Association for the Far East
The Association for the Far East was created in Berlin in 1919 through the merger of the German-Asian Society with the German China Society (Berlin, founded in 1914). It existed until 1944/45. The first president was the German diplomat Paul von Koerner , the wealthy Lübeck art patron Max Linde the general secretary. The Prussian Minister Otto Boelitz followed as President. The public organ was the Ostasiatische Rundschau , which was published together with the East Asian Association . Friedrich-Wilhelm Mohr (1881–1936) was the full-time editor-in-chief from 1922, followed by Otto Richter, who was forcibly brought to the USA in 1946 because of his proximity to the Nazi regime.
This was intended to bundle German East Asian and especially Chinese interests after the loss of the German colony of Tsingtau . This included economic interests, but also the concerns of the German-Chinese who remained or who had migrated back. The German-Chinese trade agreement concluded in May 1921 , which enabled German products to return to China, provided an important framework . Germany particularly dominated the forbidden arms trade with the Chinese warlords , which maintained its own production through arms exports. The association, however, was mainly concerned with cultural and scientific relationships. He supported the operation of Tongji University in Shanghai with an agreement (1921). In contrast, he remained reserved towards Japan because of its encroachments on German property. Only with the interest of the Nazi dictatorship in Japan were relations strengthened (German schools, language classes, cultural exchange).
literature
- Franz Schmidt / Otto Boelitz (eds.): From German educational work abroad , Langensalza 1928
- Andreas Steen / Mechthild Leutner (ed.): German-Chinese Relations 1911–1927: From Colonialism to “Equal Rights”. A collection of sources , Academy, Berlin 2006 ISBN 978-3050042435
- Hans-Joachim Bieber: SS and Samurai: German-Japanese Cultural Relations 1933–1945 , monographs from the German Institute for Japanese Studies, 55, Munich 2014 ISBN 978-3862050437