Traces of Germany in Lebanon

In 1980, the German director Volker Schlöndorff was at a crossroads: he had just become the first German to win an ‘Oscar’ for ‘Best Foreign Language Film’ for his Bertolt Brecht adaptation “The Tin Drum” and a successful career in Hollywood awaited him.

Despite its modest size, Lebanon is a country rich in historical landmarks. One of the main attractions of the cedar state, besides the columns of Baalbek and Byblos Port, is the magnificent Beiteddine Palace, from which the Ottoman Empire ruled over Mount Lebanon. 

 

The records of the German consulates are a real treasure trove of anecdotes and interesting little stories. Depending on when they were recorded, these are preserved in either the Secret State Archive or the Foreign Office’s Political Archive in Berlin.


 

Every first Wednesday evening of the month, the doctoral fellows of the Orient-Institut Beirut (OIB) hold an “Open Garden”. The popular gathering for young researchers and friends of the institute is a good opportunity to meet new people and exchange views on working and living in Lebanon. 

Blaich, Gaßmann, Unger. For anyone with an interest in German traces in Beirut, there’s no getting past these prominent family names, which were known well beyond the confines of the ‘German colony’ in the first half of the 20th century. 

In the year 2002, the Saroulla closed its doors for business once and for all. It had been one of the most popular cinemas in Beirut in the 1960s, but the Lebanese Civil War (1975-1990) and the emergence of huge cinema complexes in its aftermath took a heavy toll on the small cinema. 

The most famous protagonist in our selection has to be Karl May (1842-1912), the author of the famous Winnetou and Kara Ben Nemsi adventure novels. May has often been accused of never having seen the landscapes that provide the backdrops for his novels himself, but rather ‘copied’ scientific travel reports and other travel writing. But this is only partly true.

These days, only few visitors stray into the Marie Baz Wax Museum, housed in the old Fakhreddine Palace in Deir el-Qamar. The centuries-old palace houses more than 40 lifelike wax figures, spread over several storeys. These figures are representations of the most important figures in Lebanese history. 

In April 1874, the Upper Bavarian church historian and politician Johann Nepomuk Sepp, along with a small group of German scholars and adventurers, embarked on an expedition to the Middle East. They were on a ‘mission for Germany’ to which the Imperial Chancellor Bismarck himself had given his blessing. 

This is the tale of a brazen con artist, who used a series of false identities to cause havoc throughout the entire Middle East early in the 1930s. 

It’s unknown if mail coaches, which are enshrined in German collective memory by a famous folk song, ever rolled through the streets of Beirut. We also don’t know exactly where in Beirut the ‘Kaiserlich-Deutsches Postamt’ (Imperial German Post Office) was located at the beginning of the 20th century. 

It’s no secret that Kaiser Wilhelm II enjoyed travelling. In times of peace the head of state was rarely to be found in Potsdam or Berlin; more often he resided in one of the German spa towns or ventured out on extended journeys within Europe. 

The Lebanese Air Force proudly presents Rayak Air Base in the Beqaa Valley as the birthplace of the Lebanese Air Force in 1949. It is widely known that the air base was under French control during the French Mandate between 1920 and 1943.

Perhaps the Prussian workmen building G 8 steam trains at the turn of the 20th century saw them for what they were – symbols of Europe entering the modern age and a young Germany’s increasingly significant place in it.

The history of healthcare in Beirut also exhibits connections to Germany. This is because until the end of World War I, the grounds of the modern-day École Superieure des Affaires (ESA) used to be the site of the Johanniter Hospital, which was funded through donations by the Order of St. John and was inaugurated on 7 January 1867.

In the late 1960s and the early 1970s, the political mood in Germany was very tense. On 7 November 1968, the final day of the Christian Democratic Party congress, Beate Klarsfeld slapped German Chancellor Kurt Georg Kiesinger in the face with cameras rolling and accused him of being a ‘Nazi’ due to lingering questions regarding his past.

It all sounds like straight out of a fairy tale: a German count – widely known as a minnesinger, the German equivalent of a troubadour – joins a crusade headed for the ‘Holy Land’ where he sweeps a young French countess off her feet (although she had already been promised to another count).

When Mohamed Khair Tarabulsi boarded the plane to Munich in the summer of 1972, he was at his athletic peak. He had spent the past several weeks building up his strength and endurance and working on his technique. 

“My name is Mahler. As a lawyer, it is my legal opinion that West Berlin isn’t part of the Federal Republic, an independent political unit, and therefore, a simple West Berlin ID card is valid.”