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Refuge in research: Walter Ruben’s exile and internment in Turkey
[working paper]
Corporate Editor
Leibniz-Zentrum Moderner Orient (ZMO)
Abstract This paper follows the plight of Walter Ruben (1899-1982), an Indologist who had begun his career in Frankfurt am Main and later became one of the leading Indologists of the German Democratic Republic. In mid-1930s, he escaped Nazi persecution by seeking exile in Turkey. Relying on archival research... view more
This paper follows the plight of Walter Ruben (1899-1982), an Indologist who had begun his career in Frankfurt am Main and later became one of the leading Indologists of the German Democratic Republic. In mid-1930s, he escaped Nazi persecution by seeking exile in Turkey. Relying on archival research in the Berlin-Brandenburg Academy of Sciences and Humanities (BBAW) and the Prime Ministry's Republican Archives (BCA) in Istanbul, the Turkish press, and oral historical sources, together with the publications of Ruben during his Ankara years, I bring to light Ruben's life trajectory during his exile and internment with a balanced analysis of his 'production of knowledge' as a scholar at risk. The scholarly pressure and difficulties Ruben faced as an endangered scholar hired by a single-party authoritarian state delineate the precariousness and vulnerabilities of life as an exile academic. His original research and writing during his forced internment in Kırşehir, on the other hand, marks another dimension of his exile years, namely his endless effort to look for a real refuge within his intellectual production.... view less
Keywords
World War II; Turkey; Third Reich; exile; academic; intellectual; Nazism; biography
Classification
General History
Cultural Sociology, Sociology of Art, Sociology of Literature
Free Keywords
Walter Ruben; internment
Document language
English
Publication Year
2021
City
Berlin
Page/Pages
14 p.
Series
ZMO Working Papers, 29
ISSN
2191-3897
Status
Published Version; reviewed
Licence
Deposit Licence - No Redistribution, No Modifications