The fact of Asad’s visit to London in 1939, which I first revealed here, has been a source of confusion, since the only evidence for it lies in some incomplete official correspondence. I received the following letter from Martin Goldenberg, Asad’s step-brother and a London dental surgeon, dated London, August 27, 2000:

Dear Dr. Kramer,

In his Diplomarbeit for the grade of Magister at the University of Vienna “Leopold Weiss alias Muhammad Asad” the author, Mr. Guenther Windhager, states that Muhammad Asad had returned to Europe in 1938-39, in an effort to save his family from the Nazis. As the source of this information he refers to a work of yours “The Jewish Discovery of Islam”. 

Asad was my step-brother, through my mother’s marriage, after the death of my father in 1919. At the time mentioned I lived with the rest of the family in Vienna, which I left in March 1939. I can assure you that none of us were aware of Poldi’s presence anywhere but in India. I have contacted my nephew, Prof. Talal Asad, of The City University, New York, who is as astonished about this visit of his father’s as I am. He too was living with his parents in India at the time and states that his father was present there during that period. 

How could Asad travel in that period? He held an Austrian passport, which at that time was no longer valid but which did land him in a British internment camp on the declaration of war with Germany. Other surviving members of the family in New York are equally non-plussed by your statement. 

Dear Dr. Kramer, I am sure that you will appreciate the confusion among us and will help to allay it by giving us the source of your information. 

Anticipating your reply, I remain 

Yours sincerely, 

M. Goldenberg

I replied to Mr. Goldenberg by letter on September 4, 2000, as follows:

Dear Mr. Goldenberg,

Many thanks for your letter of August 27. I enclose my article on Muhammad Asad, on which Mr. Windhager relied. Kindly pay particular attention to p. 235, and footnotes 32 and 33. My source, as indicated, is a file on Weiss/Asad in the India Office Records, file L/P&J/7/2678. 

From the contents of this file (and here I also refer to my notes), two things can be determined for certain: 

(1) On 24 April 1939, the British legation in Vienna issued Weiss a visa (T68618) good for Britain and British India. (The file contains an extract from his passport.) The file indicates that the visa had been authorized in advance by the Government of India in New Delhi on 9 February 1939. This visa was valid for a single journey only, for entry to the United Kingdom and/or British India within ninety days. 

(2) He arrived in the United Kingdom, where he addressed a note to the India Office in London (received on 8 June 1939), requesting an extension of his visa to the end of the year, “as my parents will come in about 4 to 5 months. I have to settle many things for them.” (In his note, Weiss pointed out that his present visa obliged him to land in a harbor in India by 24 July 1939.) He gave his London address as 119, Old Church Street, Chelsea, S.W. 3. The India Office replied to Weiss granting his request, and instructing him to come to the Passport Office in London to receive his extension. 

On the face of it, then, the documents suggest that he went to Vienna in April 1939, and prove that he reached London in May or early June. I did not write that he visited Vienna, because he states in The Road to Mecca that he never saw his father again after leaving for Arabia (p. 311, note). I also thought it highly improbable that Weiss would have risked a visit to Vienna at that late date, even if he knew in advance that a British visa awaited him there. I preferred to write only that his passport was visaed in Vienna. Just how he might have accomplished this without being there is a question mark 

Nevertheless, his stay in London is beyond question, and its rationale, as explained by Asad himself, was to “settle many things” for his parents in advance of their anticipated departure from Vienna. 

I did not specify precisely when Asad left India on this trip. The file indicates that the visa issued in Vienna in April had been authorized in advance by the Government of India in New Delhi on 9 February 1939. I think it logical to assume that Asad would not have left India without first securing this authorization for a return visa, and so he probably left after 9 February 1939. I found no clue as to the date of his return to India. As he was detained in India on the outbreak of war, he must have returned before September 1939. I therefore wrote in my article that he returned in summer. 

Various British files establish that Weiss was careful to maintain a current Austrian passport throughout his travels. While in Arabia, he lost a passport (no. 1035 issued at Frankfurt on 8 June 1926); in 1928, his parents had a replacement issued in Vienna and forwarded to him for collection at the British Residency in Bahrain. He was issued another passport (no. 4275) by the Austrian Consul-General in Cairo on 12 May 1932. There is an indication in British records that Britain extended “passport facilities” to Weiss in 1937, following a 1936 “letter of request” from him, but the documents are missing from the relevant files. It seems plausible that they concerned the forwarding of yet another Austrian passport to Weiss. Even after the German annexation, Weiss would have been able to pass most foreign (and British) ports on such a document, if it were current. 

I hope this helps to clear up some of the confusion, and establish the basic facts of his trip and its purpose. Of course, there are many unresolved mysteries beyond these basic facts. If Asad somehow did pass through Vienna in April 1939, just what did he do there, aside from securing an onward visa? Did he have an actual plan to extricate his parents in four or five months, and was it coordinated with them? What, if anything, did he do while in London to advance that plan? 

The India Office Library and Records are in London, on Blackfriars Road, and I suggest you consult this file yourself. Perhaps you might detect a clue I have missed. Of course, I would welcome any other comments or factual corrections on any aspect of my article, either by you or your nephew. And feel free to share this letter with other members of your family in New York.

Yours sincerely, 

Martin Kramer 

cc: Prof. Talal Asad 

Mr. Günther Windhager

In 2015, a publishing house in Lahore, Pakistan, issued that part of Asad’s later memoirs that he managed to complete before his death, under the title Home-coming of the Heart. There he gives a cursory one-page account of 1939 prior to his detention. He makes no mention of a trip outside India; his efforts to save his family appear limited to pulling strings in India. This thin account leaves ample room for the visit to London. I reproduce Asad’s account below.

Muhammad Asad and Pola Hamida Asad, Home-coming of the Heart, 2nd ed. (Pakistan: Pakistan Writers Cooperative Society, 2015), 98-99.

As the days and months passed, an ominous rumble could be heard from Europe. Hitler occupied Austria, and one could almost physically feel the approach of a terrible catastrophe. 

My desire to bring my father, sister, and step-mother from Vienna to India became desperate; and even my father was now willing to leave his country. In view of the many thousands of refugees—mostly Jews—streaming out of Nazi Germany, it had become extremely difficult for most of them to obtain visas for other countries; and India, with its highly labile political situation, was the most difficult of all. 

As usual during my life, friends came to my rescue. One of them, Justice Din Muhammad—at that time Chief Justice of the Punjab High Court—offered to give me a letter saying that he had engaged my sister as a ‘governess’ for his daughters; on the strength of this letter, stamped with the seal of the High Court, she was certain to obtain a visa from the British Consulate in Vienna. I sent it to her forthwith. As for my father, no such fictitious engagement was practicable; and so I importuned every person of high official standing known to me to help me in my endeavours. Sardar Sikander Hayat, Chief Minister of the Punjab, responded most generously. He personally intervened with the Home Secretary in New Delhi and prevailed upon him to issue, as a personal favour to himself, an immigration visa in my father’s and his wife’s names, and this exceptional grant was communicated telegraphically to the British Embassy in Vienna. 

I wrote at once to my father and instructed him to present himself at the Embassy, have the visas entered on his and my stepmother’s passports, and leave Austria immediately. A few days later, to my horror, I received a letter from my sister informing me that she had somehow lost the Chief Justice’s letter of engagement. It was almost like a death-wish! 

On the same day, I obtained a duplicate letter from my friend the Chief Justice and sent it express to Vienna. In a telegram, I urged my father not to wait for this second ‘engagement letter’ to arrive, but to leave at once for Italy and await my sister there; she would follow as soon as she had secured her visa. Our father replied—also by telegram—that he would not leave Vienna without his daughter…. 

This was in late August of 1939. A few days later, the Second World War broke out, the British Embassy and Consulate were withdrawn from Vienna, and no visas could be obtained any longer; and I myself was arrested and—because of my Austrian passport—interned as an ‘enemy alien.’