Karel Werner

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Karel Werner (born January 12, 1925 in Jemnice ; † November 26, 2019 ) was a Czechoslovak-British Indologist , orientalist and religious scholar .

Life

Werner attended high schools in Brno and Znojmo . After graduating from high school in 1945, he studied Sanskrit , philosophy , history and sinology at the Masaryk University in Brno and the Palacký University in Olomouc , where he received his doctorate in philosophy with a linguistic thesis in 1949.

He then taught Sanskrit and Indian history for four years at Palacký University, until he was dismissed for his critical stance towards the communist government. He was then forced to work as a miner for fifteen years, workers in a gas factory and other industrial plants. After the expectations of the Prague Spring were disappointed by the occupation of Czechoslovakia by Warsaw Pact troops , Karel Werner managed to escape to England in 1968 . He was accepted into the order of Arya Maitreya Mandala by Lama Anagarika Govinda with the initiation name Vajrbuddhi . In England he worked as a tutor at Churchill College of the University of Cambridge .

From 1969 to 1990 he was a lecturer in Indian philosophy at the University of Durham . This was interrupted by visiting professorships in India in 1975 and 1976 , where he taught at the Banaras Hindu University in Varanasi and at the Karnatak University in Dharwad .

Karl Werner then worked as a professor at the School of Oriental and African Studies at the University of London . Even after his retirement he lived in London .

job

In addition to his academic teaching activities, Karel Werner published numerous of his own works and translations, which are particularly dedicated to Hinduism , Buddhism and yoga . He wrote in English and Czech as well as in German. On the occasion of Karl Werner's 60th birthday, Peter Connolly published a commemorative publication in 1986 that was published in India.

Fonts (selection)

  • Literature and other media by and about Karel Werner in the catalog of the National Library of the Czech Republic
  • Hatha yoga. Základy tělesných cvičení jogických , 1969, Nové vyd. CAD Press 2009
  • Yoga and Indian Philosophy , 2nd edition 1980
  • The Heritage of the Vedas, Farrington , 1982
  • Yoga, its Beginnings and Development, Farrington, 1987
  • A Popular Dictionary of Hinduism , 1994
  • Náboženství jižní a východní Asie , 1995
  • Malá encyklopedie hinduismu , 1996
  • Náboženské tradice Asie: od Indie po Japonsko , 2002
  • Náboženské tradice Asie 2 volumes. Bratislava: CAD Press, 2008, 2009. ISBN 978-80-88969-29-7 , 978-80-88969-30-3.

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ https://spaldingsymposium.org/2019/12/04/karel-werner-1925-2019/
  2. ↑ The following biographical information comes from the detailed biography of Karl Werner in: Lama and Li Gotami Govinda Foundation : Festschrift to commemorate the 100th birthday of Lama Angarika Govinda . Munich 1998, pp. 198-200
  3. ↑ Peter Connolly: Perspectives on Indian Religion: Papers in Honor of Karel Werner . New Delhi 1986 ( ISBN 8170300282 )
personal data
SURNAME Werner, Karel
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Czechoslovak-British Indologist
DATE OF BIRTH January 12, 1925
PLACE OF BIRTH Jemnice
DATE OF DEATH November 26, 2019