Arthur W. Hummel senior

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Arthur Hummel, 1942.

Arthur William Hummel senior ( Chinese  恒 慕 义 , Pinyin héng mù yì , 恒 恭 義 Heng, Gongyi ; born March 6, 1884 , † March 10, 1975 ) was an American missionary in China , as well as the head of the Asian Division of the Library of Congress , an eminent sinologist and editor of the Eminent Chinese of the Ch'ing Period biographical dictionary . He was the first president of the Association for Asian Studies in 1948.

He was the father of the US diplomat Arthur W. Hummel junior .

Life

Hummel was born in Warrenton , Missouri and began his education at Morgan Park Academy , where he graduated in 1905. At the University of Chicago he made a Bachelor (1909), a Master (1911) and in 1914 a Bachelor of Divinity .

During his studies in Chicago he came into contact with the Student Volunteer Movement , an academic missionary organization, and went to Kobe in Japan as a teacher . During the summer holidays of 1913 and 1914, he visited his brother, who taught history and religion at the University of Nanking . He became fascinated by the culture of China, the country from which Japan had taken so much.

Career in the Library of Congress and Sinology

He returned to the United States in 1914, married, and in November the couple went to China as missionaries for the American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions . For the following decade, Hummel taught and took Chinese classes in schools in Fenzhou and Shaanxi . During this time he acquired a large collection of Chinese cards and coins, which he bought in the local markets; his coin collection ultimately comprised 2,000 variants. In 1924 the Hummels moved to Beijing to teach at the newly established School of Chinese Studies at Yanjing University . Together with many other foreigners, he experienced the uprisings in 1927 after the northern expedition ( 國民 革命 軍 北伐 Guomin geming junbeifa ).

Soon after his return to the United States, Hummel accepted a position at the Library of Congress . He originally only wanted to work there for a transitional period until he could return to China; from the transition period, however, was his place of life until his retirement in 1954. He became the first Chief of the Orientalia Division . Hummel built the collection into one of the largest and best organized in America.

In the early 1930s he became friends with his colleague Mortimer Graves from the American Council of Learned Societies . Not only did Graves and Hummel collaborate in building the library collection, they also promoted Asian studies in colleges and universities across the country. Jan JL Duyvendak ( University of Leiden , The Netherlands ) came into contact with Hummel and encouraged him, his long-cherished interest in the Chinese scholar Gu Jiegang, to study the Movement for a New Culture ( 新文化 运动 , Xīn Wénhuà Yùndòng ) and its revisionist To expand the interpretation of ancient Chinese history. With this dissertation on The Autobiography of a Chinese Historian , Hummel earned a doctorate in 1931 from the University of Leiden. In 1950 he was elected a member of the American Philosophical Society .

Graves arranged funding for Hummel's work on the Eminent Chinese of the Ch'ing Period, and he began doing so in 1934. The United States Government Printing Office continued printing through 1943.

Works

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  • Gu Jiegang : The Autobiography of a Chinese Historian Being the Preface to a Symposium on Ancient Chinese History (Ku Shih Pien) (Arthur W. Hummel, editor, translator, issued also as thesis) Leyden, of the editor and translator EJ Brill ltd. , 1931.
  • EG Beal: Arthur W. Hummel and the Chinese Collection at the Library of Congress. In: Journal of East Asian Libraries. Vol. 74, No. 1, 1984, pp. 7-15 ( online ).
  • Edwin G. Beal, Janet F. Beal: Obituary: Arthur W. Hummel (1884-1975). In: The Journal of Asian Studies. Volume 35, No. 2, 1976, pp. 265-276.

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b c d Edwin G. Beal, Janet F. Beal: Obituary: Arthur W. Hummel (1884-1975). In: The Journal of Asian Studies. Volume 35, No. 2, 1976, pp. 267-275 ( JSTOR 2053983 ).
  2. ^ Chinese Beginnings: Library of Congress Asian Collections
  3. ↑ Member History: Arthur W. Hummel. American Philosophical Society, accessed October 6, 2018 .
personal data
SURNAME Hummel, Arthur W. senior
ALTERNATIVE NAMES 恒 恭 義, 恒 慕 义 (Chinese); Heng, Gongyi (pinyin)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION American missionary and sinologist
DATE OF BIRTH March 6, 1884
PLACE OF BIRTH Warrenton , Missouri
DATE OF DEATH March 10, 1975