Do you see the city? Remarks on the description of „oriental cities“ in German-language travel reports from the 19th century

Document Type : Original Research Paper

Author

Lecturer for DaF/DaZ at the MLU Halle-Wittenberg, Germany

Abstract
The article is about German-speaking travelers of the 19th century, who
traveled to the so called „Orient“. In particular the remarks point out the
description of oriental cities in the reports as the central theme. Based on
comparison between text passages of different authors the main features
and similarities will be presented. It will be stated, that the description of
cities is stronlgy influenced by stereotypes and wrong expectations. That
emerged from the lack of objective literature and informations about the
characteristic of oriental cities. In addition to that the authors report from a
eurocentric perspective. The idea of a superior occident compared to the
orient dominates also the description of the visited cities. Only in one of the
cited reports this element is largely missing. The author was interestingly in
contrast to the others not an envoy or scholar. He was a pious journeyman.

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