Author: Heinrich Detering

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First edition of the West-Eastern Divan (photo: Goethe Museum in Dusseldorf

Goethe anniversary

Orient and Occident

Two hundred years of the "West-Eastern Divan": "North and West and South shatter, thrones burst and empires tremble" – why Islam is part of German literature. By Heinrich DeteringMore

Goethe and the Orient: Why did the , true to the writer's motto of "Crush infamy!", , true to the writer's motto of "Crush infamy!", poet's mind wander to far-off climes?Translations of classical Islamic literature: From the emotional Orient to the distortion of IslamJohann Gottfried Herder and the Orient: Faith as silent spirituality

In brief

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Most Recent Photo Essay

Banished from paradise: in Biblical times, paradise was where Adam and Eve lived, supposedly the area between the Euphrates and Tigris rivers – until God banished them from the Garden of Eden because they nibbled on the forbidden fruit from the Tree of Knowledge. There are still lush oases on the banks of the river, but people's lives there today are anything but paradisiacal.

Pope Francis' visit to Iraq's biblical sites

Abraham was born in Iraq and this is where the whale swallowed Jonah, according to the Bible. Pope Francis' is travelling to an area steeped in biblical history.