Introduction

In the introduction to his account of the history of Oriental studies at the University of Munich, from the mid-nineteenth to the mid-twentieth centuries, Franz B abinger (1891-1967) felt it necessary to lower the expectations of his readers: there are hardly any great achievements to report, and most of the scholars, who appear in his account, have been forgotten. Babinger’s comment may come as a surprise, given that German scholarship has a long tradition in the field and that it can be credited with impressive achievements, also by international standards. The discrepancy does not appear to be just a function of local particularities. Munich has been one of the major German universities throughout the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Therefore, it seems more likely that Babinger’s comment refers to the difficulty of adhering to the conventions of historiography, while narrating the history of a discipline. Conventionally, history tells the story of great men (and, more rarely, women) and their great achievements. This was certainly the case when Babinger wrote his account in the 1950s (Iggers 2005), and it is also today not totally out of fashion (e.g., Irwin 2006). But telling the story of a discipline at a university may require a different narrative strategy. If the aim is a comprehensive chronological account, the story has to include at least all scholars holding an appointment to a chair in the field, irrespective of their “greatness” or the lasting importance of their work.