Alexander Stephan (ed.) Exile and Otherness New Approaches to the Experience of the Nazi Refugees PETER LANG Oxford * Bern * Berlin * Bruxelles * Frankfurt am Main * New York * WienEXIL-STUDIEN EINE INTERDISZIPLINARE BUCHREIHE EXILE STUDIES AN INTERDISCIPLINARY SERIES BAND/VOL. 11 Edited by ALEXANDER STEPHAN FA PETER LANG Oxford * Bern * Berlin * Bruxelles * Frankfurt am Main + New York * WienBibliographic information published by Die Deutsche Bibliothek Die Deutsche Bibliothek lists this publication in the Deutsche Nationalbibliografie; detailed bibliographic data is available on the Internet at With regard to Erich Auerbach and Leo Spitzer, scholars of Romance languages and literatures, I am interested in the epistemological gain or loss for the individual intellectual exiled in Istanbul. The question of Istanbul as the turning point in Auerbach’s and Spitzer’s scholarship has already been discussed—even though the precise circumstances under which they worked have largely remained a mystery in German and North American quarters. My aim here is not simply to reconsider the trans- formation of their individual scholarship by providing more local and historical information. I want to fill a significant gap in the fifty-year- long debate since Auerbach’s departure from Turkey by examining the epistemological value of exile for the development of philology at Istanbul Universitesi. I am interested in the legacy of Auerbach’s and Spitzer’s exile for knowledge production in Turkey and, most impor- tant, their place as Jewish-German scholars in the narration of the Turkish nation. 3 Borrowing from Appadurai’s concept regarding the circulation of forms, I refer to the circulation of disciplines and disciplinary methodologies. | prefer this over the term commonly used in German scholarship-—Wissenschafistransfer, or “knowledge transfer,” which implies a one-sided, direct, static, and uninter- rupted transmission of knowledge from one context to another.Jewish-German Philologists in Turkish Exile 33 Intellectual Migration to Turkey Auerbach and Spitzer were not the first German academics involved in Turkish academia; the presence of German academics in the Istan- bul philological faculty was not even a novelty. Prior to the decline of the Ottoman Empire, several German academics had taught at the oldest, largest, and most important institute of higher education in the country, Dariilftinun, in Istanbul. However, something else was at stake in the 1930s. Mustafa Kemal Atatiirk (1881-1938), founder and president of the Turkish republic in the years 1923-38, had declared modernization and Westernization of the republic to be his main aim, attaching particular importance to reforming the language, and the education system. In 1932, the Turkish government hired Albert Malche, a pedagogy professor from Genf, to help reform the Turkish university system according to a Wester European model.’ The Turkish Minister of Education, Resit Galip, criticized Dariilfiinun in 1933 for its belated response to the new national reforms in econ- omics, law, language, and historiography and consequently instigated the reform of tertiary education.” By Westernizing the education system, the government of the young Turkish republic hoped to ac- celerate the modernization of the country. As a result of Malche’s report, the government decided to curtail Dariilftinun’s autonomy; to transform the institution into Istanbul 4 However, Albert Malche was not the first to be invited to develop suggestions for the university reform. John Dewey from Columbia University, for example, Was invited before Malche. See Mustafa Ergin, Atatiirk Devri Tiirk Eéitimi, Ankara Universitesi Dil ve Cografya Fakiiltesi Yaynlar,, vol. 325, Ankara: Ankara Universitesi Bastmevi, 1982, 110. 5 Resit Galip claimed that a new vision of history, similar to a nationalist move- ment, had taken over the country. In order for Dariilfiinun to even take an inter- est in these new developments, he argued, three years had to pass: “Yeni bir tarih telakkisi, milli bir hareket halinde ilkeyi sardi. Dariilftinun'da buna bir alaka uyandirabilmek igin tig yil kadar beklemek ve ujrasmak lazim geldi.” Quoted in Ernst Hirsch, Diinya Universiteleri ve Tiirkiyede Universitelerin Geligmesi, vol. I, Istanbul: Ankara Universitesi Yayunlari, 1950, 312.34 Kader Konuk Universitesi, under the governance of the Ministry of Education; to dismiss two thirds of its faculty; and to hire scholars from the West. These educational reforms in Turkey, as it happens, coincided with the National Socialists’ rise to power in Germany and with the ex- clusion of German-Jewish academics from German universities. This coincidence opened many doors for a remarkable intellectual ex- change: Albert Malche and Philip Schwartz founded an organization to assist the emigration of numerous academics from Germany to Turkey, leading to an influx that influenced many students at Turkish universities. Both parties—the Turkish government and the representatives of the émigré scholars—made an effort to ascribe special meaning to the emigration of intellectuals to Turkey. Resit Galip interpreted their arrival as an act of redemption for the Byzantine scholars who had fled Constantinople after its surrender to the Ottomans in 1492.° For Philip Schwartz, who had founded the Notgemeinschaft Deutscher Wissenschaftler im Ausland (Aid Organization of German Academics Abroad), Turkey represented “ein von der westlichen Pest unberithrtes Land.” The influx of Europeans into Turkey promised salvation, he said, for the shameful expulsion of Jewish scholars from Germany. Yet both assertions proved incorrect: the German. intellectual emigrants could not restore the cultural superiority of old Constan- tinople; nor did the country remain unscathed by the exclusionary ideologies of race and nation. 6 — Galip pointed out that this was an extraordinary day in history: “Als vor fast 500 Jahren Konstantinopel fiel, beschlossen die byzantinischen Gelehrten das Land zu verlassen. Man konnte sie nicht zuriickhalten. Viele von ihnen gingen nach Italien, Die Renaissance war das Ergebnis. Heute haben wir uns vorbe- reitet, von Europa eine Gegengabe zu empfangen.” See Horst Widmann, Exi! und Bildungshilfe: Die deutschsprachige akademische Emigration in die Tiirkei nach 1933, Frankfurt: Lang, 1973, 56. 7 On behalf of this organization, Schwartz led successful negotiations with Galip in Ankara in July 1933, discussing the conditions of employment of German academics at Turkish universities, Schwartz believed that “founding and building the ‘Notgemeinschaft’ was legitimized; indeed it has proven to be a historical necessity. [. . .] Our negotiations tumed into an exchange of two organisms in solidarity.” See Widmann, Exil und Bildungshilfe, 56.Jewish-German Philologists in Turkish Exile 35 By Orientalizing the Ottoman past, denying the legacy of the Ottoman Empire, and constructing a radical break with Ottoman history, Atatiirk created the notion of a unified Turkish nation, at once ancient and modern—ancient, since it was allegedly rooted in a nomadic Turkic past, and modern, since it conceived of itself as part of the rise of nationalism in Europe.* The aim of the university reform was to move away from a way of thinking in which Islam played a significant role; the university was to serve as a model for secular education and “civilization,” to be replicated by other Turkish educa- tional institutions. Sara Saym, one of Auerbach’s most prominent students and later chair of the German Department at Istanbul Universitesi, maintained that the effect of the university reform was that “die nationale Identitat sich fremdkulturell, also in diesem Fall europaisch bzw. deutsch konstruierte. Die naive Identifikation mit dem Westen lie8 die Differ- enzerfahrung nicht zu.” This is an important insight: the influx of scholars from Germany shaped Istanbul Universitesi in a specific way by introducing new methodologies into a variety of disciplines in the humanities and the natural sciences. It would not be overstating the case to say that in the first years after 1933, German humanistic learning was the model for secular higher education in the humanities at Istanbul Universitesi. While I would not go as far as Sara Sayin and tefer to the Euro- peanization of the university culture as “Germanization,” I do agree that the categories “West,” “German,” and “European” were inter- changeable during this period. I would add, however, that not only was there no discrimination made between “European” and “Ger- man”; there was no differentiation made between Nazis and émigrés. It is important to keep in mind that a number of National Socialist academics were hired at Istanbul Universitesi at the same time as 8 For a discussion of the objective modernity versus the subjective antiquity of nations, see Benedict Anderson, Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism, New York: Verso, 1992. 9 Sara Sayin, “Germanistik an der “Universitat Istanbul,” Germanistenireffen: Tagungsbeitrige Deutschland —Tirkei, Bonn: DAAD, 1995, 30.36 Kader Konuk émigré scholars. What has not been sufficiently studied is the forced Cooperation of émigré scholars such as Auerbach with Nazi philologists who were hired by Istanbul Universitesi in the 1940s—a condition that is consistently elided and/or played down in Turkey today. This ambiguous, and hitherto unarticulated, relationship be- tween Turkish academic institutions and National Socialist education policies is an example of how National Socialist ideologies were tolerated and even welcomed in Turkey. Leo Spitzer and Erich Auerbach at Istanbul Universitesi Auerbach and Spitzer played a leading role in building up the Faculty for Western Languages and Literatures at Istanbul Universitesi and had a seminal influence on the formation of German philology, shaping the canons of both disciplines. During the three years in which Leo Spitzer took part in the reforms at Istanbul Universitesi, before he accepted an offer at Johns Hopkins University and migrated to the United States, he laid the foundation for the Department of Romance languages and literatures. Under Spitzer’s directorship, the Department of Romance languages and literatures included the fol- lowing courses in its curriculum: Introduction to the History of the French Syntax; Medieval French Theater; The European Renaissance; Classicism and Romanticism; The Nineteenth-Century French Realist Novel; Parnassus and Symbolism; Exercises in Literary Translation; Spanish: Cervantes’ Don Quixote; Calderon: La vida es sueno; Latin (along with Latin Grammar and Colloquial Latin); Greek Grammar; and—awkwardly enough—German Philology.'° From the point of view of a Romance linguist such as Spitzer, two things stand out as peculiar in the curriculum: the emphasis on literature and literary movements rather than linguistics and the addition of German to the Romance discipline. The curriculum resembles more an elementary 10 Ali Arslan, Dariilfiinun'dan Oniversiteye, Istanbul: Kitabevi, 1995, 417.Jewish-German Philologists in Turkish Exile 37 introduction to comparative literature than a regular Romance pro- gram. Emily Apter arrives at a similar conclusion through her analysis of a university journal published in 1937, which reflects Spitzer’s work and comparatist spirit at Istanbul Universitesi.'! The peculiarities of the curriculum call for an explanation: in 1934, Germanistik was founded as a subdepartment of Romance lan- guages and literatures, which in turn was part of the Faculty for West- ern Languages and Literatures. This odd affiliation of German philo- logy with the Department of Romance languages and literatures can only be understood in light of practical conditions: in Istanbul, Leo Spitzer was appointed to a professorship not of the Department of Romance languages and literatures, but of Western European philo- logy, and was given the task of starting a Faculty for Western Lan- guages and Literatures—something that had not previously existed in Turkey. Learning a foreign language in the new faculty was obliga- tory for all students at Istanbul Universitesi until 1939." There was no scholar of German philology at the Faculty for Western Languages and Literatures when Spitzer was appointed. However, he made it possible for scholars who wanted to leave Germany to obtain lecturer positions in German and other foreign languages.'? The professorship 11 Apter writes: “Though merely a coda of working papers, it offers a glimpse into the way in which European humanism Atattirk-style (that is, attuned to Turkey's modemizing agenda) played a key role in transforming German-based Philology into a global discipline that came to be known as comparative litera- ture when it assumed its institutional foothold in postwar humanities depart- ments in the United States.” Emily Apter, “Global Translatio: The “Invention” of Comparative Literature, Istanbul 1933,” Critical Inquiry 29.2 (2003): 269. 12 Arslan, Dariilfiinun'dan Universiteye. 13 Among the scholars who emigrated to Turkey with Spitzer’s assistance were Heinz Anstock, Eva Buck, Rosemarie Burkart, Herbert Dieckmann, Lieselotte Dieckmann, Traugott Fuchs, and Hans Marchand. Among the scholars who emigrated with Auerbach’s assistance were Robert ‘Anhegger (Islamic studies), Emst Engelberg, Kurt Laqueur, Andreas Tietze (Turkish studies), and Karl Weiner. See Widmann, Exil und Bildungshilfe, 290-91, From 1943 onward, Robert Anhegger, Walter Ruben, and Andreas Tietze edited twenty issues of the series Istanbuler Schriften—tstanbul Yazilart (Istanbul Writings). Erich Auerbach published his Newe Dantestudien in this series. See Erich Auerbach,38 Kader Konuk offered Spitzer, a comparatist-oriented Romanist and linguist, the opportunity to go beyond the conventional bounds of his discipline-—a passion that henceforth shaped his work. In 1936, Erich Auerbach was appointed to Spitzer’s chair of Westem European philology. During his eleven-year exile in Istanbul he did not evince the same interest in Turkish as Spitzer. He did, how- ever, perpetuate Spitzer’s comparatist spirit. His intellectual engage- ment extended beyond the bounds of national literary criticism, as shown by his most important work, Mimesis, composed during the war years in Istanbul.'! Auerbach continued to work on the univer- sity’s “modernization project” until 1947. Spitzer and Auerbach taught students who later became some of the most influential academics in Turkey. One of their most prominent students was Siiheyla Bayrav, who wrote her dissertation on French literature under the supervision of Spitzer and defended it when Auer- bach was chair of the Faculty for Western Languages and Literatures. Bayray worked closely with Auerbach as his assistant and as transla- tor of his introductory textbook to Romance philology, which he wrote specifically for students in Turkey.'° This book was substituted Neue Dantestudien, Istanbuler Schriften—Istanbul Yazilari, eds. Robert Anheg- ger, Walter Ruben and Andreas Tietze, Istanbul: [brahim Horoz Basimevi, 1944. Horst Widmann presumes that the series was distributed in the German bookstore Tiinel Kitapevi in Istanbul. See Widmann, Exif und Bildungshilfe, 193-94, 14 During his years of Turkish exile, Erich Auerbach’s work was translated into Turkish. Se , his introduction to Romance philology: Erich Auerbach, Roman Filolojisine Giris, trans. Sitheyla Bayrav, Istanbul Universitesi Edebiyat Fokiiltesi Yayinlarindan, 236, Roman Filolojisi Subesi: 4, Istanbul: Ibrahim Horoz Basimevi, 1944. In 1961, long after Auerbach’s emigration to the United States, this work was translated into English. Auerbach also published Dante hakkinda yeni arastirmalar, Istanbul Universitesi Edebiyat Fakiiltesi Yaymlari, vol. 5, Istanbul: Istanbul Universitesi, 1944, in Turkish. For other references to Auerbach’s publications, see Erich Auerbach, Gesammelte Aufsditze zur Ro- manischen Philologie, Munchen: A. Francke Verlag, 1967, 367-68. It is worth noting that Auerbach initiated the series Garp Filolojileri Dergisi Journal for Western Philologies] shortly before his departure from Turkey. The series was discontinued after his emigration. 15 Auerbach, Roman Filolojisine Giris.Jewish-German Philologists in Turkish Exile 39 for an earlier French textbook that Spitzer had written for students at Turkish universities and would serve as a standard textbook in the Department of Romance languages and literatures for many decades. Influenced by Spitzer’s methodology, Siiheyla Bayrav utilized com- paratist approaches to language. Later on in her career, she became the main authority on structuralism and semiotics in Turkey, trans- lating several important works.'* Until 1980, she chaired the Depart- ment of Romance languages and literatures at Istanbul Universitesi.'” Spitzer and Auerbach helped shape the work of numerous scholars: Azra Erhat, Spitzer’s assistant and later a leading classical philologist; Mina Urgan, who became chair of the English department; and Sara Sayin, who chaired the German department at Istanbul Universitesi and was awarded the Goethe Medal in 2000."* After the end of the Second World War, few academics re- mained in Turkey. Erich Auerbach waited anxiously for a chance to immigrate to the United States. Reflecting on his influence in Istanbul, he stressed that the émigrés had accomplished something, “but not nearly as much as would have been possible.”"” He held the uncertain and often dilettantish policies of the university administration respon- sible for the émigrés’ limited success. Erich Auerbach had helped shape the most significant phase in the history of the modernization of the Turkish education system. Based on his experience, however, he concluded that it was difficult to Europeanize a non-European country 16 For an illuminating discussion of Stheyla Bayrav’s work see Apter, “Global Transiatio.” 17 Osman Senemoglu, “1933 Universite Reformunda Bat Dilleri ve Prof. Dr. Sitheyla Bayrav,” Alman Dili ve Edebiyati Dergisi XI (1998). 18 For a discussion of Azra Erhat’s and Mina Urgan’s role as avant-garde Kemalist women scholars, see Erika Glassen, “Tochter der Republik: Gazi Mustafa Kemal Pasa (Atatiirk) im Gediichtnis einer intellektuellen weiblichen Elite der ersten Republikgeneration nach Erinnerungsbiichern von Azra Exhat, Mina Urgan und Nermin Abadan-Unat,” Journal of Turkish Studies—Tiirklik Bilgisi Arastirmatar1 26.1 (2002). 19 Quoted from a letter to Martin Hellweg, May 16, 1947, Erich Auerbachs Briefe an Martin Hellweg (1939-1950), ed. Martin Vialon, Tabingen: A. Francke Verlag, 1997, 70.40 Kader Konuk in a short space of time because of the great danger of practical and moral anarchy.” Disillusioned, Auerbach reported from Turkey that the transi- tional phase had produced nothing better than a vacuum, since irre- sponsible, amateurish, and half-baked experiments were making the whole process more difficult. Auerbach complained about the teach- ing methods at the Faculty for Western Languages and Literatures, saying there was no coherent approach to the teaching of foreign languages, other than the constantly out-of-print French textbook that Spitzer had once proposed. Asserting that he was only the director of the Faculty for Western Languages and Literatures “on paper,” the disappointed Auerbach retreated from his position.?! Auerbach was not the only one disappointed with the progress of reform at the university. After Atatiirk’s death in 1938, Turkish authorities criticized the state of scholarship at the university, which they said had become nothing more than a propaganda machine. A fundamental change in the structure of the university was only achieved after the end of the war, in 1946, when the university was given the intellectual and administrative autonomy that would ensure freedom of scholarship. By this time, however, Auerbach was Teady to leave the country. After eleven years at Istanbul Universitesi, he finally gave up the chair of the Department of Romance languages and literatures and in 1947 took an offer from Pennsylvania State University. 20 Quoted from ibid., 70. Harry Levin suggests that Erich Auerbach’s introduction to Romance philology served the purpose of Occidentalizing his students, See Harry Levin, Grounds for Comparison, Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1972), 112. Liselotte Dieckmann—a lecturer who taught at the Faculty for Western Languages and Literatures in the 1930s—also wrote about the prob- lems of Westemizing Turkey in a short period of time. See Liselotte Dieck- mann, “Akademische Emigranten in der Tirkei,” Verbannung: Aufzeichnungen deutscher Schrifisteller im Exil, eds. Egon Schwarz and Matthias Wegner, Hamburg: Christian Wegner, 1964, 122-26. 21 Quoted from a letter by Erich Auerbach to Martin Hellweg, June 22, 1946, Erich Auerbachs Briefe an Martin Hellweg, 70.Jewish-German Philologists in Turkish Exile 41 Istanbul Universitesi has undergone radical changes during the last few decades. Its elite cohort of students has been transformed, as have the administrative conditions that govern it. In 1980, after a long period of independence, the university suffered from a backlash: a military coup wiped out an entire generation of leftist students and in- tellectuals. Although the philological faculty still included Auerbach's and Spitzer’s intellectual progeny—academics such as Sara Sayin, Mina Urgan, and Siiheyla Bayrav—the ensuing centralization of Tur- kish universities (through Yiiksek Ogretim Kurulu [YOK}) drastically curtailed and censored scholarship for more than a decade, The democratization process of the 1990s allowed for a some- what less restrictive intellectual engagement: questions of marginality, ethnicity, multiculturalism, multilingualism, and gender gradually en- tered public debate and found expression in the humanities. Sara Sayin, former chair of the German department, turned to postcolonial studies, also rediscovering Auerbach and Spitzer as representatives of an intellectual Jewish-German minority. This revived interest is also evident in other developments: the 1990s saw a proliferation of publi- cations, accompanying exhibitions at the Orient Institute in Istanbul, the Goethe Institute Istanbul, Bogazi¢i Universitesi, and the Istanbul Teknik Universitesi (Mimarlik Fakiiltesi). Revisiting the exile experience of émigré academics at Turkish universities serves a specific function. It is not just a question of paying lip service to the teachings of émigrés such as Spitzer and Auerbach—Turkish philological departments still show traces of the methodologies they introduced and developed.” However, their most striking impact today is to be found elsewhere. The origin of modern education at Istanbul Universitesi is narrated as a story of rescuing Jews—communist émigrés receive less attention under the given his- torical circumstances—and thus as a story of Turkey’s ability to surpass Germany by displaying “humanity” toward Jews. This move allows the assertion of several qualities of the Turkish nation: on the 22 A memorial plaque at the entrance of Istanbul Universitesi, placed there in 1986, commemorates the contribution of German émigrés to the university re- form.42 Kader Konuk one hand, its civilized nature as compared to Germany’s barbaric past, demonstrating Turkey's superior Europeanness; on the other, nostal- gia for a multireligious and multiethnic Ottoman past. As a result, émigrés such as Spitzer and Auerbach have become unique figures in the rationalization of the Turkish nation as European; at the same time, their Jewishness serves to bridge the schism between the Ottoman past and the Turkish present. Philology and Exile I turn, finally, to the connection between exile and critical conscious- ness. Auerbach’s exile, and the comparative methodology he deve- loped during his years in Turkey, continues to be significant as a para- digm for the definition and redefinition of comparative literature. In the case of Erich Auerbach and Leo Spitzer, questions regarding the preconditions of philology have often been posed in both German and North American quarters, a common theme being the inadequacy of the library at Istanbul Universitesi versus the breadth of the works analyzed in Auerbach’s seminal work Mimesis: Dargestellte Wirklich- keit in der abendléndischen Kultur, written in Istanbul between 1942 and 1945. The absence of any secondary literature and the sparse use of footnotes in Mimesis have contributed to the image of a philologist with almost superhuman powers of memory. Auerbach’s assertion that the book’s very existence was probably attributable to the lack of a decent specialist library still causes a stir across disciplines and fields. While the library holdings at Istanbul Universitesi were indeed in a miserable state, it is no longer possible to precisely reconstruct what that state was. Because of Albert Malche’s emphasis on the need to improve the state of the university library in his 1932 report on Da- rilfiinun, the library had acquired twenty thousand books within twoJewish-German Philologists in Turkish Exile 43 years.”* The adjustments, however, did not meet the expectations of the émigrés. In an interview, Leo Spitzer spoke of the primitive condi- tions at the university: “Unfortunately, there were almost no books. I finally asked the dean about this shortage and he replied simply, ‘We don’t bother with books. They burn,’ I later realized that there was some justice in his view, for most Istanbul buildings were wooden and the fire department was hopelessly disorganized.” By the same token, though, Spitzer and Auerbach noted elsewhere that the émigrés had recourse to their own collections of books. At least as far as pri- mary sources went, there was no major shortage in Istanbul. The fact that Mimesis was written with limited resources launched a debate about the conditions of philology in exile. Inspired by Lion Feuchtwanger’s essay on émigré German writers, which weighed being cut off from the mother tongue against the wealth of new impressions, Victor Klemperer wrote a 1948 review of Auer- bach’s Mimesis entitled “Philologie im Exil.’”° Here, Klemperer tried to pinpoint the connection between Mimesis and Auerbach’s experi- ence in exile. Rather than foregrounding the lack of books as a condi- tion of writing, Klemperer pointed to the connection between exile 23. Before the reform, the library held 112,000 books. By 1934, the number had increased to 132,000. See Arslan, Dariilfiinun'dan Universiteye, 500. 24 “Leo Spitzer,” The Johns Hopkins Magazine (April 1952): 26. Liseloite Dieck- mann makes a similar observation: “Far die Humanisten gab es zwar die schon- sten alten Manuskripte, aber freilich keine Bibliothek. Nur wer eine private Sammbhing besaf und sie hatte mitbringen kénnen, konnte aber Biicher ver- fligon.” See Dieckmann, “Akademische Emigranten in der Tiirkei”, 125. In a letter from Auerbach to Martin Hellweg, dated May 22, 1939, Auerbach re- marks that the university lacks a functional library: “Uns dreien geht es gut. Es fehit auch jetzt nicht an Unsicherheit und an Unruhe. Aber das Leben ist vor- derhand bezaubernd hier—Nur Biicher, d.h. eine brauchbare UB, feblen, und Reisen ist unméglich.” Erich Auerbachs Briefe an Martin Hellweg, 58. Even in his last year of employment at Istanbul Universitesi, Auerbach regretted the lack of books and articles. See Erich Auerbach, “Onsiz;” Garp Filoloyileri Dergisi, vol. 361, Istanbul Universitesi Edebiyat Fakiiltesi Yayinlarindan, Istanbul: Ucler Bastmevi, 1947 25 Victor Klemperer had unsuccessfully sought to become Spitzer's successor at Istanbul Universitesi. Erich Auerbach obtained Spitzer’s position.44 Kader Konuk and Auerbach’s philological methodology. According to Klemperer, exile enabled Auerbach to lay aside the “blinkers” of his discipline and simultaneously assume the perspective of an aesthetician, a histo- rian, and a sociologist in his stylistic studies.”* Klemperer argued that it was exile per se, not Auerbach’s specific cultural location in Istan- bul, that was necessary for breaking disciplinary boundaries. How- ever, considering that, in Istanbul, Auerbach played the role not only of a Romanist but also of a Germanist and comparatist, I would argue that Istanbul posed new challenges to Auerbach, challenges that went above and beyond his discipline and called for a more comprehensive philological method. In 1968, two decades after Klemperer’s review, Harry Levin reflected in a similar fashion on the influence of exile on Auerbach and Spitzer, scrutinizing their respective philological methods. Levin was interested in bringing out the differences between Spitzer’s and Auerbach's methodologies. According to Levin, Spitzer distilled con- tinuities and essential elements in his comparatist analysis, while Auerbach emphasized the aspect of transformation, taking a rather relativistic perspective. In Levin’s view, Istanbul thus marked the point of divergence for the two scholars: “its lack of scholarly para- phemalia drew a sharp line between the two approaches within the same field: the infra-scholarship of Spitzer and the para-scholarship of Auerbach.””” Whereas Klemperer had sought the explanation for Auerbach’s philological approach in exile itself, and circumvented the 26 Victor Klemperer, “Philologie im Exil,” Vor 33 nach 45: Gesammelte Aufeditze, Berlin; Akademie Verlag, 1956. “Nicht dies Abgetrenntscin von dem Ubermaf) der Biicher ist es, was entscheidend auf die Arbeit gewirkt hat; sondern was bestimmend mitformt, ist buchstablich das Exil selber, der Grund der Verban- nung, das gesamte furchtbare Leben der Gegenwart. Der Fachgelehrte ist nicht weniger Fachgelehrter als sonst—eher sogar mehr, denn er klammert sich ja an sein Metier, um die seelische Freiheit zu bewahren; aber die vordem obligaten Scheuklappen des Faches sind von ihm abgefallen, das Leben strémt in sein Spezialistentum hinein.” Klemperer’s article was first published in 1948; Victor Klemperer, “Philologie im Exil,” Aufbau 10 (1948). 27 Harry Levin, “Two Romanisten in America: Spitzer and Auerbach,” The Intel- lectual Migration: Europe and America, 1930-1960, eds. Donald Fleming and Bernard Bailyn, Cambridge: Belknap, 1969, 118Jewish-German Philologists in Turkish Exile 45 question of secondary literature in Istanbul, Levin foregrounded the latter, attempting to explain Auerbach’s work—something he called the “imaginary museum of European civilization’—through the gaps in the library: “He found himself perforce in the position of writing a more original kind of book than he might otherwise have attempted, if he had remained within easy access to the stock professional facilities.” The question of the Istanbul exile also preoccupies contemporary critics. In the last decade, U.S. scholars such as Emily Apter, David Damrosch, Djelal Kadir, Aamir R. Mufti, and Edward Said have di- rected attention to Spitzer’s and Auerbach’s decisive role in the deve- lopment of comparative literature in the United States and its con- nection with exilic conditions in Turkey.” In The World, the Text and the Critic, Edward Said chooses Auerbach’s exile in Istanbul as the departure point for his thesis on the secular critic. The secular critic, he writes, occupies a liminal space that mediates between nations, political organizations, academic and social affiliations. As the con- structive end product, a “positive mission,” of exile, Said focuses on Auerbach’s Mimesis, resting his thesis on the assumption that for Auerbach, Istanbul represented “the terrible Turk, as well as Islam, the scourge of Christendom, the great Oriental apostasy incarnate.” He adds: For centuries Turkey and Islam hung over Europe like a gigantic composite monster, seeming to threaten Europe with destruction. Throughout the classical period of European culture Turkey was the Orient, [slam its most redoubtable and aggressive representative. This was not all, though. The Orient and Islam stood for the ultimate alienation from and opposition to Europe, the European tradition of Christian Latinity, as well as to the putative authority of ecclesia, 28 Ibid., 466. 29 Apter, “Global translatio”; Aamir R. Mufti, “Auerbach in Istanbul: Edward Said, Secular Criticism, and the Question of Minority Culture,” Edward Said and the Work of the Critic: Speaking Truth to Power, ed. Paul A. Bové, Dur- ham: Duke University Press, 2000; David Damrosch, “Auerbach in Exile,” Comparative Literature 47.2 (1995); Djelal Kadir, “Comparative Literature Hinternational,” World Literature Today 69.2 (1995); Edward W. Said, The World, the Text, and the Critic, London: Vintage, 1983.46 Kader Konuk humanistic learning, and cultural community. [. . .] To have been an exile in Istanbul at the time of fascism in Europe was a deeply resonating and intense form of exile from Europe.” All three critics—Klemperer, Levin, and Said—pose the question of the epistemological consequences of exile. But while Levin is inter- ested in the material conditions of exile, Klemperer, like Said, places the ontological condition of exile at the center. And though Klemperer and Levin share a particular interest in the philological methods that originated in Istanbul, Said’s interest is directed toward the critical position of the intellectual him- or herself. For Said, exile serves as a metaphor for critical distance, or rather, alienation, in which cultural difference is the decisive factor. He suggests that Mimesis “owed its existence to the very fact of Oriental, non-Occidental exile and home- lessness.”*! However, herein lies the main difficulty with Said’s approach: Auerbach did not find himself in a place that was necessarily juxta- posed with Europe, as Said maintains.? When Auerbach, in his epi- logue to Mimesis, describes Istanbul as the precondition for the incep- tion of his work, he does not make any reference to the imaginary realm of an Oriental “Constantinople.” This is not to assert that there is a distinction between an Orientalist discourse and the experience of the “real” Orient. Rather, I wish to point out that Auerbach’s letters show, not traces of an understanding of Istanbul as the Oriental Other, but an insight into the dilemmas and paradoxes of the construction of a new national identity. A letter that Auerbach wrote to Walter Ben- jamin in 1937 reinforces this contention. Reflecting upon the role of academic emigrants in the university reform, Auerbach wrote: 30 Said, The World, the Text, and the Critic, 6. 31 Ibid, 8. 32 Even the architect of Turkish university reform, Albert Malche, saw it as his mission to inform Europeans about progress in the Turkish Republic and main- tained that Pierre Loti’s Orient was nothing but a fantasy. Ergin, Atatiirk Devri Tiirk Egitimi, 146.Jewish-German Philologists in Turkish Exile 47 Kemal Atatiirk had to force through everything he did in the struggle against the European democracies on the one hand and the old Mohammedan-Pan- Islamic sultan’s economy on the other; and the result is a fanatically anti-tradi- tional nationalism: rejection of all existing Mohammedan cultural heritage, the establishment of a fantastic relation to a primal Turkish identity, technological modemization in the European sense, in order to triumph against a hated and yet admired Europe with its own weapons: hence, the preference for European- educated emigrants as teachers, from whom one can leam without the threat of foreign propaganda. Result: nationalism in the extreme accompanied by the simultaneous destruction of the historical national character.** In Auerbach’s day, Istanbul underwent one of the most curious trans- formations in its history, a radical period of Westernization and na- tionalization. And Auerbach was one of the ambivalent mediators of Turkey’s Europeanization, his correspondence demonstrating his awareness of the dangers of the university reform. The radical re- structuring of tertiary education propelled the modernization of the nation in two ways: by representing the kernel of national ideology and by creating an intellectual cohort with a strong commitment to Western scholarship. Auerbach’s critical position in Mimesis is rooted in a complex and ambivalent distance from Europe, a Europe from which he was exiled for more than a decade, yet a Europe whose humanistic ideals served as his model for Turkish university reform, a link that has been largely overlooked in previous debates. Instead of using exile as a metaphor and marking Istanbul as the site of radical Otherness, my aim is to make a case against a Saidian notion of exile and for a histo- rically specific contextualization of Auerbach’s and Spitzer’s exile. I suggest that it was neither exile as such, nor alienation, nor an inade- quate library, but rather the specificity of wartime exile in Istanbul— the new set of local conditions and the specific tasks of intellectuals like Auerbach and Spitzer-—-that gave rise to their critical con- sciousness and philological methodologies. 33 Translated in: Karlheinz Barck and Anthony Reynolds, “Walter Benjamin and Erich Auerbach: Fragments of a Correspondence,” Diacritics 2.3/4 (1992): 81-83.