Ultimately these cross purposes brought disaster, pulling a fatally weak and woefully unprepared Ottoman state into a global war, and unleashing vicious, internal ethnic repression that brought it defeat and dismemberment. The diaries and official reports of German spy and propagandist Curt Prufer - translated here into English in their entirety for the first time - chronicle the complexities of the fragile Ottoman-German alliance from the perspective of a participant. Much like fellow soldier-scholar T.E. Lawrence, Prufer and his colleagues tried to steal the loyalties of the Muslim subjects of the opposing sides. The book explores these episodes of sabotage, subversion and subterfuge - from managing spies to preparing for the attack on the Suez Canal in 1915 - and in the process sheds light onto the ways World War I played out across the Middle East. Complemented throughout by in-depth and meticulously researched footnotes, this primary source collection is an invaluable addition to the extant corpus of late Ottoman and World War I historical documents.
The Centers for Austrian Studies - founded by the Austrian Federal Ministry for Science and Research - play an important role for the international scientific community. Their tasks are to promote studies on Austria and Central Europe, and to give Austrian students the opportunity to conduct research abroad and make contact with local scientific communities. This book contains reports on the activities of these institutions during the 2010/2011 academic year, as well as the working papers developed by some of their most promising PhD students. The research presented in this book covers various aspects of Central European history in modern times, ranging from the 17th century to the present. (Series: Europa Orientalis - Vol. 12)
