Angela Dorothea Merkel is a German former politician and scientist who served as chancellor of Germany from 2005 to 2021. A member of the Christian Democratic Union (CDU), she previously served as Leader of the Opposition from 2002 to 2005 and as Leader of the Christian Democratic Union from 2000 to 2018. Merkel was the first female chancellor of Germany. During her chancellorship, Merkel was frequently referred to as the de facto leader of the European Union (EU) and the most powerful woman in the world. Beginning in 2016, she was often described as the leader of the free world.
Wolfgang Schäuble was a German politician, Minister serving in various government offices and statesman whose political career spanned more than five decades. A member of the Christian Democratic Union (CDU), he was the longest-serving member of any democratic German parliament. Schäuble served as 13th president of the Bundestag from 2017 to 2021.
Heinrich Karl Brugsch was a German Egyptologist. He was associated with Auguste Mariette in his excavations at Memphis. He became director of the School of Egyptology at Cairo, producing numerous very valuable works and pioneering the decipherment of Demotic, the simplified script of the later Egyptian periods.
Shelomo Dov Goitein was a German-Jewish ethnographer, historian and Arabist known for his research on Jewish life in the Islamic Middle Ages, and particularly on the Cairo Geniza.
Wolfgang Tiefensee is a German politician of the Social Democratic Party (SPD). He was the Federal Minister for Transport, Building and Urban Development in the grand coalition cabinet led by Angela Merkel between 2005 and 2009. Since 2014, he has been the State Minister of Economy, Science and the Digital Society in the government of Thuringia's Minister-President Bodo Ramelow.
Oriental studies is the academic field that studies Near Eastern and Far Eastern societies and cultures, languages, peoples, history and archaeology. In recent years, the subject has often been turned into the newer terms of Middle Eastern studies and Asian studies. Traditional Oriental studies in Europe is today generally focused on the discipline of Islamic studies, and the study of China, especially traditional China, is often called Sinology. The study of East Asia in general, especially in the United States, is often called East Asian studies.
Niels Annen is a German politician of the Social Democratic Party (SPD) who has been serving as Parliamentary State Secretary at the Federal Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development in the coalition government of Chancellor Olaf Scholz since 2021. He served as Minister of State at the Federal Foreign Office from 2018 to 2021 in the government of Chancellor Angela Merkel.
Baron Max von Oppenheim was a German lawyer, diplomat, ancient historian, and archaeologist. He was a member of the Oppenheim banking dynasty. Abandoning his career in diplomacy, he discovered the site of Tell Halaf in 1899 and conducted excavations there in 1911–13 and again in 1927–29. Bringing many of his finds to Berlin, he exhibited them in a private museum in 1931. This was destroyed by Allied bombing in World War II. However, most of the findings were recently restored and have been exhibited again at Berlin and Bonn.
Charles Issawi was an Egyptian-born economist and historian of the Middle East at Columbia University and Princeton University in the United States. Roger Owen, the A. J. Meyer Professor of Middle East History at Harvard, stated that Issawi, "was the father of the study of the modern economic history of the Middle East."
Stefan Heidemann is a German orientalist at Hamburg University, Hamburg.
Germany–Libya relations are bilateral relations between the Central European state of Germany and the North African state of Libya. Germany is represented in Libya with an embassy in Tripoli and a diplomatic office in Benghazi, while Libya has an embassy in Berlin. The relationship between these countries was tense in the late 1980s following a bombing incident, but improved since with increasingly close co-operation especially on economic matters. However, during the 2011 Libyan civil war, Germany sided politically with the National Transitional Council, which it recognized as Libya's legitimate government after severing ties with Muammar Gaddafi's regime.
The Deutsche Orient-Gesellschaft, abbreviated DOG, is a German voluntary association based in Berlin dedicated to the study of the Near East.
Eberhard von Stohrer was a career German diplomat who served during World War I and World War II. The son of an Army General from Württemberg, he studied at Leipzig University, receiving a Doctor of Law degree. He also studied at the University of Strasbourg and the School of Political Sciences in Paris.
Rolf Schwanitz is a German politician. From 1998 till 2005, he served under Federal Chancellor Schröder as a Minister of State in the Federal Chancellery. He was then, from 2005 till 2009, Parliamentary State Secretary in the Health ministry under Federal Chancellor Merkel.
Heinz Halm is a German scholar of Islamic Studies, with a particular expertise on early Shia history, the Ismailites and other Shia sects.
Mario Keßler is a German historian.
Nazis, Islamists, and the Making of the Modern Middle East is a controversial 2014 Yale University Press book by German historian Wolfgang G. Schwanitz and Israeli historian Barry Rubin. The authors argue that there is a high degree of similarity in the ideologies of Nazism, radical Arab nationalism, and Islamism. The book received a mixed reception with some historians criticizing the authors' methodology and conclusions.
Peter Heinz Feist was a German art historian.
Dieter Bernhard Herrmann was a German historian of astronomy and author of numerous popular science books on astronomy. He was director of the Zeiss Major Planetarium in Berlin from 1987 to 2004. In his scientific work he dealt with the early development of astrophysics and the application of quantitative methods in the history of science.
The Deutsche Orientbank was a German bank, founded in 1905-1906 in Berlin and merged into Dresdner Bank in 1931-1932. It was originally intended for financing ventures in the Ottoman Empire and the Khedivate of Egypt.
