Helmuth Scheel

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Helmuth Scheel (born May 19, 1895 in Berlin , † June 6, 1967 in Mainz ) was a German Turkologist and Orientalist. He was director of the Prussian Academy of Sciences in Berlin and later co-founder and general secretary of the Mainz Academy of Sciences and Literature . In an obituary, his performance as a promoter of the scientific work of others is emphasized in addition to his own scientific activity.

Life

After completing his school education, Helmuth Scheel began a career in middle administration. He learned Turkish in self-tuition. When the First World War broke out , he was drafted into military service and deployed in Serbia and Volhynia in northwestern Ukraine. After taking the interpreting examination for Turkish at the Oriental Seminary in Berlin in 1916, he was sent to the Ottoman Empire for military service . After a short stay in Constantinople, he was deployed to a field weather station near Sinope on the Black Sea, where he stayed until the end of the war.

After the end of the war, he continued to work in the judicial service and, in addition to his job, caught up on his school leaving examination. He then studied oriental languages, Islamic philology, history and musicology in Berlin and Greifswald. For the Foreign Office he made trips to Paris, Istanbul and North Africa. In 1921 he passed the examination to become a court clerk, in 1923 the diploma examination for Turkish at the seminar for oriental languages in Berlin. In 1926 Scheel became an unskilled worker and in 1932 a councilor in the Reich Ministry for Science, Education and National Education , where he was appointed by his teacher, the orientalist and minister of education, Carl Heinrich Becker .

Helmuth Scheel received his doctorate in 1928 under Erich Bräunlich in Greifswald, his dissertation was entitled "The letters of the Turkish sultans to the Prussian kings in the period from 1721 to 1774 and the first Prussian surrenders in 1761". From 1933 Scheel worked as a lecturer at the Oriental Seminary in Berlin as the successor to his teacher Johann Heinrich Mordtmann , who died in 1932 . From 1938 to 1939 he was a lecturer in Greifswald.

After initially getting a job at the Berlin Academy as librarian and archivist on October 1, 1938 , he was appointed academic official and archivist on October 28 , 1938 by Reich Education Minister Bernhard Rust as director of the academy and on June 24, 1939 confirmed as director of the academy and professor . As director he was subordinate to the respective president of the academy; his area of ​​responsibility included in particular internal matters of the academy. Later Scheel u. a. responsible for the successful outsourcing of the academy's library to protect against war damage. In 1939 he took over the management of the Deutsche Morgenländische Gesellschaft and was editor of the magazine of the Deutsche Morgenländische Gesellschaft (ZDMG) from 1939 to 1952 . In 1941 he was appointed honorary professor for Islamic Studies (Turkology and Turkish Documentation) at the Friedrich Wilhelms University in Berlin.

After the end of the war he was unanimously confirmed as director of the academy by the plenum of the Berlin Academy on July 12, 1945. An expert report from 1945 certified that he had behaved correctly towards all employees of the Academy during the war, and that he had even offered support to threatened scientists. However, since Scheel had apparently become a member of the NSDAP in 1937 , which he denied himself, he was suspended from his position as director of the academy on January 7, 1946 due to an order from the SMAD , but remained an employee. Although he had been gradually rehabilitated since the beginning of 1946 due to his competence, he was ousted from this position in November 1946 in the Academy, which was now the German Academy of Sciences in Berlin , although not formally released: the plenum of the academy elected Josef Naas as the new director , who had worked at the committee for scientific management of the magistrate and was head of the cultural department of the Central Committee of the SED . At this time, Scheel accepted a position at the reopened university in Mainz.

As a full public professor, Scheel became the holder of the chair for Islamic philology and Islamic studies and the first director of the seminar for oriental studies . He headed the seminar until his retirement in 1963. The development work included, in particular, the creation of a seminar library with 18,000 volumes on oriental studies, which was particularly mentioned in Benzing's obituary, for which Scheel made numerous trips to antiquarian bookshops all over the world.

Helmuth Scheel was also involved in the founding of the Academy in Mainz on July 9, 1949, which initially mainly brought together former members of the Prussian Academy of Sciences . Scheel became the first general secretary of this academy.

Scheel was co-editor of the Philologiae Turcicae Fundamenta (Volumes I and II), one of the standard works of Turkology, and he was involved in several volumes of the work of Max Freiherr von Oppenheim zu Tell Halaf (1950, 1955).

Memberships

Helmut Scheel was a member of the Royal Danish Academy of Sciences , an honorary doctorate from the University of Dijon, secretaire general of the Association Internationale des Orientalistes and a member of the editorial committee of the Philologiae Turcicae Fundamenta.

Fonts (selection)

  • Prussia's diplomacy in Turkey 1721–1774 , de Gruyter, Berlin 1931.
  • The mission of the Polish envoy von Stadnicki to the gate (1733–1737) , in: Communications of the seminar for oriental languages ​​in Berlin. 35,2, pp. 177-192, Berlin 1932.
  • Hartmann, Richard and Helmuth Scheel (eds.): Contributions to Arabic, Semitic and Islamic studies , Harrassowitz Verlag, Leipzig 1944.
  • Ewald Wagner: Bibliography Helmuth Scheel , In: Journal of the Deutsche Morgenländische Gesellschaft , Vol. 118, 1968, pp. 5-15.

literature

  • Ludmilla Hanisch: The successors of the exegetes. German-language research into the Middle East in the first half of the 20th century, Otto Harrassowitz Verlag, Wiesbaden 2003, ISBN 3-447-04758-5 , p. 205.
  • Johannes Benzing : Obituary for Helmuth Scheel , In: Academy of Sciences and Literature Mainz: Yearbook of the Academy of Sciences and Literature Mainz 1968 , Steiner, Wiesbaden 1968, pp. 48-50.
  • Ewald Wagner: Obituary for Helmuth Scheel , In: Zeitschrift der Deutschen Morgenländische Gesellschaft , Vol. 118, 1968, pp. 5–15. (With photo)
  • Jürgen Kocka (ed.), Peter Nötzoldt (collaborator), Peter Th. Walther (collaborator): The Berlin Academies of Sciences in divided Germany, 1945–1990 , Berlin-Brandenburg Academy of Sciences. Interdisciplinary working group of the history of Berlin academies in the 19th and 20th centuries, Akademie-Verlag, Berlin 2002, pp. 441ff., ISBN 3-05-003544-7 .
  • Peter Th. Walther: Thinking grid and cadre policy of the SED in the German AdW on (East) Berlin , In: Petra Boden, Rainer Rosenberg: Deutsche Literaturwissenschaft 1945-1965: Case studies on institutions, discourses, people , Akademie Verlag, Berlin 1997, p . 164, ISBN 3-05-002930-7 .
  • R. Köhler: On the conception of the academy by Johannes Stroux 1945 , session reports of the Leibniz Society 15 (1996) 7/8, p. 50.
  • Joachim Rex: The Berlin Academy Library: The Development of the Academy's Library in Three Centuries , Harrassowitz Verlag, Berlin 2002, p. 129ff., ISBN 3-447-04539-6 .
  • Walter W. Müller:  Scheel, Friedrich August Helmuth. In: New German Biography (NDB). Volume 22, Duncker & Humblot, Berlin 2005, ISBN 3-428-11203-2 , pp. 604 f. ( Digitized version ).

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ A b c d e f g Johannes Benzing: Obituary for Helmuth Scheel , In: Academy of Sciences and Literature Mainz: Yearbook of the Academy of Sciences and Literature Mainz 1968 , Steiner, Wiesbaden 1968, pp. 48-50.
  2. ↑ a b c d e Ludmilla Hanisch: The successors of the exegetes. German-language research into the Middle East in the first half of the 20th century, Harrassowitz, Wiesbaden 2003, p. 205, ISBN 3-447-04758-5
  3. ↑ R. Köhler: On the conception of the academy by Johannes Stroux 1945 , reports on the meetings of the Leibniz Society 15 (1996) 7/8, p. 50.
  4. ^ Joachim Rex: The Berlin Academy Library: The Development of the Academy's Library in Three Centuries , Harrassowitz Verlag, Berlin 2002, p. 129, ISBN 3-447-04539-6 .
  5. ^ Hans-Robert Roemer: Obituary for Franz Steiner in: Zeitschrift der deutschen Morgenländische Gesellschaft 118 (1968), pp. [219] -223.
  6. ^ Joachim Rex: The Berlin Academy Library: The Development of the Academy Library in Three Centuries , Harrassowitz Verlag, Berlin 2002, p. 136, ISBN 3-447-04539-6
  7. ↑ R. Köhler: On the conception of the academy by Johannes Stroux 1945 , reports on the meetings of the Leibniz Society 15 (1996) 7/8, p. 50.
  8. ^ Academy of Sciences and Literature Mainz: Yearbook of the Academy of Sciences and Literature Mainz , Steiner, Wiesbaden 1950
personal data
SURNAME Scheel, Helmuth
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German orientalist
DATE OF BIRTH May 19, 1895
PLACE OF BIRTH Berlin
DATE OF DEATH June 6, 1967
Place of death Mainz