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History of the subject

The history of Semitic Studies in Marburg doesn’t start with the founding of the Department of Semitic Studies in 1964. In fact, languages like Persian and Turkish were taught by the Faculty of Philosophy in the Eastern Department even before the Second World War. Seminars on Semitic Studies, which were established after the Second World War, encompassed various areas of Eastern philology: the Islamic languages Arabic, Persian, and Turkish, which were taught by Annemarie Schimmel in the years 1946-1955, the cuneiform languages Sumerian and Babylonian-Assyrian, and Egyptology. During the 1950s, there was a regular collaboration between the Department of Semitic Studies and the Department of Religious Studies and Religious History in the form of joint events held by Annemarie Schimmel and Friedrich Heiler. When a new professorship was created for Eastern Studies under H. Otten in the Winter Semester of 1958/59, the Department of Semitic Studies was renamed the Department of Eastern Studies, which included Eastern Studies, Semitic Studies, Egyptology, and African Studies. Modern eastern languages - Arabic, Persian, and Turkish - were substituted by teaching assignments. Teaching staff included Rudolf Sellheim, Fuat Sezgin, and Annemarie Schimmel.

A separate department for Semitic Studies existed between 1964 and 1999. The first official professor was Otto Rössler, who embedded the Semitic language family into a different “hamitosemitic”, or in today’s terminology, Afro-Asian context. His assistant was Rainer Degen. From 1975 to 2001, the discipline was led by Walter W. Müller, who specializes in Sabaean Studies, during which time he supervised numerous dissertations. The assistant position was occupied first by Norbert Nebes and later by Ute Pietruschka. In 1999, Semitic Studies became part of the Institute for Eastern Studies and Linguistics.

Following Walter W. Müller was Stefan Weninger in 2001, whose main research interests are Arabic and Ancient Ethiopian Studies. During this time, Susanne Saker, Michael Kleiner, Oliver Kahl, Konrad Martin Heide, Michael Waltisberg, Marco Bunge, Guilia Grassi, Marlene Guss-Kosicka, Carsten Hoffmann, and Vera Tsukanova worked in the Semitic department.

Semitic Studies in the Center for Near and Middle Eastern Studies

With a decision made by the Hessian Ministry of Science and Art in December 2005, the foundations were laid for a regional scientific center for eastern research in Marburg. By restructuring participating disciplines, we expected to improve synergies and encourage more interdisciplinary research and teaching. When this project was implemented, Stefan Weninger and the expert in Ancient Near Eastern Studies, Walter Sommerfeld, made a significant contribution. Thanks to their extensive efforts, the subjects of Ancient Near Eastern Studies, Arabic Studies, Iranian Studies, Islamic Studies, and Semitic Studies were merged to form the Center for Near and Middle Eastern Studies, which was based in the former Children’s Hospital on Deutschhausstraße 12 during the Winter Semester 2007/08. A short while later, appointments and affiliations in the subject areas of economics and politics of the Near and Middle East were made. Today, the CNMS is one of the world’s leading institutions for eastern research.