— Information in English —
Original German edition:
Winfried K. Dallmann: Tränen am Ararat (Tears at Mount Ararat). Books on Demand, Norderstedt, 2018. 216 pages, 4 colour maps. ISBN: 978-3-746-09879-1
Norwegian translation:
Winfried K. Dallmann: Tårer ved Ararat (Tears at Mount Ararat). © W.K. Dallmann, 2020. 196 pages, 4 colour maps. ISBN: 978-82-692023-0-4
About the book
Mount Ararat, the Masis of the Armenians, stands like a pillar between Western and Eastern Armenia, the lost and the recovered homeland. It is the symbol of the suffering of a people that has not found peace for countless centuries.
In the summer of 1976, as an adventure-seeking twenty-year-old, the author travelled through eastern Turkey seeking traces of the genocide that had occurred about six decades earlier and to learn how the remaining Armenians were faring.
Forty years have passed since this journey. Germany officially recognized the genocide as such in 2016, while Turkey continues to deny it. The issue of Turkey's minorities is continually revisited with repeated flare-ups of political turmoil in the country. Should not lessons from the past be learned for the future?
This book is a snapshot of recent history in the form of a travel journal with glimpses into the genocide and a record of conditions for Armenians some 60 years afterward. A preface and notes on today's situation connect the past with the present.
About the author
Born in Berlin in 1956, Winfried K. Dallmann grew up in West Berlin, where he studied geology at the Technical University. In 1982 he moved to Norway, receiving his PhD from the University of Oslo in 1987. He then began working at the Norwegian Polar Institute, moving to Tromsø when the institute relocated to the Arctic city in 1999. His work mainly concerned the geological mapping of Svalbard. Since his youth, Dallmann has been concerned with the problems of ethnic minorities and indigenous peoples, starting with a trip to eastern Turkey in 1976. There he searched for traces of the Armenian genocide of 1915-1922 and an understanding of the current circumstances of Armenians in Turkey. Later, he spent much time investigating and reporting on indigenous peoples of the Arctic, in particular, after the collapse of the Soviet Union, those in the Russian Federation. His work has mostly been published in English. "Tears at Mount Ararat" (Books on Demand, 2018), his first German-language book, now translated to Norwegian, describes what he learned about Armenians living in Turkey during and after his youthful journey in 1976.