Albert Grünwedel

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Albert Grünwedel

Albert Grünwedel (born July 31, 1856 in Munich , † October 28, 1935 in Lenggries ) was a German Indologist , Tibetologist and archaeologist who organized two of the four German Turfan expeditions .

biography

Albert Grünwedel was the eldest son of the painter Carl Grünwedel (1815–1895). From 1867 he attended the Maximiliansgymnasium in Munich, where he passed the Abitur in 1875. He then studied art history and Asian languages, including Avestisch , in Munich with Ernst Kuhn and Ernst Trupp. In 1883 he received his doctorate from the University of Munich .

Since 1881 he worked as an assistant at the Museum für Völkerkunde in Berlin. In 1883 he was promoted to deputy director of the Museum's Ethnographic Collection and Scandinavian Antiquities. In 1891 he received an honorary professorship from the University of Berlin for his numerous publications on Buddhist art , archeology of Central Asia and the languages ​​of the Himalayas .

In his two works, Buddhist Art in India (1893) and Mythology of Buddhism in Tibet and Mongolia (1900), Grünwedel demonstrated the Greek origins of the art of Gandhara and its consequences in Central Asia.

In 1899 Grünwedel was invited by the Russian orientalists Radloff and Salemann to take part in archaeological research expeditions in northern Xinjiang , where remains of ancient cultures had been found on the Silk Road . In the same year he was elected a corresponding member of the Bavarian Academy of Sciences and in 1905 a corresponding member of the Göttingen Academy of Sciences .

Under the influence of the research work of his Russian colleagues, Grünwedel organized the first German Turfan expedition himself from 1902 to 1903, which mainly worked in Idiqutšahri. He described the results in his book Report on Archaeological Work in Idikuchahri (1905). The rich yield of this expedition meant that another exploration mission - led by Albert von Le Coq - could be organized. Grünwedel himself also led the third German Turfan expedition, which worked in Tumšuq , Qarašahr and Turfan from 1905–1907 . He presented the results of this expedition in the book Old Buddhist Cults in Chinese Turkistan (1912). In 1908 he was accepted as a corresponding member of the Russian Academy of Sciences in Saint Petersburg .

Compared to his colleague Le Coq, Grünwedel proceeded more cautiously with the excavations, but he too had entire frescoes carved out of cave walls and shipped to Europe. After all, he photographed the sites before the removal and had precise drawings of the frescoes made.

The manuscripts that he brought to Germany from his expeditions are still poorly documented than the works of the visual arts, which are much more spectacular to the public. Grünwedel himself did not take part in the processing of the manuscripts.

Grünwedel was a long-time member of the Berlin Society for Anthropology, Ethnology and Prehistory and was honored with its golden medal in 1909 for a lecture on the archaeological results of the Turfan expedition. In 1916 he was appointed privy councilor. There were rivalries with Le Coq and Wilhelm von Bode . The conflict with FWK Müller was about who was the first to recognize the character of the Manichaean script and the documents written in it. It turned out that Müller deserved this credit.

Grünwedel retired in 1921 and retired to Bavaria in 1923, where he spent his final years in Lenggries near Bad Tölz and wrote a series of scientific papers. But even during this time he made trips to the regions he was familiar with. In 1927 he met the Mongolian researcher Hermann Consten (1878–1957) on Ceylon . While writing these late works, Grünwedel was affected by a worsening illness and did not always distinguish between reality and illusion.

The Sanskritist Ernst Waldschmidt noticed that Grünwedel did not distinguish between facts, speculation and invention in some passages of his magnificently illustrated volume Alt-Kutscha . This is even more true of later works such as The Devils of Avesta , The Legend of Na Ro Pa, and Tusca . In the latter book, Grünwedel claimed to have solved the Etruscan problem. These late works were sharply criticized by fellow researchers, but could not simply be ignored and enjoyed a certain influence. Grünwedel's speculations about an “Etruscan Satan cult ”, for example, were adopted by Alfred Rosenberg in his book Myth of the 20th Century (Munich 1930).

Fonts

literature

  • HG Franz: Art and Culture along the Silk Road. Graz 1986.
  • G. Grönbold: Grünwedel's Naropa handwriting. In: Central Asian Journal. Volume 17/4, 1974, pp. 251-252.
  • Hartmut Walravens (ed.): Albert Grünwedel, correspondence and documents. Wiesbaden 2001.
  • Helmut Hoffmann:  Grünwedel, Albert. In: New German Biography (NDB). Volume 7, Duncker & Humblot, Berlin 1966, ISBN 3-428-00188-5 , p. 204 f. ( Digitized version ).
  • H. Hoffmann: A picture of Grünwedel. In: W. Rau (ed.): Pictures one hundred German Indologists. Wiesbaden, 1965, p. 60.
  • RFG Müller: Albert Grünwedel. In: Communications on the history of medicine, natural sciences and technology. Volume 35, 1936, p. 255.
  • Bruno J. Richtsfeld (Ed.): "The correspondence between Lucian Scherman and Albert von Le Coq and the reasons for the failure of a Ser India department at the Ethnographic Museum in Munich. The Ser India Collection of the State Museum of Ethnology Munich II". In: "Munich Contributions to Ethnology. Yearbook of the State Museum for Ethnology Munich". Volume 14. 2010/11. Pp. 129-193.
  • J. Schubert: Albert Grünwedel and his work. In: Artibus Asiæ. Volume 6, 1936, pp. 124-142.
  • V. Stache-Rosen: German Indologists: Biographies of Scholars in Indian Studies Writing in German . New Delhi 1981, pp. 138-140, 1990.
  • Ernst Waldschmidt: Albert Grünwedel. In: East Asian Journal . NS 11/5, 1935, pp. 215-219.
  • Hartmut Walravens: List of publications Albert Grünwedel .

Web links

Wikisource: Albert Grünwedel  - Sources and full texts

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Annual report on the k. Maximilians-Gymnasium in Munich for the school year 1874/75. Munich, academic printing press by F. Straub 1875.
  2. ^ Siegfried Weiss : Desired career art. Painter, graphic artist, sculptor. Former students of the Maximiliansgymnasium in Munich from 1849 to 1918 . Allitera Verlag, Munich 2012, p. 214. ISBN 978-3-86906-475-8 .
  3. ↑ Holger Krahnke: The members of the Academy of Sciences in Göttingen 1751-2001 (= Treatises of the Academy of Sciences in Göttingen, Philological-Historical Class. Volume 3, Vol. 246 = Treatises of the Academy of Sciences in Göttingen, Mathematical-Physical Class. Episode 3, vol. 50). Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, Göttingen 2001, ISBN 3-525-82516-1 , p. 98.
  4. ^ Foreign members of the Russian Academy of Sciences since 1724. Albert Grünwedel. Russian Academy of Sciences, accessed August 22, 2015 (Russian).
  5. ↑ See Doris Göttin, "Etzel", Klaus Schwarz Verlag Berlin, 2012
  6. ↑ http://www.fabri-antiquariat.de/public_html/tib-bib/index.html
personal data
SURNAME Grünwedel, Albert
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German archaeologist
DATE OF BIRTH July 31, 1856
PLACE OF BIRTH Munich
DATE OF DEATH October 28, 1935
Place of death Lenggries