Gustave Edmund von Grunebaum (1 September 1909 in Vienna, Austria – 27 February 1972 in Los Angeles, Cal., born Gustav Edmund Ritter von Grünebaum[1]) was an Austrian historian and Arabist.
Born in Vienna, Grunebaum received his Ph.D. in Oriental Studies at the University of Vienna in 1931 with a dissertation on classical Arabic poetry. When Nazi Germany absorbed Austria in the Anschluss of 1938, he went to the United States, where he was given a position at the Asia Institute in New York City by Arthur Upham Pope, an eminent authority on Persian art and antiquities who used the institute to help a number of displaced German scholars find work in the United States in the 1930s and 1940s.[2] In 1943, he moved on to the University of Chicago, and was made professor of Arabic in 1949. In 1957, Grunebaum was appointed professor of Near Eastern History and the director of a new department called the Near Eastern Center at UCLA. He was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 1963 and the American Philosophical Society in 1968.[3][4] He died in Los Angeles at the age of 62 following brief battle with cancer. The Near Eastern Center was later renamed in Grunebaum's honor.[5]
Grunebaum was married to Giselle Steuerman.
