Martin Benedikter

Martin Benedikter with his students in Brixen, South Tyrol

Martin Benedikter (born September 10, 1908 in Campo Tures , † December 5, 1969 ) was a South Tyrolean sinologist .

Life

Benedikter spent his childhood in Pettneu am Arlberg . After attending the teacher training college in Bolzano, he was an elementary school teacher in a mountain school in Passeier , then in Vinschgau . Under fascism, like all South Tyrolean teachers, faced with the alternative of being fired or being transferred to the “old provinces” (Italy), he decided on the latter, whereupon he was transferred to Santa Maria Capua Vetere near Naples. In Naples he devoted himself to the study of Chinese language and literature at the Oriental Institute and graduated in Sinology in 1934 with a thesis on the Confucian philosopher Meng-Tse . He completed his German studies at the University of Naples in 1939 with a thesis on Charles Sealsfield . In Naples and Nola he taught German language and literature from 1935 to 1943 as a high school teacher. 1936–1938 and 1941–1943 he took on the position of assistant in the Chinese department at the Oriental Institute. His literary specialty was the T'ang period (618–906 AD), the heyday of early Chinese literature, especially poetry. He also deepened these and other epochs of the rich Chinese literary history during his time as research assistant with the sinologists Peter A. Boodberg and Ferdinand Lessing at the University of Berkeley in California. Only once was Benedikter allowed to visit China.

In 1943, Martin Benedikter was commissioned to run the new Brixen secondary school with German as the language of instruction. Later he was also appointed director of the Scientific Lyceum Brixen (South Tyrol), which he headed from 1945 to 1967. His sphere of activity was not limited to the city of Brixen; In autumn 1948 he founded the secondary schools in Bruneck and Sterzing. The establishment of the Scientific Lyceum in Bolzano and Silandro is largely due to him. His services to the South Tyrolean school system were recognized by the award of a gold medal by the Italian Ministry of Education. He had received the title of dottore in lettere in Padua in 1954 with a dissertation on Karl Barth and existentialism. During his activity as director in Bressanone, he was also entrusted with holding courses for Chinese language and literature in Naples. In the mid-1960s, three sinology chairs were established in Italy: Turin, Padua and Naples. Martin Benedikter was appointed professor of Sinology in Naples. Due to his dual function as school director in Brixen and university professor, he moved to the chair in Padua in 1968.

Benedikter died on December 5, 1969. In Brixen, memories of him as director of the Scientific Lyceum are still alive. Sinology students in Italy still work with Benedikter's translations from Chinese as compulsory reading. Martin Benedikter is not only regarded as one of the pioneers of Sinology, but also as the best translator of the literature of the T'ang period into Italian.

plant

Besides the modern literature of China, his field of work was above all the poetry of the T'ang period. Even with his own poems in home magazines, he showed himself to be a sensitive interpreter of Chinese poetry and made the entire 300 T'ang poems and the Wang-ch'uan-chi cycle of poems by Wang Wie and P'ei Ti accessible to the Italian reader in perfect form Wise. His famous collection of "300 poems from the T'ang period" was published in 1961 by Einaudi. Further translations of older and modern poetry and prose appeared between 1956 and 1963 in the magazine Cina in Rome and by Sansoni (Florence). He also published the cycle of poems about Princess Chin-ch'eng, who was married to Tibet, in the Oriens Extremus magazine . What remains unfinished is a work on the history of literature on the T'ang-shih-lei-yüan and its compiler Chang Chih-hsiang from the Ming period, as well as works from the Hsienfeng period. Benedikter worked regularly with the journals “Annuali” of the Oriental Institute in Naples and the magazine “Cina” of the Institute for Asian Studies in Rome.

bibliography

• Le trecento poesie T'ang, Torino, Einaudi 1961
• Il “Wang-Ch'uan Chi” di Wang Wei e P'ei Ti (La raccolta del fiume Wang), in Annuali dell'Istituto Universitario Orientale di Napoli, Roma 1957
• Venti “Quartine Brevi cinesi del periodo T'ang”, Firenze, Fussi 1954
• Numerous poems in the magazine “Cina” (Rome), 1956–1963
• The work of the poet Wang Wie (699–759) in the submission of his brother Wang Chin to the Emperor T'ai-tsung (763–780) and in the imperial letter of recognition, Oriens Extremus, 1958, pp. 145–148
• A cycle of poems from about 712 to Tibet, Princess Chin-ch'eng married off, in Oriens Extremus XII, 1965, pp. 11–35.

Used literature

• Dorothea Merl and Anita Countess von Lippe (ed.): South Tyrol tells - air jewels - stone rubble . Horst Erdmann Verlag, Tübingen 1979, ISBN 9783771103262 , p. 349.
• David Kofler : In memory of Prof. Martin Benedikter . In: Dolomiten , December 12, 1984, p. 12.