Friedrich Max Trautz

Friedrich Max Trautz (born June 3, 1877 in Karlsruhe ; † April 6, 1952 ) was a German Japanologist and, among other things, the founder of the Japan Institute in Berlin and head of the German Research Institute in Kyoto .

Trautz was a son of the Baden Oberkirchenrat Theodor Trautz (1845–1897), his younger brother was the chemistry professor Max Trautz . After attending the humanistic grammar school in Karlsruhe, he served as a lieutenant in the Baden field artillery from 1898 and was accepted into the war academy in 1906 , where he began to study Japanese. In 1907 he passed the interpreting test in French and English and was given leave of absence from 1909 to 1910 to travel around the world to Japan, Korea and China. In 1911 he passed the diploma exams in Japanese and Turkish at the Oriental Seminary in Berlin, whereupon in 1912 he went to the war history department of the Great General Staff . During the First World War he took part as a captain on the Western Front , in the field railway service in Turkey and in the Prussian War Ministry . In 1920 he retired from military service as a charged major and studied Japanese again in Berlin.

Trautz received his doctorate in 1921. phil. at the University of Berlin , as the first to major in Japanese Studies. From 1921 to 1926 he worked as a research assistant in the East Asian Department at the Museum für Völkerkunde Berlin under Friedrich Wilhelm Karl Müller as part of his own research on the history of European relations with Japan and in particular on the history of Engelbert Kämpfers and Philipp Franz von Siebold . In 1926 he completed his habilitation in Berlin and was then appointed head of the Japan Institute he created in Berlin. 1930-1938 he was on leave to Kyoto. There he researched the life story and poetry of Bashō (Genjūan no ki etc.) and took up Siebold research again. In 1938 he returned to Karlsruhe.

From 1909 he was a member of the East Asian Society .

Fonts

• The Tōkaidō , the main artery of medieval Japan, a contribution to the cultural history and topology of the Tokugawa period , habilitation thesis Berlin 1926
• Ceylon , Berlin 1926
• Japan, Korea and Formosa , Berlin 1930
• The Great Stūpa on the Kōyasan , 1934
• Shūzō Kure, Hartmut Walravens (Ed.): Philipp Franz von Siebold. Life and work . (Tokyo 1926) German, significantly enlarged and expanded edition, edited by Friedrich M. Trautz. Iudicium, Munich 1996, ISBN 3-89129-497-2 .

Web links

• leo-bw
• H. Walravens: Documents on life and work
• Entry at the German Society for Natural History and Ethnology of East Asia