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MIDDLE EASTERN STUDIES - ORIENTALISM

Siege of Vienna 1529,
Bookpainting about 1588

At the beginning of the 19th century a new scientific discipline was established in German speaking countries: Middle Eastern studies ( according to Duden: knowledge of Middle Eastern languages and cultures).
This, on the one hand, was the result of Europe's increasing political and economic interests in the Ottoman Empire and on the other hand was a side effect of Romanticism, a counter movement against the Enlightenment.
On their search for the submerged depths of the soul, the Romanticists were not only devoted to the Middle Ages and folklore but also saw in the Orient a mysterious source of inspiration, a simplistic image of which had been taken over from the 18th century ( Allaturca/Like the Turkish).
A flourishing activity of translating from the Middle Eastern languages started, in which the Austrian Joseph Freiherr von Hammer-Purgstall had his quantitative share. Unlike the German specialist in Middle Eastern and Oriental studies Friedrich Rückert, Mr. Purgstall is reproached for his inadequate poetic talent and his shortage of sympathetic understanding due to his through and through Euro-centric perspective.
Middle Eastern studies, like any other less scientific activity with foreign cultures, runs the risk of the "strange" being adjusted according to one's own patterns of thought and behavior.
The history of the meeting between the Christian Occident and the Islamic Orient has been, since time immemorable, characterized by stereotypes of the other and by stereotypes of oneself, from the sense of a hierarchical delimitation and idealizing self- portrait. Since antiquity the West has cultivated, for example, the illusion of Appolonian and Dionysian antagonistic powers, on the one hand the rational-logic and on the other hand the sensorial-ecstasy, a dualism which is not unknown to the people from the Middle East and until today, generally speaking, nothing has changed in the role allocation which was made by the West.

" For the Christian West, the Islamic Orient has always been more than a fearful religious and military enemy. Since their first contacts they have been blamed for exactly personifying, that, what every good Christian had to fight in himself: unscrupulous sexuality ,a digressing sensuousness and irrational cruelty due to lack of self-control. The hostile Islamic Orient turned into a background from which the Christian Occident could define itself as being on a chaste, well-mannered and humane - Christian level." (Roswitha Gost: Der Harem/The Harem, Dupont 1994, page 21f.)

"Head of a Turk"- on a housewall
in St. Margarethen / Bld. / Austria

By exactly studying the stereotype picture of the "strange" those needs, fears and longings become recognizable which one has learnt in the corset of one's own culture to despise and suppress.
Orientalism, in conceptual differentiation to Middle Eastern studies, describes the superficial, excluding ( not only idealizing but also demonizing ) the quite imperialistically biased view of the Western Societies towards the Orient, with which a counterpart to the way in which somebody sees himself is projected, also at the same time a proviso is created for one's own unconfessed " drive " .
The Turkish writer/poet Nazim Hikmet (1902-1963) fought back against the romanticized and simplistic description of the Middle East in European literature in his poem " Ein europaischer Orientale/ A European Oriental". The poem actually refers to the French poet Pierre Loti ( der " Frankenpoet/ The French Poet") about whom The Café Piyerloti (!) in Eyüp, at the end of the Golden Horn in Istanbul, is a reminder for us even today.

Ein europäischer Orientale/ A European Oriental

" Hashish!
Fatalism!
Kismet!
Trellis-work, inn, caravan, cistern!
A dancing sultana on a silver tray,
Maharajah, padishah,
A thousand-year-old shah.
From the minarets hang clogs made from mother of pearl,
Women with red henna on their noses
Embroider scarves with their feet.
From all directions Imams, with green beards, call to prayers!
That is the Orient, that the French poet has seen.
That
Is the Orient in books,
Which are published by the million in a minute.
Neither yesterday
Nor today
Nor tomorrow:
There never was
There never will be
Such a Middle East.

Translation by Sylvia Vogl-Sheperd