The Orient and Morgenland in German discourse: a semiotic and postcolonial analysis

1 Introduction

German engagements with the “East” have been articulated through two potent yet often conflated signifiers: Orient and Morgenland. Their histories intertwine theological impulses, colonial agendas, and Romantic fantasies, creating a layered semantics that positions the East as both an object of empirical scrutiny and an imagined spiritual refuge. While critiques of Orientalism emphasize how Western representations anchor global hierarchies (Said 1978, p. 333), the interplay and functional differentiation of Orient and Morgenland in German contexts remain understudied. Preliminary corpus analysis (e.g., Leipzig Corpora Collection) indicates that Orient appears significantly more frequently than Morgenland in modern texts, suggesting its broader integration into geopolitical and informational discourse. This paper traces the historical developments behind this divergence, substantiating the analysis with detailed quantitative data from the Digital Dictionary of the German Language (DWDS) presented in what follows, which reveals distinct usage patterns across different genres and historical periods.

Adopting Ferdinand de Saussure’s structuralist semiotics, this study would reveal how Orient and Morgenland became socially codified signifiers encoding colonial and idealizing impulses. Saussure’s concept of the sign clarifies that the link between signifier (e.g., Orient, Morgenland) and signified (the East) is neither natural nor fixed but constructed through historical processes (Saussure 1916/2016, pp. 67–70). The arbitrariness of these signifiers underscores how meaning emerges through cultural consensus rather than inherent truth.

From a postcolonial perspective, both terms operate within broader structures of power. Postcolonial theory frames the East as Europe’s “Other,” legitimizing paternalistic agendas (Said 1978, p. 21). In German discourse, reflecting trajectories cemented between the 16th and 20th centuries, Orient typically denotes a realm of scientific or colonial intervention, while Morgenland embodies a Romantic yearning for spiritual origins (Polaschegg 2005, S. 65). Polaschegg’s distinction is crucial: while Orient and Morgenland differ in tone, context, and frequency, both are embedded in epistemic structures that assert Western interpretive authority. Their historical deployment reflects German intellectual history’s entanglements with Romanticism, colonialism, theology, and philology.

Saussure’s focus on differential relations explains how Orient and Morgenland derive meaning in contrast to “Occident” and “Abendland,” establishing binaries that position the East as secondary (Saussure 1916/2016, p. 114). Postcolonial analysis underscores the real-world consequences of these constructs, revealing how language rationalizes exploitation.

To analyze their evolution, the study employs conceptual history and discourse analysis. Conceptual history traces semantic shifts across theological translations, Enlightenment geographies, and Romantic literature. Through discourse analysis, this study interrogates how such shifts reconfigure power relations, while critically unpacking the rhetorical strategies – embedded in academic, literary, and policy texts – that sustain colonial and Romantic imaginaries.

2 Orient: semiotics of cognitive violence

The term Orient diverged from its neutral German counterpart Osten (East) through layered processes of signification. While etymologically rooted in Latin oriens (rising sun), its semantic trajectory reveals how neutral spatial markers morph into ideological tools. Drawing on Saussure’s model of the sign (1916/2016, pp. 67–70), this analysis reveals how the signifier Orient generates meaning not as a self-contained system, but through historically contingent discursive practices – a process that simultaneously codifies and obscures colonial hierarchies.

Medieval Christian discourse, rooted in pilgrimage traditions, first reconfigured Orient as a theological metaphor. Carolingian iconography fused the rising sun with Christ’s resurrection, positioning the East as both sacred geography and pilgrimage frontier (Polaschegg 2005, S. 67). Martin Luther’s 1545 Bible translation (Die Luther-Bibel 1545/1912) amplified this duality, framing Orient as a biblical origin point and missionary terrain.

The Enlightenment precipitated an epistemic rupture as German geographers, propelled by imperial agendas, reimagined the Orient through pseudoscientific taxonomies rooted in climatic zones and economic typologies. Ewald Banse’s continental schema homogenized North Africa and the Near East, while Hermann von Wißmann framed pastoralism as “inefficient,” legitimizing civilizational hierarchies (Escher 2011, S. 133–136). Eugen Wirth’s “rent capitalism” further codified Oriental economies as parasitic agrarian systems, creating Europe’s antithesis: a space perceived as needing colonial remediation (Escher 2011, S. 133–136).

Colonial rhetoric strategically deployed this semiotic framework. Susanne Zantop (1997, pp. 197–200) documents how metaphors like “brotherly assistance” moralized aggression, casting exploitation as pedagogical duty. Banse’s depiction of deserts as “desolate” terrain framed local populations as passive recipients of European stewardship. Even without extensive colonies, German intellectuals positioned themselves as “nonviolent mediators” tasked with civilizing Naturvölker (natural peoples) – a discourse echoing Wilhelm Hübbe-Schleiden’s vision of “peaceful hegemony” (Zantop 1997, p. 199). By the Wilhelmine era, Orient had largely shed its geographic neutrality, becoming a racialized marker of cultural difference.

This epistemic violence permeated seemingly objective tools. Isohyet maps quantifying rainfall zones were reinterpreted as indices of “civilizational potential,” while nomadic lifestyles were labeled “inefficient” to legitimize Eurocentric governance (Escher 2011, S. 133–136). As Saussure observed, signs derive power from institutional consensus, not inherent truth (Saussure 1916/2016, p. 118): the repeated coupling of Orient with tropes of backwardness naturalized colonial logics. This historical trajectory, associating Orient with empirical mapping, categorization, and colonial administration, helps explain the term’s enduring function and its demonstrably higher frequency in specific discourse domains compared to Morgenland. Today, this legacy persists in development policies that frame aid as technical “capacity-building,” perpetuating hierarchies under neoliberal guise.

3 Morgenland: semiotics of poetic projection

In stark contrast to Orient’s empirical and geopolitical delineations, Morgenland (morning land) in German discourse embodies a fusion of theological symbolism and Romantic idealism. Etymologically merging Morgen (dawn) and Land (land), the term evokes the East as a realm bathed in metaphorical light – a construct shaped less by geographic precision than by cultural imagination (Polaschegg 2005, S. 65). Its textual roots lie in Martin Luther’s 1,522 Bible translation, where Morgenland was coined to render Hebrew qedem (קדם) and Greek anatolē (ἀνατολή), positioning it as the theological antipode of Abendland (evening land).^[1] Luther’s framing not only sacralized the East as a biblical locus but also laid the groundwork for its secularization (Polaschegg 2005, S. 66), enabling later intellectual movements to adapt the term. This semantic expansion illustrates how Morgenland’s meaning emerged not from fixed definitions but through relational contrasts, adapting to shifts in religious and aesthetic thought).

Initially denoting areas near Jerusalem, Morgenland gradually expanded in the European imagination – shaped by growing geographic knowledge – to encompass a more broadly conceived East (Polaschegg 2005, S. 64–66). By the late 18th century, Romantic thought had rebranded this East as a spiritual refuge challenging Enlightenment rationalism. Johann Gottfried Herder played a key role here. His Ideen zur Philosophie der Geschichte der Menschheit extended Luther’s theological perspective, portraying the East as Europe’s poetic and religious cradle, while his collection Lieder der Liebe. Die ältesten und schönsten aus dem Morgenlande (1778) exemplified the term’s Romantic instrumentalization by framing the Song of Songs as quintessential “Eastern” poetry embodying ancient authenticity (Gaycken 1985, S. 38). Though ostensibly celebrating cultural plurality, such moves often reduced the East to a static archetype serving European needs. This Herderian vision, emphasizing the East as a source of primal authenticity and a remedy for Western fragmentation, coexisted with a tension: it still positioned the East as temporally prior and fundamentally different. Friedrich Schlegel’s Über die Sprache und Weisheit der Indier further reinforced this tendency, highlighting India’s heritage to elevate Morgenland into a powerful cultural symbol for Protestant Germany against Catholic Europe. This “spiritual-utopian” construct simultaneously critiqued Enlightenment rationality and underpinned German cultural self-assertion.

While figures like Herder and Schlegel actively employed and shaped the connotations of Morgenland, the engagement of others, including the influential Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, reveals a more complex picture regarding direct terminology versus broader influence. Although Goethe’s West-östlicher Divan is central to the German Orientalist imagination and evokes an idealized East (e.g., seeking “Patriarchenluft” [air of the patriarchs]; Goethe 1998, S. 10; Kontje 2004, p.130), in the famous lines of “Hegire,” he uses the more direct geographical term Osten (“Flüchte du, im reinen Osten” [flee toward the pure East]) to signify the direction of escape from a fragmented Europe (“Nord und West und Süd zersplittern” [North and West and South splinter apart]; Goethe 1998, S. 10). This specific word choice highlights the available linguistic options. However, the Divan’s overall project – its sustained poetic engagement with and romanticization of the East – significantly contributed to the cultural climate where the idealized, spiritual connotations associated with Morgenland flourished (Polaschegg 2005, S.391), even if Goethe himself did not use that specific term overwhelmingly. Thus, Goethe’s influential work demonstrates how major literary creations could reinforce the conceptual field associated with Morgenland – its poetic and spiritual aura – within German cultural consciousness, even without frequent deployment of the specific signifier, thereby acting synergistically with philosophical engagements.

Semiotically, Morgenland oscillates between a vague geographic reference and a powerful Romantic longing, dramatizing Saussure’s claim that signifiers arbitrarily link to signifieds (the East as spiritual renewal), often unmoored from material geography (Saussure 1916/2016, p. 115). Todd Kontje (2004, pp.130–133) critiques Goethe’s selective embrace of Persian poetry as curated Orientalism, where the East serves Germany’s quest for cultural coherence. Heinrich Heine satirizes this idealism: rapturous Ganges imagery – “Der Ganges rauscht, der große Ganges schwillt” (The Ganges rushes, the great Ganges swells) – is undercut by ironic queries about trading a “noble steed” for “a painting”,^[2] exposing Orientalist binaries as cultural constructs. While Saussure emphasizes meaning through contrast (e.g. Morgenland vs. Abendland), Heine reveals such oppositions as ideologically contingent, not natural truths.

Philosophical engagements with the East also reveal divergent appropriations, particularly evident in the contrasting approaches of Schopenhauer and Nietzsche. Arthur Schopenhauer, for instance, famously admired Indian and Buddhist philosophies for their perceived metaphysical depth, framing the East as a repository of timeless wisdom (Halbfass 1987), though without centering the specific term Morgenland in this idealization. Nietzsche, however, while also engaging with Eastern themes partly in response to Schopenhauer’s perspective, took a sharply different path. He specifically seized upon “Morgenland”, leveraging its Lutheran theological resonance not to idealize, but strategically to subvert Christian discourse and assert a vision of German modernity. Unlike Schopenhauer’s tendency towards idealization, Nietzsche repurposed “Morgenland” and the adjective “morgenländisch” (oriental) as potent polemical instruments. His reference in Thus Spoke Zarathustra (Nietzsche 1967, p. 325) to “dieser Gott aus dem Morgenlande (this God from the Orient)” exemplifies this strategy: it appropriates Luther’s linguistic heritage – which traditionally linked the “Orient” primarily to biblical authority – only to invert it. Nietzsche employed the term to portray Christianity itself as derivative, characterizing it as an imposition stemming from what he saw as Eastern decadence or irrationalism. By recasting Christianity as fundamentally “Oriental” in this negative sense, Nietzsche aimed to dismantle its claims to universality and thereby foster a secular, culturally autonomous German identity. This critique operates dialectically: the rejection of a constructed, “foreign” East serves definitionally to bolster modernity as a distinctively Western, and specifically German, cultural achievement.

Edward Said’s (1978, pp. 203–204) notion of the “absent Orient” finds resonance here. From Luther through the Romantics and figures like Nietzsche, Morgenland emerged as a potent discursive construct – a site of aesthetic promise, spiritual redemption, or polemical redefinition that often obscured actual Eastern voices. This “poetic salvation” subtly naturalized a paternalistic hierarchy. The term exemplifies Saussure’s insight: its evolution from theological symbol to Romantic metaphor underscores how arbitrary linguistic signs become socially codified, encoding power even as they masquerade as neutral description. This historical embedding in literary and philosophical idealism helps explain its relative scarcity in broader 20th-century discourse compared to Orient.

4 The symbiotic relationship between Orient and morgenland: scientific rationalism and romantic idealism in German discourse

The coexistence of Orient and Morgenland within German intellectual history reflects more than mere chance; it reveals a functional symbiosis. Emerging and solidifying primarily between the 16th and 20th centuries, these linguistic constructs fostered an interplay between knowledge production and cultural desire. This dynamic allowed German narratives to frame the East dualistically: as an object requiring domination or management (Orient) and simultaneously as a source of redemption or nostalgia (Morgenland).

The historical trajectories outlined previously laid the groundwork for their distinct profiles. German geographers of the 18th and 19th centuries employed data-driven methodologies to codify the East under the signifier Orient, linking it to civilizational lack and the need for intervention (Escher 2011, S. 127–136). Simultaneously, Romantic literati and philosophers turned to Morgenland as an antidote to modernity’s alienation, idealizing the East as a pristine wellspring of authenticity (Polaschegg 2005, S.293–399).

The legacy of this functional divergence is starkly visible in historical usage patterns, as demonstrated by data from the DWDS core corpus covering the crucial period of 1900–1999. Overall, Orient appears significantly more frequently than Morgenland, with 1,060 occurrences compared to just 156 for Morgenland across diverse text types (literature, science, newspapers, practical texts combined). This stark quantitative disparity – an approximate 7:1 ratio in favor of Orient during the 20th century – immediately points toward its broader discursive integration and distinct functional weight.

More revealingly, the distribution across different text genres within the DWDS corpus highlights their distinct functional domains. Orient overwhelmingly dominates in scientific/academic texts (Wissenschaft: 526 vs. 46), newspapers (Zeitung: 240 vs. 21), and practical/utility texts (Gebrauchsliteratur: 224 vs. 30). This aligns precisely with its historical association with empirical observation, geopolitical reporting, administration, and colonial management. Conversely, while still less frequent than Orient even here, Morgenland finds its strongest relative presence in literary texts (Belletristik: 59 occurrences, nearly matching Orient’s 70 in this genre). This quantitative evidence strongly supports the thesis that Morgenland was predominantly reserved for poetic, spiritual, or historical-idealizing contexts, while Orient served as the more common term for engaging with the East in perceived factual, political, and scientific terms throughout the 20th century.

This historical pattern, quantitatively established through the analysis of 20th-century data, provides a crucial foundation for understanding contemporary usage. Preliminary observations from 21st-century corpora (like LCC) suggest that Orient, while perhaps evolving in connotation, continues to maintain a higher frequency in general and news-related discourses compared to the more specialized Morgenland. The empirical linguistic footprint thus not only mirrors the conceptual bifurcation established historically but also indicates its enduring legacy in shaping present-day representations.

Though both terms emerged from related temporal-spatial frameworks (Polaschegg 2005, S.63–66), their emphases diverged. Orient, rooted in Latin etymology and Enlightenment science, carried the weight of rationalism and potential imperial control. Morgenland, born of Luther’s translation and Romantic reinvention, draped the East in theological and poetic mystique. Far from conflicting, these narratives often operated in tandem, mirroring Homi Bhabha’s (1994, p. 95) notion of colonial ambivalence – a “double articulation” locking the East into alternating roles. In practice, these discourses intertwined, as exemplified by events like the 1896 Berlin Colonial Exhibition where rational data (Orient) and romanticized visions (Morgenland) coalesced. Despite contrasting veneers, both reinforced Western centrality.

The semiotic potency lies in this adaptability. Oscillating between “primitive” and “sacred,” German discourse could justify intervention while masking coercion (Bhabha 1994, pp. 53–59). Orient’s grids and Morgenland’s metaphors functioned ideologically, their arbitrary links to hierarchy cemented by repetition (Saussure 1916/2016, p. 122). Their endurance reveals how colonial-era semiotics adapt, cloaking power imbalances. Ultimately, their coexistence illuminates the tenacity of linguistic structures in sustaining historical asymmetries – an alchemy where ambiguity enables domination to masquerade as enlightenment, ensnaring the East in a dialectic of deprivation and idealization.

5 Persistent semiotics: Orientalist constructs in a globalized era

In an age of globalization, the historically formed constructs of Orient and Morgenland persist not merely as relics but as adaptive signifiers, recalibrated to suit neoliberal and geopolitical exigencies. The 2015 refugee crisis in Germany exemplified this resilience: media narratives oscillated between framing Middle Eastern migrants through the lens of Orient-associated tropes of threat or premodern values, and evoking Morgenland-like romanticized suffering requiring Western salvation. This duality mirrors historical patterns, wherein the East is simultaneously exoticized and pathologized – a bifurcation whose endurance Saussure’s theory of linguistic persistence helps elucidate. Once institutionalized, signs like Orient and Morgenland retain their ideological cores even as they absorb new contextual meanings (Saussure 1916/2016, p. 74).

Contemporary mass culture amplifies this semiotic inertia. Luxury brands market perfumes like “Desert Rose” using Morgenland-inflected imagery of mystique, while tourism campaigns deploy Orient-derived reductions of the East to consumable exotica. Such representations reinforce Orientalist binaries under the guise of aesthetic appreciation or market logic, demonstrating the ongoing “work” of these historically sedimented signifiers (Saussure 1916/2016, p. 74) to categorize and commodify the East in ways that resonate with Arjun Appadurai’s (2005, p. 33) concept of globally circulating “ethnoscapes” tailored for Western consumption. Academic discourse, despite critiques, sometimes echoes this Manicheanism, dissecting “Eastern societies” through rigid dichotomies (Escher 2011, S. 134). Even critical frameworks risk reinscribing monolithic representations if not carefully employed.

Postcolonial critiques challenge these patterns. Dipesh Chakrabarty’s call to “provincialize Europe” urges dismantling universalist narratives (Chakrabarty 2000, pp. 9–15). German initiatives like the Haus der Kulturen der Welt’s programming aim to decentralize discourse. Yet such efforts remain fraught. Neoliberal exoticism often coopts decolonial rhetoric, while conservative factions weaponize centuries-old tropes of cultural conflict, echoing the hierarchical framing embedded in the historical usage of Orient.

These dynamics expose the self-replicating nature of Orientalist semiotics. Appadurai’s analysis of global “-scapes” clarifies how circulating images amplify these semiotics (Appadurai 2005, p. 33). The East remains trapped in what Homi Bhabha (1994, p. 183) termed a “time-lag,” perpetually cast as either archaic or aspirational but never coeval. Institutionalized via canons, policy, and media, these signifiers naturalize the East as a mirror for Western anxieties and aspirations – evident when curricula elevate Goethe’s Orientalist poetry as universal humanism while marginalizing contemporaneous Arab intellectual traditions.

The persistence of these constructs underscores their institutional entrenchment. Until such systems are critically interrogated, the East remains confined to a dialectic of empirical reduction (Orient) and romantic mystification (Morgenland), perpetuating Europe’s historical projections.

6 Conclusions

This study has illuminated the critical yet under-examined interplay between Orient and Morgenland as symbiotic yet functionally distinct signifiers within German discourse. By analyzing their co-evolution and divergence, primarily between the 16th and 20th centuries, we have shown how they collectively bifurcated the East into a space of calculable lack (Orient) and ineffable plenitude (Morgenland). Academic taxonomies, Romantic idealizations, and colonial rhetoric all functioned recursively to validate Western centrality. This interplay, established primarily during this period (the Age of Colonialism; Polaschegg 2005, S. 31), balanced scientific quantification (Orient) with poetic projection (Morgenland), creating a self-perpetuating dialectic that sustained European exceptionalism. The enduring legacy of this historical divergence is quantitatively underscored by corpus data: analysis of the DWDS core corpus (1900–1999) reveals the stark difference in overall frequency and, more importantly, the distinct distribution across text genres, with Orient dominating scientific and public discourse and Morgenland finding its relative niche in literature. This pattern provides context for contemporary observations from corpora like LCC, which suggest the continued prevalence of Orient in certain modern contexts.

Transcending this legacy requires dismantling the infrastructures that sustain hierarchical signification – academic canons, funding biases, pedagogical conventions – and reorienting intercultural dialogue toward collaborative meaning-making. Following Geertz (1983, p. 234), this entails reciprocal interpretation where the East is neither a “laboratory” nor a passive screen but an active interlocutor. Such a shift demands abandoning the dialectic of measurement (Orient) and mystification (Morgenland), recognizing cultural signifiers as “webs of signification” (Geertz 1983, p. 182) shaped by power (Chakrabarty 2000, pp. 9–15). Epistemic humility is critical here: treating Orient and Morgenland as “thickly described” palimpsests (Geertz 1983, p. 184) exposes their historicity and fractures their enduring hierarchies.

The goal is not erasure but historical transparency – rendering these terms as artifacts revealing language’s dual capacity. Institutional unlearning – decentering citation practices, reorienting pedagogy, amplifying non-European frameworks – can transform intercultural dialogue into a pluriversal rewriting of signs. Just as Luther’s Morgenland once served Reformation theology, we now face the task of decolonizing semiotic structures. In this light, cross-cultural engagement becomes not deciphering “Otherness,” but a shared labor to disentangle the webs of signification binding us all.

While both Orient and Morgenland serve as geographic signifiers denoting the Eastern world, their contextual deployment transcends mere referential equivalence. As demonstrated in the preceding analysis, each term functions as a cultural cipher conveying distinct sociolinguistic information. This phenomenon aligns with Kluckhohn’s (1951) classical cultural framework as operationalized by Wang and Guan (2022, p. 146) in their semiotic analysis of the Chinese color term Qing. Their methodological synthesis identifies four critical dimensions for contextual term analysis: Lexical perceptibility: The term’s function as a sensorially recognizable symbol; Cognitive patterning: Its capacity to encode collective cognitive schemata and affective responses; Cultural embodiment: Its reflection of distinctive group accomplishments; Value transmission: Its role as a vehicle for traditional ideologies.

When contextual parameters – historical, sociopolitical, and discursive – are accounted for, the supposed semantic parity between these terms dissolves. Each evolves into a complex signification system progressively accumulating referential, connotative, evaluative, and emotive components. Thus, despite superficial denotative overlap, Orient and Morgenland emerge as distinct cultural palimpsests, their semantic architectures shaped by divergent epistemological traditions and value systems.