Eva Müller (Sinologist)

Eva Müller ( chin .: Mei Yihua; born May 10, 1933 as Eva Menzel in Königsberg ) is a German sinologist and specialist in Chinese literature .

Life

Eva Menzel's family left Königsberg in 1944 and she attended school in Eisleben , where she graduated from high school in 1951 . She began studying Chinese interpreters at the Foreign Language School in Leipzig under Paul Ratschnevsky . She also heard lectures by Eduard Erkes , Käthe Finsterbusch and Zhao Ruihong from Nanjing at the East Asian Institute of the University of Leipzig . In the summer of 1954 she married her colleague Reiner Müller.

In 1954 Eva Müller went to China with her husband to study at Peking University . After a year of language skills , she studied Chinese literature with You Guo'en , Wang Yao , Lin Geng , Wu Zuxiang and Zhou Yibai , linguistics with Wang Li and Zhu Dexi and philosophy with Feng Youlan . She wrote her diploma thesis on folk songs from the time at the beginning of the Great Leap (title: Dàyuèjìn míngē zhōng de láodòng《大跃进 民歌 中 的 劳动》). Their daughter Barbara was born in April 1960 and after completing her studies in Beijing, she and her family went to Berlin ( GDR ).

In 1961 Eva Müller took up a position as a research assistant at the East Asian Institute of the Humboldt University in Berlin under Siegfried Behrsing . In the following year, as a result of her diploma thesis, a collection of folk songs that she had put together appeared. Her doctoral thesis from 1966 dealt with the shape of the white snake in Chinese literature. Their son Mathias was born in the same year. Later she dealt with the classic Chinese novel, also because due to the tensions between China and the Soviet Union and the GDR, publications on more current topics were politically very sensitive. In 1970 she became a university lecturer in the history of Chinese literature, culture and language and in 1983 a full professor of Chinese studies . It was only in the 1980s that publications on contemporary Chinese literature were possible again, and in 1984 Eva Müller was able to travel to China for the first time. In the 1990s, her research focus on women became very evident in literature. She knew numerous authors whose works Eva Müller translated and presented personally, including Chi Li , Shu Ting , Lu Xing'er , Ma Ruifang , Su Qing , Chen Ran , Lin Bai and above all Zhang Jie .

literature

• Mechthild Leutner, Jens Damm (ed.): Chinese literature. For Eva Müller's seventieth birthday. LIT, Berlin, Hamburg, Münster 2005, ISBN 3-8258-8434-1 .

Web links

• Literature by and about Eva Müller in the catalog of the German National Library