Johannes Lepsius

Who was Johannes Lepsius?

Johannes Lepsius was a German Protestant missionary, Orientalist, and humanist with a special interest in trying to prevent the Armenian Genocide in the Ottoman Empire. He initially studied mathematics and philosophy in Munich and a PhD in 1880 with an already award-winning work. During World War I he published his work "Bericht über die Lage des armenischen Volkes in der Türkei" in which he meticulously documented and condemned the Armenian Genocide. A second edition entitled "Der Todesgang des armenischen Volkes" included an interview with Enver Pasha, one of the chief architects of the genocide. Lepsius had to publish the report secretly because Turkey was an ally of the German Empire and the official military censorship soon forbade the publication because it feared that it would affront the strategically important Turkish ally. However Lepsius managed to distribute more than 20,000 copies of the report. In his novel The Forty Days of Musa Dagh the Austrian-Jewish author Franz Werfel portrayed Lepsius as a "guardian angel of the Armenians".