Eugen Mittwoch’s Trips to the East (1899, 1904, 1907)

The renowned Arabist, Islamicist, and Africanist Eugen Mittwoch (1876–1942) undertook two extended trips to the Near East and Egypt, in 1899 and in 1907. Moreover, in the first half of April 1904, he paid a brief visit to Haifa in Palestine. After his return to Berlin from his 1899 trip, Mittwoch published a series of articles about his journey; they appeared in installments between May and December 1899 in Der Zeitgeist: Beiblatt zum Berliner Tageblatt under the pseudonym “M.R. Credi.” On 28 January 1901, Mittwoch also delivered a public lecture at the invitation of the Hamburger Verein für jüdische Geschichte und Literatur on the situation of Jews in the East, based on his observations. The lecture was titled “Über die Lage der Juden in den Muhammedanischen Ländern (Eindrücke nach einer im letzten Jahre unternommenen Orientreise).” The manuscript of the lecture is preserved in the Eugen Mittwoch Archive at the National Library of Israel, and a critical annotated edition is provided in this study.