In Memoriam

Günter Lüling (1928—2014)*

r. Günter Lüling, author of a number and his wife Ilse (née Wilms). The family of revisionist works on the Qur’ān returned to Germany in 1935, where and the ’s origins, Günter attended elementary school in Ddied on 10 September 2014, in Wasser- Altbelz, near the town of Köslin in eastern burg am Inn, Germany. He had suffered Pomerania (now Poland), and then (1939- a coronary thrombosis in April, followed 1943) the Staatliche Oberschule für Jungen a few days later by a stroke, and over the in Köslin. next few months was moved from his Günter was drafted into military service home in Erlangen to various rehabilitation on 1 January 1944, that is, at the age of 15, clinics in southern Bavaria. He was 85. an indication of the desperate need for Lüling was born on 25 October 1928, in “manpower” of the Third Reich in the final Warna, on the Bulgarian Black Sea coast, years of the war. He was at first utilized as to Pastor and Missionary Gerhard Lüling a support worker for the Navy, and then,

* I am grateful to Friedrich Lüling, Günter Lüling’s son, for providing important information about his studies, and to the Lüling family for their warm support. The detailed information on Lüling’s early life and studies is taken in part from a Lebenslauf prepared by Lüling himself, dated August 1975. (Photo: Günter Lüling ca. 2012. Photo courtesy of Friedrich Lüling.)

Al-ʿUṣūr al-Wusṭā 25 (2017): 229-234 230 • Fred M. Donner

starting on 15 March 1945 (still only 16), as Philology; Hans Wehr and Hans-Joachim an infantryman. Schoeps again numbered among his At the conclusion of the war, Günter teachers. He passed the civil examination became an Allied prisoner-of-war, for political economy (Diplomvolkswirt) and from October 1945, was entered in Erlangen in November 1957. In early into training near Braunschweig and 1958, he resumed his studies with a focus Salzgitter (Lower Saxony) to be a mason on Semitic Philology and Islamic studies, or bricklayer. He was, however, able with Sociology and History of Religions as to return to formal schooling in spring subordinate fields. Under the direction of 1947, attending the Große Schule in Prof. Dr. Jörg Kraemer, he started work on Wolfenbüttel, near Braunschweig, where an edition of the pseudo-Aristotelian Liber he passed the Reifeprüfung in March 1949. de pomo as his dissertation. In September In early 1950, he embarked on 1961, however, his progress was halted university study, which he pursued by a double shock: first, the news that continuously until 1961, mainly in another scholar was about to release an Erlangen, but with stretches also in edition of the Liber de pomo, which made Göttingen and Bern, Switzerland. From Lüling’s work superfluous; and second, the 1950-1954, he studied Protestant theology, tragic early death of his Doktorvater, Jörg with secondary studies in Classical Kraemer.2 philology, History of Religions, Germanic Lüling had little choice but to break languages and literatures, and Arabic off his studies, and starting in January studies. In the course of these studies, he 1962, he worked for several months as worked with some of the foremost scholars an instructor in German for the Goethe- in these fields, including Hans Wehr Institut in several towns in Germany. In (Arabic studies), Walther Zimmerli (Old August, 1962, he assumed the position of Testament), Ernst Käsemann and Joachim Director of the Goethe-Institut in Aleppo, Jeremias (New Testament and systematic Syria. It was there that his two children, theology), and Hans Joachim Schoeps Friedrich and Lieselotte, were born to him (History of Religions), among others. He and his wife Hannelore (née Wolfrum), was also deeply influenced by the work whom he had married in June 1960. Günter of Martin Werner of Bern (History of remained Director of the Goethe-Institut Religions), especially Werner’s theory of Aleppo until August 1965. The family then an “angel Christology,” although he never returned to Erlangen, where Lüling was formally studied with him.1 Lüling passed able to work at the University, first as the First Exam in Theology in Göttingen in assistant in the Seminar for the History of February 1954. Medicine, and eventually as assistant in From 1954 to 1957, he undertook further the Seminar for Oriental Studies, where studies in Erlangen, combining the fields of he taught courses in modern Arabic while Sociology, History of Religions, and Semitic working on a new dissertation, under the

1. A helpful summary of Werner’s views is John 2. Lüling informed me that Kraemer committed Reumann, “Martin Werner and ‘Angel Christology’,” suicide. (Personal communication, Erlangen, 1970 or Lutheran Quarterly 8 (1956), 349-58. 1971).

Al-ʿUṣūr al-Wusṭā 25 (2017) In Memoriam: Günter Lüling (1928—2014) • 231

Günter Lüling in July 2008. Photo courtesy of Fred M. Donner. direction of Prof. Wolfdietrich Fischer, of a comprehensive pre-Islamic Christian another former student of Hans Wehr. Hymnal hidden in the Koran under earliest Lüling completed his dissertation, entitled Islamic reinterpretations (Delhi: Motilal “Kritisch-exegetische Untersuchungen des Banarsidass, 2003). Qur’ān-Textes,” in February 1970 and was It is difficult to summarize Lüling’s awarded the doctorate in Islamic studies arguments concisely, because they are and Semitic philology, with history of complex and wide-ranging. His basic religions as a secondary field. I had the argument in these works is that the Qur’ān good fortune to study with him in Erlangen text, as we have it today, represents in 1970-71. a reworking by Muḥammad of earlier Lüling’s dissertation presented Christian texts that had served as liturgy in revolutionary views on the Qur’ān, a hitherto unknown pre-Islamic Christian advancing ideas that he continued to community in Mecca. In developing these elaborate in subsequent publications, ideas, in which he was influenced by the notably his Über den Ur-Qur’ān: Ansätze zur work of Albert Schweitzer, Martin Werner, Rekonstruktion vorislamischer christlicher and Hans-Joachim Schoeps, he argued Stropenlieder im Qur’ān (Erlangen: H. that Muḥammad’s original message was a Lüling, 1974) and Die Wiederentdeckung continuation of concepts found in Jewish des Propheten . Eine Kritik Christianity that considered Jesus to be an am “christlichen” Abendland (Erlangen: angel (from Greek angelos, “messenger”). H. Lüling, 1981). Über den Ur-Qurʾān was Hellenistic Christianity, including the later translated by Lüling himself and Christian community of Mecca, had issued in an expanded English version as rejected this view and saw Jesus as divine; A challenge to Islam for Reformation. The but Muḥammad, in Lüling’s view, clung to rediscovery and reliable reconstruction the older Arabian “religion of Abraham”

Al-ʿUṣūr al-Wusṭā 25 (2017) 232 • Fred M. Donner and its concepts. Muḥammad, in his clash confidently, as few people have similarly with the Meccan Christians, took strophic wide-ranging training in all these areas; hymns that had been used in the Christian reading his work, one often feels that one liturgy and emended them, changing is “over one’s head” in unfamiliar technical individual words and phrases in order to material. bring their theology in line with his own The revolutionary nature of Lüling’s views, particularly the idea of Jesus not hypotheses on the Qur’ān and Islam’s as God, but as a divine messenger (rasūl) origins led fairly quickly to his being forced in accord with the notion of his status as out of the German academic establishment, an angel. Lüling attempted to recover the even though his dissertation had originally earlier Christian teachings of these buried been supported enthusiastically by his Christian hymns by making relatively Doktorvater and was accepted by his minor adjustments to the received department with the mark of eximium Qurʾan text—in effect, reversing the very opus, “extraordinary work.” Lüling’s emendations to these texts that, in Lüling’s ideas were just too threatening to view, Muḥammad himself had made. certain established scholars whose work Several observations can be made would have been overturned by it. His about Lüling’s work. First, his manner effort to submit a Habilitationsschrift of making emendations to the Qur’ān or “second dissertation,” necessary to text can be criticized as capricious or, qualify for a permanent teaching position perhaps, circular—Lüling’s emendations in Germany, was thwarted; a number of did not prove the existence of an earlier senior Orientalists, led apparently by the theological outlook in the text, but rather influential Prof. Anton Spitaler of Munich, were made by him precisely in order to blocked his efforts to find a position, and bring a passage of text in line with the organized a virtual conspiracy of silence theological arguments he thought “must against him so that his work was hardly be there,” even though there was little reviewed in Germany3—and, since it was or no external grounds for suspecting written in German, few foreign scholars the passage had been subjected to prior were able readily to follow Lüling’s manipulation. Second, Lüling’s hypotheses complex argumentation or bothered to represented a bold challenge to the do so. It must be said that regardless traditional view of the Qur’ān and its of how uncomfortable or threatening a environment held not only by Muslims, but also by Western scholars at the time, 3. Lüling describes these machinations in some for which reason it was received with detail in the Preface to his A Challenge to Islam for great hostility by most of the academic Reformation. Spitaler was, of course, the same scholar who, for over fifty years, concealed the archive of establishment in Germany (on which photographs of early Qurʾan manuscripts amassed more shall be said below). Third, Lüling’s early in the century by Gotthelf Bergsträsser and impressive erudition in Old Testament and Otto Pretzl, claiming it had been destroyed by allied New Testament theology, Islamic studies, bombing during the war—and who thus single- and Arabic studies, combined with his keen handedly delayed critical scholarship on the Qurʾan for a generation or more. See Andrew Higgins, “The intellect, meant that his hypotheses are Lost Archive,” The Wall Street Journal Jan. 12, 2008 often intriguing but difficult to evaluate (www.wsj.com/articles/SB120008793352784631).

Al-ʿUṣūr al-Wusṭā 25 (2017) In Memoriam: Günter Lüling (1928—2014) • 233 scholar’s ideas may seem, they deserve to already written several hundred pages, on be openly debated, and judged on their the early history of the Hebrews, in which merits. The ideas of Lüling’s hero, Martin he presented a characteristically radical Werner, were rejected by many German new vision of their history and impact in theologians, but Werner, as an already the world—in short, it was, like everything established scholar, was able to publish he wrote, filled with revolutionary them, and his opponents were forced implications.4 to write their own formal rebuttals in Regardless of one’s ultimate judgment learned academic works. Günter Lüling, by on Lüling’s work, he was in many ways comparison, was never shown the decency a pioneer. That he was original, highly of straightforward critical engagement. intelligent, thoughtful, independent of The way Lüling was treated by those judgment, and possessed of an impressive who should have been his colleagues can range of knowledge can hardly be denied; only be deemed shabby, and stands as a this means that his work often contains dark stain on the record of the German intriguing insights and observations, academic establishment of his time. even if his critical judgment, or the Deprived of a university career, system underlying his approach, may Lüling nonetheless continued to pursue be questioned. He was an early voice scholarship for the remainder of his life, challenging the traditional Islamic origins working essentially in isolation. He and narrative that represented the dominant his wife lived frugally on her salary, and consensus until the 1970s—a challenge his scholarship was self-published. He later raised, albeit in different ways and was, naturally, embittered and considered with different arguments, by such scholars himself a martyr to the causes of true as John Wansbrough, , scholarship and proper theology, and , and others. His sense that sometimes had choice things to say about the origins of Islam had, in some way, an the German academic establishment; but intimate connection with Christianity is in his later years, he worked without much one that has been advanced more recently overt complaint, ever confident that his by numerous other scholars, notably those ideas would, in the end, be vindicated. associated with the so-called “Inarah When my wife and I last visited him in school” based in Saarbrücken. His bold Erlangen in the summer of 2008 (he would attempt to “correct” the text of the Qur’ān have been just short of 80 at the time), he to restore what he considered to be its was cheerful, eager to discuss scholarly presumed original meaning anticipated matters, and vigorous enough to lead us by a quarter-century the similar efforts of on a memorable bicycle tour of Erlangen, (who, however, never carefully pointing out apartments where bothered even to mention Lüling’s work— he had lodged as a student and noteworthy or, for that matter, anyone else’s) in his architectural monuments of the town, including a church whose tower we climbed to enjoy a fine view of the city. He 4. I do not know what the state of this manuscript was at the time of his death—largely completed? was even then deeply engaged in research Mostly only sketched out?—nor where it may be for a new book, of which I think he had today.

Al-ʿUṣūr al-Wusṭā 25 (2017) 234 • Fred M. Donner

Die syrisch-aramäische Lesart des Korans the underlying theology that the Qur’ān (Berlin, 2000). Lüling’s works contain many text attempts to articulate, that deserve fertile ideas, particularly in the realm of more sustained and detailed examination.

— Fred M. Donner University of Chicago ([email protected])

Al-ʿUṣūr al-Wusṭā 25 (2017)