Karl Süssheim
Karl Suss home, even Süßheim ( born January 21, 1878 in Nuremberg, † January 13, 1947 in Istanbul, Turkey ) was a German historian and Orientalist Jewish descent, professor of history of Islamic peoples as well as Turkish, Persian ( Farsi) and Arabic.
Life
He was the son of the hop - dealer Sigmund Süßheim from Kronach, who moved to Nuremberg in 1870, and his wife Clara. Mother's side he was a grandson of the Bavarian politician David Morgenstern. After visiting the Old Grammar School and the New School in Nuremberg Sweet Home from 1896 studied history, philosophy and natural sciences at the universities of Jena, Munich, Erlangen and Berlin. There he studied at the Department of Oriental Languages at Martin Hartmann. On March 5, 1902, he received his doctorate in history in Berlin with his dissertation Prussian Annexxionsbestrebungen in Franconia 1791-1797, a contribution to the biography of Hardenberg (1901 ). Then he held until 1906 to study in Istanbul. During the Young Turk Revolution in 1908, he went to Cairo. In 1911 he qualified as a professor in Munich with his work Prolegomena to an edition of custody to London in the British Museum chronicle of the Seljuk Empire and was at the Ludwig- Maximilians- University of Munich, first lecturer. Under Fritz Hommel and Gotthelf Bergsträsser he taught at the University of Munich, Arabic, Persian and Turkish. From 1919 until his dismissal from the Bavarian civil service by the Nazis on 27 June 1933 he was an associate professor there. Among his students were, inter alia, the medievalist Ernst Kantorowicz and later historians, the Jewish religious historian Gershom Scholem and the Orientalist Franz Babinger.
From 1934 until his emigration Süssmann lived with his family in Munich Preysingstraße 12 After the Kristallnacht pogrom of November 9, 1938, he came for a short time in the Dachau concentration camp. In 1941, he succeeded through the help of Turkish friends at the last moment with his wife and daughters to Istanbul to emigrate, parts of his private library were then incorporated into the Bavarian State Library. The Turkish friends helped him in Istanbul at a temporary job at the local İstanbul Üniversitesi. Sweet Home died in 1947 from kidney disease and is buried in the Jewish cemetery in the Ortaköy district - Ashkenazen.
During his years in Istanbul Sweet Home had a variety of original manuscripts collected, which he could later hold together in exile despite extremely difficult circumstances. The Bavarian State Library acquired in 1960 a large part of this collection. Sweet Home also wrote his own texts often handwritten in Ottoman and Arabic. Even his own diary of the years 1908 to 1940 he wrote since 1908 in Turkish and from 1936 in the Arabic language. Following the publication it was compared with the Victor Klemperer's diaries.
The eloquent Orientalist was used in Istanbul as an interpreter at the German embassy, but also asked later in Germany as an interpreter to diplomatic meetings. So he interpreted on April 30, 1917 during a visit to the Grand Vizier Talât Pasha, with whom he corresponded since his stay in Istanbul.
He is described as a modest and reserved, but important scholar. He was the younger brother of the Bavarian Council of Justice and SPD member of parliament Dr. Max Süßheim.