Heinrich Wenzel

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Heinrich Wenzel (born June 7, 1855 in Mainz , † June 16, 1893 in London ) was a German linguist whose interests lay in the fields of Indology and Tibetology . Wenzel spoke a total of twelve languages.

Life

Heinrich Christian Ferdinand Wenzel was the son of the Electoral Mainz doctor and medical advisor Carl Wenzel and his wife. He attended grammar school in his hometown until 1874, and then began to study oriental languages ​​in Jena, Leipzig and Tübingen, where he received his doctorate in the spring of 1879 with a thesis on the instrumental in Rigveda . He then went to Oxford to deepen his Indological studies with Max Müller , to whom he had been recommended by the language philosopher Ludwig Noiré . Müller directed his interest to the then little researched Tibetan language and literature. In order to be able to deal adequately with it, Wenzel went to Herrnhut in 1881 to see the linguist and missionary Heinrich August Jäschke , who was probably the most profound expert on Tibetan in Germany at the time. Wenzel stayed there for two years and after Jäschke's death in 1883 published a second edition of his "Tibetan grammar" .

In 1886 Wenzel completed his habilitation in Leipzig with a translation of the "Letter of Nāgārjuna to King Udayana" ( Suhṛllekha ), but returned to England shortly after his mother's death, where he continued to devote himself to his studies, which resulted in a series of essays in the “Journal of the Royal Asian Society of Great Britain and Ireland” ( JRAS ) published. Another focus of his work was the translation of Indological essays from Russian in order to make them more accessible to research.

For the last six years of his life he lived in a very secluded place in a Welsh guesthouse in Bloomsbury . His health was always unstable. Heinrich Wenzel died of blood poisoning, and a dissection was diagnosed with bilateral pneumonia.

Library

After his death, his father said, his estate from books and manuscripts of the library of the German Oriental Society (DMG), in which structure, which is now in the University and State Library Saxony-Anhalt in the branch library Middle East / Anthropology in Halle an der Saale located which around 1000 volumes are still available today. Part of the collection can be researched via the library's opac .

The managing directors of DMG reported: "The library received a major new addition in 1893 through the gift of the Secret Medicinal Councilor Dr. Wenzel in Mainz, who, at the instigation of Dr. Rost in London, owned the valuable library of his son, Dr. Heinrich Wenzel, who died in London The company transferred, after deducting the duplicates and the works not suitable for the company, about 1,000 volumes. "

Parts of the prints not taken over in Halle reached the Mainz city library in 1894 . After the copies were taken over, they were provided with a universal gift exlibris , which was also used for the library of his father Carl Wenzel , with the text Gift from the estate of Dr. phil. Heinrich Wenzel + 1893 is printed. Wenzel himself gave his books the abbreviation HW .

The annual reports of the city library and the city collections ( Mainz city archives , holdings 72/195) noted under the year 1893/94: "Of the gifts, the numerous particularly foreign-language literature works and interesting editions of old-class writers from the estate of the in London on Former Privatdozent in Leipzig, Dr. Heinrich Wenzel, who died in the bloom of his years on June 16, 1893. The main field of work of this able scholar extended in particular to Buddhism and Tibetan; also immortalized Dr. Wenzel, to the library of the German Oriental Society in Halle, the most suitable place for it, given, the other, still quite considerable part of the more general content of the local city library as valuable and welcome Transferred a gift. "

Works (selection)

  • About the instrumentalis in the Rigveda. Tuebingen 1879.
  • Tibetan grammar by HA Jäschke, Moravian Missionary. 2nd ed. Prepared by Dr. HW London 1883. (Trübner's Collection of simplified grammars VII.)
  • Suhrillekha. Letter from Nāgārjuna to King Udayana. Translated from the Tibetan by H. Wenzel. Leipzig 1886. online at archive.org
  • List of the Tibetan mss. and printed books in the library of the Royal Asiatic Society. JRAS 1892, pp. 570-579
  • Dr. Serge d'Oldenburg, The Buddhist sources of the (Old Slavonic) legend of the Twelve Dreams of Shahaïsh. Transl. by HW JRAS 1893, pp. 509-516.

The legend of the origin of the Tibetan race. Greetings to Roth, pp. 170–172. Stuttgart 1893.

  • (Posthum) The Dharma-Sangraha, an ancient collection of Buddhist technical terms, prepared for publication by Kenjiu Kasawara, a Buddhist priest from Japan, and after his death edited by F. Max Müller and HW Oxford 1885 (Anecdota Oxoniensia, Aryan Series I , 5).

literature

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Article “Wenzel, Heinrich” by Bruno Liebich in: Allgemeine Deutsche Biographie https://de.wikisource.org/wiki/ADB:Wenzel,_Heinrich
  2. ↑ In the manuscript collection of the Mainz City Library , a previously unexplored diary (Hs IV 61) has been preserved that deals with his stay in Mainz and at his study locations.
  3. ↑ https://lhhal.gbv.de/DB=1/SET=2/TTL=21/CMD?ACT=SRCHA&IKT=1016&SRT=YOP&TRM=sgn+bibliothek+heinrich+wenzel (search command: so-called library heinrich wenzel)
  4. ↑ Richard Pischel (et al.): The German Oriental Society in 1845 - 1895. A survey commissioned by the directors ... . Leipzig: Brockhaus, 1895, p. 23.
  5. ^ Annelen Ottermann: Karl August Maria Katharina Wenzel. 1820–1894 and Heinrich Christian Ferdinand Wenzel 1855–1893. In: Where our books come from. Provenances of the Mainz City Library in the mirror of ex-libris. Mainz 2011, DNB 1011510502 , pp. 147–152 ( online , PDF; 4.6 MB).

Web links

personal data
SURNAME Wenzel, Heinrich
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German linguist, Indologist and Tibetologist
DATE OF BIRTH June 7, 1855
PLACE OF BIRTH Mainz
DATE OF DEATH June 16, 1893
Place of death London