Daniel Gerlach

Daniel Gerlach (* 1977 in Wuppertal ) is a German author , publicist , orientalist and Middle East expert. He is co- publisher and editor-in-chief of Zenith magazine - magazine for the Orient .

Life

Gerlach studied at the Universities of Hamburg and Paris IV Sorbonne , where he obtained a Magister Artium in history and oriental studies (2005) and a License d'histoire (2001). His teachers included the Middle East historian Helmut Mejcher and the orientalist Gernot Rotter .

A monograph on the interrelationships between the two German states and the Middle East during the Cold War and the emerging international terrorism entitled The Double Front: The Federal Republic of Germany and the Middle East Conflict (1967–1973) emerged from his academic thesis .

During his studies in 1999 Gerlach founded the magazine Zenith together with fellow students in Islamic Studies at the University of Hamburg (at that time with the addition of the magazine for the Orient ). The aim was to create a magazine that would offer differentiated, well-founded, but broad public reporting on the Muslim world.

After completing his studies, Gerlach worked, among other things, as an author and director of television documentaries on the culture and history of the Middle East on behalf of the Second German Television . He also wrote as a freelancer for national newspapers and magazines, including the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung and Die Welt .

In 2008, Gerlach founded the Deutscher Levante Verlag GmbH together with two other Zenith publishers , and from then on the magazine appeared in their program. Gerlach regularly ran the magazine together with other publishers and became its editor-in-chief in 2012 together with Christian H. Meier.

Since 2013 Gerlach has headed the consulting institute zenithCouncil together with constitutional lawyer Naseef Naeem , which primarily deals with questions of statehood and law in the Arab world .

In 2014 Gerlach founded the Candid Foundation gGmbH together with other Middle East experts, including the publicist and political scientist, Abdelasiem El-Difraoui . The organization sees itself as an independent think tank and as an organization promoting intercultural relations between civil society in Europe and the Mediterranean . This should also be done with the help of media and technological innovation. Zenith magazine has also been an organ of the Candid Foundation since 2015 .

In 2015 his non-fiction book Rule over Syria - Power and Manipulation under Assad was published , in which Gerlach describes architecture, internal cohesive forces and strategies of the Syrian government.

In addition to his analytical and journalistic work, Gerlach deals with the topics of cultural history and archeology and researched, among other things, robbery excavations and the illegal trade in oriental antiquities. In a documentary by the broadcaster arte on the anniversary year of Richard Wagner , he addressed the oriental influences of the composer's worldview, which he called the "Wagner religion". Gerlach regularly gives lectures on the Middle East and has spoken at King's College London , Princeton , Oxford and Yale Universities, among others .

In March 2017 it became known that Gerlach was on an entry ban list of the Syrian Assad regime together with the war reporter and documentary filmmaker Marcel Mettelsiefen , also an employee of the magazine Zenith , and the Swiss reporter Kurt Pelda .

Positions

The double front

In his work on the "double front", Gerlach tried, among other things, to prove that the federal governments under Kurt Georg Kiesinger and Willy Brandt , who had initially been Foreign Minister under Kiesinger, did not pursue a coherent Middle East policy in the "mined region". Influenced by the Cold War, the competition with the GDR , the historical relationship with Israel and party-political conflicts, an improvised and conceptless “ ad hoc policy” emerged in Bonn , which later became a constant in the Middle East. The review of the portal for political science notes that, according to Gerlach, the German perceptions of the conflict were shaped by the Israeli victory in the Six Day War and that they were often “under the sign of misperceptions about the Arab states”. The East German Arabist Wolfgang G. Schwanitz , on the other hand, considers the book to be unacceptable as a diplomatic story because of the lack of source work; the GDR chapter, like some other texts, did not stand up to any test. Gerard Bökenkamp, on the other hand, considers the presentation of the party political standpoints and the balance policy of the Federal Republic to be successful.

Syria

In his book Rule over Syria , which was published in 2015 and is offered by the Federal Agency for Political Education, Gerlach argues, among other things, that the apparent dysfunction of the Syrian power apparatus (parallel structures, ambiguities in the chain of command) actually increases the strength and viability of the Assad Government promoted. Among other things, Gerlach calls for the international community to turn more towards those sections of the population who do not feel represented by either the government or the opposition. According to the bpp, the book is "in addition to a well-founded political analysis, also a didactic piece on despotism and authoritarian rule techniques".

In the book, Gerlach also addresses the structural parallels between the Assad government and the so-called Islamic State .

In his methodology, Gerlach refers, among others, to the French sociologist and Syria researcher Michel Seurat, who was kidnapped in Beirut in 1985 by the Islamic Jihad organization and died a year later while being held hostage.

The six major power blocs are unable to work together constructively. He advocates a solution of the third way: You have to reach those people who are still on Syrian territory and serve the Assad regime actively or passively. This section of the population would have to develop its own forces, which form an alternative to the active warring parties and negotiate a ceasefire according to their own needs. "And for that they must be able to count on political guarantees from international powers."

Islamic State in Syria

In the course of the dispute over the so-called Islamic State, Gerlach and the research group zenithCouncil criticized the assumption that this was a state or a "state education project". Rather, the discussion is an expression of arbitrariness in dealing with the question of what a state in the Middle East is and what tasks it has to fulfill. Instead, it makes more sense to speak of a "permanently warring occupying power" with "imperial" claims. The Assad regime and IS coexist and are dependent on each other. The terrorist militia is needed for tactical reasons, said Gerlach in 2016. “You are in a tactical equilibrium that neither side has an interest in dissolving. However, this interest is extremely difficult to communicate to your own supporters, which is why the two regimes are now and again forced to field their troops against each other and, if it seems tactically opportune, to sacrifice willfully. "

Shiite militias

In an analysis of the phenomenon of Shiite militias and the Al-Hashd al-Sha'bī , Gerlach criticizes the use of the term jihadism in this context. Based on the resistance ideology and behavior of these groups, the word creation "muqawamism" is more appropriate. After the killing of Iranian major general Qassem Soleimani, commander of the Qods armed forces , on January 3, 2020 in Iraq and the Iranian rocket fire on a US base a few days later, Gerlach warned that further retaliation by Shiite groups against American targets was to be expected. In the ZDF broadcast Maybrit Illner he declared that the "Shiite resistance" would take revenge indefinitely and was now less predictable due to the death of Soleimani and the Iraqi militia leader Abu Mahdi al-Muhandis, who were also killed in the attack. Gerlach also expressed doubts about the defense capability of the American armed forces against Iranian missiles in Iraq. At the end of January 2020, it was announced that the US had not yet installed any Patriot anti-aircraft missiles to secure its bases against ballistic missiles.

Sykes-Picot Agreement

Gerlach is critical of the media and historical reception of the Sykes-Picot Agreement . A large majority of journalists and academics consider the French and British mandate from the collapse of the Ottoman Empire to the end of the Second World War to be the main cause of the disintegration of state structures since 2011. Gerlach counters this by saying that within the French sphere of interest only partially contiguous areas have been separated. The mandate powers had taken care to preserve the cultural space there. The Middle East expert mentions the minority policy of the time and the sectarianism of the Ottoman administration, the emergence of authoritarian governments and a lack of critical reappraisal of their own history as further factors that should be considered in addition to the agreement.

Denominationalism vs. Sectarism

In his book The Middle East does not go under - the Arab world before its historical chance , Gerlach criticizes the widespread use of the term “denominationalism” to describe contradictions or tensions between religious, denominational, and sometimes ethnic communities and identities Middle East, particularly in Syria and Iraq. Confessionalism does not do justice to the phenomena and above all arouses associations with the German experience with the Protestant-Catholic antagonism. Instead, Gerlach suggests calling these phenomena “ sectarism ”, a loan word from the English sectarianism or French sectarisme and a translation of the Arabic ta'ifiya.

criticism

Gerlach is a regular guest in German and international TV media. The ZDF journalist Claus Kleber described him as one of “the leading German experts” for the Middle East and the Muslim world.

The magazine Buchjournal declared Gerlach the "new Peter Scholl-Latour ".

In a review of his book “The Middle East doesn't go under”, the Süddeutsche Zeitung called Gerlach an “almost lonely caller in the proverbial desert of the Middle East experts.” Gerlach had “succeeded in creating an excellent book that dispenses with the usual know-it-all and has clairvoyant and entertaining backgrounds describes."

In 2013, he was host and expert in the documentary series Auf der Flucht by the ZDFneo channel , in which six Germans traveled along the refugee routes to Iraq and Ethiopia. The combination of entertainment and documentation met with divided media coverage and in some cases led to fierce controversy. The experiment makes use of reality formats from the toolbox, it cannot make the right decision. What is always committed reportage and offers context through informative clips, works in other places like a “mixture of cheap political magazine and trash soap”. The “voyeuristic food for the viewer” is attempted to “add journalistic fodder”. Gerlach expressed understanding for criticism of the style and design of the program, but defended it as an attempt to place an urgent topic outside the short news reports in the media. The format was awarded the German Television Prize in 2013 .

In 2015 the Syrian poet Ali Ahmad Said Esber , known as Adonis, was chosen to receive the Erich Maria Remarque Peace Prize of the city of Osnabrück. The jury wanted to honor him “for his advocacy for the separation of religion and state, for equal rights for women in the Arab world and for an enlightened Arab society”. Several journalists and intellectuals criticized this because Adonis had "not distanced himself decisively enough" from the Assad government. At the request of the jury, Gerlach had taken on the laudation for Adonis and stated that despite the controversy he would be available as a laudator.

Publications (selection)

The double front - the Federal Republic of Germany and the Middle East conflict 1967-1973 . Lit Verlag, Berlin 2006, ISBN 3-8258-9399-5 .
Lord Haw Haw - Hitler's English voice , a documentary radio play with Ulrich Noethen (co-author Johann Buchholz). Random House Audio, 2006, ISBN 978-3-8660-4115-8 .
The hour of the jackals - German-Israeli relations during the Yom Kippur War in the NATO crisis in 1973 , in: The German-Israeli security relations : past, present, future , ed. by Milena Uhlmann, Berliner Wissenschafts-Verlag, Berlin 2008, ISBN 978-3-8305-1569-2 .

Freud at the Abbasidenhof? The sexual theory of the poet Gahiz , in: Fremde, Feinde, Kurioses: Festschrift for Gernot Rotter , ed. by Benjamin Jokisch, Ulrich Rebstock, Lawrence I. Conrad, De Gruyter, Berlin 2009, ISBN 978-3-11-019232-2 .

(Ed.): The Middle East in 100 Heads - Biographical Handbook on Present and Contemporary History. (Co-editor Christian H. Meier) Federal Agency for Civic Education, Bonn 2012, ISBN 978-3-8389-0287-6 .

Men who stare at corpses - how our image of the war in Syria is created (co-author Nils Metzger), in: Aus Politik und Zeitgeschichte 8/2013 , Bonn 2013, ISSN 0479-611X.

(Ed. And others): Coping with dictatorship - processing and transitional justice in Egypt and Tunisia . forum zenith eV, Berlin / Tunis 2013, ISBN 978-3-943737-01-1 .

Rule over Syria - power and manipulation under Assad . Edition Körber, Hamburg 2015, ISBN 978-3-89684-164-3 .

Algeria - in the land of newspaper readers , in: Handbuch Arabische Medien , ed. by Carola Richter and Abdelasiem El-Difraoui, UVK, Konstanz 2015, ISBN 978-3-86764-509-6 .

(Ed. And others): Atlas of the Arab Spring - a world region in upheaval , Federal Agency for Civic Education, Bonn 2016.

Suddenly responsible , in: International Politics and Society - IPG . By Daniel Gerlach , June 16, 2017 / Близькосхідна Росія: як Москва опинилася перед вибором у сирійському конфлікті , 27 червня 2017 Ukrainian / [1]

The Middle East is not going under - the Arab world is facing its historic opportunity . Edition Körber, Hamburg 2019, ISBN 978-3-89684-268-8 .

(Ed.): The New Libya: Stories from an Unknown Land . (Co-editor Robert Chatterjee) Deutscher Levante Verlag, Berlin 2020, ISBN 978-3-943737-96-7 .

Filmography

2005: The power of knowledge: Marie Curie in Paris (with Johann Buchholz)
2006: TerraX : The Da Vinci Code . The riddle of Rennes-le-Château (with Georg Graffe )

2006: Imperium II: Storm over the Bosporus - the Ottoman Empire (with Georg Graffe)

2007: Troy is everywhere: The miracle on the Indus (with Christopher Gerisch and Andreas Sawall)

2008: TerraX Imperium III: Race to East India (with Georg Graffe)

2009: TerraX Morgenland (Parts I and III)

2010: TerraX: Persia - Inheritance of Fire (with Saskia Wisdom)

2010: TerraX Imperium IV: The empire of the caliphs

2010: where is Islam drifting? (with Friedrich Klütsch )

2011: Egypt - birth of a great power (with Susanne Utzt and Stefan Köster)

2011: The Fragile Dream - The Orient after the Revolution (with Dietmar Ossenberg and Andreas Lünser)

2011: The Seven Heads of John - on the trail of the relics

2012: Overcoming dictatorship (with Friedrich Klütsch)

2013: Salvation the Redeemer: The Wagner Religion

Individual evidence

↑ Bibliographical evidence in the portal for the social sciences, via GESIS

↑ Christiane Müller-Lobeck: There is no such thing as the state . Daniel Gerlach analyzes how the Assad regime has remained in power since 2011. In: taz . May 23, 2015 (review).

↑ Daniel Gerlach: Rule over Syria - Power and manipulation under Assad . Edition Körber Foundation, Hamburg 2015, ISBN 978-3-89684-164-3 .

↑ Cultural Destruction Campaign - The Destruction of Antiquity in Palmyra ( Memento from September 9, 2015 in the Internet Archive ), title, theses, temperaments , September 7, 2015

↑ Wagner versus Verdi , The Wagner Religion ( Memento of the original from January 7, 2016 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link has been inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. , arte , August 18, 2013

↑ ICSR Event - Expert Talk and Interactive Session on the Syrian Conflict. In: ICSR. October 16, 2018; Retrieved January 3, 2019 (UK English).

↑ Past Events | The Institute for the Transregional Study. Retrieved January 3, 2019 .

^ Candid Foundation: Our Founders. Accessed December 11, 2019 (German).

↑ The War of Narratives in Syria: Deciphering Al-Asad's Regime | Yale MacMillan Center Council on Middle East Studies. Retrieved January 3, 2019 .

^ Zapp (magazine) : Syria journalists on wanted list - NDR-online from March 8, 2017, accessed on March 13, 2017

^ Daniel Gerlach: The double front: The Federal Republic of Germany and the Middle East conflict 1967–1973 , Lit Verlag , 2006, p. 204

↑ Portal for Political Science - The Double Front. Retrieved April 8, 2017 (German).

↑ Wolfgang G. Schwanitz: Review of: Engler, Katja: The German question in the Middle East. Political relations of the Federal Republic of Germany to Iraq and Jordan 1951-1965. Berlin 2007 / Gerlach, Daniel: Die doppelte Front. The Federal Republic and the Middle East Conflict 1967-1973. Berlin 2007. In: Connections. A Journal for Historians and Area Specialists. March 14, 2008, <www.connections.clio-online.net/publicationreview/id/rezbuecher-10272>.

↑ Gérard Bökenkamp: ECONOMY, POLITICS, FINANCE: COLLECTED REVIEWS 2005-2008 . BoD - Books on Demand, 2009, ISBN 978-3-8391-3310-1 , pp. 16 ( google.de [accessed on April 8, 2017]).

^ Federal Agency for Civic Education: Rule over Syria | bpb. Retrieved April 8, 2017 .

↑ Who rules Syria? , Daniel Gerlach in conversation with Spiegel editor Dieter Bednarz , March 25, 2015

^ Federal Agency for Civic Education: Rule over Syria | bpb. Retrieved April 8, 2017 .

↑ "The Arab Spring was an epoch-making success" ( Memento of the original from January 7, 2016 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. , Daniel Gerlach in an interview with Marie Schreier and Benjamin Weiß, In: bpb: Magazin No. 08, 2015, p. 23. @1@ 2

↑ Federal Agency for Civic Education: What is happening in Syria - essay | bpb. Retrieved April 8, 2017 .

^ Nassef Naeem and Daniel Gerlach: The new S-Class. The "Islamic State" and statehood . In: zenithonline . 2nd October 2014.

↑ Daniel Gerlach: "In Syria you need IS for tactical reasons" - WELT. Retrieved April 8, 2017 .

↑ Civil War in Syria - The Rule Techniques of Bashar al-Assad . In: Deutschlandfunk . ( deutschlandfunk.de [accessed April 8, 2017]).

↑ Daniel Gerlach: "Are Shia Militias Jihadist?" - zenith. Retrieved January 18, 2017 .

↑ "Big revenge attack is still pending". Retrieved April 5, 2020 .

↑ Aaron Mehta: Here's why Patriot missile defense systems aren't in Iraq yet. January 30, 2020, accessed April 5, 2020 (American English).

↑ The Sykes-Picot Complex . ( ipg-journal.de [accessed on November 11, 2016]).

↑ The scapegoat of the autocrats . ( katapult-magazin.de [accessed on November 11, 2016]).

↑ Daniel Gerlach: The Middle East is not going under - The Arab world before its historic opportunity . Edition Körber Foundation, Hamburg 2019, ISBN 978-3-89684-268-8 .