Competing Visions of Area Studies in the Interwar Period: The School of Oriental Languages in Berlin

Abstract

Focusing on the Seminar for Oriental Languages in Berlin, the article explores competing visions on the role of area studies between two prominent Orientalists in the interwar period. It shows that tensions between blue-sky research, applied research and the provision of educational services were at the centre of this argument. In sketching the development of the academic community of Orientalists since Germany's imperial period, it will be argued that concepts of area studies continued to be linked to visions of nationalist and expansionist foreign policies, even after 1918.