Enno Littmann

Louis Richard Enno Littmann ( born September 16, 1875 in Oldenburg, † May 4, 1958 in Tübingen ) was a German orientalist.

Life and work

Littmann studied from 1894 Protestant Theology, Oriental Studies, German, English and Classical Philology in Berlin ( in August Dillmann ), Greifswald and Halle ( Saale). In 1898, he put his degree from a " senior teacher " for the subjects of religion and Hebrew and a doctorate in Oriental Philology with the verb of the Tigresprache in Abyssinia. From 1898 to 1900 he pursued further studies with Theodore Nöldeke in Strasbourg and participated in an ethnographic expedition to Syria and Palestine, which was repeated in 1904. From 1901 to 1904 he lectured at Princeton University, 1905, the Tigre participated in an organized from there expedition to explore the language and culture to Eritrea in 1906 and led the legendary German Aksum - Expedition, the first archaeological excavations at Aksum in Tigray ( Northern Ethiopia producers).

In 1906 he was appointed full professor of Oriental Studies to Strasbourg in 1914 to Göttingen in 1917 to Bonn, 1921, Tübingen, where he remained until his retirement in 1951. He coined the tray Ethiopian decisively through his work.

Littmann was a member of the Arab Academy Cairo, where he was several times a guest lecturer, and the scientific academies of Berlin, Göttingen, Mainz, Copenhagen, Amsterdam, Brussels, Rome, Paris and Vienna. In 1931 he was admitted to the Pour le Mérite for Sciences and Arts from 1952 to 1955 and was Chancellor of the Order.

He mastered English, French, Italian, Latin and Greek fluently, Hebrew, Modern Persian, Turkish and Arabic to in different dialects and languages ​​spoken in Ethiopia Tigre, Amharic, Ge'ez and Tigrinya.

Littmann has transferred the first Tales of the Thousand and One Nights from Arabic into German correctly. His Edition ( six volumes with almost 5,000 pages ) appeared in the 1920s in the Insel-Verlag, has been revised by him until his death over and over again and is available today in bookstores. His bibliography includes more than 550 entries. 1905/1906 found the German Aksum - Expedition under the direction Enno Littmann's. She led in northern Ethiopia and the Italian colony of Eritrea by archaeological and architectural history research. Staff were Daniel Krencker and Theodore of Lüpke.

Littmann, whose field included both the old and new Orient in its entirety (including Ancient Israel and modern Palestine), is considered the last " the great European Orientalists ", whose life's work is unmatched on the width and depth. In Addis Ababa, his memory still 50 years after the Aksum - Expedition was so vivid that on the occasion of his death at the behest of Emperor Haile Selassie, the flags were lowered to half mast.

Littmann estate

The estate of Enno Littmann located mainly in the Berlin State Library - Prussian Cultural Heritage and the Archive of the Austrian Academy of Sciences in Vienna. The stock ( Ethiopia and Eritrea) in Vienna - from the estate of Maria Höfner - has recently been systematically developed ( 2009-2010 ) Hatem Elliesie (Free University of Berlin). In addition, the archive of the Berlin- Brandenburg Academy of Sciences keep a majority of the letters and postcards Enno Littmann's Eduard Meyer. The amount of the estate was, to put on the website of the Archive of the Austrian Academy of Sciences online after completion of the development in 2011.

Littmann conferences

2002, was named after him I. International Littmann Conference was on " Archaeology and History of the Horn of Africa " at the Museum of Ethnology, Munich ( Organizer: Museum director Walter Raunig, Sudan archaeologist Steffen Little). In January 2006, the Second International Littmann Conference was held in Aksum in Tigray, exactly one hundred years after the arrival of the Deutsche Aksum - Expedition, with an emphasis on history and culture of Tigray and the work of the Deutsche Aksum - Expedition, under the title " 100 years German Aksum - expedition " ( organizer: archaeologist Steffen Wenig, Äthiopist Wolbert Smidt from the research Centre Ethiopian Studies, Hamburg, in cooperation with the Goethe- Institut Addis Abeba ). The road that runs past the archaeologically rich water reservoir May Shum was named this by Littmann. The III. International Enno Littmann Conference took place from 1 to 4 April 2009 at the Free University of Berlin, organized by the Seminar for Semitic and Arabic Studies ( Rainer Voigt ) in cooperation with the German Orient Institute in Beirut ( Manfred Kropp ), the German Archaeological Institute (Hans -Joachim Gehrke, Burkhard Vogt ) and the Orbis aethiopicus ( Raunig ) instead ..

The aim of the meetings is, starting from the broad research interests Littmann's new research from its research as well as studies on Littmann and his staff present. A special feature of all meetings is that despite the official enmity between the two neighboring countries, scientists from Ethiopia and Eritrea to participate and always topics from both countries. Subject areas include the archeology of Tigray and Eritrea, the cultural heritage of the region ( including oral traditions), äthiosemitische languages ​​such as Tigrinya ( Tigray / Ethiopia, important language of Eritrea ) and Tigre ( the second most important language of Eritrea ), Arabic, historical research on East Africa, and, probably more in the future, also research on Arab regions. Another topic since the beginning of the sessions is the Semitic Inscription, which was decisively promoted by Littmann. The meetings are alternately in Germany and countries of the Orient, where Littmann worked (planned are Egypt and Eritrea) performed.

Writings (selection )

• An official list of Bedouin tribes of Transjordan. In: Journal of the German Palestine Association 24, 1901, pp. 26-31
• Neuarabische folk poetry, collected and translated. Berlin 1902 ( online at Archive.org ).
• Semitic Inscriptions. New York 1904 ( with David magic Jr. and Duana Reed Stuart, online at Archive.org ).
• German Aksum Expedition. Vol 1, 3, 4 Reimer, Berlin 1913
• Semitic Inscriptions. Section A-D. ( Syria. Publications of the Princeton University Archaeological Expedition to Syria in 1904-5 and 1909, Division IV), Leyden, 1914-49.
• Oriental words in German. Berlin 1920; dsgl. , 2nd verm and verb. Edition, Tübingen 1924
• From the oriental flea. Poetry and Truth about the flea in Hebrews, Syrians, Arabs, Abyssinians and Turks. Leipzig 1925
• A century Orientalism. Life images from the pen of EL Edited by Rudi Paret and Anton Schall, Wiesbaden 1955
• Dictionary of the Tigre language. Lfg 1-3, Wiesbaden 1956-58
• The Tales of the Thousand and One Nights. (6 volumes), ISBN 3458347437
• Arab Bedouin stories. ISBN 3487126036