Helmut Mejcher

Helmut Mejcher

Helmut Johann Friedrich Mejcher (born September 17, 1937 in Viersen ) is a German historian . From 1977 until his retirement in 2002 he taught as professor for modern history of the Middle East and the Mediterranean at the University of Hamburg .

Life

After several years of teaching and traveling, Mejcher studied English, history, philosophy and political science at the universities of Bonn , Bangor (Wales) and Tübingen . From 1967 to 1970 he was a fellow at the Middle East Center of St. Antony's College of Oxford University . There he did his doctorate on “The Birth of the Mandate Idea and its Fulfillment in Iraq up to 1926”. From 1970 to 1977 he was a research assistant at the Department of Contemporary History at the University of Tübingen . Extended research stays in countries in the Middle East, North Africa, the USA and Great Britain . His research relates primarily to the history of the Arab world, v. a. Iraq , Egypt , Palestine and Saudi Arabia , in the 20th century with special consideration of the oil policy and international relations.

Fonts

Books

• Imperial Quest for Oil: Iraq 1910-1928 , London: Ithaca (St. Antony's Middle East Mon-ographs No. 6), 1976.
• Die Arabische Welt: Aufbruch in die Moderne , Stuttgart: Klett sources and workbooks for history and politics, 1976, 2nd edition 1979.
• Politics and oil in the Middle East , Stuttgart: Klett-Cotta 2 vol., (1980, 1990).
• Times and people, edition K, history for college level and basic studies (together with E. Goerlitz, E. Meier, Kerrin Countess Schwerin), Paderborn: Schöningh-Schrödel, 1982, revised by Joachim Immisch, 2nd edition 1990.
• The Palestine Question 1917–1948: Historical Origins and International Dimensions of a National Conflict (Ed. With Alexander Schölch), Paderborn: Schönigh 1981, 2nd expanded edition 1993.
• Oil, the Middle East, North Africa and the Industrial States: Developmental and International Dimensions (ed. With Klaus Jürgen Gantzel), Paderborn: Schöningh 1984.
• History of the Arab World (Ed. Ulrich Haarmann), chap. IX: The Arab East in the Twentieth Century 1914–1985, pp. 432–501, Munich: Beck 1987, 5th edition 2004. Translation in Italian: Torino 2010.
• The Egyptian Society in the 20th Century (Ed. With Alexander Schölch), Hamburg: German Orient Institute, 1992.
• Sinai, June 5, 1967: Hotspot near and Middle East , Munich: dtv (20 days in the 20th century), 1998, 2nd edition 1999; Translations in Polish: Warsaw 1999, Italian (extended): Bologna 2000, Chinese: Taipei 2000 and Beijing 2001.
• Franz F. Schmidt-Dumont: Letters to my Hedekind (ed. With Marianne Schmidt-Dumont), Hamburg-Wohldorf: Private printing for family and friends, 2007.
• The Struggle for a New Middle East in the 20th Century: Studies in Imperial Design and National Politics (Eds. Camilla Dawletschin-Linder and Marianne Schmidt-Dumont), Berlin / Münster: LIT Verlag (Periplus Studien Vol. 11), 2007.
• Franz Frederik Schmidt-Dumont: From Altona to Ankara, A Hanseatic life in the Middle East (1882–1952). Berlin / Münster: LIT Verlag (Studies on Contemporary History in the Middle East and North Africa, Vol. 16), 2010.
• Time horizons in the Middle East: Studies and miscommunication on history in the 20th century (Eds. Sonja Mejcher-Atassi and Marianne Schmidt-Dumont), Berlin / Münster: LIT Ver-lag (Periplus Studien Vol. 16) 2012.
• The Middle East in World War II , Paderborn: Schöningh, 2017.
• Fusul min tarikh al-sharq al-awsat (articles by Helmut Mejcher translated into Arabic), ed.Sonja Mejcher-Atassi, Beirut: Dar al-Tanweer, 2017.

Essays

• Numerous articles in German, English and Arabic in specialist journals and conference proceedings, collected and published. a. in The Struggle for a New Middle East in the 20th Century: Studies in Imperial Design and National Politics (2007) and Time Horizons in the Middle East: Studies and Miscellular History in the 20th Century (2012).

Editing

• Studies on the history of the Middle East and North Africa, together with Camilla Dawletschin-Linder and Marianne Schmidt-Dumont, Berlin / Münster: LIT Verlag.

Reviews

• Book reviews in the following journals: British Journal of Middle Eastern Studies , Gazelle Review of Middle Eastern Literature , Historical Journal , International Journal of Middle East Studies , The International History Review , Islam , Military History , Orient , Political Quarterly , Quarterly Social and Economic history , the world of Islam , the world of the orient , magazine of the German Oriental Society , magazine for corporate history ; larger collective discussions are published in the newspaper Das Parlament , published by the Federal Agency for Political Education , under the titles: A standard work on Jordan (1976); Reading for travelers to Arabia (1977); Information on Iran (1978); Orient and Occident - a community of fate (1981); The Troubled Middle East (1984); Roads to Palestine (1984); The world of Islam from a European perspective (1987); The PLO - An Analysis (1987); Information about the Middle East (1988); Ayatollah Khomeini and the Islamic Revolution (1988); Political Everyday Life in Palestine (1989); The Palestinians in the shadow of the Gulf conflict? (1990); Israel - quo vadis? (1992); The Challenge of Islam (1992); A Slow Approach to Peace (1993); The Middle East and Europe: A Long and Mixed Relationship (1994); The Relationship Between Palestinians and Israelis: From the Difficult Road to Peace (1995); Interim assessments of political developments in the Middle East: will the peace process in the Holy Land succeed? (1996); A New Direction in Israeli Politics: The Path to an Uncertain Future (1997); Three publications on the faltering peace process in the Middle East: Between Alienation and New Beginning (1998)

Documentaries (Contribution)

• June 5, 1967: Crisis near and middle East , ARD-BR (Munich), 1999.
• On dangerous paths - The Baghdad Railway , LAVA Film (Berlin), Arte , 2007.
• HOT SPOT FILMS: Arshifuhum wa-tarikhuna: ahlam al-wahda wal-ittihad (Your Archives and Our Story: Dreams of Unity and Union), (2 parts, Aljazeera ), 2007.
• Caught in Bitter Lake. Ship trap Suez Canal , Neue Cut OUT Film-Berlin. Arte , 2009.

Web links

• Entry by Helmut Mejcher on the website of the History Department of the University of Hamburg