Friedrich Schrader | |
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Friedrich Schrader
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Born |
Wolmirstedt, Prussia |
November 19, 1865
Died | August 28, 1922 Berlin, Prussia, Germany |
(aged 56)
Nationality | Prussian, since 1916 German |
Other names | Ischtiraki |
Occupation | teacher, journalist, writer, newspaper editor |
Friedrich Schrader (November 19, 1865 – August 28, 1922) was a German philologist of oriental languages, orientalist, art historian, writer, social democrat, translator and journalist. He also used the pseudonym Ischtiraki (Arabic/Ottoman for "the socialist"). He lived from 1891 until 1918 in Constantinople (today Istanbul)
Born in Wolmirstedt, Prussia, Friedrich Schrader passed his Abitur at the Domgymnasium Magdeburg. After studies of Oriental Languages and art history at the University of Halle he wrote his Ph. D. thesis on a translation of the "Karmapradipa" (an important Vedic sutra) into German. The work was done under the supervision of Professor Richard Pischel, at that time the most eminent scholar on vedic languages.
In 1891 Schrader took a position as a lecturer for German language and literature at Robert College in Bebek, close to Constantinople, where he lived with his family on the campus. Around 1900 he was "professeur" at a French-Armenian lycée in Pera, the European quarter of Constantinople (today Istanbul-Beyoğlu). Starting from the reign of Sultan Abdul Hamid II, Schrader began to translate contemporary Turkish literature and to write articles about it in German journals and newspapers such as Das Literarische Echo and Frankfurter Zeitung.
From 1900, Schrader worked as a foreign correspondent for different German newspapers and journals. In the same period he published several articles in the official newspaper of the German SPD (Social Democratic Party), Vorwärts and in the theoretical journal of the party, Die Neue Zeit. In the articles, which he published under the pseudonym "Ischtiraki", he strongly criticized the official German policy in the Ottoman Empire, especially the focus on exploitation of economic and military-strategic interests while neglecting cultural exchange between the two nations and not engaging in the development of a modern civil society in the Ottoman Empire.