Abraham Shalom Yahuda’s German Assistants : The Cases of Hans Kindermann and Hans L. Gottschalk

Schmidtke, Sabine (2025) Abraham Shalom Yahuda’s German Assistants : The Cases of Hans Kindermann and Hans L. Gottschalk. ARABIST: BUDAPEST STUDIES IN ARABIC, 48. pp. 63-127. ISSN 0239-1619

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Abstract

Over the past decade or two, the formation, provenance, and history of manuscript collections around the world have become a focus of scholarly attention. This trend has prompted numerous studies of the Jerusalem-born cosmopolitan Abraham Shalom Yahuda (1877–1951), arguably the most important seller of Islamic manu¬scripts to Western collectors and libraries during the third and fourth decades of the twentieth century. One area that has not been studied is Yahuda’s assistants, whom he employed to write descriptions of the manuscripts in his possession. No attempt has been made to identify the individuals who worked for Yahuda at different times or to distinguish between the various languages (Arabic, German, English, French) and hands in which the extant catalog slips were written. It appears that over the years Yahuda employed a number of Egyptian and German scholars, some of whom worked for him longer than others. Among them were Hans Kindermann (1902–1979) and Hans Ludwig Gottschalk (1904–1981). This study discusses the surviving evidence of their work for Yahuda, as well as the unsuccessful attempt of Hedwig Klein (1911–1942) to enter Yahuda’s service in 1938.

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