In closing may I express the Guardian’s prayers and best wishes for the
progress of your work in serving the Faith....
LETTER OF 27 JUNE 1933
27 June 1933
Dear Dr. Mühlschlegel:
Shoghi Effendi wishes me to acknowledge on his behalf the receipt of your
letter dated May 11th, 1933, together with the enclosed Program of the
Bahá’í meetings held in Stuttgart and Esslingen, all of which he has
carefully read and deeply appreciated.
In regard to the transliteration of Oriental names and words into German
he wishes me to inform you that the system of transliteration actually in
use in the Bahá’í world has been adopted and approved with only slight
changes by a general Orientalist Congress representative of world’s
greatest orientalists including some outstanding German authorities in
various branches of Oriental history and literature. As you see,
therefore, it is a highly recommendable system of transliteration and this
is why the Guardian is so emphatic about its universal adoption by the
Bahá’ís the world over. Any departure from that system, he strongly feels,
may lead to incalculable difficulties and misunderstandings in the future.
He would certainly urge you to adopt it yourself and then advise our
German friends to do the same in all their official Bahá’í publications
and particularly in the forthcoming issues of the “Sonne der Wahrheit”
wherein some chapters of the “Dawn-Breakers” are going to be published.
Concerning the date of the anniversary of the Báb’s declaration the
Guardian feels that it would be preferable to postpone the consideration
of this problem until the Universal House of Justice is established. In
the meantime he would advise you to follow the system actually in use in
the Bahá’í world, i.e. (year 9.) even in Germany. According to this system
the hundredth anniversary of the Declaration of the Faith should be
celebrated in May of the year 101, that is when we enter the second Bahá’í
century. By year 90 we should not mean that 90 years have elapsed since
the declaration of the Báb but that we are in the 9th year. But whether it
is preferable to adopt this system or that suggested by you and which, you
remark, is in use among Christians and Moslems, the future House of
Justice has to decide.
Touching the Bahá’í funeral service the Guardian would like you to know
that it is of an extreme simplicity, consisting as it does of a
congregational prayer which has not yet been translated into any western
language but which Shoghi Effendi is planning to have it translated and
circulated among the friends. The friends and relatives of the deceased
who are unwilling to attend the service should not be forced to do so.
In closing may I extend to you the loving greetings of the Guardian....
[From the Guardian:]
Dear and valued co-worker:
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