Wilhelm Litten

Wilhelm Litten

Wilhelm Litten (born August 5, 1880 in St. Petersburg , † January 28, 1932 in Baghdad ) was a German diplomat , orientalist , writer and translator. During his time as a dragoman at the German embassy in Tehran , he collected materials from which he worked out studies of geography, culture and economic history. During the First World War , he witnessed the death marches of the Armenians in the Ottoman Empire in early 1916 . His report The Path of Horror is a source on the Armenian genocide . After the war, Litten continued to work in the diplomatic service. From 1920 to 1924 he was consul in Libau and from 1928 in Baghdad, and after establishing diplomatic relations with Iraq there also charge d'affaires of the German Reich .

Life

Education

Litten attended high schools in Pforzheim , Neustadt an der Haardt and Steglitz . He passed his Abitur on February 24, 1899 and studied law , modern languages, Turkish , Persian and Arabic from 1899 to 1902 in Berlin and at the Seminar for Oriental Languages in Berlin . On July 13, 1901, he passed the diploma examination in the Turkish language and on April 28, 1902, the legal dean's examination.

As a dragoman in the foreign service

On May 31, 1902, Litten was drafted into the Foreign Service (Dragomanat Service). He worked at the German legation in Tehran as a dragomanat aspirant and from October 1907 as a dragoman for the legation. In the meantime he took leave of absence from May 1904 to October 1905 and completed his military service as a one-year volunteer . From October 1907 he was a lieutenant in the reserve . In 1909 he was briefly employed in Constantinople . Litten used his time in Tehran to familiarize himself with the political and economic conditions in Iran and to collect documents. In 1913/14 he passed the consular examination and submitted a thesis entitled “Foreign capital investments in Persia, in particular the possibilities and prospects of German capital investments there” in French, which was published in German translation and revised in 1920 under the title Persia - by the “pénétration pacifique "To the" Protectorate "[...] appeared. In Tehran, Litten married Tilli Struck on September 20, 1913.

In the first World War

After passing the exam, Litten was sent to Tabriz in February 1914 to open and administer a German consulate there. He was appointed consul on April 1, 1914. After the outbreak of World War I he found himself in hostile foreign countries occupied by Russia. After the Ottoman Empire entered the war , his status as a consul no longer protected him from arrest and he fled with his wife to the American consulate. After Kurdish tribes from the border area had advanced as far as Tabriz, but were unable to assert themselves against the Russians there, Litten left Tabriz on January 28, 1915 with the retreating Kurds. From April 26, 1915, he was back at the German legation in Tehran. On leave from November 15, 1915, he left Tehran with the German embassy at the end of November and was drafted into the military from December 4.

From January 7, 1916, Litten was a reserve officer in the staff of General Field Marshal Colmar Freiherr von der Goltz in Baghdad, where he had already arrived on December 1, 1915. On January 17th he went on a trip to Berlin to give a lecture on Persia. On the way he met German officers who told him that they had observed numerous dead Armenians and atrocities between Aleppo and Deir ez-Zor . Litten himself witnessed the Armenian death marches between January 23 and February 6, 1916 on the way to Aleppo:

“A large transport of Armenians had passed me behind Sabha , driven to ever greater haste by the gendarmerie cover, and now the tragedy of the stragglers unfolded in real form. On the way I saw the hungry and thirsty, the sick, the dying, the recently deceased, thousands beside the fresh corpses; and those who could not quickly part with the loved one's corpse risked their life, because the next station or oasis is three days' walk away for pedestrians. Exhausted from hunger, illness and pain, they stumble on, fall, stay where they are. "

- Wilhelm Litten : report. February 6, 1916

His report, which he prepared for the German consul in Aleppo, Walter Rößler , and which the latter forwarded to the German Chancellor Theobald von Bethmann Hollweg , documents the genocide of the Armenians . Johannes Lepsius published the report under the title Der Weg des Horens in 1920 in his magazine Der Orient .

Back in Germany on March 2, Litten did military service from March 6, 1916, as a company commander from April 8, and as a first lieutenant in the reserve from April 16. He was deployed near Verdun and on the Somme , wounded on July 27, 1916, captured by the British and operated twice on the thigh that had been shot through and exchanged via Switzerland in December 1916. From June 1917 to July 1918 he officially stayed at the German embassy in Bern , where he worked on the Orientalia. He returned to Germany, received the Iron Cross First Class in January 1918 and worked in Department IA (Politics) at the Foreign Office in Berlin. In October 1918 he tried in vain to get to Tabriz to return to his service there. In November 1918 he returned to Berlin.

Consul in Libau and Baghdad

Arrived in Berlin on November 20, 1918, Litten was initially without use. From April 30, 1919, he was subordinate to the Foreign Office as an advisor for foreign affairs to the office of President Ebert , headed by Rudolf Nadolny . On September 23, 1919 he was assigned to the German-Persian Society in Berlin, which he had co-founded and which he served as general secretary from October 1. Until its dissolution in 1932, the company maintained an information service that processed reports from the Persian press.

On March 2, 1920, Litten was put into temporary retirement. In July 1920 he took a temporary job as a consul z. D. in the Foreign Office and worked on Romanian and Bulgarian affairs in Dept. III ( Southeast Europe ). In November 1920 he was appointed head of an unscheduled consulate in Libau , Latvia , which he headed from January 1, 1921 until its dissolution in October 1924. Back at the Foreign Office in Berlin, he worked in Department III (British Empire, America, Orient). In 1925/27 he taught as a non-scheduled part-time lecturer at the Oriental Seminary at the University of Berlin . In July 1928 Litten went to Baghdad as Consul First Class . On December 5, 1929, with the establishment of diplomatic relations between the German Reich and Iraq, he also became chargé d' affaires there.

Fonts

• The new Persian constitution. Overview of the previous legislative work of the Persian Parliament. In: Contributions to the knowledge of the Orient: Yearbook of the Munich Oriental Society. 6, pp. 1-51 (1908); ( online at archive.org )
  • Reprint as The New Persian Constitution. Overview of the previous legislative work of the Persian Parliament - Teheran 1907. epubli GmbH, Berlin 2014, ISBN 3-7375-0183-1 .
• Introduction to the Persian diplomatic language. Reimer, Berlin 1919. ( Online edition Halle, Saale: University and State Library Saxony-Anhalt, 2012 ).
• Persian. A shortened method, Toussaint-Langenscheidt. Langenscheidt, Berlin 1919.
• Persia from the “pénétration pacifique” to the “protectorate”. Documents and facts on the history of the European "pénétration pacifique" in Persia 1860–1919. W. de Gruyter, Berlin 1920. ( Online edition Halle, Saale: University and State Library Saxony-Anhalt, 2011 ).
• Who Violated Persian Neutrality? 14 points on the question of Persian neutrality and the Persian black list; along with 320 verbatim official diplomatic briefs to clarify the warfare on the eastern front. Ver. scientific Verl, Berlin & Leipzig 1920.
• Latvian. A shortened Toussaint-Langenscheidt method. Langenscheidtsche Verlagsbuchh, Berlin-Schöneberg 1924.
• Persian honeymoon. With 64 illustrations, 5 tablets and 6 map sketches. Georg Stilke, Berlin 1925.
  • Excerpt (pp. 293–329): The passage of death of the Armenian people. epubli GmbH, Berlin 2014, ISBN 3-7375-0342-7 .
• (Ed.): The drama in Persia. De Gruyter, Berlin & Leipzig 1929. ( Online edition Halle, Saale: University and State Library Saxony-Anhalt, 2012 )
• What does chajjam mean? Why did Omar Chäjjam, the author of the famous Persian quatrains, choose this particular poet's name? De Gruyter, Berlin & Leipzig 1930.

literature

• Ulrich Gehrke: German contributions to the knowledge of Iran in the 20th century. In: Orient 12 (1971), pp. 167-177.
• Gerhard Keiper, Martin Kröger (Ed.): Biographical Handbook of the German Foreign Service 1871–1945. Volume 3: L-R. Schöningh, Paderborn 2007, ISBN 978-3-506-71842-6 .

Web links

Commons : Wilhelm Litten  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

• Document 1916-02-09-DE-001 on armenocide.net . Complete text of the report from the consul in Aleppo (Rößler) to the Reich Chancellor (Bethmann Hollweg), February 9, 1916, with Wilhelm Littens' report of February 6, 1916 as an attachment.

Individual evidence

1. ^ Wilhelm Litten: Persian honeymoon. Georg Stilke, Berlin 1925, pp. 1–4 and 349
2. ↑ Wilhelm Litten: Persische Honeymoon , pp. 270-279
3. ↑ Carl Alexander Krethlow: Colmar Freiherr von der Goltz and the genocide of the Armenians from 1915 to 1916. In SozialGeschichte 21, no . 3 (2006), pp. 74f.
4. ^ Wilhelm Litten: Persian honeymoon. , Pp. 293 and 302-312
5. ↑ cit. According to Rolf Hosfeld: The genocide of the Armenians. In: Military History, Journal for Historical Education. Issue 1/2015, p. 11. ( PDF )
6. ↑ The Path of Horror. In: The Orient. Vol. 1920, No. 10/12, pp. 61-67; also as leaflet No. 7: The path of horror. Potsdam 1920.
7. ^ Wilhelm Litten: Persian honeymoon. , P. 346 f. and 356
8. ^ Wilhelm Litten: Persian honeymoon. , Pp. 376-381
9. ^ Wilhelm Litten: Persian honeymoon. , P. 399
10. ↑ see also Wilhelm Litten: Persische Honeymoon , pp. 417-420
11. ^ Wilhelm Litten: Persische Honeymoon , pp. 420-422