Islam in German Primers

The GEI research library began digitising its collection of reading primers from the German imperial period in October 2017, as part of a collaborative project led by Prof. Christian Dawidowski at Osnabrück University for the research project ‘Der Islam im Deutschen Lesebuch. Eine Analyse der Islamdiskurse 1870–1918‘ (Islam in German Readers: An Analysis of Discourse on Islam 1870–1918). The digitised material is available online in the digital textbook library GEI-Digital.

Through its research and description of interpretive patterns this joint project contributes significantly to the phenomenological study of ‘Muslim foreigners’. This investigates whether current images of Islam can be decoded as products of historical scholastic mediation processes. The period under study, between the foundation of the German Empire and the end of the First World War, is also interesting in terms of the didactics of literature because, on the one hand, German teaching as we know it today became established during this period and, on the other hand, reading primers are gaining in importance for the formation of collective memories.