Ernst Jäckh

Image:Bad-urach-fachwerk-2015-3.JPG

Jäckh was born in Urach, Germany.{{cite web | url=https://findingaids.library.columbia.edu/ead/nnc-rb/ldpd_4078934 | title=History / Biographical Note | work=Ernst Jäckh papers, 1900–1961 | publisher=Rare Book & Manuscript Library, Columbia University | access-date=December 8, 2015 }}Özçalık, Promoting an Alliance, Furthering Nationalism, p. 40.

His secondary education was at the theological seminaries of Maulbronn and Blaubeuren and at technical school in Stuttgart.{{cite news | url=https://timesmachine.nytimes.com/timesmachine/1959/08/18/80599229.html?pageNumber=29 | title=Ernest Jackh, 84, Educator, Is Dead | newspaper=The New York Times | date=18 August 1959 | page=29}} He then was a student at the University of Breslau, the University of Geneva, the University of Munich, and Heidelberg University. He studied philosophy, politics, and history, focusing in particular on Turkey and the Middle East.{{cite web | url=https://archives.yale.edu/repositories/12/resources/2966 | title=Biographical / Historical | work=Ernst Jäckh papers | publisher=Yale University Library | access-date=March 17, 2021}}

Image:Heilbronn, Altes Rathaus, Rathaus-Innenhof mit dem Vertrauten der Jungtürken Ernst Jäckh und türkischer Studienkommission in Heilbronn, am 8. Juli 1911.jpg

A journalist during his early years, Jäckh worked as an editor for the paper {{Interlanguage link|Neckar-Zeitung|de|italic=y|WD=}} in Heilbronn.

Under the overall guidance of pastor and politician Friedrich Naumann, Jäckh was a key organizer of the liberal movement in Germany during the early years of the twentieth century.Weber, "Ernst Jäckh and the National Internationalism of Interwar Germany", pp. 406–407.

Starting in 1908, Jäckh promoted the German-Turkish Alliance and he founded the {{Interlanguage link|Deutsch-Türkische Vereinigung|lt=German Turkish Association|de||WD=}} in 1912. His book Der aufsteigende Halbmond, published in 1911, sought to explain contemporary Turkey to a German readership and further the prospects of alliance between the two countries.{{Cite web |last=Döpp |first=Sebastian |date=2025-03-01 |title=„Gottes ist der Orient, Gottes ist der Okzident“ – Biblische „Orientromantik“ und europäische Modernitätsansprüche in Ernst Jäckhs „Der aufsteigende Halbmond“ |url=https://kritarab.hypotheses.org/1506 |access-date=2025-03-06 |website=Krit:Arab |language=de-DE}} He became a professor of Turkish history at the University of Berlin starting in 1914.

Ernst Jäckh played an active role in German diplomatic efforts during the First World War, although was never officially part of the German Foreign Office. During the war, Jaeckh was engaged in putting out propaganda in favor of the German-Turkish alliance (and trying to instigate actions that would undercut the British in the Middle East), with historian Fritz Fischer characterizing him as "the most important propagandist of Germany's eastern policy." Historian Margaret Lavinia Anderson describes Jäckh as "a diminutive journalist with a supersized gift for self-promotion" who marketed the Ottoman Empire as "the land of tolerance" while Ottoman Armenians were being systematically murdered.Anderson, "Who Still Talked about the Extermination of the Armenians?", pp. 203–204.

Jäckh suffered a personal loss when his only son, 18-year-old Hans, was killed in action in September 1918, on the Chemin des Dames,Özçalık, Promoting an Alliance, Furthering Nationalism, p. 201.{{cite book | title=The New Germany: Three Lectures by Ernst Jäckh | publisher=Oxford University Press | location=London | year=1927 | page=5}} during the Second Battle of the Marne. The death, coupled with the demise of the German Empire, changed his thinking about the nature of international relations.

In 1920, the Deutsche Hochschule für Politik was founded by Jäckh, who served as its president and initial director.Korenblat, "A School for the Republic?", p. 394.Weber, "Ernst Jäckh and the National Internationalism of Interwar Germany", pp. 410–411. During the 1920s, it was considered Berlin's best school for the study of political behavior.Kaplan, The Wizards of Armageddon, p. 19. The Hochschule benefited from Jäckh's abilities to fit in with both liberal and conservative factions and act as a consensus builder.Korenblat, "A School for the Republic?", pp. 398–399. He gave lecture tours in America, made contacts there, and secured funding for the Hochschule's library and publications from the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace and the Rockefeller Foundation.Eisfeld, "Émigré Scholars and the Genesis of International Relations", p. 113. As the decade went on, Jäckh promoted the idea of a "New Germany", one that was democratic and internationalist in perspective.Weber, "Ernst Jäckh and the National Internationalism of Interwar Germany", pp. 412ff.

Jäckh, like other German academics, witnessed first-hand the demise of the Weimar Republic and the rise to power of the Nazi Party.Eisfeld, "Émigré Scholars and the Genesis of International Relations", p. 114.Korenblat, "A School for the Republic?", p. 413. While some of the academics perceived immediately the reality of the Nazis, Jäckh did not. Long an advocate of a "New Germany", and with an internationalist perspective in which he saw himself as an unofficial ambassador for his country in international dealings, Jäckh continued this approach even after the Machtergreifung in January 1933.Weber, "Ernst Jäckh and the National Internationalism of Interwar Germany", pp. 416–417. Indeed in public statements and a private letter to Hitler, he maintained that a continuity was possible between the liberalism of Naumann and the national socialism of the new regime. His attempts at accommodation with the Nazis were to little avail, however, as the Hochschule underwent a political purge, lost its independence, and was put under control of the Reich Ministry of Public Enlightenment and Propaganda later during 1933.

At this point in 1933, Jäckh left Germany for refuge in Britain, but he still traveled to Germany on a steady basis and maintained contact with the government and went to Nazi-related events.Weber, "Ernst Jäckh and the National Internationalism of Interwar Germany", p. 418.

He became international director of the newly founded New Commonwealth Society, which had been created in 1932 by David Davies, 1st Baron Davies and which advocated the creation of an international tribunal and an international police force. Jäckh worked with the German branch of the society, which at first had close ties to the Nazi Party; but subsequently, the Nazis grew suspicious of both the branch and of Jäckh, reporting that Jäckh was a "highly murky personality" and that he was "married to a Jew" and thus could not be relied upon to represent German interests in international settings.Weber, "Ernst Jäckh and the National Internationalism of Interwar Germany", pp. 419–420.

Jäckh was said to have become a British citizen and to have represented the British Foreign office on trips he took to Turkey. When the Second World War started in 1939, Jäckh was named head of the Southeastern Division of the British Ministry of Information.Özçalık, Promoting an Alliance, Furthering Nationalism, p. 204.

In 1940, he migrated further to the United States where he became Professor of Public Law and Government at Columbia University, focusing on the politics of the regions of Germany, the Balkans, and the Middle East. He published the book The Rising Crescent: Turkey Yesterday, Today and Tomorrow in 1944;{{cite news | url=https://timesmachine.nytimes.com/timesmachine/1944/07/30/96412946.html?pageNumber=45 | title=Turkey Moves Forward to Join the European Family of Nations | author-first=Byron | author-last=Dexter | work=The New York Times Book Review | date=July 30, 1944 | pages=3, 16}} his aim was to explain modern Turkey to American readers and to foster improvement in Turkey–United States relations. The New York Times Book Review made reference to "Dr. Jackh's distinguished reputation as an interpreter of Turkey's policies" and found "his frank special pleading for Turkey disarming and persuasive."

He served on the Columbia faculty until 1946.{{cite news | url=https://timesmachine.nytimes.com/timesmachine/1950/03/25/96212800.html?pageNumber=2 | title=Columbia Studies Institute of Peace | author-first=Richard H. | author-last=Parke | newspaper=The New York Times | date=March 25, 1950 | page=1}} Jäckh then became a consultant at Columbia's School of International Affairs, in particular for the school's Near and Middle East Institute which he had helped found. He lived in Morningside Heights, Manhattan. He was one of the key co-founders of the American Turkish Society in 1949.

Jäckh published his memoirs, entitled Der goldene Pflug: Lebensernte eines Weltbürgers, in 1954. He died in New York City on August 17, 1959, at the age of 84.{{cite news | url=https://www.newspapers.com/image/419188448/?terms=%22Ernst%20Jackh%22&match=1 | title=Ernest Jackh | newspaper=New York Daily News | date=August 18, 1959 | page=32 | via=Newspapers.com}}

As an academic, Jäckh has not been highly regarded in terms of scholarship or original thought.Weber, "Ernst Jäckh and the National Internationalism of Interwar Germany", pp. 421–422, 423. Author Sevil Özçalık states that "Jäckh's reputation was largely self-created throughout his career, which also favorably shaped other people's perception of him."Özçalık, Promoting an Alliance, Furthering Nationalism, p. 41.

This reputation was maintained to the end of his life, with obituaries of him hailing his claimed opposition to the Nazi regime. But the progressive, democratic reputation that the Deutsche Hochschule für Politik had enjoyed for decades became diminished as a result of scholarly research performed in the latter part of the twentieth century, which showed that the Hochschule's relationship with the Nazi Party was not the one of pure opposition that had been portrayed. With these findings, Jäckh's reputation in connection to his role there suffered substantially as well.Korenblat, "A School for the Republic?", pp. 397, 409–411.

{{incomplete list|date=January 2022}}

Jäckh wrote some twenty-one books, including some under the name Ernest Jackh. His books include:

• Albanian War
• Der Austeigende Halbmonde
• Background of the Middle East
• Deutschland im Orient
• The War for Man's Soul (1943)
• [https://archive.org/details/risingcrescent002408mbp The Rising Crescent] (Farrar & Rinehart, 1944)

{{Reflist}}

• {{cite book |last1=Anderson |first1=Margaret Lavinia|author-link=Margaret L. Anderson |editor1-last=Suny |editor1-first=Ronald Grigor |editor2-last=Göçek |editor2-first=Fatma Müge |editor3-last=Naimark |editor3-first=Norman M. |editor1-link=Ronald Grigor Suny |editor2-link=Fatma Müge Göçek |editor3-link=Norman Naimark |title=A Question of Genocide: Armenians and Turks at the End of the Ottoman Empire |date=2011 |publisher=Oxford University Press |isbn=978-0-19-979276-4 |language=en |chapter=Who Still Talked about the Extermination of the Armenians?|pages=199–220}}
• {{cite book | title=Émigré Scholars and the Genesis of International Relations: A European Discipline in America? | editor-first=Felix | editor-last=Rösch | publisher=Palgrave Macmillan | location=Basingstoke, Hampshire | year=2014 | first=Rainer | last=Eisfeld | author-link=Rainer Eisfeld | chapter=From the Berlin Political Studies Institute to Columbia and Yale: Ernest Jaeckh and Arnold Wolfers | pages=113–131}}
• {{cite book | first=Fred | last=Kaplan | author-link=Fred Kaplan (journalist) | title=The Wizards of Armageddon | publisher=Stanford University Press | location=Stanford, California | year=1983}}
• {{cite journal | title=A School for the Republic? Cosmopolitans and Their Enemies at the Deutsche Hochschule Für Politik, 1920–1933 | first=Steven D. | last=Korenblat | journal=Central European History | volume= 39 | number= 3 | date=September 2006 | pages= 394–430| doi=10.1017/S0008938906000148 | s2cid=144221659 }}
• {{cite book | url= | title=Promoting an Alliance, Furthering Nationalism: Ernst Jäckh and Ahmed Emin in the Time of the First World War | author-first=Sevil | author-last=Özçalık | publisher=Klaus Schwarz Verlag | location=Berlin | year=2018 }}
• {{cite journal|last=Weber|first=Peter|date=2019|title=Ernst Jäckh and the National Internationalism of Interwar Germany|url=https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/central-european-history/article/ernst-jackh-and-the-national-internationalism-of-interwar-germany/08553DDF469900B0BF54F7BC45F101E8|journal=Central European History|language=en|volume=52|issue=3|pages=402–423|doi=10.1017/S0008938919000761|s2cid=204373771|issn=0008-9389|url-access=subscription}}

• {{PM20|FID=pe/047786}}
• [http://hdl.handle.net/10079/fa/mssa.ms.0467 Ernst Jackh papers (MS 467). Manuscripts and Archives, Yale University Archives.]
• [https://findingaids.library.columbia.edu/ead/nnc-rb/ldpd_4078934 Finding aid to Ernst Jäckh papers at Columbia University. Rare Book & Manuscript Library.]

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Category:German philologists

Category:German orientalists

Category:People from Bad Urach

Category:1875 births

Category:1959 deaths

Category:German political scientists

Category:German expatriates in Turkey

Category:German male non-fiction writers

Category:Commanders Crosses of the Order of Merit of the Federal Republic of Germany

Category:Emigrants from Nazi Germany to the United Kingdom

Category:Emigrants from Nazi Germany to the United States

Category:Writers from Baden-Württemberg

Category:Academic staff of the Deutsche Hochschule für Politik

Category:Columbia University faculty

Category:People from Manhattan

Category:Deniers of the Armenian genocide