El Arabiya. The Association of Arab Students – Germany | Libya | Syria
Organizations
Selma Hertz, 2024
In interwar Berlin, Egyptian, Syrian, Palestinian and many other Arab students from different colonies and mandated territories came together at the universities. From 1923 onwards, they organised themselves in El Arabiya, the first Arab student association in the German Reich. The members of El Arabiya demonstrated against European imperialism and supported the independence movements in their home regions from their base in Berlin. At the same time, they participated in colonial science discourses in lectures and seminars and founded academic institutions such as the Islamia in 1924 and the Islam Institute in 1927.
On the one hand, the resulting tensions in the field of orientalism at Berlin universities illustrate how anti-colonial protests globalised parallel to the new dynamics of European expansion in the 1920s. On the other hand, it becomes clear that the imperial metropolis of the Reich developed into a centre of such protests. The history of El Arabiya shows the extent to which colonial migrants in the German Reich were committed to opposing colonialism and shaping decolonial worldviews.
References:
Ahmed, Aischa: Arabische Präsenzen in Deutschland um 1900. Biografische Interventionen in die deutsche Geschichte, 2020.
Dinkel, Jürgen: “Mecca of Oriental patriots.” Antikolonialismus in Deutschland 1900 bis 1960, in: van Laak, Dirk et al. (Hrsg.): Weimar und die Welt. Globale Verflechtungen der ersten deutschen Republik, 2021, S. 53–88.
Höpp, Gerhard / Gesemann, Frank / Sweis, Haroun: Araber in Berlin, 1998.
Höpp, Gerhard: Texte aus der Fremde. Arabische politische Publizistik in Deutschland, 1896–1945. Eine Bibliographie, 2000.
Kuck, Nathanael: Anti-colonialism in a Post-Imperial Environment – The Case of Berlin, 1914–33, in: Journal of Contemporary History, 49 (2014) 1, pp. 134–159.
Nordbruch, Goetz: Arab Students in Weimar Germany – Politics and Thought Beyond Borders, in: Journal of Contemporary History, 49 (2014) 2, pp. 275–295.
Stationen
The Weimar Republic and the “Orient”
Muhammed Kamil Ayyad [1900–1986]
Muhammed Nafi Tschelebi [1901–1933]
Anticolonialism beyond borders
Encounters in the “Oriental Studies”
Arab Students after 1933