With Milena Methodieva hosted by Andreas Guidi and Jovo Miladinovic for a joint release with Ottoman History Podcast   The Aladja Mosque in Plovdiv, early 20th century (Wikimedia Commons)   In 1878, following the Congress of Berlin, Bulgaria became a de facto independent principality. Not anymore under Ottoman rule, the Muslims of Bulgaria navigated…

With Nadège Ragaru Marco Behar: “Their Last Way” (from the Series “Past”, detail, 1958), Courtesy of the Bulgarian National Gallery, Sofia.   Since the immediate aftermath of the end of World War II, a narrative concerning the rescue of the Bulgarian Jews from deportation and genocide has nurtured the self-representation of the governments in…

With Ümit Kurt Hosted by Zeynep Ertuğrul and Andreas Guidi   A prominent Armenian family deported and perished in 1915. Source: Mihran Minassian Private Collection.   The Armenian community of Aintab, nowadays Gaziantep, was among the most flourishing of Ottoman Anatolia. The Armenian Genocide not only brought an end to the community’s coexistence with the…

With Gaëlle Fisher At the crossroad of Bukovinans Street and Radauti Street, Stuttgart. Courtesy of Gaelle Fisher.   Before World War II, Bukovina was a region marked by multiconfessional coexistence and ruled by the Habsburg Empire (1774-1918) and then by Romania (1918-1940). Two among Bukovina’s population groups, the “ethnic” Germans and the Askhenazi Jews, left…

with Paolo Fonzi A 1941 cartoon from the newspaper “The Manchester Dispatch”, mocking Mussolini’s dependency on Hitler to defeat Greece   In the spring of 1941, after a brief war ending in an embarrassing retreat for Italy one year earlier, Mussolini’s troops supported by Nazi Germany occupied various regions of Greece. In Fascist Italy’s vision…

with Christine Philliou hosted by Zeynep Ertugrul and Jovo Miladinovic   Portrait of Refik Halit Karay in Aleppo (1928). Courtesy of the Taha Toros Archive Refik Halid Karay was a satirical writer whose life can help us rethink the transition from the Ottoman Empire to the Republic of Turkey. After 1908, Refik Halid opposed the…

with Malte Fuhrmann hosted by Andreas Guidi and Zeynep Ertugrul for a joint release with Ottoman History Podcast (Steamers, row and sailing boats on the Istanbul Golden Horn, ca. 1890. Courtesy of the Deutsches Archäologisches Institut Istanbul)   At the turn of the twentieth century, Ottoman port cities of the Eastern Mediterranean were sites of…

with Martin Rempe A military band from Germany, 1913 (Wikimedia Commons) A few countries can boast a musical heritage comparable to Germany’s. Yet, this tradition was made possible by rank-and-file musicians, whose position in society was far from stable and acknowledged. In this episode, we discuss a history of music in Germany “from below”. Applying…

with Alan Mikhail Sultan Selim I and Piri Reis’s world map (1513) – collage based on Wikimedia commons   The Ottoman Empire was a key force in the making of the early modern world. Growing from a regional to a global player and to the most powerful Muslim empire at the turn of the 16th…

with Jasmin Daam, Esther Möller, Cyrus Schayegh, and Selim Deringil a joint release with Ottoman History Podcast Swimming at the Corniche of Beirut, in the background: the Hôtel Saint-Georges, 1930s. © Fonds photographique René Zuber. Modern Mediterranean history and Middle Eastern history rarely dialogue with each other. Whereas European ideas and practices of and in…