Johannes Lepsius and Dealing with the Armenian Genocide
Introductory speech to the international conference “Johannes Lepsius and Dealing with the Armenian Genocide” on 26/27 November 2010 at the House of Brandenburg-Prussian History in Potsdam
The philosopher, theologian and philanthropist Dr. Johannes Lepsius (1858—1926), assistant and lawyer for the Armenian people threatened with complete annihilation in the 19th/20th century, wrote the first systematic documentation of the genocide of the Armenian people internationally as an appeal for help. The manuscript was already circulating in Germany during the ongoing genocide in autumn 1915. For example, on January 11, 1916, the Reichstag member Dr. Karl Liebknecht was able to base his “Small Question” to the German Reich Government on the materials of the critical theologian Johannes Lepsius.
However, it still took some time to print the documentation, as a number of printing companies, due to the German government censorship imposed on the entire Armenian issue, refused to write or print what they considered dangerous manuscript. With the help of the printing press of the newspaper Der Reichsbote in Berlin and the company Imberg & Lefson in Neubabelsberg, Johannes Lepsius finally succeeded in publishing his documentation as a book in July 1916 in his own temple publishing house in Potsdam.
This first issue was entitled “Report on the Situation of the Armenian People in Turkey.” The board of trustees of Lepsius's own Armenian Relief Organization refused to provide financial and logistical support for the dissemination of this documentation due to political concerns. On his own responsibility, with only the help of a few employees and family members, Johannes Lepsius has distributed 20,500 copies of this “report” in Germany and beyond the German borders. It was also sent with obstacles to German politicians and to the editorial offices of major German daily newspapers.
However, copies for members of the German Reichstag and the Württemberg State Parliament were withheld by the police without the sender or recipient being notified of this. It was not until April 1919 that the Berlin police headquarters notified Lepsius of this, and only now did members of the Reichstag and the state parliament receive this historical documentation. The fact that Reichstag members, i.e. the highest political representatives of the German people, were withheld this controversial information by the state made a number of members of the German Bundestag — when they received this information from the Johannes Lepsius Archive — so much that this outrage contributed to the introduction of a resolution in the Bundestag for the first time on the 90th anniversary of the Armenian genocide, in Which the deportations and massacres are referred to as genocide in the explanatory text. [i]
A first draft of this resolution was tabled at the 172nd session of the German Bundestag on April 21, 2005. In the afternoon of the same day, there was a debate in the plenary session of the Bundestag, in which members of the Bundestag from all factions referred to Johannes Lepsius's opposition to the genocide and even apologized to the Armenian people for the role played by the German Reich during the genocide.[ii] The German media reported less about this than would actually have been necessary. When brave today Turkish Intellectuals also make a media impression in Germany by asking the Armenian people for the genocide to apologize to the Armenian people, in the German media, not a word is reminded of the pleas made by the highest representatives of the German people to apologize to the Armenian people in the German Bundestag.
International research also barely knows today that the French translation of the “Report” initiated by Lepsius was published as early as 1916, which was republished in Paris in 1918 as “Rapport secret sur les massacres d'Arménie” (with a preface by René Pinon), which was further reprinted throughout the decades of the 20th century.
The French title “Rapport secret” is misleading, as Lepsius — quite the contrary — had made his “report” wide public. The title page of the German original does say “Strictly confidential! Printing and use in the press prohibited! “and “Printed as a manuscript,” but the term “secret report” does not appear anywhere. This is only a legal protection formula that Lepsius needed against German censorship in order not to be held responsible under criminal law.[i]
When censorship against the Armenian issue was lifted after the First World War, Johannes Lepsius published his “Report” in a second edition in 1919, again in his Potsdamer Tempelverlag. This enormously important “second, increased edition” was given a new title: “The Death of the Armenian People.” The subtitle is a variant of the original title, which now reads: “Report on the fate of the Armenian people during the World War.”
[i]Cf. Hermann Goltz (ed.), Germany, Armenia and Turkey 1895—1925. Documents and journals from the Dr. Johannes Lepsius Archive, part 3: Hermann Goltz and Axel Meissner, thematic lexicon on people, institutions, places, events, Munich 2004, pp. 72—74.
[i]See the text of the resolution as printed matter 15/5689 of 15 June 2005.
[ii]See the entire debate in the minutes of the 172nd plenary session of the German Bundestag on 21 April 2005. Footage of the entire debate is also available on the Internet; the film of the entire session can also be ordered from the German Bundestag.