Holding High the Hanseatic Cross in the Levant: Andreas David Mordtmann and the Diplomatic Milieu of Istanbul

Abstract

This article unearths the little-known history of the Hanseatic legation in mid-nineteenth-century Ottoman Istanbul through a close reading of the career and writings of its head of mission Andreas David Mordtmann. A trained Orientalist, Mordtmann ventured well beyond the social and spatial boundaries that seemed to confine the select and inward-looking diplomatic milieu of Pera. He travelled extensively throughout Anatolia and had close relationships with notable Ottoman high-officials and intellectuals. After the legation was disbanded in 1859, these contacts secured him employment in the Ottoman state service. Applying a transcultural approach, the article examines Mordtmann's overlapping and often conflicting roles of diplomat and scholar in the light of recent scholarship on nineteenth century diplomatic culture and (German) Orientalism, paying particular attention to his complex position as an observer with multiple and shifting political, cultural, and professional affinities. Uncovering the mental and material worlds of this Orientalist-turned-diplomat-turned-Ottoman will not only shed new light on some of the intricacies of diplomatic life in Istanbul, but also show how it was ultimately more 'locally embedded' than previously presumed in the literature.

A Parenthesis to Ottoman-German Economic Relations: The Hansa League

“…Bu gelişme uyarınca, şark üzerine araştırmalar yapan Andreas David Mordtmann, Hansa Birliği'nin İstanbul elçisi olarak 1846'da görevlendirildi ve 1847'de görevine başladı. 56 Lübeck, Hamburg ve Bremen'in oluşturduğu Hansa Birliği için İstanbul'daki diplomatik temsilcilik kıta Avrupası dışında tam diplomatik karaktere sahip ilk tecrübeydi. Osmanlı'da uzun zamandır diplomatik temsilcilikleri bulunan diğer deniz cumhuriyetlerinin aksine, Venedik vb.…”