Enno Littmann

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Enno Littmann in Aksum (2nd from right), with other participants of the German Aksum expedition and Governor Gebre Selassie, February 1906.

Ludwig Richard Enno Littmann (born September 16, 1875 in Oldenburg , † May 4, 1958 in Tübingen ) was a German orientalist .

life and work

From 1894 Enno Littmann studied Protestant theology , Oriental studies , German , English and classical philology in Berlin (with August Dillmann ), Greifswald and Halle (Saale) . In 1898 he passed his exams as " senior teacher " for the subjects of religion and Hebrew and received his doctorate in oriental philology with the work The Verbum of the Tigre Language in Abyssinia . From 1898 to 1900 he deepened his studies with Theodor Nöldeke in Strasbourg and took part in a folklore expedition to Syria and Palestine , which was repeated in 1904. From 1901 to 1904 he read at Princeton University , took part in an expedition organized by there in 1905 to research the language and culture of the Tigre to Eritrea and in 1906 led the legendary German Aksum expedition , which carried out the first archaeological excavations in Aksum in Tigray ( Northern Ethiopia ). Employees were Daniel Krencker and Theodor von Lüpke .

In 1906 he was appointed full professor of oriental studies in Strasbourg, in 1914 in Göttingen, in 1917 in Bonn, in 1921 in Tübingen, where he stayed until his retirement in 1951. He had a decisive influence on the subject of Ethiopology through his work.

Littmann was a member of the Cairo Arab Academy, where he was a guest lecturer on several occasions, and the scientific academies of Berlin, Göttingen , Mainz, Copenhagen, Amsterdam, Brussels, Rome, Paris and Vienna. In 1931 he was accepted into the Pour le mérite for sciences and arts and was Chancellor of the Order from 1952 to 1955.

He was fluent in English, French, Italian, Latin and Greek, Hebrew, New Persian, Turkish and Arabic down to individual dialects as well as the languages ​​spoken in Ethiopia , Tigre , Amharic , Old Ethiopian and Tigrinya .

Littmann was the first to translate the stories from The Thousand and One Nights completely from Arabic into German. His edition (six volumes with almost 5,000 pages) was published by Leipziger Insel Verlag in the 1920s , was revised again and again by him until his death and is still available in bookshops today. His bibliography contains more than 550 entries.

Littmann, whose area of ​​expertise encompassed both the ancient and the new Orient in its entirety (including ancient Israel and modern Palestine), is considered to be the last “of the great European Orientalists” whose life's work is unmatched in breadth and depth. In Addis Ababa , 50 years after the Aksum expedition, his memory was so vivid that, on the occasion of his death, at the instigation of Emperor Haile Selassie, the flags were raised to half-mast. In the city of Aksum, the road leading to the archaeological zone was named after him.

Littmann estate

The estate of Enno Littmann is mainly in the State Library of Berlin - Prussian Cultural Heritage and in the archive of the Austrian Academy of Sciences in Vienna. The holdings (on Ethiopia and Eritrea) in Vienna - from the Maria Höfner estate - were systematically cataloged only recently (2009-2010) by Hatem Elliesie (Free University of Berlin). In addition, the archive of the Berlin-Brandenburg Academy of Sciences keeps a large number of Enno Littmann's letters and postcards to Eduard Meyer . After the indexing was completed, the holdings of the estate were put online on the website of the archive of the Austrian Academy of Sciences in 2011. Individual letters and documents are also stored in the Goettingen State and University Library.

Littmann Conferences

In 2002 the I. International Littmann Conference named after him on the subject of "Archeology and History of the Horn of Africa" ​​took place at the Ethnographic Museum in Munich (organized by: Museum Director Walter Raunig, Sudan archaeologist Steffen Wenig ). In January 2006 the 2nd International Littmann Conference took place in Aksum in Tigray , exactly one hundred years after the arrival of the German Aksum Expedition, with a focus on the history and culture of Tigray and the work of the German Aksum Expedition, under the title 100 Years German Aksum Expedition (Organizer: Archaeologist Steffen Wenig, Ethiopist Wolbert Smidt from the Research Center for Ethiopian Studies, Hamburg, in cooperation with the Goethe Institute Addis Ababa). The street that leads past the archaeologically important May Shum water reservoir was named after Littmann. The III. International Enno-Littmann Conference took place from April 1st to 4th, 2009 at the Free University of Berlin, organized by the Seminar for Semitic and Arabic Studies ( Rainer Voigt ) in cooperation with the German Orient Institute in Beirut ( Manfred Kropp ), the German Archaeological Institute ( Hans-Joachim Gehrke , Burkhard Vogt ) and the Orbis Aethiopicus (Raunig).

The aim of the conference is to present new research results from his research areas as well as studies on Littmann and his staff based on Littmann's broad research interests. A special feature of all conferences is that despite the official hostility between the two neighboring countries, scientists from Ethiopia and Eritrea participate or topics from both countries are always dealt with. The subject areas include the archeology of Tigray and Eritrea, the cultural heritage of the region (including oral traditions), Ethiosemitic languages ​​such as Tigrinya (in Tigray / Ethiopia, the main language of Eritrea) and Tigre (the second most important language in Eritrea), Arabic, historical research on Northeast Africa, and research on Arab regions, probably intensified in the future. Another subject area since the beginning of the conference is the Semitic inscription, which was decisively promoted by Littmann. The conferences are held alternately in Germany and countries in the Orient in which Littmann was active (Egypt and Eritrea are planned).

Fonts (selection)

  • An official list of the Bedouin tribes of the East Bank. In: Journal of the German Palestine Association 24, 1901, pp. 26–31
  • New Arabic folk poetry, collected and translated. Berlin 1902 ( online at Archive.org ).
  • Semitic Inscriptions. New York 1904 (with David Magie Jr. and Duana Reed Stuart ; online at Archive.org ).
  • German Aksum expedition . Vol. 1, 3, 4. Reimer, Berlin 1913
  • Semitic Inscriptions. Section A-D . (Syria. Publications of the Princeton University Archaeological Expedition to Syria in 1904-5 and 1909, Division IV), Leyden 1914-49.
  • Oriental words in German. Berlin 1920; like., 2. possibly u. verb. Ed., Tübingen 1924
  • From the oriental flea. Poetry and truth about the flea among Hebrews, Syrians, Arabs, Abyssinians and Turks. Leipzig 1925
  • Aḥmed il-Bedawī (= treatises of the Academy of Sciences and Literature. Humanities and social science class. Born 1950, Volume 3). Verlag der Wissenschaft und der Literatur in Mainz (commissioned by Franz Steiner Verlag, Wiesbaden).
  • Islamic-Arabic saints' songs (= treatises of the Academy of Sciences and Literature. Humanities and social science class. Born in 1951, Volume 2). Verlag der Wissenschaft und der Literatur in Mainz (commissioned by Franz Steiner Verlag, Wiesbaden).
  • A century of oriental studies. Pictures of life from the pen of EL Edited by Rudi Paret and Anton Schall , Wiesbaden 1955
  • with Maria Höfner : Dictionary of the Tigre language. Wiesbaden 1962.
  • The stories from the thousand and one nights. (6 volumes), ISBN 3458347437
  • Arab Bedouin stories . Olms, Hildesheim 2004, ISBN 3-487-12603-6 .

literature

  • Axel Knauf:  Enno Littmann. In: Biographisch-Bibliographisches Kirchenlexikon (BBKL). Volume 5, Bautz, Herzberg 1993, ISBN 3-88309-043-3 , Sp. 134-136.
  • Claudia Ott: Enno Littmann and his translation of 1001 nights . In: Karlheinz Wiegmann (Ed.): There and away. Tübingen all over the world, Kulturamt, Tübingen 2007 (Tübingen catalogs, volume 77), pp. 111–123, ISBN 978-3-910090-77-4
  • Rudi ParetLittmann, Enno. In: New German Biography (NDB). Volume 14, Duncker & Humblot, Berlin 1985, ISBN 3-428-00195-8 , p. 710 f. ( Digitized version ).
  • Rainer Voigt: Enno Littmann's diary of the Abyssinian Expedition (German Aksum Expedition) December 29, 1905 - April 7, 1906 . In: Steffen Wenig (Ed. In collaboration with Wolbert Smidt, Kerstin Volker-Saad and Burkhard Vogt): On imperial order: The German Aksum Expedition 1906 under Enno Littmann. Vol. 1: The actors and the scientific research of the DAE in Eritrea . Verlag Lindensoft, Aichwald 2006, ISBN 978-3-929290-33-2 (Research on the Archeology of Non-European Cultures [FAAK], Volume 3.1, edited by Burkhard Vogt, Commission for Archeology of Non-European Cultures [KAAK], German Archaeological Institute).
  • Steffen Wenig, Walter Raunig (Ed.): Afrikas Horn. Files from the First International Littmann Conference May 2-5, 2002 in Munich . Harrassowitz, Wiesbaden 2005 (meroitica 22).

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. Holger Krahnke: The members of the Academy of Sciences in Göttingen 1751-2001 (= Treatises of the Academy of Sciences in Göttingen, Philological-Historical Class. Volume 3, Vol. 246 = Treatises of the Academy of Sciences in Göttingen, Mathematical-Physical Class. Episode 3, vol. 50). Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, Göttingen 2001, ISBN 3-525-82516-1 , p. 153.
  2. after Rainer Voigt 2005
  3. On the III. Littmann conference in Berlin also dealt with scientists who took part in expeditions in the Middle East with Enno Littmann. The expeditions are American Archaeological Expedition to Syria (1899/1900) and Princeton (University) Expedition to Abyssinia (1905/1906).
  4. At the conference in Berlin special attention was paid to the Tigre. After Littmann laid the foundations for researching this language, young Eritrean scholars (and also the Ethiopian Studies working group at the Free University of Berlin under the direction of Rainer Voigt) are now looking into this new literary language, which is now the language of instruction in the tigrephone area has become. In research, the international cooperation with Eritrean scientists who have been invited is to be intensified. Scientists who are involved in excavations in Tigray could also be won for the conference.