Bahman Nirumand | |
|---|---|
 | |
| Born | September 18, 1936 |
| Nationality | Iranian German |
| Occupation(s) | Scholar and Journalist |
Bahman Nirumand (Persian: بهمن نیرومند; born 18 September 1936 in Tehran) is an Iranian and German journalist and author.
Bahman Nirumand was born on 18 September 1936 to a wealthy family of civil servants in Tehran, Iran. His uncle was a consul in the Iranian embassy in Berlin before World War II. When he was 14 years old, Nirumand was sent to Germany to go to gymnasium, and attended Rudolf Steiner School.[1]
After his primary and secondary schooling, he studied German, philosophy and Persian at the Universities of Munich, Tübingen, and Berlin. He became a docent in 1960 at the University of Tübingen with the subject "Problems of transplanting European dramas to Neo-Persian literature". After finishing his studies, he returned to Iran and worked there as a docent for comparative literature at the University of Tehran, and as a writer and journalist. Together with Mehdi Khanbaba Tehrani and Majid Zarbakhsh, he founded the Goruhe Kadreh (Kader Group), which understood itself as a Marxist-Leninist organization and wanted to organize revolutionary cells for the anti-imperialist war in urban areas of Iran by acting as urban guerillas. In 1965, he returned to Germany to escape a purported imminent arrest.[2]
His book, Iran, The New Imperialism in Action, was published in January 1967 and had a large influence upon the internationalism of the May 1968 student uprising.[note 1] Nirumand became a member of the Confederation of Iranian students. Freimut Duve invited him on a lecture tour for his book in Hamburg and he became acquainted with Ulrike Meinhof. They talked about the circumstances in Iran, whereupon in June 1967, for the official visit of Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi to West Germany, Meinhof alleged in an open letter to Shah's wife, Farah Diba,[3] that, among other things, for the peasants of Mehdiabad, a "Persian meal" consists of straw put in water.[4] In October 1967, Der Spiegel published a critical review of Nirumand's book, alleging that much of the information it contained was dubious or wrong.[5]
1979 Nirumand returned to Iran before the Islamic Republic of Iran was founded. After staying there for three years, Nirumand exiled in Paris, as he had not received permission to re-enter Germany. He later relocated to Berlin.[6]
Nirumand advocates for freedom in Iran. He holds that the forces around Ahmadinejad[needs update] are sustained through terror and threats from the West, including the threats of sanctions and war. He believes that such actions bolster the regime and that popular support for the regime is much weaker than is assumed in the West. He contends that artists, women, and the youth are not radicals and desire freedom. Nirumand argues that the image of Iran in the West has been reduced to that of only the Islamic regime itself.[7]
Nirumand is the author of several books and articles, including:
In addition to that, he authored numerous contributions that have been broadcast. He published, among others:
In addition, he has translated literature from Persian into German, among others:
Since 2001, he has been the composer of the monthly "Iran Reports" of the Heinrich Böll Foundation.
Bahman Nirumand is the father of the journalist Mariam Lau, who is currently working as the political correspondent of the weekly journal Die Zeit.
