Hellmut Wilhelm

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Hellmut Wilhelm (born December 10, 1905 in Tsingtau , Kiautschou Protected Area , German Empire , † July 5, 1990 in Seattle , Washington State , USA ) was a German sinologist .

Life

Hellmut Wilhelm was born in Tsingtau as the son of the missionary and sinologist Richard Wilhelm (1873-1930), who was famous and appreciated for his translations of Chinese texts . His grandfather was the Württemberg Protestant theologian Christoph Friedrich Blumhardt , who was a member of the state parliament of the SPD.

Childhood and youth

Wilhelm came into close contact with everyday life in China and the language at an early age. When he was 9 years old, the Japanese occupied Tsingtao. Wilhelm was sent to friends in Shanghai . After the end of the First World War , the Wilhelm family returned to Germany. The father received a chair in Sinology at the University of Frankfurt . The son Hellmut attended high schools in Stuttgart and Frankfurt am Main . In Frankfurt he assisted his father in the China Institute.

First he studied law and politics in Kiel and Grenoble . He then returned to Frankfurt, where he passed the first state examination in law in 1928. He worked for a while on the Frankfurt courts, while at the same time helping his father publish a new magazine for sinologists called "Sinica".

Legal activity did not satisfy him. When his father died in 1930, he decided to study Sinology. In the same year he passed the exam as a Chinese translator. In 1932 he received his doctorate in Berlin under Otto Franke with a thesis on the Chinese philosopher Gu Wenwu as an ethicist .

The Beijing time

Shortly before the Nazis came to power, Wilhelm left Germany and first became a correspondent for the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung in Beijing . He founded the "Germany Institute" in Beijing in 1933 and headed it for a short time. When the National Socialist government forbade foreigners to fill academic positions at German institutions with Jews, he resigned. Wilhelm's wife was Jewish. He feared that the institute would be closed if he retained leadership.

Instead, Wilhelm published the journal "Monumenta Serica", which he had recently founded, with the support of the Catholic Peking University . The first article he published there in 1936 had an almost legal topic: "The A Yün Trial". Using the example of a criminal case from the Sung dynasty, Wilhelm was concerned with the current connection between politics and legal norms in fascist Germany. In 1935 Wilhelm began to work with Chinese scientists on a "Chinese-German dictionary" which appeared in 1945.

After giving lectures at Beijing University for a few years after 1935, he was appointed "Professor of German" there. Between 1932 and 1940 he published 11 titles dealing with legal studies, the intellectual and social history of China, and shorter translations of modern Chinese literature.

In all his activities he ensured mutual cultural contact between China and Europe. In the early 1940s, for example, he gave a series of lectures on Chinese thought and history for the German community in Beijing. He gave the first part of these lectures in the winter of 1941/42. He published it in 1942 under the title China's History, Ten Introductory Lectures . In it he gave a broad overview of the history of China , from prehistoric times to the fall of the Jin Dynasty .

He gave the second part of the lectures in the winter of 1943. They formed the basis of the book Society and State in China . In this, he comprehensively described the development of Chinese society and political thought. Wilhelm also gave a series of lectures on the I Ching . The German version appeared in 1944 under the title: Die Wandlung: Eight lectures on the I-Ging . They have been translated into English and appear under the title Change: Eight Lectures on the I Ching . To date, this is the most widely read introduction to the Book of Changes in the Western language. The American sinologist E. Bruce Brooks believes that it surpasses the work of his father in terms of the possibilities for interpretation of the text and the presentation of Wilhelm's in-depth knowledge.

The time in Washington

Wilhelm's marriage got into a crisis after the end of World War II and was divorced. Maria went to the USA in 1947, where her parents had meanwhile emigrated, Hellmut followed in 1948 and became a professor at the University of Washington in Seattle, where he taught until his retirement in 1971. In 1951 he married the musician and sculptor Erica Samuel, and founded a second family in which two sons were born.

Wilhelm taught almost all areas of Chinese research in Washington from 1948 on, including literature and philosophy, politics and religion, ancient and modern history. He was a leading member of the large group of Far Eastern and Russian specialists that had formed in Seattle under the direction of the American sinologist George Taylor in the interests of Far Eastern research. Wilhelm was an important collaborator for the expansion of the sinological department in Seattle, which was then due. Like Taylor and others, he wanted to attract the social science departments to Sino-Asian research. He promoted the idea of ​​interdisciplinary research by actively practicing it.

In addition, Wilhelm played an important role in the education of graduated students. They came from all over the USA and other countries to complete their studies with him. Many of these students now teach and research as professors in universities around the world.

Between 1951 and 1967 he gave a series of lectures at the annual conferences of the Eranos Society in Ascona, Switzerland, which has been dedicated to the intercultural exchange of ideas between East and West since 1933. In these lectures, which were published in 1977 under the title Heaven, Earth and Man in the Book of Changes , Wilhelm showed which questions and answers arise from the I Ching for human life. Namely, according to man's position in the cosmos, his actions and his relationship to nature. Issues that move people in both the East and the West.

scientist

Researchers and teachers

Wilhelm was interested in looking at his research from other interpretative aspects than just his own. He always wanted to learn new things instead of just lecturing what he had earned. Just as he accepted Leibniz 's view of the I Ching, he also accepted Jung's depth psychological view of the Book of Changes .

And he also accepted other points of view from his students. For him it was always about getting to the heart of the matter. Whenever he succeeded in this, the participants in his events felt compelled to pursue what he had said in conversation with one another, which he liked to be drawn into, or in the library.

It was easy for him to include students in his deliberations, from there to guide them into the world of his knowledge and finally into the rich panorama of the Chinese language. “ His most natural role, but not a consciously didactic one, was to help us find our way, by reminding us of the broader and deeper dimensions of human capacities, and being able to show us where we are. ”(German:“ It was above all his own impartial role as a teacher, and not a deliberate teaching, that helped us to find our own way. To show us who we are, he reminded us of the unlimited and unfathomable dimensions of human beings Skills.")

Scientists in exile

Wilhelm had successfully established himself professionally and privately during his exile in China and the United States. More than once - according to the biographical sources - he received offers from German-speaking countries after the Second World War. But he refused. Presumably, said E. Bruce Brooks, the dusty "Professor Doctor" kept him in Europe. He enjoyed communicating better with others on an equal footing, he added.

Research on China had almost come to a standstill in Nazi Germany between 1933 and 1945. Wilhelm belonged to that 'large and scientifically important group' of around 30 sinologists who had left Germany for political reasons. In 1949, in an article on “German Sinology Today”, he pointed to the negative consequences of emigration for German China research. In addition to the names of many emigrants, he mentioned the lack of personnel and money as an obstacle to changing this situation. The idea of ​​a conference to discuss them and find solutions was not implemented because of the lack of financial resources of the invited China researchers.

A first study by Martin Kern, published in 1999, shows that none of the scientifically profiled emigrants returned to one of the orphaned German chairs. International, and above all American, China research benefited from emigration.

Works

  • Gu Wenwu, the ethicist. Diss. Berlin, 1932.
  • The Sino-Japanese conflict and the legal basis of the Japanese position in the three eastern provinces of China (Manchuria). Journal for Comparative Public Law and International Law. 3, Part 2, 1932: 2352 48.
  • Tasks and goals of the China Institute. Lecture on November 11, 1932 to the Association of the Friends of the China Institute, Shanghai. China Service 1 (1932): 30/31; News from the China Institute. No. 1, 1933, pp. 3-6.
  • The brain of a cosmopolitan city. From the Chinese administration of Greater Shanghai. China Dienst 2, 1933, pp. 219-222.
  • The process of A Yün. In: Monumenta Serica. 1, 1935/36, pp. 338-351.
  • Hiau went. The Book of Awe. Translated and explained by Richard Wilhelm. Newly published by Hellmut Wilhelm. Beijing 1940. ( chinaseiten.de full text).
  • China's history. Ten introductory lectures. Beijing 1942.
  • The change: eight lectures on the I-Ching. Beijing 1944.
  • German Sinology Today. Far Eastern Quarterly 8, 1949, pp. 319-322.
  • The Problem of Within and Without, a Confucian Attempt in Syncretism. In: Journal of the History of Ideas. Volume 12, 1951, pp. 48-60.
  • The creative principle in the Book of Changes. Eranos-Jahrbuch 25 (1957): 455-475.
  • I-Ching Oracles in the Tso-chuan and the Kuo-yü. Journal of the American Oriental Society, Vol. 79, No. 4, 1959, pp. 275-280.
  • Society and State in China. On the history of a world empire. Hamburg (2) 1960.
  • Change :. Eight Lectures on the I-Ching. New York 1960.
  • Essay: To Understand the Work in Wu Cheng'en : The Rebel Monkey. The trip to the west. A Chinese novel. Rowohlt's classic, Reinbek near Hamburg 1961.
  • (ed.) Kungfutse, School Discussions (Gia Yü). Düsseldorf 1961. Translated by Richard Wilhelm.
  • The Image of Youth and Age in Chinese Communist Literature. The China Quarterly, Volume 13, 1963, pp. 180-194.
  • The Reappraisal of Neo-Confucianism. The China Quarterly, Vol. 23, 1965, pp. 122-139.
  • Sense of the I Ching. Düsseldorf et al. 1972.
  • The Book of Changes in the Western Tradition. A Selectiv Bibliography. University of Washington 1975.
  • Tseng Kuo-fan and Liu Chʿuan-ying. Journal of the American Oriental Society, Vol. 96, No. 2, 1976, pp. 268-272.
  • Heaven, Earth, and Man in the Book of Changes: Seven Eranos Lectures. Seattle / London 1977.
  • Trends of Thought in the Early Nineteenth Century. Asia Major. Third Series, 3.2, 1990, pp. 3-23.

literature

  • Martin Kern: The emigration of sinologists 1933 - 1945. On the unwritten history of the losses. In: Helmut Martin, Christiane Hammer (eds.): Chinawissenschaften. Hamburg: Communications from the Institute for Asian Studies. 303, 1999, pp. 222-242.
  • David R. Knechtges: Hellmut Wilhelm, Memories and Bibliography. In: Oriens Extremus. Volume 35, No. 1/2, 1992, pp. 5-7.
  • Neder, Roetz, Schilling: China in its biographical dimensions. Wiesbaden 2001.
  • George Taylor: Hellmut Wilhelm: Pioneer of China Studies. In: Oriens Extremus. Volume 35, No. 1/2, 1992, pp. 8-11.

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ The biographical presentation here and for the other sections follows the biography of the American sinologist E. Bruce Brooks, University of Massachusetts, available on the university website under Profiles of Sinologists .
    Hartmut Walravens: Hsü Dau-lin (1906–1973) in correspondence with Hellmut Wilhelm. Berlin ( uni-hamburg.de PDF);
    David R. Knechtges: Hellmut Wilhelm, Memories and Bibliography. In: Oriens Extremus. Volume 35, No. 1/2, 1992, pp. 5-7.
  2. ↑ Bernd Martin (Ed.): German-Chinese Relations 1928–1937: “Same” partners under unequal conditions. Berlin 2003, p. 526.
  3. ↑ Wilhelm wrote: “ in 1944, on the Yi (I Ging), his father's home territory, and, as he says in the Preface, 'based wholly on the work of my father', but in their awareness of the relevant scholarship, and in their sensitivity to the possibilities within the text itself, taken well beyond the point his father had reached. ”
  4. ^ George Taylor: Hellmut Wilhelm: Pioneer of China Studies. In: Oriens Extremus. Volume 35, No. 1/2, 1992, pp. 8-11.
  5. ↑ An estate (life documents; photographs; manuscripts, including Gu Ting Lin , The Book of Changes and Parerga; specimen copies of his scientific work) is in the “German Exile Archive 1933–1945” of the German National Library .
  6. ^ E. Bruce Brooks.
  7. ^ E. Bruce Brooks.
  8. ↑ Hellmut Wilhelm: German Sinology Today. In: The Far Eastern Quarterly. Volume 8, No. 3 (May, 1949), pp. 319-322. read online free
  9. ^ Martin Kern: The emigration of the sinologists 1933 - 1945. On the unwritten history of the losses. In: Helmut Martin, Christiane Hammer (eds.): Chinawissenschaften. Hamburg: Communications from the Institute for Asian Studies 303 (1999), pp. 222–242. PDF
personal data
SURNAME Wilhelm, Hellmut
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German sinologist
DATE OF BIRTH December 10, 1905
PLACE OF BIRTH Tsingtau
DATE OF DEATH 5th July 1990
Place of death Seattle