Heinrich von Siebold

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Heinrich (Henry) Philipp von Siebold , from 1889 Freiherr von Siebold (* 21st July 1852 in Boppard , † 11. August 1908 at Freudenstein Castle in Appiano ) led parts of the research his father away and is next to Edward S. Morse as one of the Founder of archeology in Japan .

Youth and trip to Japan

Heinrich von Siebold was after Alexander von Siebold (1846–1911) the second son of the Japanese and natural scientist Philipp Franz von Siebold . He was born in Boppard on the Rhine and spent his youth in Bonn and Würzburg. When his brother, who had come to Europe with a Japanese delegation in 1867, left for Japan in 1869, he decided to travel with him. The Austro-Hungarian embassy in Tokyo hired him as a translator, but without a formal education, Siebold was denied the higher ranks of the diplomatic service for his entire life. But more important to him was the completion of his father's work. The circumstances of the time made collecting much easier. Japan experienced a major upheaval. As a result of the strengthening of Shinto and its separation from Buddhism ( Shinbutsu-Bunri ), numerous temples were closed between the early 1870s, others fell into disrepair for financial reasons. Buddhist paintings, sculptures, cult implements, etc. a. were destroyed, thrown away, or sold cheaply. Like many other foreigners, Heinrich von Siebold collected carefully and expertly.

Archaeological research

Title page of Siebold's Japanese publication Kōko setsuryaku (1879)

In the footsteps of his father, he dealt intensively with prehistory and early history. In Vienna he met the English prehistoric historian Jens Jacob Asmussen Worsaae , from whom he acquired the necessary specialist knowledge. The geologist Edmund Naumann called into the country by the Japanese government drew Siebold's attention to a beach line near the Ueno station near Tokyo, which he should take a closer look at.

When von Siebold inspected the 10–15 m thick shell deposits, Edward Sylvester Morse appeared , who worked as a lecturer in archeology at the young University of Tokyo and had permission to excavate. Since the shell pile was on a property owned by the State Railways, which was subordinate to the Ministry of Finance, von Siebold was also allowed to start digging. Von Siebold found living pits, ceramic fragments and human bones in this now famous mollusc heap of Ōmori.

Both opponents published their finds almost simultaneously and fought hard fights for the honor of the first discovery. Morse published his findings under the title "Shell mounts of Oomori" in the Memoirs of the Science Department of the University of Tokyo . Siebold included his results in the text "Notes on Japanese Archeology" (1879). In the Japanese version Kōko setsuryaku , also printed in 1879 , he coined the term kōkogaku ( 考古学 , archeology).

Morse was of the opinion that the inhabitants of the pits were remnants of the Japanese natives ( Ainu ) who lived there as cannibals . The Japanese and Siebold opposed this view. Siebold pointed out that the Ainu did not use ceramics or cannibalism. In his opinion, the remains came from an ethnic group who lived there before the Ainu. In search of answers to this question, he made further trips and found various ceramics in Hokkaidō in 1878 . On the basis of around 3000 shards and 1200 stone tools, he differentiated into three shape circles:

  1. simple, thick-walled vessels decorated with string patterns ( Jōmon period ) with a flat bottom, plus coarse tools (cuts). According to Siebold, this ceramic goes back to the Ainu
  2. thin-walled, harder fired, gray vessels without a pattern, with a round or pointed bottom ( Yayoi period ). They were first made by hand, after 700 BC. u. Z. made with the potter's wheel and are associated with polished stone tools. Siebold describes this ceramics as purely Japanese.
  3. larger, gray vessels, associated with bronze. According to Siebold, this ceramic came to Japan through Korean immigrants.

Siebold's thesis that the Ainu are so-called " Caucasians " (outdated racial category for people of European descent) was accepted by some well-known contemporaries such as the internist and anthropologist Erwin Bälz who worked at Tokyo University .

Collectors and patrons

Since the Vienna World Exhibition of 1873, where he worked as an interpreter for the Japanese delegation, Siebold had excellent contacts with the Vienna museums. As he was very familiar with the Japanese market, he also acquired ethnographic objects in Japan on behalf of German museums. In 1883, at his instigation, the first exhibition of his collection took place in Vienna, which he then wanted to sell to the Austrian state. After his offer was rejected, he gave some of the exhibits to the Austrian Trade Museum as a gift. At the Vienna World Exhibition in 1873 Siebold a. a. the Grand Duke Karl Alexander of Saxe-Weimar-Eisenach , to whom he gave 242 Japanese and Chinese coins. In 1885 he sent a further 820 objects to Weimar, which the Grand Duke also incorporated into his coin cabinet (today: Oriental coin cabinet Jena ).

Von Siebold lived in Japan for another two decades, during which he mainly bought and sold objects. In 1888 he bequeathed 5,315 objects to the Natural History Court Museum in Vienna (today the Museum of Ethnology). As a thank you for this spectacular donation, he was elevated to the baron status of the Imperial and Royal Legation Secretary in Tokyo on April 11, 1889 , and was thus made an Austrian citizen. The baron diploma was issued on March 3, 1891 in Vienna.

In 1896, Heinrich, together with his older brother Alexander, on the occasion of the 100th birthday of their father, published his work "Nippon - Archive of Japan" in a small-format new edition that was supplemented in some places. Although the greatly reduced images lost much of their original wealth of information, this print achieved a distribution that was never achieved by the large-format first edition (58 × 39 cm) published in unbound partial deliveries from 1832 to 1851. At the same time Heinrich exhibited the “Japanese-Chinese Collection” in the rooms of the former Katzenwickerhof in Würzburg (Maxstrasse 4), which was very well attended.

Marriage and late years

In 1899, when he was only 46 years old, he asked for “temporary retirement” due to illness. The year before, on February 10, 1898, he had Euphemia Carpenter b. Wilson (March 16, 1864 - November 14, 1908), the widow of a British major, married. She bought the Freudenstein Castle in Appiano near Bolzano , where the two of them spent the last few years in prosperity, surrounded by a collection that is still rich. Heinrich von Siebold was still a sought-after advisor on issues relating to East Asia, and acted as a guide and interpreter on visits from Japan and China.

He died on August 11, 1908 at Freudenstein Castle, and his widow followed him a little later. The collection was sold from March 1909 in Vienna at “Au Mikado”, a company of the Singer brothers in Vienna, and was “scattered in all the winds”.

Fonts

  • Heinrich von Siebold: Something about the Tsutschi Ningio. Announcements of the German Society for Natural History and Ethnology of East Asia , Volume I (1873–1876), Issue 7, pp. 13–14.
  • Heinrich von Siebold: The Harakiri. Communications from the German Society for Natural History and Ethnology of East Asia , Volume I (1873–1876), Issue 10, pp. 26–28.
  • Kitō Teijirō (transl.) Heinrich Philipp Siebold: Keizai sōsho 2 . Ōkurashō, Tōkyō 1878 ( バロン·ヘンリー·フォン·シーボルト述,鬼頭悌次郎訳(大蔵省翻訳課) 「経済叢書第2号」明治11年 )
  • Maeda Toshiki ( transl .) Heinrich Philipp Siebold: Rizai yōshi 1 . Ōkurashō, Tōkyō 1879 ( バ ロ ン ・ ヘ ン リ ー ・ フ ォ ン ・ シ ー ボ ル ト 述 、 前 前 田 利器 訳 (大 蔵 省 翻 訳 課), 『理財 要旨. 卷 1 輯』 、 明治 12 年 )
  • Henry von Siebold: Notes on Japanese Archeology with Especial Reference to the Stone Age . Yokohama: C. Lévy 1879 ( digitized version (Google Books) )
  • Henry von Siebold: Kōkosetsu ryaku . Tokyo, 1879 ( 考古 説 略 ). ( Digitized in the library of Waseda University, Tokyo )
  • Ethnological studies of the Aino on the island of Yesso. Journal of Ethnology / Organ of the Berlin Society for Anthropology, Ethnology and Prehistory , Suppl., P. Parey 1881. ( Digital copy of the Berlin State Library )
  • Matsumi Onojirō (transl.): Henry von Siebold, Bahitsu kairyō setsu . Dainippon Nōkai, Tokyo 1887 ( ヘ ン リ ー ・ フ ォ ン ・ シ ー ボ ル ト 著, 松 見 斧 次郎 訳 『馬匹 改良 説』 大 日本 農 会 Digitalisat National Diet Library, Tokyo )
  • Arcadio Schwade, Hans A. Dettmer, Viktoria Eschbach-Szabo (eds.): Letters from the Brandenstein family archive. The circle around Alexander and Heinrich von Siebold. O. Harrassowitz, Wiesbaden 1991. (Acta Sieboldiana, 4)

literature

  • Hans Körner: The Würzburger Siebold. A family of scholars from the 18th and 19th centuries. Neustadt (Aisch) 1967, pp. 978-996.
  • Josef Kreiner: Heinrich Freiherr von Siebold. A contribution to the history of Japanese ethnology and prehistory. In: Contributions to Japanese ethnogenesis - 100 years after Heinrich von Siebold. (Bonner Zeitschrift für Japanologie, Vol. 2), Bonn, 1980, pp. 147-203.
  • Yōsefu Kuraina– (ed.): Shō-shiiboruto to nihon no Kōko-Minzoku-Gaku no reimei. Tōkyō: Dōseisha, 2011 ( ヨ ー ゼ フ ・ ク ラ イ ナ ー 編 『小 シ ー ボ ル ト と 日本 の 考古 ・ 民族 学 の 黎明』 同 成 社 ) ISBN 978-4-88621-546-8　( table of contents ).
  • Wilfried Seipel: The discovery of the world, the world of discoveries. Austrian researchers, collectors, adventurers. Kunsthistorisches Museum, 2001, ISBN 3-85497-033-1 .
  • H. Körner, H. Walravens:  Siebold Heinrich Frh. Von. In: Austrian Biographical Lexicon 1815–1950 (ÖBL). Volume 12, Verlag der Österreichischen Akademie der Wissenschaften, Vienna 2001-2005, ISBN 3-7001-3580-7 , p. 230.
  • Gothaisches genealogical pocket book of baronial houses, 1911, p.880

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Acta Sieboldiana , Volume 9, p. 74, footnote 7
  2. ↑ Neither of them knew that the first objects by Ōmori were found in the Edo period (Stefan TANAKA: New Times in Modern Japan. Princeton University Press, 2004, p. 28). Naumann inspected the site in 1877 (Kreiner 1980, p. 183), and Siebold also began his excavations off Morse (Kreiner 1980: 155ff.). Morse's excavations were, however, the first to take place in a scientific-university setting.
  3. ^ Edward Sylvester Morse: Shell mounts of Oomori. In: Memoirs of the Science Department. University of Tokyo, Vol. 1, Part 1. A Japanese version appeared in December of that year: Ōmori-kaikyo kobutsu-hen エ ド ワ ル ド ・ エ ス ・ モ ー ル ス 撰著 『大 大 森 介 墟 古物 篇』 京 大學 法理 文學 部 帙 、 第 1 、 明 12 年 .
  4. ↑ Acta sieboldiana , Volume 9, page 341 Digitalisat
  5. ^ Genealogical handbook of the nobility . Adelslexikon Volume XIII, p. 342, Volume 128 of the complete series, Verlag CA Starke, Limburg (Lahn) 2002.
  6. ↑ So were u. a. the chapters on acupuncture and moxibustion added.
  7. ↑ Christina Baird: Au Mikado: A Tea, Coffee and 'Oriental' Art Emporium in Vienna. In: Journal of Design History. 24 (4), 2011, pp. 359-373.
  8. ↑ What is meant is tsuchi-ningyō , literally earth dolls
personal data
SURNAME Siebold, Heinrich von
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Siebold, Heinrich Philipp von (full name); Siebold, Henry
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Austrian Japanologist
DATE OF BIRTH July 21, 1852
PLACE OF BIRTH Boppard
DATE OF DEATH August 11, 1908
Place of death Freudenstein Castle , Eppan