Moriz Winternitz

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Moriz Winternitz (born December 23, 1863 in Horn , † January 9, 1937 in Prague ) was an Austrian Indologist and ethnologist who dealt primarily with the Sanskrit literary history, the Mahabharata and late Vedic rituals. His Sanskrit research is still considered groundbreaking today.

life and work

Moriz Winternitz grew up in Horn in Lower Austria and in neighboring Sigmundsherberg , in the eastern Waldviertel. His parents ran a small grocer's shop, the proceeds of which were apparently barely enough to overcome the poverty line. At least they were able to enable him to attend the Horner Gymnasium (1872-1880), which, as the second oldest grammar school in Austria, looked back on a great tradition and - as was customary at the time - used the ancient languages ​​Latin and Greek. “Commendable” to “excellent” achievements in the linguistic subjects of last year at the grammar school formed the basis for his further path. He then studied classical philology and philosophy in Vienna, but then turned to Indology under the influence of Georg Bühler . In his dissertation (1886) he dealt with the ancient Indian wedding ritual according to the "Apastambiya Grihyasutra", a work of the Sutra literature, which he brought out a few years later in a critical edition.

In 1888 Winternitz went to Oxford and worked at the University of Oxford with Friedrich Max Müller on a new edition of the Rigveda . In Oxford he also worked as a private teacher for German and Sanskrit at various institutions . In 1911 he was appointed full professor of Sanskrit and ethnology at the German-speaking Karl Ferdinand University in Prague, where he had taught as a private lecturer since 1899 and remained active until 1934. He published many authoritative studies in the field of religion, epics and Sanskrit literature.

In the same year Albert Einstein came to the German university in Prague and stayed for three semesters. He was a member of the same philosophy faculty and was friends with Winternitz and his family, including their five children. As Dean of the Faculty, Winternitz received the prominent and celebrated Indian poet, author, philosopher and Nobel Prize winner Rabindranath Tagore as a guest of the university in June 1921 . A year later he accepted Tagore's invitation to his school in Santiniketan , where he taught Sanskrit and ancient Indian literature in 1922/1923. A long friendship developed and Tagore visited Prague again in 1926.

Vincenc Lesný , Wilhelm Gampert and Otto Stein , who later became well-known Indologists themselves, were among his Prague students .

An important field of study for Winternitz was also the epic Mahabharata , on which he published an article in the "Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society" as early as 1897. Many more articles followed in the next few years, including a study of the genesis of the epic, with Winternitz taking the view that it was not the work of a single author. In 1901 he suggested for the first time the production of a critical edition on the basis of the numerous manuscripts, some of which are available in different versions, whereby the South Indian ones seemed particularly important to him. It was only after the First World War that his plans could be implemented by the Bhankarkar Oriental Research Institute in Pune , which completed the "Creation of the Critical Edition of the Mahabharata" in 1966. It was the great merit of Winternitz to have initiated this project and to have accompanied it for a long time as a member of the editorial board.

His main work is the "History of Indian Literature", which appeared in three volumes from 1905 to 1922. In it, Winternitz deals with Vedic literature, the epics and Puranas as well as the Buddhist and Jaina texts as well as poetry and science. In 1927 an English edition of the work appeared, the first two volumes of which he could still look through himself. In 1934 O. Stein and W. Gampert published a bibliography of Winternitz's works and articles, which named no fewer than 452 titles.

Faced with the Nazi and anti-Semitic threat, three of the sons of Winternitz joined socialist and anti-fascist organizations. His son Josef worked for the Communist Party in Germany in the 1920s, but had to flee to Prague in 1933 when it became too dangerous for him. After the Germans invaded Prague in 1938, the Winternitz sons emigrated to England. His death in 1937 spared his father Moriz this bitter time. Josef Winternitz went to East Berlin after the war in 1948 and briefly assumed important roles in the SED until he fell ideologically out of favor because of a publication. He returned to his family in England in 1951, where he died a year later. His son Artur Winternitz was a mathematician.

Publications (selection)

literature

  • Georg Winternitz: Glimpses of the life of my father, the Indologist Moriz Winternitz. (Translated from German and edited by Debabrata Chakrabarti) Tagore International, Winternitz Memorial Number, December 1988, pp. 35-63.
  • Margot and Martin Kraatz: Carl Capeller, Moriz Winternitz and Theodor Zachariae. Three biographies of famous Indologists. (= Indologica Marpurgensia II) Munich 2010.
  • Erich Rabl: The Waldviertel roots of the Indologist and ethnologist Moriz Winternitz (1863-1937). In: The Waldviertel. Journal for local and regional studies of the Waldviertel and the Wachau , 61 (2012) issue 3, pp. 249–265.
  • Erich Rabl: Moriz Winternitz (1863-1937) - an Indologist from the Waldviertel. In: DAVID Jüdische Kulturzeitschrift , No. 103, December 2014

Web links

Wikisource: Moriz Winternitz  - Sources and full texts
personal data
SURNAME Winternitz, Moriz
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Austrian indologist and ethnologist
DATE OF BIRTH December 23, 1863
PLACE OF BIRTH Horn (Lower Austria)
DATE OF DEATH January 9, 1937
Place of death Prague