Heinrich Zimmer (Indologist)

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Heinrich Zimmer 1933

Heinrich Robert Zimmer (born December 6, 1890 in Greifswald , † March 20, 1943 in New Rochelle , New York ) was a German Indologist . He was the son of the Indologist and Celtologist Heinrich Friedrich Zimmer (1851-1910).

life and work

Zimmer studied German and Indology in Berlin from autumn 1909 and received his doctorate there in 1914 under Heinrich Lüders with studies on the history of the Gotras . After four years of military service in the First World War , he continued his studies in Berlin in 1919, from April 1919 as an assistant to the Oriental Commission of the Prussian Academy of Sciences . In July 1920 he completed his habilitation at the University of Greifswald and worked there for two years as a private lecturer in Indian philology before accepting a teaching position at the University of Heidelberg in the summer of 1922 . In the spring of 1926 he was appointed associate professor of Indology there.

On June 14, 1928, Heinrich Zimmer married Christiane Maria Anna Katharina Pompilia Patronilla Augusta von Hofmannsthal (1902–1987), the only daughter of the Austrian poet and writer Hugo von Hofmannsthal. This marriage resulted in four sons: Christoph Heinrich Hugo (1929–1931), Andreas Peter (1930–2003), Clemens (1932–1955) and Michael Johannes (1934–2008). From January 1924 and until his death, Heinrich Zimmer also had a life relationship with Mila Esslinger, b. Rauch (1886–1972), with whom he had three children: Elisabeth Maja (1925–2008), Ernst Michael (1926–1945) and Hannes Lukas (born 1932). An extremely extensive correspondence from 1924 to the end of 1941 attests to this community.

When America entered the war, the correspondence was cut off. There are descendants of both families, both in the USA and in Switzerland. In the course of the National Socialist race laws , his Heidelberg professorship was withdrawn in 1938 because of "non-Aryan infiltration". In 1939 Zimmer emigrated to England and lectured at Oxford University . In 1940 he moved to New York, where he published under the name Henry R. Zimmer and gave guest lectures. He died there of pneumonia in March 1943, a few weeks before he should have taken a visiting professorship in Indian philosophy and religion at Columbia University .

Zimmer maintained personal contacts with numerous intellectuals of his time, including a. to Hermann Hesse , Thomas Mann , Emil Nolde , Carl Jacob Burckhardt and CG Jung , who influenced Zimmer's work as much as the British scholar John Woodroffe . In 1933 he gave the opening lecture of the first Eranos conference in Ascona with the title On the Importance of Indian Tantra Yoga .

Zimmer published numerous writings on Indian philosophy and mythology. Compared to the strictly philological text interpretation of his contemporaries, Zimmer found a more personal and psychological approach to his research topic.

His estate is in the Bavarian State Library and in the German Literature Archive in Marbach . For her novel, published in 2015, Katharina Geiser viewed 1,700 letters from the lovers Mila Esslinger and Heinrich Zimmer.

Heinrich Zimmer Chair

A chair has been named after Heinrich Zimmer since 2010. The Heinrich Zimmer Chair for Indian Philosophy and Intellectual History is awarded by the Indian Council for Cultural Relations (ICCR) in New Delhi and is based both at the Cluster of Excellence “Asia and Europe in a Global Context” and at the South Asia Institute at Heidelberg University . The first holder of this new endowed professorship for Indian philosophy and intellectual history was the Indian historian of science Dhruv Raina. Heeraman Tiwari has been a professor since May 2011.

Fonts

  • Studies on the history of the gotras. 1914 ( online )
  • Art form and yoga in the Indian cult image. Berlin 1926. New edition: Suhrkamp, ​​Frankfurt am Main 1976, ISBN 351801482X .
  • Game for the elephant. A book of Indian nature. 1929. New edition: Suhrkamp, ​​Frankfurt am Main 1979, ISBN 3518370197 . Contains a translation of Matanga-lila , an ancient Indian elephant customer from Nilakantha. ( online )
  • Eternal India: Leitmotifs of Indian existence. Zurich 1930 ( online )
  • Maya. The Indian myth . Deutsche Verlags-Anstalt, Stuttgart and Berlin 1936.
  • The way to the self. Teaching and life of Sri Ramana Maharshi. Rascher, Zurich 1944.
  • The King and the Corpse. Edited by Joseph Campbell . Pantheon Books, New York 1948. German edition: Adventure and journeys of the soul: The king with the corpse and other myths, fairy tales and legends from Celtic and Eastern cultural areas: representation and interpretation. Rascher, Zurich 1961. New edition: Adventure and journeys of the soul: A key to Indo-European myths. Translated by Lucy Heyer-Grote and Johannes Piron. Diederich's yellow series vol. 67 . Diederichs, Cologne 1987, ISBN 3-424-00877-X .
  • Myths and Symbols in Indian Art and Civilization. Pantheon Books, New York 1946. German: Indian Myths and Symbols. Diederichs, Düsseldorf 1972.
  • Philosophies of India. Routledge & Kegan Paul, London 1952. German edition: Philosophy and Religion of India. Edited by Joseph Campbell. Suhrkamp, ​​Frankfurt am Main 1961, ISBN 3-518-27626-3 .
  • Yoga and Buddhism. Indian spheres. Indel, Frankfurt am Main 1973, ISBN 3458017453 .
  • The Indian world mother. Essays. Edited by Friedrich Wilhelm, Indel, Frankfurt am Main 1980, ISBN 3458049673 . Digitized in the Gutenberg project. His autobiographical notes from Chapter 10 are linked here: [1]

translation

  • Daisetz Teitaro Suzuki : The Great Liberation - Introduction to Zen Buddhism. Weller, Leipzig 1939. 14 further editions until 2010. With a foreword by CG Jung . Original title: The Great Liberation. Introduction to Zen Buddhism. Eastern Buddhist Society, Kyōtō 1934

Work edition

  • Collected Works. Rascher, Zurich & Stuttgart
    • Vol. 1: Myths and symbols in Indian art and culture . 1951
    • Vol. 2: Maya, the Indian myth. 1952
    • Vol. 3: The way to the self. Teaching u. Life of the Indian saint Shri Ramana Maharshi from Tiruvannamalei. Ed. v. Carl G. Jung. 1954
    • Vol. 4: Adventure and journeys of the soul. The king with the corpse and other myths, fairy tales and legends from Celtic and Eastern cultures. Representation and interpretation. 1961
    • Vol. 5: Indian spheres. 1963

literature

  • Katharina Geiser : Vierfleck or Das Glück. Novel. Young and Young, Salzburg 2015

Web links

Wikisource: Heinrich Zimmer (Indologist)  - Sources and full texts

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Estate of Heinrich Robert Zimmer (1890-1943) - BSB Ana 417/0: Repertory of the estate of Heinrich Robert Zimmer (1890-1943).
  2. ^ DLA Marbach, holdings Heinrich Zimmer
  3. ↑ India's ambassador opened Heinrich Zimmer Chair. at the Cluster of Excellence Asia and Europe in a Global Context , Heidelberg University
  4. ↑ Heinrich Zimmer Chair for Heeraman Tiwari. University of Heidelberg
  5. ↑ Sibylle Birrer: Mittendrin am Rande , in: NZZ , May 2, 2015, p. 25
personal data
SURNAME Zimmer, Heinrich
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Zimmer, Heinrich Robert
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German Indologist
DATE OF BIRTH December 6, 1890
PLACE OF BIRTH Greifswald
DATE OF DEATH March 20, 1943
Place of death New Rochelle , New York