These papers, purchased from Ernst Jäckh in 1949, consist of correspondence, reports, and other materials dealing with political and diplomatic affairs in Turkey and the Middle East from 1908 to 1921, particulary in reference to the interests of the German Foreign Office in that area.
Papers of the German naval attache Hans Humann form the bulk of the material. Included are his correspondence with Jäckh (1911-1918) and reports from Constantinople (1914-1916), many in the form of telegrams and extracts of official correspondence, to the chiefs of the German admiralty and of the naval administration. Humann was a close friend and foster brother of the Ottoman general and commander-in-chief Enver Pasha, a member of the Young Turkish Revolution of 1908 and one of the triumvirate that virtually ruled the Ottoman Empire from 1913 to 1918. Enver played a key role in allying the Ottoman Empire with Germany in World War I, and Humann was in constant contact with him regarding Turkish national and international issues, especially the preparation of Ottoman war policy.
Other materials included in the Ernst Jäckh Papers are extracts of Enver Pasha's letters from Albania (1911), from the Tripolitanian War (1911-1912) in Libya where he successfully organized and led Arab resistance to the Italian invasion, and from the Second Balkan War (1912-1913) where he was chief of staff. In addition, the papers contain part of his unpublished autobiography. Some correspondence of grand vizier Mehmed Talât Pasha and his unpublished autobiography accompany these papers, as do a manuscript describing Baron Oppenheim's designs for an Islamic holy war from India to Morocco and information about native Moslems used by the German intelligence service (1914). Finally, also included are reports to German ambassador Baron Wangenheim in Constantinople on the "Armenian Massacres" of 1915-1917 from observers in Asia Minor and from Wangenheim to the Foreign Office in Berlin, and a collection of political drawings relating to the Young Turkish Revolution of 1908.
This material was originally part of the Edward M. House Papers, Manuscript Group Number 466.