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"My Experiences in the Orient" are the memoirs of sergeant Otto Zoberbier (1887-1974), an officer in the German army who partook in Germany's Mesopotamia campaign during WWI. The text is a highly fascinating document in several respects: We learn about the challenges of everyday life of German troops who were collaborating with the Ottomans (Young Turks) in the Fertile Crescent (Syria, Iraq, and parts of Persia), including travelling on the (still incomplete) Baghdad railway and Germans' attitudes towards their Turkish allies and the local Arabs, but also about entertainment, hunting, hospitals, etc.
Zoberbier also became an eyewitness of (parts of) the Armenian genocide. In spite of observed cruelties and suffered hardship (esp. from the heat, malaria, typhoid, etc.), the overall narrative is that of tourism, and exciting exotic adventure. Moreover, the history of the text raises general questions about text transmission and historical reliability, as the memoirs are preserved in 2 versions, none of them the "very original" one.
About Professor Guth:
Stephan Guth is a Professor of Arabic and Arabic literature at IKOS. He studied "Islamwissenschaft," Modern German literature, and Philosophy at the universities of Bonn, Tübingen, and Cairo. He wrote both his MA and PhD theses on contemporary Egyptian novels. Guth was a research fellow at the German "Orient-Institut" in Istanbul (1992-94) and Beirut (1995-96), and a post-doc who achieved his Habilitation in Bern (Switzerland) with a comparative history of the Arabic and Turkish novel (Brückenschläge [Building bridges] 2003). He has taught at universities in Bern, Berlin, and Munich, and has been at UiO since 2007. His research interests started with contemporary Arabic and Turkish fiction (cf. anthology Literary Visions), then languages (book Hauptsprachen der Islamischen Welt [Major Languages of the "Islamic World"], and now are mainly focused on etymology and conceptual history of Arabic, as well as Nahḍa Studies. A book on "Emerging Subjectivity" is forthcoming.
The event is open to all!