The Legacy of Otto Stein - New Evidence

In: Zeitschrift der Deutschen Morgenländischen Gesellschaft, 164 (2014), Nr. 3. pp. 811-816. ISSN 0341-0137

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Abstract

The demand for the so-called "Aufarbeitung" of the NS-period in German Indology has produced fairly large volumes on those figures that have been identified as the strongest and most active supporters of the regime, and the volumes dealing with Hauer and Wüst, which are indispensable reading for everyone interested in the period, may not have exhausted the topic. Nevertheless, the focus on the culprits has one drawback. lt is likely to leave those in the dark who are mostly enumerated as the victims. While we know quite a deal about Hauer's strange world view, we have only a very basic idea of the lives of the the Jewish Sanskritists who were forced into exile (Sheftelowitz, Scherman) or killed in the holocaust (Strauss, Stein). We have four hundred pages on Wüst, but only seven on Otto Stein. From the perspective of the history of Indology this is to be regretted and one can only hope that more can be found out about the two Jewish scholars of Sanskrit in Prague, Moritz Winternitz and Otto Stein.