Armin T. Wegner: Bearing Witness to the Armenian Genocide

Armin T. Wegner’s letters and photographs from the Ottoman Empire during World War I remain some of the most important eyewitness accounts of the Armenian Genocide surviving today. Wegner was also a writer, poet, and playwright who paid a high price for speaking out against tyranny and injustice throughout his life. Here, Dr. Johanna Wernicke-Rothmayer considers Wegner’s journey from a young law student in Berlin to the man who documented and brought to light the unimaginable horrors he witnessed in the Ottoman Empire in the shadows of WWI.

Originally published April 2022.

About the speaker

Johanna Wernicke-Rothmayer

Dr. Johanna Wernicke-Rothmayer is a literary scholar and the editor of Armin T. Wegner: Writer, Traveler, Human Rights Activist. She was Armin T. Wegner’s assistant from 1964-1965. Dr. Wernicke-Rothmayer worked as a lecturer for German language and literature in Nepal and India for more than 25 years and, since 2011, she is the Deputy Chairwoman of the Armin T. Wegner Society in Wuppertal, Germany.

Johanna Wernicke-Rothmayer