Carl Philipp Hentze

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Carl Philipp Hentze (born June 22, 1883 in Antwerp , † March 20, 1975 in Darmstadt ) was a German sinologist and painter .

Life

Hentze came from a German merchant family. He attended the General German School and the Belgian state grammar school in his native Antwerp, then the grammar school in Mannheim and the Atheneum in Antwerp, where he obtained the Abitur. He then devoted himself to painting for about a decade, which he studied in Karlsruhe and Antwerp. His teachers included the painters Friedrich Fehr , Ernst Schurth , Eugène Joors , Jacob Smits and Adolf von Oechelhäuser , with whom he heard art history. Hentze's works show influences from German Expressionism and Dutch painting tradition.

Around 1910, Hentze first came into contact with Chinese art in the Berlin Ethnographic Museum , which ultimately motivated him to study Sinology. In 1912 he moved to Berlin. He had initial success as an artist and exhibited at the Munich Glass Palace (1913) and the Great Berlin Art Exhibition (1915). In the latter exhibition he showed the oil painting Girl with Still Life (today the National Gallery Collection ), which shows the child an arrangement with a globe and an East Asian vase and with this motif indicates Hentze's future scientific activity.

After moving to Berlin, Hentze began to acquire knowledge about the language, history and culture of China, while painting increasingly faded into the background. However, he remained connected to the arts, so in 1925, together with the art historian Alfred Salmony, he founded the specialist journal Artibus Asiae, which is still renowned today .

After the First World War, Hentze returned to Antwerp. In the absence of an opportunity to study Sinology in Belgium, he began studying at the Jesuit mission in Ghent , where he was a student of Louis van Hée, a former employee of Séraphin Couvreur . He did not receive his doctorate in accordance with the rules and did not qualify for his habilitation, but legitimized himself for teaching through scientific articles and lectures. In 1926, Minister Camille Huysmans appointed him lecturer for Chinese written language, cultural history, archeology and art history of China at Ghent University . In 1930 Hentze became an associate professor at the University of Ghent, in 1932 a professor of Chinese language and culture at the University of Ghent and in 1942 a full professor of Sinology at the University of Frankfurt am Main . At the end of 1942 he also took over the management of the China Institute there , which he held until it was bombed in 1944. In 1951 he retired . He then lived in Darmstadt, where he died in 1975.

As a sinologist, Hentze mainly dealt with ancient China (e.g. the Shang period ).

Fonts (selection)

  • Mythes et symboles lunaires. (Chine ancienne, civilizations anciennes de l'Asie, peuples limitrophes du pacifique) . Antwerp 1932, OCLC 470572174 .
  • The sacred bronzes and their meaning in the early Chinese cultures . Antwerp 1941, OCLC 25722854 .
  • The house as the world place of the soul. A contribution to the symbolism of souls in China, Greater Asia, and Old America . Stuttgart 1961, OCLC 186395313 .
  • Finds in ancient China. The world experience in the oldest China . Goettingen 1967, OCLC 777981504 .

literature

  • Greta Beckmann: Carl Philipp Hentze (1883–1975). Sinologist and artist - a reconsideration . Gossenberg 2012, ISBN 978-3-940527-63-9 .
  • Manfred Porkert : Carl Hentze (1883–1975). In: Journal of the German Oriental Society. Volume 128. Deutsche Morgenländische Gesellschaft, Kommissionsverlag F. Steiner, 1978, pp. 5-11.
  • Carl Hentze: the work of the scholar and artist. Kunsthalle Darmstadt am Steubenplatz, exhibition catalog (February 3 to March 10, 1968), Darmstadt 1968.
  • Manfred Porkert: Carl Hentze on his 80th birthday. In: Sinologica. Volume 7. 1962/1963, pp. 153-155.

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Herbert Kühn : Ipek. Yearbook of Prehistoric and Ethnographic Art. Volume 24, years 1974/1977, Gruyter, p. 165.
  2. ↑ a b Manfred Porkert : Carl Hentze (1883–1975). In: Journal of the German Oriental Society. Volume 128. Deutsche Morgenländische Gesellschaft, Kommissionsverlag F. Steiner, 1978, p. 5.
  3. ^ Girls with still life In: Image index of art and architecture . Accessed August 21, 2020.
  4. ↑ Hartmut Walravens:  Salmony, Alfred. In: New German Biography (NDB). Volume 22, Duncker & Humblot, Berlin 2005, ISBN 3-428-11203-2 , p. 386 f. ( Digitized version ).
personal data
SURNAME Hentze, Carl Philipp
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Hentze, Carl
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German sinologist
DATE OF BIRTH June 22, 1883
PLACE OF BIRTH Antwerp
DATE OF DEATH March 20, 1975
Place of death Darmstadt