The Dream of a Jewish-Arab Orient: Writer M.Y. Ben-Gavriêl

Of Jewish-Austrian heritage, Eugen Höflich was born in Vienna in 1891 and served as an officer in the Middle East during the First World War. While in Jerusalem, he saw cruelty and corruption at first-hand and witnessed the misery of the local population. Upon his return to Europe, he began writing and dreaming of a new Orient – the place that was the last “chance for humanity” after the horrors of large-scale war: Jews, Arabs, and all the peoples of Asia would be united in the fight against exploitation and oppression.

Dr. Sebastian Schirrmeister is a literary scholar and a research fellow at the University of Hamburg. He gained an M.A. in Jewish Studies and German Literature in Potsdam before completing his PhD in Hamburg. He has held fellowships in Haifa, Jerusalem, Göttingen and elsewhere. Schirrmeister is the author of Begegnung auf fremder Erde. Verschränkungen deutsch- und hebräischsprachiger Literatur in Palästina/Israel nach 1933 (2019, Encounter in a Strange Land. German-Hebrew Literary Entanglements in Palestine/Israel After 1933).