John P. Birkelund Lecture in the Humanities

The Exodus of German Culture to Turkey, 1933–45

During the Third Reich, two hundred eminent German and Austrian academics found refuge in Turkish institutions of higher learning—among them Alexander Rüstow, one of the fathers of social market economy and neoliberalism; Ernst Reuter, urban planner and two-time mayor of Berlin; and Bruno Taut, a leading figure in modern architecture. In her talk, Azade Seyhan examines this encounter and the historical conditions that necessitate the preservation of intellectual heritages through transport and translation. She analyzes exile scholarship in and as translation, the role of translation in the economies of a national culture, the imperative of cross-disciplinary work in exile, and the emergence of an alternative critique of modernity at a non-European site.