Wolfgang Gust Honored in Berlin

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BERLIN — The German-Armenian Society (Deutsch-Armenische-Gesellschaft, DAG) has announced “with joy and satisfaction” that it has conferred an honorary membership on Wolfgang Gust. In accepting the honor, Gust wrote that he has appreciated the DAG’s efforts for many, many years.

In the announcement issued on September 29, the Dr. Raffi Kantian, writing on behalf of the board, stated, “The extremely significant contribution to the study of the Armenian genocide that Wolfgang Gust has made concerns the diplomatic documents from the archives of the German Foreign Ministry” during the First World War; Gust has “inspected them, edited and interpreted them, before making them available to interested parties worldwide. His website www.armenocide.net is a true treasure trove for researchers and interested persons.”

“For the German-Armenian Society it is a special honor to have someone like Wolfgang Gust as an honorary member,” the announcement continued.

The German-Armenian Society, which celebrated its centennial three years ago in Berlin, was founded by Johannes Lepsius, and has continued to promote friendship and scholarly cooperation between the two countries. (See https://mirrorspectator.com/2014/07/18/1914-2014-100-years-of-the-german-armenian-society/). The website founded by Wolfgang Gust and his wife Sigrid has indeed become the meeting place for genocide researchers throughout the world, with an exceptionally large number of visits by individuals in Turkey. The website presents crucial documents from the archives of the Foreign Ministry of Imperial Germany, which was a wartime ally of the Ottoman Empire. The correspondence among diplomats in Turkey and Berlin provides a crucial record of what the Germans knew and did not know about the genocide. In addition to the original documents, in German and English, are articles and educational materials pertaining to the subject. A print version of a large number of documents appeared in German in 2005, and in 2014 the Zoryan Institute put out an English translation: The Armenian Genocide – Evidence from the German Foreign Office Archives, 1915-1916, New York. Among the many honors conferred upon him for his pioneering work was a tribute to Wolfgang Gust on the occasion of his 80th birthday, two years ago. In a Festschrift containing greetings, testimonials and scholarly articles, friends and researchers from many countries including Germany, France, Armenia, Turkey, Denmark and the United States, joined to express their gratitude for his continuing achievements. (See https://mirrorspectator.com/2015/06/04/happy-birthday-wolfgang-gust/)

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