Franz Rosenthal’s Half an Autobiography

Abstract

Franz Rosenthal (1914-2003), one of the outstanding scholars of Semitic languages, Arabic and Islamic history of the past century, has described himself as an Orientalist, whose task is “to look beyond the culture in which one is rooted to other cultures whatever their geographical location with respect to Europe, in order to learn about and understand them and to try to spread the knowledge thus acquired”. This simple-sounding approach is qualified by a vast knowledge of the appropriate literary sources and a keen sense for the truly significant topic that characterize all of Rosenthal’s works. His memoir discusses these aspects, as well as the profile and outlook of Near Eastern Studies, particularly in relation to neighboring disciplines, and the roles of philology and language teaching. What is at least as interesting as this discussion is an autobiographical account of Rosenthal’s family, his school and university years in Berlin, of his emigration to the United States, and his career up to his arrival at Yale University – a memoir which illuminates his work and his convictions and which tells a story of “cruelly turbulent times” that changed the lives of many scholars and opened up new ways of scholarship.