Director
Udo Steinbach

Special Features
The German Orient Institute was established in 1960 by the Near and Middle East Association. It concerns itself with research, information and documentation on the Near and Middle East, namely all member states of the Arab League, as well as Israel, Turkey, Iran, Afghanistan and Pakistan. Together with other regional institutes, it forms the "German Overseas Institute Foundation." The research activity is organized on an inter- and multidisciplinary basis and deals with contemporary social, economic and political developments in the region. In the scheme of middle-term research planning, the Institute has set the following areas in the center of its work: the economic and development policies of the oil-producing countries in the region; the approaches to political and economic cooperation in the Middle East on the basis of their financial situation; the feedback of economic development, especially the continuing process of industrialization, on the social structure and the mental, cultural and ideological bases of the countries of the Middle East; problems of labor force, the regulation of labor markets and intra-regional labor migration; the concern of the countries of the region for a more independent position within international politics; and continual observation of the problems occurring in European-Arab relations, particularly in the European-Arab dialogue.

Additional Information
Attached to the Institute is the Middle East Documentation Center (Dokumentations-Leitstelle Moderner Orient), whose role is the central collection and making available material relevant to the study of the area. The collected material is open to scientific study, government, business, politicians, and interested parties. In its literary documentation, the most important journals and papers and the contents of the German Orient Institute's library are regularly assessed; also, the contents of numerous libraries in the Federal Republic are disclosed. The Documentation Center publishes a quarterly list of new admissions, formulates the bibliography for the journal Orient, and issues bibliographies and documentation materials with short introductions on particular subjects at irregular intervals. Every two weeks it issues reports and commentaries on important political, social and economic events in the Middle East in its "Information Service on Current Political and Economic Developments" ("Nahost-Informationsdienst"), compiled from the European-language regional press.