At a Glance

While there is a long tradition of Iranian Studies in Germany, only a few universities have their own Iranology departments. Back in 1949, Iranology was set up at Freie Universität as a section of the Seminar of Indo-European Studies. Following the structural reforms of Freie Universität in 1970, it was placed within the newly created Faculty of Philosophy and Social Sciences and in the course of the 1970s renamed Institute of Iranian Studies to take account of the discipline’s changed profile.

Since 2001 the Institute of Iranian Studies along with the institutes of Islamic Studies, Turkic Studies, Arabic Studies and Semitic Studies have formed an interdisciplinary center working on the identification of “Elements of a Social History of the Near and Middle East.” During the 2004 spring/summer semester, the Institute of Iranian Studies gave up its domicile on Reichensteiner Weg, where it had been located for more than 30 years, and moved to Schwendenerstr. 17 in Berlin-Dahlem.