Harry Stürmer

Little is known for certain about his life outside the years of World War I, and even his birth and death dates are not clearly established. What can be confirmed is that he was a German journalist and author who worked as a foreign correspondent in Constantinople for the Kölnische Zeitung, one of Germany’s leading newspapers of the time.

In 1915 and 1916, while reporting from the Ottoman capital, he witnessed the atmosphere surrounding the persecution and destruction of the Armenian population. Later accounts describe him as an important contemporary witness to the Armenian genocide, and he also submitted a confidential report to German officials about what he had observed and learned.

After leaving the Ottoman Empire, he published Two War Years in Constantinople in 1917. The book is remembered for its sharp criticism of both the Young Turk authorities and German policy toward its wartime ally, making it one of the notable firsthand journalistic accounts from that period.