A Subterranean History: Paul Wittek (1894-1978) and the Early Ottoman State

Abstract

In the extensive literature which has appeared in recent years on the work of refugee or self-exiled German-speaking historians during the Emigration2, little attention appears to have been paid to those who concerned themselves with what may be termed, in the broadest sense, oriental history. This is equally the case for German-speaking historians born within the boundaries of the Dual Monarchy, as for that greater number who were by origin subjects of the German Empire and its post-war successors. Thus, for example, Catherine Epstein's recently published and otherwise admirable prosopographic study of German-speaking refugee historians in the United States3 makes no mention of the Vienna-born Islamicist and medieval historian Gustave E. von Grunebaum, who had a