German–Armenian Society

The German - Armenian Society ( DAG) is an association that has set itself above all the promotion of mutual understanding between Germans and Armenians and safeguarding the interests of the Armenians living in Germany to the destination. The DAG consists beyond for the rights and interests of the Armenian minority in Turkey and other countries of the Near and Middle East.

History

The DAG was founded in 1914 by Johannes Lepsius, Paul Rohrbach and Avetik Issahakyan in Berlin. Lepsius was the first chairman of the association. The initiative for the establishment of the association went out against the backdrop of the worsening of the Armenians in the Ottoman Empire location of Lepsius. A year later, the genocide of the Armenians began. The DAG pursued the goal of independence or autonomy of the Armenian people at its inception. The initiative to create the DAG was started at the critical time at which it was taken for granted that the information required by the Western powers for the Armenians in the eastern provinces of the Ottoman Empire reforms of the Sublime Porte would be accepted and the eyes of the European world again were once drawn to this " Armenian provinces". Comprehensive reforms for the Armenians were required since the Treaty of Berlin in 1878. At that time reigned Sultan Abdulhamid II, the Young Turk party Ittihat ve Terakki Cemiyeti, which ruled the country from 1908-1912 and in 1913 accepted February 8, 1914 finally the reform plan.

After the death of the later chairman of the association, Rohrbach, the DAG was dissolved in 1956. In 1972, she was finally established in Frankfurt again. Today, the club has 274 members.

Activity

Since 1973, the association publishes the quarterly magazine Armenian - German correspondence. Among the previous book publications of the DAG include:

• 75 years German - Armenian Society ( Mainz 1989),
• Phoenix from the ashes -, Armenia 80 years after the genocide ( Frankfurt 1996)
• Armenia - past and present in a difficult environment ( Frankfurt 1998)
• About some political and legal aspects of the Nagorno- Karabakh problem ( Frankfurt aM 1999).

The DAG organizes various conferences and lectures and is a member of the Association for the Study of Nationalities in the United States and the Institute for Foreign Cultural Relations in Stuttgart. The current chairman is Raffi Kantian.