German Palestine Association

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The German Palestine Association ( Deutscher Verein zur Erforschung Palestine ) is an association founded in 1877 to promote scientific research into the history and culture of Palestine , especially its biblical past. The former seat was Leipzig, the current seat is Bonn .

Fields of activity are biblical archeology , ethnology, philology, political and art history of the Palestine region.

History and mission

The association was founded in 1877 on the initiative of the Swiss high school teacher and Palestine researcher Carl Ferdinand Zimmermann . When it was founded, he sought to expand philologically-based research into the Bible by including regional studies. However, denominational or political boundaries were not set. The model was the British Palestine Exploration Fund founded in 1865 . The statutes say, among other things:

"§ 1: Under the name" German Association for the Study of Palestine "there is a scientific society based on the following statutes and under that name exercises the rights of legal personality."

Furthermore, in § 2 the purpose of the association is named as "to promote the scientific exploration of Palestine according to all connections and to spread the participation in it in wider circles" .

Research on Palestine was to be expanded through topographical findings, through expeditions to the land of the sites of the Bible, and through archaeological, geographical and ethnographic research. The current political situation was also the subject of the investigation. In order to achieve these goals, local and dispersed activities should be bundled along the lines of the British model and funding for research should be improved.

Important founding members were the Orientalist Albert Socin and the clergyman Konrad Furrer from Switzerland, the Protestant theologian Emil Kautzsch , the Old Testament scholar and Palestine researcher Hermann Guthe , the former German consul in Jerusalem Georg Friedrich August von Alten, the incumbent consul Thankmar von Münchhausen , the Berliner Cartographer Heinrich Kiepert , the Stuttgart geologist Oscar Fraas , the Protestant theologian Franz Delitzsch and the Leipzig publisher Karl Baedeker junior .

In the year it was founded, the association had around 230 paying members. He published the annual journal of the German Palestine Association (ZDPV) at Verlag Karl Baedeker in Leipzig , which had strict academic standards. Among the most prominent members were the Kaiser Wilhelm I , Friedrich III. and Wilhelm II. and the Prussian Field Marshal Helmuth von Moltke .

Several members of the German Palestine Association were also members of the Palestine Exploration Fund , e. For example, the Haifa-based engineer, architect and archaeologist Gottlieb Schumacher or the Jerusalem-based architect, archaeologist and missionary Conrad Schick . On the other hand, too, the British officer and explorer Charles William Wilson became a member of the association in 1878, the year it was founded.

In the prewar period, two excavations in Palestine (Jerusalem [1881] and Megiddo [1903-1905]) were carried out by the association.

The association publishes the annual magazine of the German Palestine Association (ZDPV) with articles on the history and culture of Palestine.

literature

  • Dominique Trimbur (ed.): Europeans in the Levant. Between politics, science and religion (19th - 20th centuries). = Des Européens au Levant. Oldenbourg, Munich 2004, ISBN 3-486-57561-9 ( Paris historical studies 53). Online at perspectivia.net
  • Haim Goren: "Go and explore the country". German Palestine Studies in the 19th Century. (= Series of publications by the Institute for German History at Tel-Aviv University 23). Wallstein, Göttingen 2003, ISBN 3-89244-673-3 .
  • Ulrich Hübner : The German Association for the Study of Palestine (1877-2002) and its Basel roots. In: Theologische Zeitschrift 58, 2002, pp. 329–338 ( digitized version )
  • Ulrich Hübner: The German Association for the Exploration of Palestine: its prehistory, foundation and development up to the Weimar period . In: Ulrich Hübner (ed.): Palaestina exploranda (= treatises of the German Palestine Association 34). Wiesbaden 2006, pp. 1–52 ( digitized version ).

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Articles of Association (PDF)
  2. ↑ http://www.palaestina-verein.de/wp/wordpress/?page_id=917
  3. ↑ [1]
  4. ↑ Archived copy ( Memento of the original from May 19, 2017 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.palaestina-verein.de