author
Paul Rohrbach
1869–1956
A Baltic German writer and public thinker, he wrote widely about world politics, travel, and Germany’s place in the wider world. His life moved between theology, colonial administration, and political journalism, giving his work an unusually broad and sometimes controversial perspective.
1 Audiobook
Die Bagdadbahn
by Paul Rohrbach
About the author
Born in 1869 in Courland, in what is now Latvia, Paul Rohrbach studied at the universities of Dorpat, Berlin, and Strasbourg. He trained in subjects including history, geography, and theology, and went on to travel extensively in Asia and Africa.
Rohrbach became known as a writer on world politics and as a political publicist. He also served in the German colonial administration in Southwest Africa in the early 1900s, an experience that shaped much of his later writing about empire, international affairs, and Germany’s global role.
His books and essays brought together travel observation, political argument, and cultural commentary. Read today, his work offers a window into the ambitions, anxieties, and debates of Germany from the imperial era through the first half of the twentieth century.