Brigitte Schiffer: Letters from Cairo 1935–1963

Arabic translation by Mustafa al-Slaiman
Artwork and cover by Katharina Marszewski
Book design by Safeya Fawzy

Born in Berlin in 1909, the composer, musicologist and educator Brigitte Schiffer fled Nazi Germany for Egypt in the mid-1930s, where she soon became one of the defining figures of Cairo’s musical culture. She directed a High School of Music, worked for the Egyptian Ministry of Education, and established a salon where artists and intellectuals gathered. Based on an annotated selection of her letters from that time, the publication makes her extensive correspondence with friends and colleagues in Germany available in Arabic for the first time. Illustrated with visual material from the guest book of Schiffer’s salon, the volume conveys a modern woman’s view of the cultural and social life of cosmopolitan Cairo in the mid-20th century in a way that is as informative as it is often humorous and touching.

The Arabic translation by Mustafa al-Slaiman is based on the German publication of her letters edited by Matthias Pasdzierny, Dörte Schmidt and Malte Vogt (München 2017).

This publication is funded by the Arab-German Young Academy of Sciences and Humanities (AGYA). AGYA is supported by the Federal Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF).