Rudolf Gelpke (Islamic scholar)

Rudolf Gelpke (born December 24, 1928 in Waldenburg , † January 19, 1972 in Lucerne ) was a Swiss Islamic scholar and drug researcher .

Life

Gelpke was the son of the engineer and shipping pioneer Rudolf Gelpke . He studied Islamic studies , ethnology , religious history and philosophy at the Universities of Basel , Berlin and Zurich and received his doctorate in 1957 in Basel in Islamic studies. In 1960 he traveled to Iran to teach at Tehran University . At the same time he worked on the Iranian Language and Factual Atlas and as a correspondent for the Neue Zürcher Zeitung . However, he moved in the same year returned to Switzerland, where he attended the University of Bern a lecturer perceived for Islamic Studies. In 1961 he completed his habilitation on contemporary Persian literature . Between September 1962 and May 1963 he was an Associate Professor at the University of California . From 1963 he lived in Tehran , where he called himself Mostafa Eslami and converted to Islam in 1967 . He translated Persian poetry and prose and published his own work. He also published works on drugs with his brother Wendel Gelpke and Albert Hofmann .

In his most famous publication From Journeys in the Space of the Soul , he reports on taking LSD with his friend Albert Hofmann and the pharmacologist Heribert Konzett . He later published Vom Rausch im Orient and Occident .

Gelpke was married twice (1954 to 1965 with Liliane Rommel and from 1968 with Parvin Enayat-Pour from Tehran). He died in Switzerland as a result of a stroke .

Works

• Persian treasure chest. Stories of the Orient, retold and illustrated by the sources with 8 previously unpublished miniatures. Good writings, Basel 1957
• Nizami : The seven stories of the seven princesses . (Translated from Persian and afterword) Manesse, Zurich 1959
• Nizami: Leila and Majnun . (Translated from Persian and afterword) Manesse, Zurich 1963 (new edition: Unionsverlag, Zurich 2001 ISBN 3-293-20212-8 )
• From journeys into space of the soul: reports of self-experiments with LSD and psilocybin . 1962 (Pieper's Medienexperimente, Löhrbach 1999, ISBN 3-930442-34-5 )
• About intoxication in the Orient and Occident . Klett / Cotta, Stuttgart 1966 (1982, ISBN 3-548-39033-1 ), under the title: Drugs and Soul Expansion . Kindler, Munich 1970, ISBN 3-463-18065-0 .

literature

• Konrad Feilchenfeldt (Hrsg.): German Literature Lexicon. The 20th century. Biographical-bibliographical manual. Volume 11. Saur, Zurich / Munich 2008, p. 4f

Web links

• Roland Brechbühl: Gelpke, Rudolf. In: Historical Lexicon of Switzerland .