Director of the Institute of Iranian Studies, Austrian Academy of Sciences, Vienna

Abstract:

The starting point of historical research concerning Iran and Persian speaking areas in Germany and “Germanophone” Austria was in fact shaped by the famous Austrian orientalist Joseph von Hammer-Purgstall (died 1856). In the early nineteenth century, he worked as an employee at Habsburgian diplomatic missions to the Ottoman Empire. His intention was to establish Oriental Studies in Vienna according to the French model which was preshaped by Silvestre de Sacy, in Paris. Throughout the following decades, a severe debate, if not to say: a quarrel between Hammer-Purgstall and a group of orientalists in Germany came into existence. These German scholars blamed Hammer-Purgstall because of his apparently poor philological abilities, particularly in Arabic; Their root idea was to establish Oriental Studies (i.e. roughly, what is called Middle Eastern Studies today) according to the methodologically straight and almost coercive model of Ancient Philology (Greek and Latin, Antiquity Studies). To a certain extent, the debate resembled somewhat the distance between German idealism and Austrian pragmatism (the latter having been caused politically). His pragmatic attitude led Hammer-Purgstall to historical research based on chronicles and, whenever accessible, archival material. His huge contributions to the study of Ottoman history were a result of these endeavors but, also his study on Iran under the rule of the Il-Khans.

Furthermore, history and particularly Iranian history remained almost untouched in the frame of German learnedness, until the late Twenties of the Twentieth century: It was roughly at that time that a young scholar having profiled himself in the field of history of Eastern Europe and Russia took closer notice of the oeuvre of the eminent Russian orientalist and historian Vladimir Bartol´d. This (then) young scholar was Walther Hinz. Having been deeply impressed and influenced by Bartol´d´s historical writings, Hinz himself shifted towards studying late medieval and early modern history of Iran (and also Transoxiana, as far as the Timurids were concerned). Whilst Hinz became famous as a researcher in the fields of Achemaenian and Elamic history too, his main service to the study of Iranian history is rather located in the field of political but, even more socio-economic history of Iran in early modern times.

In due course, Hinz stood on the top of a whole school of German researchers in post-Mongol Iranian history, down to the Qajar period. Among his pupils we find names like Hans Robert Roemer and Bertold Spuler who themselves established “selseleh´s” of specialists in these field. If we take into consideration that up to the middle of the 20th century, research in early modern history of Iran in England and in France was strongly connected with the initiatives of Vladimir Minorsky (who did even strongly influence historical research in North America too) and, that Minorsky himself once had been a pupil of Bartol´d´s, we find a surprising network of “compatible” scholars in “Iranian History” all over Europe disregarding the fact that many of them belonged to countries which had been involved in animosity and warfare against each other, during World War II.