'Local'-izing Wetzstein and other 'Western' Actors of Translocation Processes. By F. El-Ghawaby
Channel: Staatsbibliothek zu Berlin
Date: 14/08/2022

'Local'-izing Johann Gottfried Wetzstein and other 'Western' Actors of Translocation Processes in the 19th and early 20th Century.

With a stock of about 3,000 manuscripts, the Prussian consul and orientalist J.G. Wetzstein (1815-1905) was probably one of the most successful collectors of Middle Eastern manuscripts of the 19th and early 20th centuries. The Berlin State Library currently holds more than 2200 artifacts in the Wetzstein Collection I and II which Wetzstein sold to the former Royal Library in 1851 and 1862 respectively. Wetzstein's success in collecting can certainly be explained by multiple aspects. I will focus here on the sociocultural localization of 'the collector Wetzstein'. Taking Wetzstein as a central comparative figure and putting him into relation with other 'Western' collectors of the 19th and early 20th century, this paper highlights the complexity and multifaceted intricacies in collecting practices and associated collecting philosophies of 'Western' collectors. Accordingly, the question here is to what extent the 'degree of embeddedness' in Middle Eastern societies provides insight into the accessibility of material? In addition, this paper will critique the rather stiff concepts of 'local' and 'nonlocal', emphasizing the problematic attribution of such anthropological classifications as too narrow. To illustrate this conceptual inconsistency, Wetzstein will be framed as a kind of 'semilocal' who was resident in Damascus as Prussian consul for 12 years. He is thus compared to other 'categories' of international collectors, namely 'manuscript hunters', adventurers and non-locals such as Charles Francis Tyrwhitt Drake (1846-1874), Edward Henry Palmer (1840-1882) and Richard Francis Burton (1821-1890), and - in contrast - actors which I will classify here as 'locally embedded' or 'rooted' collectors such as Abraham Shalom Yahuda (1877-1951). Along these theoretical reflections, I will try to elaborate through primary (letters, biographies, publications) and secondary sources whether and to what extent the 'degree of embeddedness' of actors in accumulating Middle Eastern cultural artifacts favored (or not) their chances of success. In doing so, this paper aims to draw attention to the socio-historical, political, power-structural and narrative idiosyncrasies that must be considered when examining each actor involved in 'Western' collection histories. As a result, this re-assessment will shed light onto power relations of different forms in translocation processes in Middle Eastern / 'Western' contexts. 

Farid El-Ghawaby is Doctoral Fellow at Berlin Graduate School Muslim Cultures and Societies, Freie Universität Berlin.