Wolfgang G. Schwanitz

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Wolfgang G. Schwanitz is a German-American Middle East historian. He is an expert on comparative studies of modern international relations between the United States, the Middle East, and Europe.

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[edit] Life

Before the millennium Schwanitz got known by his research on relations between Arabs, Jews, and Germans, and on the history of German relations to the Middle East. In his history of the German Orient Bank he proved by records from American and German archives how Jewish gold looted by Nazis in occupied Europe was sold in Turkey via the German Orient Bank. This bank was founded in 1906 by Dresdner Bank in Berlin, the second largest German bank, and served 40 years in the Middle East.

Born in 1955, he grew up seven years in Cairo, Egypt, for his parents were diplomats. Back in East Germany, he attended the Max Planck highschool of Berlin. In 1982 he finished five years of Middle Eastern studies as Arabist/Economist at Leipzig University. There he did his Ph.D. on Egypt's open-door policy. In Berlin he headed the research group on Middle Eastern history at the Academy of Sciences. He has taught at Humboldt University, University of Potsdam, and Free University of Berlin. After the German reunification, he published at the Modern Orient Center--that was founded by the Max Planck Society of Munich--books on relations between Germany and the Middle East. He was visiting fellow in Cairo, Princeton, NJ, and Washington, DC. In Princeton he finished two volumes on the history of Germans in the Middle East after World War II. In 2000 he settled down near Princeton. He researches and teaches Arabic, world history, and Middle Eastern history at local colleges, among them Burlington County College in Pemberton, New Jersey, and Rider University in Lawrenceville, New Jersey and Princeton, New Jersey. He edits a book series of comparative studies on America-Mideast-Europe and he is visiting professor at the Gloria Center, Herzliya, Israel.

His works on the German and American Islam policy met a wide echo. Schwanitz authored four and edited ten books. He authored 61 book chapters on history and politics of the Middle East in international relations since 1798, as modernity came to the Middle East.

[edit] Selected Bibliography


[edit] Literature on W.G. Schwanitz


[edit] External links