Ashes and Phoenix

On the occasion of the annual Memorial Day of the Armenian Genozide on 24th April and on repeated request from the public, to once more hold the film presentation from February this year, the Goethe-Institut presents the documentary film “Ashes and Phoenix” about the German theologian and orientalist Dr. Johannes Lepsius (1858-1926), whose name is unsolvable connected with the history of the Armenian people. “Ashes and Phoenix” was made 2009 ( 95 min; German with English subtitles) by Merlyn Solakhan and Manfred Blank.

On 24th of April the Armenian communities worldwide and their friends remember the genozide on the Armenian people. On that occasion and because many asked for a repetition of our film presentation from last February, we once again present on the 24th of April the documentary film about the German theologian and orientalist Dr. Johannes Lepsius (1858-1926), whose name is unsolvable connected with the history of the Armenian people. The writer Franz Werfel erected him a literary monument in his famous novel “The forty days of Musa Dagh” , where he named Lepsius the “guardian angel of the Armenians”. We remember this great orientalist and humanist by presenting the documentary film “Ashes and Phoenix”, which was produced with the support of the German Federal Foundation for Culture in 2009.

Lepsius is known for his documentation of the Armenian Genocide. His work, "Report on the situation of the Armenian people in Turkey", was censored on August 7, 1916, however 20,000 copies were sent throughout Germany before the censorship was enforced. Another edition of the documentation is an interview with Enver Pasha in 1915 that bears the title "The death corridor of the Armenian people".

In 1909 the Armenians of the Ottoman Empire had high expectations from the Young Turk movement which brought Abdul Hamid's regime to an end. Yet during the opening months of the First World War, there were mass arrests, deportations, and massacres of Armenians living in Eastern Anatolia. During this time, Lepsius founded humanitarian relief activities, and tried(unsuccessfully) to influence Germany, the Ottoman Empire's ally, which had thousands of soldiers and officers stationed throughout the Ottoman Empire. According to Ernst Jaeckh "At the time of World War I he introduced the Armenian protagonist. Dr. Lepsius, to the Turkish Generalissimo Enver Pasha, and through the author's [Jaeckh's] intervention the lives of many Armenians, particularly women and children, were saved."