Eugen Mittwoch

Coming from an old Orthodox Jewish family, Mittwoch was born on 4 December 1876 in Schrimm, Prussian Province of Posen, Imperial Germany (now Srem in Poland).

After the agency initially employed people who advocated Jihad and violence against the Western powers, Mittwoch hired more liberal and cosmopolitan writers and intellectuals for the Nachrichtenstelle such as the Swiss Max Rudolf Kaufmann (Mittwoch hired him for the Nachrichtenstelle, after he was arrested, briefly imprisoned and deported from Turkey because Turkish intelligence had found letter of Kaufmann criticizing German-Turkish militarism and jingoism), the Social Democrat Friedrich Schrader and the Zionist Nahum Goldmann.

Schrader and Kaufmann were correspondents for the Jewish-owned liberal Frankfurter Zeitung and close associates of Paul Weitz [de], one of the sharpest critics of German collaboration with the genocidal politics of the Young Turks.

In the 1920s, Mittwoch was the leading orientalist in Germany, and the founder of a more politically oriented, modern science of Middle East Studies, in contrast to the traditional philologic, apolitical approach very much influenced by Goethe.

The oldest daughter, Ursula, born 1924, was professor for human genetics at the University College London and, in 2014, was still scientifically active and celebrated her 90th birthday in her old institute.