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Here are some of the things we’ve been looking at:

Southern Areas (Talysh Mountains):

Istu:
- http://stevehollier.wordpress.com/2011/04/01/azerbaijan-the-road-less-travelled-%E2%80%93-south-of-lankaran-the-istisu-hot-springs-hirkan-national-park/
- http://www.azerbaijan24.com/tours/tour/21.html

Lerik:
http://aaronmckean.wordpress.com/2011/01/06/a-walk-in-lerik-with-pictures/

Northn Areas (Caucas Mountains or close by):

Xinalyg to Laza hike:
- http://www.azerbaijan24.com/tours/tour/21.html
- http://www.spiration.co.uk/post/1424/Hiking-to-Laza,-Azerbaijan

Alych to Budug:
http://www.azerbaijan24.com/tours/tour/23.html

Siv Hackzell has not examined the research conducted by Azerbaijan International which was carried out over a period of six years and in 10 languages. I invited her to examine the contents, she declined. So much for her claims to serious scholarship!!

Times were very chaotic during the late 1930s in Austria because of Nazi terror from Germany. Thousands upon thousands of emigrees were living in European capitals and often they had to live “hand to mouth” because they simply could not get work. So this easily explains how a book could have been written by someone other than the person who registered the book.

No one denies that Elfriede Ehrenfels registered the copyright but that does NOT prove that she herself penned the novels. No matter what the copyright law and the Berne Convention purport – the truth lies elsewhere.

Furthermore, there is correspondence in the University of New York, Albany archives between Mireille Ehrenfels (third wife of Baron Ehrenfels and mother of current copyright holder of Kurban Said books – Leela Ehrnefels) where Mireille admits that she did not know whether Elfriede had penned the novel or not – but that it was irrelevant because Elfriede had registered the book – and so that settled it for her. Mireille writes that finally the money should be coming to the Ehrenfels family and not to America (where publisher Lucy Tal, a Jew, had fled after the Anschluss in Austria, 1938).

This quarrel between Tal and Ehrenfels was not settled in Ehrenfels favor until the 1990s. The two women argued so much that Paramount Pictures refused to get involved and do the movie that they had commissioned Paul Monash (Peyton Place) to script. Only in the 1990s did the copyright go to Ehrenfels. By that time Lucy was elderly – in her 90s and she simply gave up as she did not have money to initiate a lawsuit and did not want to end up “out in the street”. To the bitter end, Tal held that as publisher she had as much rights to the copyright as did the Elfriede who Tal insisted had only registered the book. Correspondence exists between Lucy Tal and her lawyer on this topic.

I spent four days at the Lichtenau Castle in Austria as guest of Ehrenfels niece Leela in September 2005. Clearly, there is nothing definitive there in that castle that would identify Elfriede as the author of “Ali and Nino”. Even I went so far as to track down some of Elfriede’s writings and have them translated into English and analyze the writing style which is totally different than Ali and Nino. And it is ridiculous to say that “post-war Austrians had several Baku’s to choose from” as if you could substitute the streets of Prague or Trieste for Baku.

Baku is Baku and the streets, buildings and contemporary historical personalities of that period – are described in the novel. But more importantly the issue of independence of Azerbaijan and freedom to make decisions about nationality, religion, race, gender and race – were characteristic of Baku in the early 1910 to 1920. And they run very deep throughout the novel. Not something that has been dropped into a paragraph here and there. Clearly, it was written by someone who deeply felt these concerns.

Baron Ehrenfels did visit Constantinople in the 1920s but Constantinople cannot be equated with Baku of 1917-1920. It is irrelevant that Ehrenfels was featured in a film made about East / West issues.

What does Hackzell mean when she says AI relied on hundreds of references from Reiss? She has not read our research and doesn’t know. Furthermore, the real source is the late Dr. Gerhard Hoepp – often Reiss does not acknowledge him. Today, these rare materials were donated by Hoepp upon his death to the Center for Modern Oriental Studies in Berlin.

Our conclusions are very different – Reiss wholeheartedlly embraces Essad Bey (Lev Nussimbaum). We conclude that Yusif Vazir Chamanzaminli who had been writing about these very concerns since 1904-05 was the Core Author but that Essad Bey elaborated passages – particularly folkloric material (EB was a “cut and paste” author so you can find exact references in earlier books to similar legends etc. Furthermore, EB plagiarized passages from Grigol Robakidze when it came to descriptions of Tiflis (Tbilisi) and Tehran.

Reiss totally dismisses the Chamanzaminli link. Of course, why not? He had already published his findings in The New Yorker in 1999 and then he returned to Baku in 2000 to interview the sons of Chamanzaminli – Fikrat and Orkhan – who invited him to go to the Institute of Manuscripts in Baku and examine Chamanzaminli’s extensive body of work. And Reiss did not show up.

The research that Azerbaijan International carried out is far more extensive than Hoepp, an East German, who did not explore any Azerbaijani link, nor did Hoepp examine English language resources and there are scores of reviews in English publications such as New York Times and Saturday Review – related to Essad Bey’s works.

Hackzell calls herself a “Literature Historian,” but the issue of authorship of Ali and Nino requires much deeper analysis than what she has provided above.

For those who are interested, read more – including all sources and references – at http://azer.com/aiweb/categories/magazine/ai152_folder/152_index_eng.html.

Could’t find any contact info here. We want to ask you about active tourism in Azerbaijan. Could you reply by e-mail?