armenians in 1915/16. Milz considers it to be a credit to Süssheim’s intellectual “honesty” that he, deeply disappointed, clearly names Talat’s criminal role. But the close observer, as is often the case, remains ambivalent in his personal judgement. When Talat was murdered by a young Armenian in exile in Berlin (!) in 1921, he wrote: “Even if I lost a friend – justice was done.”

In the end he marries a Catholic woman from Lower Bavaria

Süssheim does not have to go to the front, he is deployed in Munich as a military censor. Despite the demand for secrecy, he copies passages from letters into his diary, which is also a treasure trove. The path to a paid job, however, proves to be extremely difficult. For years, Mother Clara wrote letters urging a “rich marriage”. A Jewess is the only option for Süssheim, but the shy man, who is in love with his books, keeps brushing him off despite frequent visits to the ball.

Milz also devotes himself to this private side and thus gives insights into a society that will be wiped out by the Nazis only a few years later. He, meanwhile an associate professor, only finds love for life at the age of 49. For her, he throws all resolutions overboard. Karolina, called Ina, is a Catholic, 27 years younger, poor, daughter of leather dealers from Lower Bavaria. One can imagine how strange the couple’s families were to each other. But Ina, clever and courageous, will remain at his side until the bitter loss of homeland.

The biographer suspects that Süssheim felt closer to a devout Catholic than to his often indifferent co-religionists. Because after being indifferent at a young age, he now takes his Judaism so seriously that he insists on a Jewish upbringing of his two daughters – born in 1929 and 1934. Even when attending a Jewish school becomes a burden for the family. Everyday discrimination is huge. In their Upper Bavarian holiday resort of Miesbach, the family is chased out of the boarding house because a guest doesn’t want to tolerate any Jews.

For two weeks he was in the Dachau concentration camp

Süssheim tries to “reflexively counter the absolute madness with the greatest possible normality”. So, two days after the November pogrom of 1938, he went to the familiar state library, where an employee asked the Jewish professor to leave the building immediately. A day later he was arrested and taken to the Dachau concentration camp.

He later recorded this in Arabic in his diary so that no one but him could read it. “When they came to me, I said: I’m a Jew and not that I’m a Jewish swine.” They then punched him in the face and neck “about 20 times in all.” There is also a camp drawing inscribed in Arabic. A unique document. After two weeks he is released. Süssheim is convinced that the detention was intended to induce the Jews to emigrate in order to rob them of their property.

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Süssheim doesn’t want to leave, but Turkish friends, with whom Ina corresponds, have long been urging him to save himself in Turkey. Before his death in 1938, the founder of the state, Atatürk, had already invited numerous German professors to set up new Turkish universities. Among them are many who saved themselves from the Nazis, Jews, Social Democrats. But meanwhile Turkey does not want to accept any more European Jews. The friends will also overcome this hurdle for “Karl Süssheim Bey”, as they respectfully call him. It will be a highly dramatic escape. As one of the last Jewish families from Munich, Ina and Karl Süssheim and their daughters were able to emigrate in June 1941 before the deportation trains rolled.

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This life of a Bavarian looks like an oriental fairy tale, in contrast to stories from 1001 nights it is well documented. A searcher is to be discovered who, in the course of a long, turbulent life as a scholar, bids farewell to Eurocentric, even racist ideas of the Occident and the Orient, until he writes “Orient” in quotation marks. At the same time, as an eyewitness, he experiences how all certainties disappear in his homeland. As a social democrat, his brother Max was involved in the Munich council revolution. The conservative professor rarely agrees with his brother, which doesn’t change the affection between the two. Milz is amazed that Max Süssheim, a complex socialite in lederhosen, seems to have been forgotten.

The biographer spoke to Karl Süssheim’s first daughter Margot, who lived in New York until 2020. The younger, Gioconda, died in the United States in 2006. Their daughter Lisa R. D’Angelo did not know that her grandfather was Jewish until she visited Turkey when she was 13. Only when she saw the Star of David on his grave did her mother tell her about it. Karl Süssheim, the cosmopolitan Bavarian patriot, never saw Munich again, he died in Istanbul in 1947.

The Munich University, where this dissertation was written, would do well to remember an extraordinary scholar and not just leave it to their archives. There is also an exchange of letters with Ina Süssheim, who fought in vain for reparations for eleven years until she received a small compensation for lost widow’s money.

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