Robert Charles Zaehner - Life

Life

Born on 8 April 1913 in Sevenoaks, Kent, the son of Swiss immigrants to England, Zaehner was educated nearby at Tonbridge School. Admitted to Christ Church, Oxford, he studied Greek and Latin, and also ancient Persian including Avestan, gaining first class honours in Oriental Languages. During 1936-37 he studied Pahlavi, another ancient Iranian language, with Sir Harold Bailey at Cambridge. He then began work on his Zurvan, a Zoroastrian Dilemma, a study of the pre-Islamic religion of Iran.

Zaehner enjoyed "a prodigious gift for languages" and later acquired reading knowledge of Sanskrit (for Hindu scriptures), Pali (for Buddhist), and Arabic (for Islamic). In 1939 he acted as research lecturer at Christ Church, Oxford. About this time, apparently after reading the French poet Arthur Rimbaud, and Rumi the sufi poet of Iran, as well as the Hindu Upanishads, Zaehner had adopted a "nature mysticism". Yet his spiritual progression led him to convert to Christianity, becoming a Roman Catholic while stationed in Iran.

During World War II starting in 1943, he served as a British intelligence officer at their Embassy in Tehran. Often he was stationed in the field among the mountain tribes of northern Iran. After the war he performed a more diplomatic role at Tehran until 1947. Decades later another British intelligence officer, Peter Wright, described his activities:

"I studied Zaehner's Personal File. He was responsible for MI6 counterintelligence in Persia during the war. It was difficult and dangerous work. The railway lines into Russia, carrying vital military supplies, were key targets for German sabotage. Zaehner was perfectly equipped for the job, speaking the local dialects fluently, and much of his time was spent undercover, operating in the murky and cutthroat world of countersabotage. By the end of the war his task was even more fraught. The Russians themselves were trying to gain control of the railway, and Zaehner had to work behind Russian lines, continuously at risk of betrayal and murder by pro-German or pro-Russian... ."

Back in Britain, Zaehner took up again his academic research on Zoroastrianism, while also continuing his work as an MI6 officer. During 1949 he was relocated to Malta where he trained anti-Communist Albanians. In 1950 he secured appointment as Lecturer in Persian at Oxford University. He returned briefly to Iran during 1951 to perform government service.

When in Tehran that year he held the rank of Counsellor. In fact, he continued as an MI6 officer. During the Abadan Crisis he was assigned to prolong the Shah's royal hold on the Throne from the republican challenge led by Mohammed Mossadegh, then the Prime Minister of Iran. Thus Zaehner became engaged in the failed 1951 British effort to topple the government of Iran and return oil production to an entity controlled by the British government, the Anglo-Iranian Oil Company, which had been in effect nationalized by Mossadegh. "he plot to overthrow Mossadegh and give the oilfields back to the AIOC was in the hands of a British diplomat called Robin Zaehner, later professor of Eastern religions at Oxford."

In the 1960s, MI5 counter-intelligence officer Peter Wright questioned Zaehner about floating allegations that he had doubled as a spy for the Soviet Union, harming British intelligence operations in Iran and Albania during the period following World War II. Zaehner is described as "a small, wiry-looking man, clothed in the distracted charm of erudition." Wright wrote in his 1987 book Spycatcher that Zaehner's humble demeanor and candid denial convinced him that the Oxford don had remained loyal to Britain. Wright notes that "I felt like a heel" for confronting Zaehner.

Back again to his prior home at Oxford University, in 1952 Zaehner was elected Spalding Professor of Eastern Religions and Ethics to succeed the celebrated professor and Indian statesman Sarvepalli Radhakrishnan. His inaugural lecture was unconventional in content, Zaehner delivering a strong yet witty criticism of "universalism" in religion. He served Oxford in this academic chair, while also a fellow at All Souls College, until his death in 1974, and never married. Invited to deliver in Scotland the Gifford Lectures, he did so at the University of St. Andrews during the years 1967-1969, which lectures were later published.

"Zaehner was a scholar who turned into something different, something more important than a scholar," according to Prof. Dummett. With insight and learning (and his war-time experience) Zaehner shed light on key issues in contemporary spiritual life, writing abundantly. "His talent lay in seeing what to ask, rather than in how to answer... ." He died on 24 November 1974. "t the age of sixty-one he fell down dead in the street on his way to Sunday evening Mass."