A Life Between Worlds: The German Exile Scholar and Artist Traugott Fuchs (1906-97) and His Legacy

Supervised by: Dr. Richard Wittmann

The Romance studies scholar who lived in Istanbul from 1934 to 1997 was mostly overshadowed in public perception by more well-known German professors in Turkish exile, such as the literary scholar Ernst Auerbach, the Romance studies scholar Leo Spitzer, the jurist Ernst Eduard Hirsch, or the municipal scientist and later first mayor of West Berlin, Ernst Reuter. However, while those usually taught at Turkish universities for only a few years before relocating to the USA or Britain or returning to post-war Germany, Fuchs was one of the few German academic migrants who chose to stay in Turkey permanently. This gave Traugott Fuchs a significant role as a mediator between different academic cultures. Through his role in developing several chairs at the state university of Istanbul and at the American Robert College, later Bosporus University, where he taught for decades, he had a lasting influence on generations of scholars in Turkey. His engagement had a lasting impact on the fields of German and Romance studies, but also as an active artist who left his mark on contemporary art in Turkey.

The focus of the engagement with Traugott Fuchs at the Orient-Institute Istanbul has so far been on the inventory and preservation of the significant and variously held legacy of text materials and images to enable future research of the rich collection of sources in terms of intellectual, art, and science history.

Projekte Phases

First Phase (2018-20): Cataloging the Text Collections

A project for cataloging the text collections in the archive of Istanbul’s Bosporus University and recording titles in the Kalliope cataloging system was carried out in collaboration with the Bosporus University archive and financially supported by funds from the Cultural Preservation Fund of the Foreign Office, and supervised by the then library director of the Orient Institute, Dr. Astrid Menz, and her successor, Dr. Karin Schweissgut.

Second Phase (since 2021): Securing and Preserving the Entire Estate in Turkey

Since 2021, the focus of the Orient Institute’s efforts has been on securing and preserving the entire estate, consisting of text archives including his extensive correspondence, drawings, and paintings. In the winter of 2020/21, the painting portion of the estate, which had been housed in a private residence in Istanbul for decades, was acutely endangered due to the dilapidation of the historic wooden house. As an emergency measure, the holdings were professionally packed and stored in a depot. In the fall of 2021, a contractual agreement with Traugott Fuchs’ heirs allowed for the transfer of the archive to the Orient Institute Istanbul upon the relocation to the new institute building. Currently, Fuchs’ several hundred drawings are being digitized and prepared for inclusion in the Kalliope cataloging program.

Third Phase (from 2023): Making the Entire Estate Accessible for Research

With the move to the new institute building at the beginning of 2023, for the first time since Traugott Fuchs’ death 25 years ago, all archive components, including those still located at the Bosporus University, will be brought together in one place and securely housed at the Orient Institute Istanbul, making them available for research as a unique archival collection.

  • Wanderer between Worlds (Interview with Richard Wittmann, conducted by Stefanie Hardick), Worldwide on Site. The Magazine of the Max Weber Foundation, 02/2021, pp. 34-38
  • Schweissgut, Karin; Sivri, Melissa “Traces of a Life – Cataloging the Legacy of Traugott Fuchs”, Orient Institute Istanbul Blog, 17 September 2021
  • Schweißgut, Karin. “Traugott Fuchs – a Life as a Migrant in Istanbul,” Orient Institute Istanbul Blog, 11 September 2020