Baron Omar Rolf Von Ehrenfels - A Passage To India 1932- 33

A Passage To India 1932- 33

In an attempt to overcome the grief at his beloved father's death Umar Rolf made a journey to India in 1932-33. Together with the Imam of the Wilmersdorfer Mosque in Berlin, former professor in Lahore Dr S.M. Abdullah, Baron Omar made a lecture tour from Lahore in the north to Hyderabad in the south as an advocate of the Ahmadiya movement. He sent reports from the tour printed in newspapers. At home again he lectured. The tour affected him so much that Umar Rolf decided to give his life a new turn. He made India his main life project. His interest was deep. His father's colleague the Indologist professor Moriz Winternitz (1863–1937) had taught Rolf as a boy. He had met high ranking Indians in his home among them the Nobel Prize Laureate Rabindranath Tagore (1861–1941). Mahatma Gandhi's close man Vallabhai Patel (1875–1950) was the patron of Der Orientbund in Vienna, which Umar Rolf founded 1932 and presided until his escape to India 1938. What Ehrenfels saw of women's position on the tour 1932-33 made him choose to study social anthropology at Vienna University. In 1937 he got his doctorate with the dissertation "Mutterrecht in Vorderindien". It was translated by himself and published in Hyderbad/Dn in 1941 as "Mother-right in India".