Dietmar Rothermund

The cultural exchange between Germany and South Asia was of great importance for Dietmar Rothermund. For decades, he was considered the number one contact person when Indian politicians visited Germany. He also frequently accompanied German ministers and other envoys on their South Asian tours. For this commitment and many other activities, Dietmar Rothermund was awarded the "Verdienstkreuz erster Klasse" (engl. Federal Cross of Merit 1st Class) in October 2011. Rothermund was also available for interviews on radio and television at any time, even though he very much regretted that he was only interviewed on the occasion of crises and disasters. In connection with his commitment to cultural exchange, the governmental Indo-German Consultative Group should also be mentioned. Rothermund had been a member of the institution founded by Helmut Kohl at the suggestion of Indian Prime Minister Narasimha Rao since 1992. It was founded to intensify economic contacts between India and Germany.

The historian from Heidelberg did not limit himself to South Asian studies alone, he also focused on topics related to colonial history and Asia in general. One of his works on this field is Asian Trade and European Expansion in the Age of Mercantilism, which can also be subsumed to his research focus on economic history. On the subject of colonial history, he produced the world-historical volume The Routledge Companion to Decolonization in 2006. In this book the decolonisation processes in Africa, Asia, the Caribbean and the Pacific are described in individual chapters, which are presented chronologically and clearly with maps.

Rothermund's publications are published in his Festschrift, which was edited by, Georg Berkemer, Tilman Frasch, Hermann Kulke and Jürgen Lütt. All works after 2001 are taken from the catalog of the German National Library.

India's contemporary history was also part of Rothermund's multifaceted studies. In 1996, he published a volume entitled Liberalising India. Progress and Problems, which was based on a conference he organised at the Nehru Memorial Library in Delhi, attended by many senior Indian government officials. In addition, his monograph on the trouble spot Kashmir should be mentioned in this context. Rothermund describes the development of the conflict between India and Pakistan from the beginning through the partition of British India in 1947 and the impact of contemporary events such as 9/11.

With History of India, Rothermund, together with his colleague Hermann Kulke, created a true standard work, which has been translated into Italian, Turkish, Romanian and Chinese. First published in German in 1982, the work was translated into English in 1986 and became very successful in both languages. Many more editions were to follow, including, for example, Geschichte Indiens. Von der Induskultur bis heute (engl. History of India. From the Indus Culture to the Present), or Geschichte Indiens. Vom Mittelalter bis zur Gegenwart (engl. History of India. From the Middle Ages to the Present).

Economic history gripped Rothermund between the early 1980s and the 1990s. As this topic was one of the main focuses of Rothermund's research, he wrote several monographs and anthologies on it. Including An Economic History of India. From Pre-colonial Times to 1986.

At the "Historikertag" (engl. Historians' Conference) in Würzburg in 1980, Dietmar Rothermund gathered a small group of like-minded people who wanted to try to bring "non-European topics" more into the focus of German historical scholarship. Rothermund saw this as his goal in the 1980s/90s. Since the first meeting in Würzburg in 1980, the "Arbeitskreis außereuropäischer Geschichte" (AAG) (engl. Working Group on Non-European History) met regularly during the Historikertage. At the Historikertag in Berlin in 1984, Rothermund was elected Chairman of the Working Group, which he managed for many years. In October 1988, the German Historians' Congress decided at its 37th session that non-European history should become a major topic in German historical scholarship. At the Historikertag in Aachen in 2000, Rothermund achieved official recognition of the AAG by German historians. A priority programme established by the German Research Foundation (DFG) was decisive for this, entitled Transformations of Non-European Expansion from the 15th to the 20th Century. Cultural interaction between European and non-European societies in the Age of Expansion. These developments resulted in the Periplus. Jahrbuch außereuropäischer Geschichte, which addressed colonial history and the history of the world outside the West.

In the course of his habilitation, Rothermund dealt with India's agricultural system in colonial times. In 1978, barely ten years after his habilitation, he published his monograph Government, Landlord and Peasant in India. Agrarian Relations under British Rule, 1865-1935, which strengthened his international reputation.

The EASAS emerged from a small conference organised by the Heidelberg South Asia Institute in Bad Herrenalb in 1966. The first official meeting of the European Conference of Modern South Asian Studies took place in Cambridge in 1968. The conference rotated every two years between different European research centres, so in 1972 the third conference was held for the first time at the South Asia Institute in Heidelberg. With Rothermund as its founding father and long-time chairman (1997-2006), EASAS developed into one of the most important European associations of its kind. In 2001, on the occasion of Rothermund's retirement, the 17th conference was held in Heidelberg with over 250 international participants. The regularly held meetings gave Europe a significant position for South Asian studies worldwide.

Rothermund had close ties to the South Asia Institute in Heidelberg. Almost his entire academic career took place at the then still young South Asia Institute, which had just been founded by Werner Conze. From 1963, he was a research assistant in the Department of History until 1968, when he was appointed Chair of the History of South Asia. For one third of his 38 years at the SAI, he was Executive Director. Under Rothermund's leadership, the Institute developed rapidly, and shortly after Rothermund's retirement in 2001, the SAI was considered the leading centre for South Asian studies in Germany and also one of the leading institutes in this field worldwide. With Dietmar Rothermund, the Heidelberg South Asia Institute became an important contact point for Indian scientists, diplomats and politicians. The important role Rothermund played for the SAI becomes clear with the joking name of "Dietmar's Institute", which colleagues liked to use frequently.

The actual end of his three-year stay is probably Rothermund's last publication My Encounters in India. He established some contacts with research colleagues in the Indian National Archives and reports in his last publication on encounters with 135 Indian political, cultural and scientific personalities since 1961, including the aforementioned Jawaharlal Nehru, Manmohan Singh and Indira Gandhi. Shortly after his stay in India, Rothermund visited the National University of Australia as a visiting fellow in 1963.

Through his successful dissertation, Rothermund seemed to be on the direct path to becoming a specialist in American history, but thanks to a grant from the German Research Foundation (GRF), which allowed him to spend three years in India, Rothermund decided to devote his research to South Asia. He arrived in Bombay (today's Mumbai) on a freighter in mid-January 1960 and was immediately impressed by the diverse culture of South Asia. In the very first year, he gave a lecture at the Indian History Congress at Aligarh University on the Indian Non-Cooperation Movement against Indian colonial rule.

Rothermund studied history and philosophy in Marburg, Munich and Philadelphia. He received his doctorate in the US in 1959 with a thesis on US social history. With the help of a Fulbright scholarship, he was able to study in Pennsylvania and write his dissertation there at the age of 26, entitled: The Layman's Progress. Religious and Political Experience in Colonial Pennsylvania. 1740-1770. It dealt with the "growing politicisation of denominational groups in Pennsylvania in the late colonial period and in the run-up to American independence". It gained a great deal of attention in the USA and England up to the present day. Not for nothing was it published by Oxford University Press in 1962 and Cambridge University Press in 1963. Between 1961 and 2020, a total of 17 editions were published at the University of Pennsylvania. In 1963 Rothermund became a research assistant to the Chair of History at the South Asia Institute in Heidelberg. Shortly after his habilitation The Land and the Law in India, 1875-1900, in 1968, he was appointed Chair of the History of South Asia at the South Asia Institute. At that time, this was the only professorship of Modern History of South Asia in the Federal Republic of Germany. He held the professorship until his retirement in 2001 and was the executive director of the South Asia Institute for a total of 15 years.

Dietmar Otto Ernst Rothermund (20 January 1933 in Kassel - 9 March 2020 in Dossenheim) was a German historian and professor of the history of South Asia at the Ruprecht-Karls University in Heidelberg. He is considered an important representative of modern German historical scholarship. Although he began his academic career as an Americanist, he eventually became a notable figure in the German historiography of South Asia. He helped to lay the foundations for South Asian Studies in Germany and Europe.

The "Heidelberger Südasiengespräche" (engl. Heidelberg South Asia Talks), which have been held in the surroundings of the Heidelberg South Asia Institute since 1991, were initiated directly by Dietmar Rothermund, who also co-organised them until his retirement. With the talks, he offered a forum for exchange between academia, business and representatives of politics and public life. The SAI wanted to make its contribution to the discussion and shaping of the cooperation between the Federal Republic of Germany and the countries of South Asia. The internal development of these countries and their position in the international context were part of the analysis of current problems and the attempt to point out longer-term perspectives.  Thus the topics of discussion (as of 30.06. 2000) were "India" (1990), "Pakistan" (1991), "Bangladesh" (1992), "Nepal and the Himalayan Region" (1933), "Sri Lanka" (1994), "German Cooperation with South Asia" (1995), "Food Security in South Asia" (1996), "50 Years of Independent South Asia: Awakening, Change, Future Prospects" (1997) and "The Southeast Asian Economic Crisis - Diagnoses, Therapies and Implications for South Asia" (1998).

Dietmar Rothermund was interested in India and its culture from an early age on. He read the early Indian philosophical Upanishad texts at a young age and made a map of India's most important temples while still at school. A few years before his Abitur, Rothermund wrote a letter to Jawaharlal Nehru, the then Prime Minister of India. Even as a child, he had enthusiastically read Nehru's autobiography. In 1929, Nehru, as president of the Indian National Congress, complained that the Congress had so far been able to make cultural progress but no social progress. Referring to this, Rothermund formulated his question as to whether this had been achieved under his leadership after Indian independence. The letter remained unanswered and even at a personal meeting a few years later, Nehru did not give him any information.

Rothermund's work The Global Impact of the Great Depression 1929-1939, describes his studies of the Great Depression, with chapters on China, Southeast Asia and Latin America. With India in the Great Depression, Rothermund focused on the impact of the economic crisis on India and its inhabitants.

Dietmar Rothermund was extremely keen on strengthening and consolidating the relationship between India and Germany. In addition to his commitment in this field, he has also published several works. These include Rabindranath Tragore in Germany, where he captures the euphoria of the 1920s in Germany for India, which arose through the visits of the great Bengali and Gandhian Rabindranath Tragore. Furthermore, his biography on Mahatma Gandhi and his India Handbook are to be highlighted, as both kept alive the knowledge about India and one of its most important personalities in Germany. The handbook was written by several authors and provides important basic knowledge about modern India.