Dietmar Rothermund

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.

Childhood and Youth

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.

Academic career

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.

Research and Focal Points

Passage to India 1960-1963

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

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