News office for the Orient

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Headquarters of the message center for the Orient: Berlin, Mauerstraße 45/46

The Intelligence Agency for the Orient (NfO) was an institution of the German General Staff and the Foreign Office that was active in the Middle East during the First World War . She was responsible for pro-German propaganda activities in the countries of the Orient and British India and at the same time carried out intelligence tasks.

The intelligence agency tried to convince soldiers of Islamic faith from the French, British and Russian armies to defend with little success. Islamic prisoners of war were concentrated in the so-called " half moon camp " near Berlin at the instigation of the intelligence agency . Here Islamic practices such as food laws or Ramadan were explicitly taken into account and the first mosque was built on German soil for the prisoners. “Guest speakers” from Turkey tried to agitate the prisoners and persuade them to change sides. A propaganda newspaper entitled "El Jihad" was distributed in POW camps.

The news agency supported nationalist and independence-oriented trends in the countries of Arabic, Indian and Ottoman space, Persia, and China to allow the German position in the Middle East , the Middle East and Transcaucasia to strengthen and the Entente -Mächte, France , Great Britain and Russia to weaknesses. The politicization of the term " jihad " in the Islamic world is, among other things, a. attributed to the propaganda activities of the news agency. According to Wolfgang G. Schwanitz , the term “Islamism” often appeared in the NfO environment . This in today's political sense, once used by Kaiser Wilhelm II as a short form for "Pan-Islamism", as Max von Oppenheim described it as a possible jihad movement and ally of the monarch before his 1898 trip to Palestine.

History and structure

Idea and initial situation

Relations between Germany and the Ottoman Empire were very good at the beginning of the 20th century. While Germany took part in military conflicts between the Ottoman rulers in terms of personnel and weapons, and the German military missions ensured the modernization of the Turkish army, remote parts of the multi-ethnic state were also opened up with the prestigious German-Ottoman major project, the construction of the Baghdad Railway . The rising great power Germany tried to win the Ottomans as allies. The Ottoman Empire, on the other hand, was on the ground: the European powers spoke of the " sick man on the Bosporus " because of the constant economic and political decline . The “ Oriental question ” of whether the Ottoman Empire would continue or split up as colonies and thus disintegrate was an important aspect of the foreign policy of imperialism .

The First World War began in July 1914 . On this occasion, the German orientalist and diplomat Max von Oppenheim (1860–1946) presented the Foreign Office with a memorandum entitled “Memorandum on the revolutionization of the Islamic areas of our enemies” in October . In it he wrote:

"First and foremost we have to think about our self-defense at the moment, to take advantage of Islam for ourselves and to strengthen it now as much as we can. [...] The perfidy of our opponents also gives us the right to resort to any means that can lead to a revolution in the enemy countries. "

- Max von Oppenheim, October 1914.

Oppenheim had gained a lot of experience as a German diplomat and amateur archaeologist in the Arab world and was considered a foreign policy expert for the Ottoman Empire. He saw great potential in the possibility of igniting a holy war ( Jihad , Arabic جهاد) against the Entente powers France , Great Britain and Russia in order to improve their own war situation. Oppenheim saw propaganda measures as well as action by the German army in the Ottoman Empire as necessary preconditions for a revolution. In order to coordinate these projects, he suggested the establishment of a news agency, which would be composed of orientalists, Arabic or Turkish native speakers and trained lecturers, and which would develop and send out "adapted, truthful war reports (appeals, etc.)".

Oppenheim's memorandum went through Undersecretary Arthur Zimmermann to Reich Chancellor Theobald von Bethmann Hollweg and Kaiser Wilhelm II. While the Kaiser, who was keen to win the Ottomans as allies, viewed the plan benevolently, opinions were divided in the Foreign Office. In particular, the liberal diplomat and Orient expert Friedrich Rosen , an opponent of Oppenheim, warned urgently against stirring up religious fanaticism. However, since the General Staff under Helmuth von Moltke decisively promoted the plans, the "News Center for the Orient" was founded in November by the Foreign Office and the Politics section of the Deputy General Staff. This was under the direction of the diplomat Rudolf Nadolny , who was responsible for the cooperation of the NfO with the military on the side of the Central Powers since the entry into the war of the Ottoman Empire on November 3rd.

Funding for the NfO was made available from the general propaganda budget of the Federal Foreign Office. The basic monthly funding was 5,000, which was increased to 8,000 by an “iron reserve fund for extraordinary tasks”. This sum was nowhere near enough, which is why Oppenheim contributed funds from his private fortune. The German headquarters of the NfO was initially housed in five rooms of the Berlin Reich Colonial Office. However, the expansion of the areas of responsibility soon made it necessary to move to Tauentzienstrasse 19a. At the end of the war, 32 rooms were used by the NfO.

Organization and tasks

First World War in the oriental region - participating states
  • Entente and Allies
  • Central Powers
  • neutral states
  • The propaganda among the Muslims of Russia, the French colonies and the British Empire in favor of the German warfare was the central task of the NfO. This area was divided into the following four areas:

    1. Propaganda on the fronts
    2. Propaganda among Muslim prisoners of war
    3. Propaganda in the Entente colonies
    4. Propaganda in the allied countries and the German Reich

    According to its status, the NfO was neither an authority nor a private company. However, her secret collaboration with the Foreign Office and the General Staff gave her a semi-official character. In terms of organization, it resembled a university faculty : in addition to the management there was a law firm and a press office. There were also six departments that dealt with legal, Turkish, Persian, Arabic, Indian and Russian affairs. In addition, the editorial offices of the prison newspaper and the New Orient were on an equal footing with the departments. The entire organization was the responsibility of the head of the facility, in the early years Max von Oppenheim. In order to increase the proximity to the Muslim population and to facilitate the work, native speakers were also employed in the respective departments.

    As one of the first activities of the NfO, the Orientals present in Berlin at the beginning of the war were brought together in committees from which national organizations for the peoples of the Middle East were formed. This is how the “Indian Independence Committee”, the “Persian Committee in Berlin” and the “ Committee for the Independence of Georgia ” came into being. These organizations were in constant contact with the NfO. Oppenheim also suggested the establishment of a Georgian and a Tatar scholarship fund of the “German-Georgian Society” and the establishment of a “German-Persian Society”.

    The NfO had various subsidiary organizations, including the so-called "message hall organization" at the German embassy in Constantinople, which represented the intelligence agency in the Ottoman Empire. In the course of the First World War, numerous “news rooms”, liaison offices of the NfO, were established throughout the region, for example in Tbilisi , Mosul , Damascus and Jerusalem . The German embassy was responsible for the coordination between Berlin and the agencies in the Orient. Daily multilingual reports from the German General Staff found their way deep into the Middle East. To distribute propaganda publications, the news agency had its own sales office in Zurich and was in close contact with several bookshops in Lausanne , Amsterdam , The Hague and Stockholm . In this way, German war propaganda should also attract attention in neutral countries.

    In addition to its actual propaganda activity, the NfO also had other tasks. Maintaining personal contacts with oriental circles in the German Empire, the Ottoman government and neutral foreign countries was of great importance. In addition, a newspaper archive relating to the Orient was established in Berlin, which was primarily available to the Foreign Office and could provide information to other official bodies. To this end, the NfO observed the Oriental, European and American press and published periodical reviews of the Russian, Tatar, Caucasian , Turkish, Persian and Indian press. These press reviews made the work of German diplomacy and the General Staff easier. The NfO also acted as the official censorship agency for writings, films and even letters related to the Orient for the Foreign Office and the General Staff. The correspondence of Muslim prisoners of war was also subjected to censorship. In addition, the news agency exerted influence on the German press in order to achieve a “more deliberate choice of words” in the context of Islam and the Ottoman Empire.

    Personnel structure

    The news center was initially composed of “some people who had long been connected to Oppenheim”. They worked together on the most collegial basis possible, voluntarily and sometimes even free of charge. The further the war progressed, the stronger the institutional character of the NfO became. In 1915, 15 German and 20 Oriental employees were employed in the news office. There were also eleven occasional translators and eleven other employees. In 1918 the total staff consisted of 59 people, including some clerks and messengers. The German employees were predominantly orientalists, diplomats or journalists .

    Head of the news office

    Period Head of the NfO
    November 1914 - March 1915 Max von Oppenheim (1860-1946)
    March 1915 - February 1916 Karl Emil Schabinger von Schowingen (1877–1967)
    February 1916 - November 1918 Eugen Wednesday (1876–1942)

    In March 1915, Max von Oppenheim, the founder and initiator of the news agency, was appointed to the German embassy in Constantinople. For this reason he appointed his colleague Karl Emil Schabinger Freiherr von Schowingen as his deputy for an indefinite period. Schabinger was a diplomat and lawyer, but had already developed a keen interest in oriental studies during his studies and had learned Persian and Turkish with Martin Hartmann . Until the establishment of the news agency, Schabinger had worked as an interpreter at the imperial embassy in Tangier ( Morocco ). When he took over the management of the NfO, he was given the title of “ Consul ”. Schabinger remained in office until February 22, 1916, before he was transferred from the Foreign Office to the German Consulate General in Jerusalem . He was succeeded by Eugen Wednesday. Wednesday was no longer semi-officially appointed by Oppenheim itself, but commissioned by the Foreign Office. Wednesday was a professor of Islamic studies and headed the NfO until it was dissolved at the end of the war. In the 1920s, Wednesday, who was also an eminent Jewish scholar, was committed to building a Jewish home in Palestine . In 1924, as a visiting professor at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem, he set up the chair for Semitic studies there. He was one of the first Germans to speak fluent Ivrith . After emigrating to London in the late 1930s, he worked with Ernst Jäkch for the Middle East Department of the British Ministry of Information .

    German employees

    Among the German employees were the influential orientalists Martin Hartmann , Helmuth von Glasenapp and Willy Spatz . Martin Hartmann has been teaching Arabic at the Oriental Seminar in Berlin since 1887 and, as a co-founder of the German Society for Islamic Studies, campaigned for the recognition of Islamic studies as an independent academic discipline. The society published the world of Islam as an organ of association. His former student Karl Emil Schabinger von Schowingen had campaigned for his appointment to the news agency. Other employees included the journalist Max Rudolf Kaufmann , who came from Switzerland (from 1952 head of the Orient department of Inter Nationes in Bonn ), who had contacts to the press in the German Reich and neutral countries, and Nahum Goldmann , who later became President of the Jewish World Congress , who was then working as an author of German propaganda writings. Kaufmann's father ran a front company in Zurich, the "Orientverlag", which sold the news agency's propaganda publications from neutral Switzerland. The Swiss businessman was arrested in Turkey in 1916 and deported to Germany because he had forwarded information to Berlin about the desperate state of the Turkish troops on the Caucasus front. In Istanbul he belonged to the circle of correspondents for the liberal Frankfurter Zeitung under the leadership of Paul Weitz , who was an important informant of the Reich government on events in the Balkans and the Middle East and at the same time a sharp (internal) critic of the Young Turkish regime and an eyewitness to the genocide of the Armenians of Anatolia .

    The young orientalist Helmuth von Glasenapp had volunteered for military service at the beginning of the war, but had to return from the front only a few weeks later due to an injury. In order to be able to pursue an "important military occupation" as he wished, he turned to the personal acquaintance of his father Otto Georg Bogislaf von Glasenapp , the liberal State Secretary of the Colonial Office Wilhelm Solf . Solf referred the young Glasenapp to Max von Oppenheim, who at that time founded the NfO. Because of his knowledge of Indology , Oppenheim took him on to his staff. Glasenapp was responsible for the implementation of the propaganda in British India in the news office and had good relations with the Indian National Congress . At the same time, the oriental prisoners of war were part of his field of activity: He wrote the German texts for the prisoner newspaper.

    A connection between the German employees of the NfO existed via the seminar for oriental languages in Berlin. This renowned academic institution produced many important orientalists and ensured above-average language training for numerous German diplomats and colonial officials. The seminar held a special position in the educational landscape and was operated by the German Reich together with the Kingdom of Prussia. The financial resources came from the Federal Foreign Office's budget. The seminar for oriental languages ​​was a cadre forge for German diplomacy in the Ottoman Empire and therefore of outstanding importance for the NfO.

    Oriental staff

    Şālih aš-Šarīf at-Tūnisī - employee of the news agency for the Orient

    The approximately 20 oriental employees of the news office tried to better pursue their own interests by turning to the German Empire, which enjoyed a certain popularity in the region: This meant walking a tightrope between patriotism and striving for independence on the one hand and collaboration on the other. The management of the NfO therefore always remained suspicious and monitored the activities of this group of employees very closely. For its part, the news agency tried various means to recruit Muslim workers. Some came on the recommendation of the Ottoman side, others came from the communities of the oriental exiles. a. in Switzerland, recruited by NfO employees.

    Among the Orientals who worked with the NfO is the Tunisian Şālih aš-Šarīf at-Tūnisī (1866–1920). He came from a traditional family of scholars and had been a professor at the Zitouna University in Tunis since 1889 . In 1906 he went into exile as a result of the French occupation of Tunisia . He emigrated first to Constantinople and later to Damascus . During this time he made contacts with important personalities of the Ottoman Empire, such as Ismail Enver . He arranged for him to work at the news office in Berlin through Ambassador Hans von Wangenheim . Together with Karl Emil Schabinger von Schowingen, he traveled as a propagandist to the Western Front , where attempts were made to persuade Muslim soldiers of the French army to desert. Later Şālih aš-Šarīf at-Tūnisī was responsible for the German propaganda in the so-called “ Weinberg camp” for Muslim prisoners of war in Zossen .

    The German prisoner-of-war camps represented the most important field of activity for the oriental employees. B. as imams, the propaganda of the news agency. In addition to the “vineyard camp ” in Zossen, where this task was mainly performed by Tatars, there was also the “ half moon camp” in Wünsdorf with over 30,000 Muslim prisoners. There the Algerian lieutenant Rabah Būkabūya worked for the Germans. He had defected to the Entente and appeared under the pseudonym El Hadj Abdallah as a preacher and author of propaganda brochures. Another important oriental employee of the NfO was Abd al-Azīz Šāwīš (1876–1929). After studying at Al-Azhar University in Cairo , he became the editor of the magazine al-Liwa ' , the central organ of the Egyptian independence movement, and as a result was captured several times by the British. For the news agency he published the magazine Die Islamische Welt in Berlin from 1916 .

    The NfO also worked closely with the Indian Independence Committee . During the first half of the war, the most important tasks of the committee consisted of enforcing its own anti-colonial interests as well as fulfilling the expectations and goals of the Foreign Office and the NfO. This can be seen in the involvement of members of the committee in Werner Otto von Hentig's Afghanistan mission and a planned mission in the Persian Gulf, in which Indian soldiers were to be convinced not to fight against Turkish troops. The propagandistic Hindi and Urdu-language camp newspaper Hindostan , which was distributed in the " half moon camp ", was created in cooperation between members of the committee and the NfO.

    News agency propaganda

    Propaganda means

    The Truth About the Faith War , news agency propaganda brochure

    The intelligence agency's propaganda tools for the Orient included leaflets, appeals, war reports, magazines and newspapers, books, brochures, picture sheets and even films. By the end of 1915, the NfO had issued 386 different publications in a total of 20 languages. The choice of propaganda media was always based on the respective area of ​​application. The largest proportion was made up of the leaflets that were dropped en masse on the fronts of aircraft over enemy positions where Muslim soldiers were suspected. The target groups were primarily the North Africans in the French army ( Zouaves and Turkos ), as well as Indians in the British Army and Georgians and Central Asians in the Imperial Russian Army . German propaganda in the allied Ottoman army , however, was strictly prohibited.

    Brochures and books should exert an influence on public opinion, especially in neutral countries. The largest related publication of the NfO was the translation of an extensive war chronicle. From 1916 an oriental edition of the picture The Great War in Pictures appeared in Arabic, Turkish, Persian and Urdu. Not all publications came from the pen of newsroom staff. Many texts were written anonymously or came from Muslim scholars and were only examined by the NfO for their suitability as propaganda and then published.

    Influencing the press was another aspect of the propaganda activity. For this reason, Max von Oppenheim took part in 1916 in founding an Arabic-language, German-friendly newspaper called Al Šark in Damascus. From that year the Persian newspaper Kaweh appeared in Berlin in cooperation with the news agency. In addition, the NfO created two of its own official organs: the correspondence sheet and the magazine Der Neue Orient .

    Publications

    See also

    literature

    • Maren Bragulla: The news agency for the Orient. Case study of a propaganda institution in the First World War. VDM Verlag Dr. Müller, Saarbrücken 2007, ISBN 978-3-8364-4642-6 .
    • Friedrich Dahlhaus: Possibilities and Limits of Foreign Culture and Press Policy. Shown using the example of German-Turkish relations 1914–1928 (= European university publications. Series 3: History and its auxiliary sciences. Vol. 444). Lang, Frankfurt am Main et al. 1990, ISBN 3-631-42739-5 (At the same time: Münster, Universität, Dissertation, 1989).
    • Irmgard Farah: The German press policy and propaganda activity in the Ottoman Empire from 1908-1918 with special consideration of the "Ottoman Lloyd" (= Beirut texts and studies. Vol. 50). Steiner, Stuttgart 1993, ISBN 3-515-05719-6 (also: Hamburg, University, dissertation, 1988).
    • Helmuth von Glasenapp: My journey through life. People, countries and things that I saw. Brockhaus, Wiesbaden 1964.
    • Gottfried Hagen: Turkey in the First World War. Leaflets and pamphlets in Arabic, Persian and Ottoman-Turkish from a collection of the Heidelberg University Library (= Heidelberg Oriental Studies. Vol. 15). Introduced, translated and commented. Lang, Frankfurt am Main et al. 1990, ISBN 3-631-42494-9 .
    • Peter Hopkirk : East of Constantinople. Kaiser Wilhelm's holy war for power in the Orient . Europaverlag, Vienna / Munich 1996, ISBN 3-203-78000-3 .
    • Gerhard Höpp : Muslims in the market. As prisoners of war and internees in Wünsdorf and Zossen, 1914–1924 (= Center for Modern Orient. Studies. 6). Verlag Das Arabische Buch, Berlin 1997, ISBN 3-86093-151-2 .
    • Wilfried Loth , Marc Hanisch (Ed.): First World War and Jihad. The Germans and the revolutionization of the Orient. Oldenbourg, Munich 2014, ISBN 978-3-486-75570-1 .
    • Tilman Lüdke: Jihad Made in Germany. Ottoman and German Propaganda and Intelligence Operations in the First World War. Lit, Münster 2005, ISBN 3-8258-8071-0 (also: Oxford, University, dissertation, 2001).
    • Herbert Landolin Müller: Islam, Jihād ("Holy War") and the German Empire. A sequel to Wilhelmine world politics in the Maghreb 1914–1918. (= European university publications. Series 3: History and its auxiliary sciences. Vol. 506). Lang, Frankfurt am Main et al. 1991, ISBN 3-631-44416-8 (also: Freiburg (Breisgau), university, dissertation, 1991).
    • Lothar Rathmann : Focus on the Middle East 1914–1918. On the expansion policy of German imperialism in the First World War. Rütten & Loening, Berlin (GDR) 1963.
    • Friedrich Rosen : From a diplomatic wandering life. Volume 3/4: End of the Empire - Weimar Republic. Edited from the estate and introduced by Herbert Müller-Werth. Limes Verlag, Wiesbaden 1959.
    • Wolfgang G. Schwanitz : Islam in Europe, revolts in the Middle East. Islamism and genocide from Wilhelm II and Enver Pascha to Hitler and al-Husaini to Arafat, Usama Bin Ladin and Ahmadinejad as well as talks with Bernard Lewis (= America - Middle East - Europe. Vol. 2). Trafo-Wissenschaftsverlag Weist, Berlin 2013, ISBN 978-3-86464-018-6 .
    • Gabriele Teichmann, Gisela Völger (Ed.): Fascination Orient. Max von Oppenheim - researcher, collector, diplomat. DuMont, Cologne 2001, ISBN 3-7701-5849-0 .

    Web links

    Individual evidence

    1. Jens Bisky : From the Pickelhaube to the steel helmet. Twenty million dead, twenty-one million wounded, no winners: the German Historical Museum in Berlin is showing an exhibition on the First World War - and leaves the visitor at a loss. In: Süddeutsche Zeitung . May 31, 2014, accessed August 30, 2015 .
    2. ^ Organization and structure of the NfO in: Salvador Obernhaus, Entflammen the wild uprising, VDN Verlag Dr. Müller, Saarbrücken, 2007, p. 280ff.
    3. Facsimile: To the Reich Chancellor, Von Oppenheim's Report No. 48, The Pan- Islamic Movement, Cairo, July 5, 1898. In: Schwanitz: Islam in Europa. 2013, pp. 64–65.
    4. Max von Oppenheim: The revolutionization of the Islamic areas of our enemies. Memorandum on revolutionizing the Islamic territories of our enemies. sn, sl 1914, p. 134. Quoted from Bragulla: Die Nachrichtenstelle für den Orient. 2007, p. 3.
    5. Bragulla: The Intelligence Bureau for the East. 2007, p. 17.
    6. Rosen: From a diplomatic wandering life. Vol. 3/4. 1959, p. 54.
    7. Hagen: Turkey in the First World War. 1990, p. 32 ff.
    8. Bragulla: The Intelligence Bureau for the East. 2007, p. 19.
    9. Bragulla: The Intelligence Bureau for the East. 2007, p. 24.
    10. ^ Farah: The German press policy and propaganda activity in the Ottoman Empire from 1908-1918 with special consideration of the "Ottoman Lloyd". 1993, p. 241.
    11. Bragulla: The Intelligence Bureau for the East. 2007, p. 26.
    12. Bragulla: The Intelligence Bureau for the East. 2007, p. 27.
    13. ^ Farah: The German press policy and propaganda activity in the Ottoman Empire from 1908-1918 with special consideration of the "Ottoman Lloyd". 1993, p. 240.
    14. Karl Emil Frhr. Schabinger von Schowingen : World history mosaic fragments. Experiences and memories of an imperial dragoman. KF Schabinger Ms. von Schowingen, Baden-Baden 1967, p. 126.
    15. Bragulla: The Intelligence Bureau for the East. 2007, p. 28.
    16. Karl Emil Frhr. Schabinger von Schowingen: World history mosaic fragments. Experiences and memories of an imperial dragoman. KF Schabinger Ms. von Schowingen, Baden-Baden 1967, p. 153.
    17. La Section de Renseignements de l'Etat-Major général de l'Armée suisse au Département politique, Documents Diplomatiques Suisses, 1919, 7a, doc. 146, January 30, 1919, pp. 291-293, Archives fédérales suisses No. 60002872
    18. Max Rudolf Kaufmann: Experiences in Turkey 50 Years Ago: Journal for Cultural Exchange, Volume 12, Institute for Foreign Relations , pp. 237–241 (1962)
    19. ^ Glasenapp: My journey through life. 1964, pp. 71-72.
    20. Karl Emil Frhr. Schabinger von Schowingen: World history mosaic fragments. Experiences and memories of an imperial dragoman. KF Schabinger Ms. von Schowingen, Baden-Baden 1967, p. 111.
    21. Bragulla: The Intelligence Bureau for the East. 2007, p. 36.
    22. Höpp: Muslims in the Mark. 1997, p. 71.
    23. Bragulla: The Intelligence Bureau for the East. 2007, p. 37.
    24. ^ Heike Liebau: "Enterprises and Aufwiegelungen": The Berlin Indian Independence Committee in the files of the Political Archive of the Foreign Office (1914–1920) . In: MIDA Archival Reflexicon . 2019, p. 4–6 ( projekt-mida.de ).
    25. Höpp: Muslims in the Mark. 1997, p. 23.
    26. Bragulla: The Intelligence Bureau for the East. 2007, p. 39.
    27. Wolfdieter Bihl : The Caucasus Policy of the Central Powers. Part 1: Your basis in Orient politics and its actions 1914–1917 (= publications of the Commission for Modern History of Austria. 61). Böhlau, Vienna et al. 1975, ISBN 3-205-08564-7 , p. 104, (also: Vienna, University, habilitation paper, 1975).