How to Cope with the Nazi Regime. The “Parallel Lives” of Albrecht Goetze and Kurt Bittel and their Meaning for Hittite Studies

This paper investigates the repercussions of National Socialism on the then-nascent field of Hittite studies. It presents the “Parallel Lives” of two leading scholars: the philologist Albrecht Götze (1897-1971), who in 1931 was professor of Semitic Languages and Ancient Oriental History at the Philipps-Universität Marburg and in 1933 emigrated to the United States, and the archaeologist Kurt Bittel (1907-1991), who in 1931 was director of excavations at Boğazköy-Ḫattuša and in 1933 was appointed Referent at the Archäologisches Institut des Deutschen Reiches Istanbul. This pair of biographies provides meaningful insights on the different behaviour of two non-Jewish scholars in the field of Ancient Near Eastern studies towards the National Socialist regime. Furthermore, the personal relationship between Götze and Bittel is highlighted by means of their so-far unpublished correspondence from the Thirties.