Where Iran Came From or Iran Ueber Alles or Go East Young Man Maimon Schwarzschild

Today's Iran was historically Persia.  But did you know that the name Iran was adopted in the 1930s at the urging of Hjalmar Schacht, Hitler's financial wizard, who noted that Persians were historically Aryans?  ("Iran" means "Land of the Aryans".)  

According to Elton Daniel, Persian scholar and author of The History of Iran, it was Schacht who urged the Shah at the time to adopt the name Iran instead of Persia, which Reza Shah did in 1935.

Hjalmar Schacht's full name, by the way, was Hjalmar Horace Greeley Schacht.  Schacht's parents had spent years in the US, and admired Horace Greeley.

Schacht was Hitler's Minister of Economics and head of the Reichsbank.  He was a key figure in Hitler's rise to power and in the economics of Nazi Germany.  He was a defendant at the post-war Nuremberg trial, where he was acquitted - to the outrage not only of the Soviets but also of US prosecutor (and Supreme Court Justice) Robert Jackson.

Schacht, with his American connections, spoke fluent English.  Schacht, by the way, was not the only member of Hitler's inner circle with American connections.  Hitler's friend Putzi Hanfstaengl was actually Ernst Sedgwick Hanfstaengl, a Harvard graduate.  (Putzi was a cousin of Edie Sedgwick, Andy Warhol's protegee who committed suicide after a wild time in the 1960s.)  And Baldur von Schirach, head of the Hitler Youth and Gauleiter of Vienna, was three-quarters American, despite his Wagnerian name: von Schirach's mother was American and his father was descended from the Norris family of Philadelphia.

So much for today's edition of Truth Stranger Than Fiction...

Comments

[hass]

This is COMPLETE crap. It is true that Iran is "Land of the Aryans" but the name had nothing to do with Hitler. The Iranians have ALWAYS referred to their country as Iran. There are stone inscriptions in Iran using that term that are over a thousand years old. So in 1935 they formally asked others to also use "IRan" rather than "Persia"

[Andre Daie]

Such a nonsense article
Iran was always Iran and no Iranian ever called their country Persia. This is a name given by Greeks 2500 centuries ago and remained a European word for Iran. Reza Shah, in 1935, in order to clarify the matter through foreign ministry requested that the word Iran be used instead of Persia. By the way, there are stamps from Nasseroddin Shah with the word Iran on it, circa 1880. The poet,Ferdowsi in Shahnameh ,about 1000 years ago, Talks about the land as Iran.

[mike livingston]

Wasn't Schacht the one that Hitler fired during the intermission at the Berlin Opera?

[maimon]

Schacht resigned in 1937 as Finance Minister, in conflict with Goering and his ambitions for economic "autarky". Hitler didn't fire Schacht: in fact Hitler was reluctant to accept his resignation. Schacht stayed on as head of the Reichsbank and continued to give Hitler public support.

Iran is indeed an old word and I ought to have said that it was formally adopted as the name of the country in 1935. Still, Schacht encouraged Reza Shah to take the step at that time. The touchy reaction suggests that this fact - no one seems to deny it - strikes a raw nerve. It is at least plausible that ideas spreading around the world from Germany in the 1930s made it attractive to Reza Shah at just that time that the country should be known internationally as "Land of the Aryans" rather than "Persia".