Bahman nirumand biography sample paper
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Texts Video icon An illustration of two cells of a film strip. Video Audio icon An illustration of an audio speaker. Audio Software icon An illustration of a 3. Software Images icon An illustration of two photographs. In the Western press landscape, modernizing monarchs like Pahlavi profited from the exoticism of their countries while also appearing assimilated into European lifestyles and capable of acting as »rational« contrasts to their purportedly fanatical opponents.
They vacationed at the spa town of Baden-Baden in West Germany in the s and were photographed skiing in the Alps. For the West German public, the »Oriental« monarchs were »Westernized« by being welcomed into the club of European aristocracy and international commerce while still retaining exotic aspects of their »fairy tale world. But the fairy tales travel the world over wire and cable now [and]… are no longer about hanging gardens but about oil, no longer about the mysteries of the bazaar and harems but about power.
The import of Persian carpets boomed in the s, and neon-lit names like »Mohammed« and »Ahmed Ali« appeared over hundreds of new stores across the country, entering the West German everyday. Yet being able to regulate the world supply of oil required that power remain concentrated in the Iranian leadership in a form of government that was more monarchy than constitution.
West German news sources contrasted the rationality and stability of the modernizing monarchs regularly with the irrationality and »fanatical nationalism« of more left-leaning leaders like Egyptian President Gamal Abdel Nasser. In , Der Spiegel distinguished the shah from Mossadegh, writing that the latter governed through »ecstasy: a mystical impulse deeply rooted in the religious traditions of Shiite Islam«, reflecting the discursive link between Islam and communism widespread at the time.
By , an economically booming West Germany imported one third of the oil for its rapidly growing needs from Iran. After a banquet with seven hundred people in attendance in Baden-Baden, they continued on to Munich where large groups of people gathered beneath the balcony of their hotel. The crowd chanted in unison, »Soraya, please look down, all of Munich stands before your house!
Bahman nirumand biography sample paper
There were over eight hundred Iranians studying at West German universities by mid-decade, comprising the largest single group in the foreign student population, and including many critics of the shah. Both were targets for the West German and Iranian authorities. Ahead of the visit, the West German foreign office had remarked on the »considerable economic interests« at stake and advised that »the most prominent agitators be deported and sent back to Iran so long as there is a legal means to do so and an agreement can be made that will not burden the Federal Republic with excessive costs.
Specific plans were made for the expedited deportation of three students in particular though they ultimately eluded arrest. One Iranian student bold enough to express public support for the social democratic policies of Mossadegh was taken into police custody and interrogated. Yet the opposition would not come first from the expected source of Tudeh or Mossadegh supporters but from liberal West German journalists guarding their space of professional freedom.
Press and television covered his travels through what his biographer called the »fairytale country« extensively. Journalists pilloried the Iranian government for its illiberality and the West German government for failing to protect its own press corps. Responding to these concerns, West German police seized fifty-seven images of Mossadegh and arrested seven Iranians at the hotel protest.
Two days later, they seized eighteen more at a protest as Amini left a press conference. He said that he went to the protest primarily out of sympathy with the »entirely democratic« attitude of his Iranian student friend. When Juds complained to a police officer that protesting Iranian students were being arrested while the »not exactly model-democratic« shah went to »shed crocodile tears at the wall«, he was placed under arrest himself as the only non-Iranian in a group of sixteen.
He wrote that the »humiliating treatment emboldened [him] to take part actively in the first demonstration of [his] life«, protesting at the German Opera later that evening with a placard that staked out a position that was both anti-communist and shah-critical: »The world can live without Ulbricht and Dr. They asked why the police had prohibited a demonstration after allowing it originally.
The foreign office authorities answered gnomically, reminding them that the »law of hospitality Gastrecht forbade foreign students from carrying domestic political divisions from their home countries into the public sphere but this did not infringe on their right of free private expression. There were two solutions to this quandary, both of which Iranians employed.
The first was to disregard it by speaking publicly anyway. The second was to have Germans speak for and with them. The conservative Welt reprinted the criticism of the Iranian student organization, giving it a wide audience. News agencies remain silent. All of this happens in the name of democracy. In , West Germany-based intellectual Bahman Nirumand wrote that the goal of Iranian opposition to the shah in the s was to »see behind the scenes« of the Iran that the shah performed »before the eyes of the enthusiastically applauding world.
After finishing his studies, he returned to Iran and worked there as a docent for comparative literature at the University of Tehran, and as a writer and journalist. Together with Mehdi Khanbaba Tehrani and Majid Zarbakhsh, he founded the Goruhe Kadreh Kader Group , which understood itself as a Marxist-Leninist organization and wanted to organize revolutionary cells for the anti-imperialist war in urban areas of Iran by acting as urban guerillas.
In , he returned to Germany to escape a purported imminent arrest. His book, Iran, The New Imperialism in Action, was published in January and had a large influence upon the internationalism of the May student uprising. After staying there for three years, Nirumand exiled in Paris , as he had not received permission to re-enter Germany. He later relocated to Berlin.
Nirumand advocates for freedom in Iran. He holds that the forces around Ahmadinejad [ needs update ] are sustained through terror and threats from the West, including the threats of sanctions and war. He believes that such actions bolster the regime and that popular support for the regime is much weaker than is assumed in the West. He contends that artists, women, and the youth are not radicals and desire freedom.
Nirumand argues that the image of Iran in the West has been reduced to that of only the Islamic regime itself. In addition to that, he authored numerous contributions that have been broadcast. He published, among others:. In addition, he has translated literature from Persian into German, among others:. Bahman Nirumand is the father of the journalist Mariam Lau, who is currently working as the political correspondent of the weekly journal Die Zeit.
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