Nazi-authored Arabic-English dictionary causes stir at U. Minnesota

The revelation that Hans Wehr, a late German scholar who authored the preeminent Arabic-English dictionary, was a Nazi has triggered a debate about the ethics of using his book.

One of the world’s leading Islamic historians, Daniel Pipes, tweeted last week that “Hans Wehr’s Nazi role has – after 70 years – suddenly become a public issue at the University of Minnesota ‘after second-year student [Rodrigo Tojo Garcia] found information online about Wehr’s background,’” quoting an article by The Minnesota Daily, a campus newspaper that first reported the unease of using Wehr’s dictionary.

Tojo Garcia located shocking material about Wehr’s Nazi history online and reported it to another student, who approached Katrien Vanpee, the director of Arabic language instruction at the university.

“I was amazed that it hadn’t come up, that no one had talked about it,” Tojo Garcia told The Minnesota Daily. “You would think with something like that, especially in the modern political climate... that someone would’ve mentioned at some point that Hans Wehr did this – but they didn’t.”

Wehr was born in 1909 and joined the Nazi party in 1940. The German Arabist died in 1981. Wehr argued in an essay that Germany should promote an alliance with “the Arabs against England and France, not to mention against the Zionists in Palestine,”

according to an article by Stefan Buchen on the website of Qantara.de.

The Minnesota Daily reported that Vanpee did not expect to discuss Nazis on the first semester day.

“I don’t want to require a dictionary that is a product of Nazi Germany, even if you could technically argue that the Hans Wehr dictionary that’s being used here is not exactly the same as the original one,” Vanpee told the campus paper, adding “the fact that ‘Hans Wehr’ is still on the cover is, of course, still really problematic.”

“What I find most problematic about the dictionary’s name is the fact that all of us who are familiar with the dictionary, refer to it as ‘Hans Wehr,’ i.e. automatically crediting him and only him, and not his contributors,” Vanpee wrote by email to the paper.

Wehr’s dictionary was funded by the Nazi regime and published years after the defeat of the Hitler movement in 1952. Hitler’s foreign affairs specialists wanted to use the dictionary project.

The Minnesota Daily reported that the dictionary was a requirement for all Arabic language classes but Vanpee has not made it obligatory since the disclosure of Wehr’s Nazi past.

Tojo Garcia told the paper that he owns the dictionary.

“It poses something of a problem, because it’s not exactly completely ethical for me to resell it knowing exactly what that is,” he said.

Nibraas Khan, an Arabic language student, told the campus paper she uses a free PDF version of the dictionary.

“I personally just don’t feel comfortable ever buying anything that incorporates any sort of Nazi ideologies,” Khan said.

Arabic student Lauren Meyers told the paper that she takes the Hans Wehr dictionary on loan from the library, because she does not want to finance the dictionary.

“If we’re operating with a dictionary every day that was named after someone who learned this language as a tool to use the Middle East and Arabic-speaking countries for their heinous motives, that’s really disrespectful and really harmful,” she said. “I think making the book optional and having that conversation is very important for Arabic learners to understand.”

Hedwig Klein, a German Jew, received an assignment to analyze modern Arabic literature for the Wehr dictionary. Klein, an academic Arabist in Hamburg, sought to escape Nazi Germany in 1939 to India aboard a vessel, but the outbreak of World War II prevented her from reaching Bombay.

Buchen writes that Wehr’s colleagues praise “the excellent quality” of Klein’s entries.

“Though, of course it will be completely impossible for her to be credited as a contributor later,” said one person involved in the dictionary project. In 1942, the Germans deported Klein to Auschwitz from the harbor city of Hamburg. The Nazis murdered Klein, her sister, mother and grandmother.