Alfred von Kremer

Alfred von Kremer (born May 13, 1828 in Penzing near Vienna , † December 27, 1889 in Döbling ) was an Austrian orientalist and politician.

Life

Alfred Kremer first studied philosophy in Vienna , then law , also practiced modern Greek , Arabic , Hebrew and Persian on his own and traveled to Syria and Egypt from 1849–51 on a scholarship from the Academy of Sciences .

On his return he received the professorship of Vulgar Arabic at the Vienna Polytechnic, which he resigned in May 1852 in order to return to Egypt as the first interpreter at the Austrian consulate.

In 1858 he became vice consul, in 1859 consul in Cairo , then in 1862 he was given the consulate in Galatz , in 1870 that in Beirut, and in 1872 he was appointed ministerial advisor and consultant for the consular system in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in Vienna, and in 1876 he was elected a member of the Academy of Sciences there.

After residing in Cairo as a member of the Egyptian National Debt Commission since May 1876, he returned to the Vienna Ministry of Foreign Affairs in the spring of 1880 and was appointed Austrian Minister of Commerce a few months later, which he held until mid-February 1881.

Fonts

Kremer's writings are mostly of a geographical and ethnographic nature, especially the

• Contributions to the geography of northern Syria. Vienna 1852
• Central Syria and Damascus. Vienna 1853
• Topography of Damascus. Vienna 1855
• Egypt. Research on land and people. Leipzig 1863
• About the South Arabian legend. Leipzig 1866
• History of the ruling ideas of Islam. Leipzig 1868
• Cultural and historical forays into the field of Islam. Leipzig 1873

His ingenious cultural history of the Orient under the Chalifes (Vienna 1875–77, 2 volumes) made him known in other circles . He also published the Arabic texts of a

• Description of Africa from the 12th century (Vienna 1852),
• al-Waqidi's History of the Campaigns of Muhammad (Calcutta 1855), the
• Himjarian Kasideh (Leipzig 1865) and a German version of the
• Divans of Abu Nuwas (Vienna 1855);
• Contributions to Arabic lexicography (Vienna 1883–84, 2 volumes);
• About my collection of oriental manuscripts (Vienna 1885).

He fought against the Slavic and clerical tendencies in domestic politics in Austria in the work The Nationality Idea and the State (Vienna 1885).

literature

• Constantin von Wurzbach : Kremer, Alfred Ritter von . In: Biographisches Lexikon des Kaiserthums Oesterreich . 13th part. Imperial and Royal Court and State Printing Office, Vienna 1865, p. 196 ( digitized version ).
• Franz Ilwof :  Kremer, Alfred Freiherr von . In: Allgemeine Deutsche Biographie (ADB). Volume 51, Duncker & Humblot, Leipzig 1906, pp. 374-376.
• Kremer Alfred Frh. Von. In: Austrian Biographical Lexicon 1815–1950 (ÖBL). Volume 4, Publishing House of the Austrian Academy of Sciences, Vienna 1969, p. 253 f. (Direct links on p. 253 , p. 254 ).
• Peter Fuchs:  Kremer, Alfred Freiherr von. In: New German Biography (NDB). Volume 13, Duncker & Humblot, Berlin 1982, ISBN 3-428-00194-X , p. 5 f. ( Digitized version ).

Web links

• Literature by and about Alfred von Kremer in the catalog of the German National Library
• Works in the SSG Vorderer Orient digital of the University and State Library Saxony-Anhalt