Hermann Bohner

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Hermann Bohner ( Japanese transcription: ヘ ル マ ン ボ ー ナ ー , Heruman Bōnā ; * December 8, 1884 in Abokobi ( Gold Coast ); † June 24, 1963 in Kobe , Japan) was trained as a theologian. He worked for 41 years in Osaka ( Japan ) as a lecturer / professor for the German language. His translations of classical Japanese source literature and the Noh theater are philologically first class, but little known in Germany.

Life

Hermann Bohner, who, like so many of the important sinologists and Japanologists from the second half of the 19th century, comes from a missionary family, was born on December 8, 1884 in Abokobi (Gold Coast) - the second son. He worked in Osaka for a total of 41 years as a language teacher and translator of Japanese historical sources.

He died after a brief serious illness on June 24, 1963 in Kobe , where he is buried in the foreigner cemetery at Futatabiyama .

Family and education

His family came from the northernmost tip of the then Bavarian Rhine Palatinate , from Feil near Ebernburg . The father (Philipp) Heinrich (1842–1905) was a trained shoemaker - therefore often called "God's shoemaker" at the time. From 1863 he worked for the Basel Evangelical Mission Society on the Gold Coast, was ordained in 1875 and was heavily involved in the fight against slavery. In 1886 Heinrich Bohner moved to Cameroon , the new protected area of ​​the German Empire. There he headed the mission as praeses for twelve years, for which he set up over 100 outstations and schools.

The missionary's ten children from his marriage to Johanna Krieg (1853–1935) grew up with relatives “at home”. After the first years of school in the boys' house in Basel, Hermann Bohner went to high school in Speyer ; then, from 1903, a theological course (also history, philosophy) in Tübingen and Halle. This was completed in 1907 by the theological examination before the Palatinate consistory . Further studies took Hermann Bohner to Strasbourg (from June 9, 1912) and Erlangen. In 1913 he got a job as a teacher in the Haubinda Landerziehungsheim from Hermann Lietz , a position that influenced him deeply.

Tsingtao and prisoner of war (1914–1922)

Out of admiration for Richard Wilhelm (known as the translator of the I-Ging ), Hermann Bohner started working as a teacher for the General Evangelical-Protestant Mission Association at the German-Chinese seminar in Tsingtao (today: Quingdao) from the summer of 1914 , after he was still at the beginning of the year in Erlangen for Dr. phil. had received a doctorate.

With the start of the war - one month after his arrival - he was deployed as a simple soldier (Marine 6th Company, III Marine Battalion). For this, the following awards were then "submitted" on the German side: "1; Iron Cross 2nd class on October 25, 1920, 2; Colonial badge on March 22, 1922, 3; Cross of honor for front-line soldiers on January 14, 1936.

After the fall of Tsingtao, Hermann Bohner got caught on November 14th. in captivity. First he was in the Matsuyama camp (Gef.-Nr. 2794, hometown: Mannheim), from April 1917 in the Bandō prisoner of war camp . In the camp he learned Japanese by self-study. He gave lectures on art and German literature, which are documented in the camp magazine "Die Baracke". He was released around New Year 1920.

Teaching activity in Japan (from 1922/23)

Hermann Bohner's grave (Kobe foreigners cemetery 神 戸 市立 外国人 墓地)

After a stay with the Hunziker family, who were also missionaries, in Tokyo, Hermann Bohner took over provisional management of the institution in Tsingtao in 1920 until Richard Wilhelm's successor arrived. Around this time followed the call (April 1, 1922) to the newly founded Ōsaka Gaikokugo Gakkō (founded in December 1921; today: Osaka University of Foreign Studies) as a German teacher (" Lektor ", in higher classes for history, literature and Greek).

In the summer of 1923 he married Hanna Blumhardt (1883–1971), daughter of Christoph Blumhardt and sister-in-law of Richard Wilhelm. No children emerged from this connection.

Coming from the Wandervogel movement , Bohner had been an avid hiker since his school days. He spent most of his summer vacations in Karuizawa , where the Germans living in Japan met informally to exchange experiences even before the First World War.

The Ministry of Education ( Mombu-shō ) appointed Hermann Bohner as an imperial official in 1925. He held his position (since 1951 as a professor) for 41 years until his death - only interrupted by two short vacations in Germany in 1929 and 1937. He was unable to take a planned trip in 1963. At times Bohner was also a lecturer at the Naniwa High School ( Naniwa kōtō gakkō ) and from 1941 at the Gaiji Technical School ( Gaiji semmon gakkō ); from 1960 to 1963 part-time at the University's Tanki Daigaku .

On April 1, 1951, he was officially appointed professor by his university. In 1941 he was given a professorship by the German government. H. been awarded.

An evacuation from his apartment (in the district of Himematsu ) during the war does not seem to have taken place. Nothing is known about the situation in the immediate post-war period. Unlike many other Germans, Bohner was not interned. Neither was he affected by the deportation order issued by the American military government in 1947, which sent back all Germans who had arrived in Japan after 1933. Hermann Bohner died of a painful nerve problem in the summer of 1963. His widow returned to Germany, where she died in 1971.

From the obituary, written by Wilhelm Gundert :

“Quite on his own, without any outside order, without any remuneration, Hermann Bohner has expanded and deepened our knowledge of Japan for forty years to an extent that probably only very few others from previous generations. Who thanked him for that? It was certainly a satisfaction for him, through the mediation of the German ambassador in Tōkyō , to give a lecture to Prince Takamatsu , the brother of the emperor, and to present him with his Shōtoku work , as did his Nō writings later in the 1950s. But it must be troubling him that his works, published in Japan, were nowhere near receiving the attention they deserved at home. ... In Hermann Bohner stands a lonely figure in front of our proper science who may give us a lot to think about. In all his research, he was always concerned with the center. In "Japanology" that was the Logos of Japan for him . "
“That alone was the meaning and value of Japanese studies for him; for the sake of this value he sacrificed his free time and best energy free of charge for forty years. He was open to people of all kinds and their needs. Whenever someone turned to him for advice and help, Japanese, Germans, Swiss, Americans, Swedes, Danes, he stepped in. ... The fate was all the more bitter for him, which did not allow him to find a closer relationship with the East Asian studies that are based at our universities . At the height of his life, he too, like every foreigner in the Far East, was faced with the question of whether it was not time to return to his home country and to serve her with what has been achieved in the foreign country and people. With his great knowledge and very rare understanding of the Japanese soul, he could have adorned any university in Germany. But this turning point unfortunately fell in the ominous thirties, and if, in view of the prevailing conscience, he preferred to wait, it can only be credited to him. After 1945, however, he was already too old for an academic career in his home country, while at home East Asian research was simultaneously exploring new things. In relation to her he could only remain what he was; the Japanese researcher in his original form, if you may say so, that is, the pioneer far out in the field ... That is why what he has left behind in writing is a precious legacy of our Japanese studies. Then the purity of his striving, the magnitude of his achievement and, last but not least, the breadth and depth of his vision will remain in our science in gratefully honoring memory. "

The alleged “distress of conscience” with regard to National Socialism does not seem to have existed. After all, Bohner "appropriated" the work Zen words in the tea room to the Nazi propagandist Graf Dürckheim , wrote it for the magazine The XXth Century financed by the Berlin Foreign Office , and in 1942 composed a book of fairy tales for German children in the East on behalf of the German embassy. A reflection on his part does not seem to have taken place. Although he calls the Second World War an "abysmal fall", he also mentions Dürckheim positively in 1954 in the preface to his "Japan Pictures". Overall, however, he was probably an apolitical person.

The Japanese film Baruto no Gakuen (theatrical release June 17, 2006) tells “the story of extraordinary international understanding between the 'simple marines' Hermann Bohner and the camp commandant Toyohisa Matsue ”. It mainly deals with the history of the first performance of Beethoven's 9th Symphony.

Services

Hermann Bohner considered it the main task of Japanese Studies to “make source material accessible through translation.” This was mostly done through publications in the various series of the OAG and - for smaller writings - in the Monumenta Nipponica . In many cases he has co-financed the publications himself through grants for printing costs.

His first translation was Westgraf and Lu Shang in 1923 . The first significant historical work the Nihon Ryōiki as legends from the early days of Japanese Buddhism . His translation of the Jinnō-Shōtō-Ki 1935 ( 神 皇 正統 記 ) udT "Book of the True God-Emperor Rule Line" was particularly successful . For this he was given a professor by the imperial government in 1941. H. awarded. This was followed by the Jōgū-Sōtoku-Hō-ō Teisetsu , a total of 22 works on the Prince Regent Shōtoku Taishi ; the monk and sect founder Kōbō-Daishi . The Gunsho ruijū usually served as a template for the historical source translations .

In the 1930s (co-) published several textbooks for German. Treatises, translations and presentations from various scientific fields mostly appeared in the Monumenta Nipponica . He also translated Japanese dramas and stories from the present (1913-1940), a. a. by Okamoto Kidō ( 岡本 綺 堂 ), Yamamoto Yūzō ( 山 本 有 三 ), Mushakoji (Shittoku) Saneatsu and Sasaki Kuni .

For his cultural merits he was given the Japanese "high orders" of the 5th (December 22, 1938; this is the kun-gotō, which every imperial official in the sōnin-kan category was entitled to after 13 years of service) and 4th grade awarded (March 20, 1958). The FRG expressed its appreciation for "special merits" on December 10, 1954.

He later turned to the No Theater. The attempt at a general overview of the Nō remained unfinished. Outstanding are the works 16 Bu Sesamis and The individual Nō . Further parts appeared until 1960. He was also unable to publish the planned series of “Japan Pictures” in a compiled form, only parts exist in mimeographed form.

Works

Catalog of works with over 60 titles, structured thematically:

  • Hermann Bohner; Treatises and publications on East Asia; Osaka 1955 ( full text )
  • Festschrift Hermann Bohner on the 100th birthday, Osaka 1984 (Osaka University of Foreign Studies); (at the same time exhibition catalog; in Japanese language)

literature

  • Kō Watanabe: Hermann Bohner (1884–1963). One of the first German Japanologists . In: Bridge Builders. Pioneers of the Japanese-German cultural exchange . iudicium, Berlin 2005, ISBN 3-89129-539-1 .
  • Rolf-Harald Wippich: Hermann Bohner as a missionary of the General Evangelical-Protestant Missions Association (1914-1922). On the history of a Japanese scholar . In: Deutsche Gesellschaft für Natur- und Völkerkunde Ostasiens (Hrsg.): OAG Notes . No. 09/2009 . Tokyo 2009, p. 42-47 ( PDF ).

See also

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ see: jp: 神 戸 市立 外国人 墓地
  2. ^ Wilhelm Matzat: The missionaries of the General Evangelical Protestant Missions Association (AEPM) in Tsingtau. (No longer available online.) Evangelical Church of the Palatinate, archived from the original on September 24, 2015 ; Retrieved June 10, 2009 . Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.evpfalz.de

Web links

personal data
SURNAME Bohner, Hermann
ALTERNATIVE NAMES ヘ ル マ ン ボ ー ナ ー (Japanese)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German Japanologist and translator
DATE OF BIRTH December 8, 1884
PLACE OF BIRTH Abokobi (Gold Coast)
DATE OF DEATH June 24, 1963
Place of death Kobe