Edgar Pröbster

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Edgar Pröbster (born July 14, 1879 in Neustadt an der Orla , † April 18, 1942 in Leipzig ) was a German diplomat, orientalist . He taught at the University of Leipzig .

Life

The factory owner's son attended grammar school in Weimar . From 1898 to 1904 he studied oriental studies and law in Jena, Munich, Berlin and Leipzig (among others with August Fischer ). In 1903 he received his doctorate in Leipzig and passed the interpreter examination at the Berlin Seminar for Oriental Languages . In 1904 he passed the first state examination in law.

In 1905 he entered the diplomatic service , initially as an interpreter in Morocco . In 1910 he was a dragoman at the consulate in Fez ; from 1911 to 1914 he was head of the consulate. During the First World War , Pröbster worked as a secret agent in northwest Africa. When the World War broke out, he was taken prisoner by the French and was tried in a court martial in December 1914, but was released in exchange for the French consul in Nuremberg. He was transferred to the German Embassy in Constantinople ; At times he was also employed in Berlin. In November 1915 went Pröbster in renewed intelligence mission in U 38 from Kotor to Cyrenaica to Ahmad al-Sharif to go to war against France. In 1916, UC 20 brought him from Heligoland to southern Morocco, where he hired the “Blue Sultan” Mulai Hibat Allah and the Souss and Hiba tribes against the French colonial power. Pröbster eventually fled to Spain and was interned. In 1919 he returned to Germany.

After the war he began teaching oriental studies in Leipzig in November 1919 and was primarily concerned with the French colonies. In the Weimar Republic he was a member of the anti-republic German National People's Party from 1924 to 1932 . He joined DMG before 1931 . In 1931 he received his habilitation for Islamic culture and history in Leipzig. In the same year he was a board member of the German Society for Islamic Studies . From 1931 to 1939 he was a private lecturer for Islamic culture and language at the University of Leipzig . In 1933 the Foreign Office released him into retirement with the rank of Vice Consul. In November 1933 he signed the German professors' confession of Adolf Hitler . From 1936 to 1939 he held an extraordinary chair for Arab national studies at the University of Berlin's foreign university .

Pröbster was active in colonial politics during the Nazi era . He was lecturer for “Colonial Questions” in the “Main Office for Literature Maintenance of the NSDAP”, which was headed by Hans Hagemeyer . In addition, he was an employee of the Colonial Legal Research group in the Colonial Politics Department of the Reich Research Council, founded in 1941 . In a 1938 article on North Africa he reported that the “natives in need [...] quite often fell victim to Jewish and other usurers”.

literature

  • Ekkehard Elliger: German Oriental Studies at the Time of National Socialism: 1933–1945 , 2006
  • Maria Keipert (Red.): Biographical Handbook of the German Foreign Service 1871–1945. Published by the Foreign Office, Historical Service. Volume 3: Gerhard Keiper, Martin Kröger: L – R. Schöningh, Paderborn et al. 2008, ISBN 978-3-506-71842-6 .

Web links

Wikisource: Edgar Pröbster  - Sources and full texts

Individual evidence

  1. ^ A b c d Ekkehard Ellinger: German Oriental Studies at the Time of National Socialism 1933–1945 . Deux-Mondes-Verlag, Edingen-Neckarhausen 2006, p. 515.
  2. ^ A b c Ekkehard Ellinger: German Oriental Studies at the Time of National Socialism 1933-1945 . Deux-Mondes-Verlag, Edingen-Neckarhausen 2006, p. 26.
  3. Ekkehard Ellinger: German Oriental Studies at the Time of National Socialism 1933–1945 . Deux-Mondes-Verlag, Edingen-Neckarhausen 2006, p. 39.
  4. Ekkehard Ellinger: German Oriental Studies at the Time of National Socialism 1933–1945 . Deux-Mondes-Verlag, Edingen-Neckarhausen 2006, p. 244.
  5. ^ Edgar Pröbster: The North African Crisis 1934-1938 . In: The world of Islam . Volume 20, 1938, p. 95, quoted in Ekkehard Ellinger: Deutsche Orientalistik zur Zeit des Nationalozialismus 1933–1945 . Deux-Mondes-Verlag, Edingen-Neckarhausen 2006, p. 369.