Wilhelm Siegling

Wilhelm Siegling

Wilhelm Siegling (born January 14, 1880 in Erfurt , † January 22, 1946 in Berlin ) was a German Indologist and Tocharologist . Siegling is considered to be the "co-discoverer of the 'Tocharian'" ( Ernst Waldschmidt ) and the "best connoisseur of the various varieties of the Brahmi script with Central Asian characteristics" ( Emil Sieg ).

Life

After passing the baccalaureate in Eisleben studied Siegling in Halle an der Saale , Heidelberg , Leipzig , Greifswald and Berlin , where he 1901-1906 Sanskrit , Avestan and Tibetan studies and 1906 for Dr. phil. PhD .

The Tocharian Turfan finds

One of the Tocharian manuscripts ( THT 133 ) edited by Sieg and Siegling and published posthumously in 1953 in the “Tocharian language remnants”.

At the suggestion of Professor Richard Pischel , Siegling and the private lecturer Emil Sieg were entrusted with the evaluation of the manuscript finds made by the German Turfan expeditions since 1902 and which had been left to the Royal Prussian Academy of Sciences in Berlin for further processing ("Berlin Collection") . Since 1907 Siegling devoted himself to these relics in close cooperation with Emil Sieg, first as an apprentice , then (since 1912) as a scientific assistant . The manuscripts - often fragmentary , mostly from Buddhist monasteries and therefore predominantly religious in content - were written in an Indian Brahmi script and were linguistic witnesses of a previously unknown language that Sieg and Siegling referred to as " Tocharic " and which they managed to decipher and translate . They belong to the second half of the 1st millennium AD. Siegling did military service from 1915 to 1918; therefore it was not until 1920 that the first results could be published under the title "Tocharian Language Remnants I".

Academy professorship

As a result of his achievements, Siegling was permanently employed at the academy in 1929 as a scientific official with the title " Professor ". In the following years until the end of the Second World War , Siegling dealt with the edition of a Tocharian grammar and the development of the less coherent text finds ("Tocharisch B"), which could only appear in 1949, after Siegling's death.

Character and performance

Sieg, who had been appointed to the chair in Göttingen in 1920 , characterized his Berlin colleague, who was fourteen years his junior, as "extremely skeptical, and scientific collaboration with him was not easy ... but he was also extremely meticulous". Siegling carefully assembled all Tocharian paper fragments under glass, neatly transcribed the texts and was able to identify, assign and decipher even the smallest text fragments. His knowledge of Sanskrit and Tibetan came in handy when he worked on the Matŗceta stotra , which he could no longer finish. Siegling did not survive the post-war winter of 1945/46 in completely destroyed Berlin; his wife died nine years after him in 1955 in Berlin-Wittenau.

Private

Ernst Waldschmidt, Emil Sieg's successor at the Göttingen Chair of Indology, was "known and friends for many years" with Siegling (p. VIII). In his obituary, he described the teacher and friend as "always a humble scholar" who was characterized by "the greatest care and sense of form". Siegling therefore formed a certain complement and a scientific counterpoint to his older colleague Sieg:

"Sieg's impulsive nature was not averse to bold combinations, so that a cautious companion [ie Siegling] complemented him perfectly."

- Ernst Waldschmidt

Fonts (selection, in chronological order)

• The reviews of the Caraṇavyūha. Leipzig: Printed by G. Kreysing 1906 [inaugural dissertation]
• A glossary of Aśvaghoṣa's Buddhacarita. With a biographical introduction by Ernst Waldschmidt , ed. by Heinz Bechert and others Facs.-Ausg. Göttingen: Seminar for Indology and Buddhist Studies at the University of Göttingen 1985 - A work from the academic estate, in facsimile handwriting, year of origin 1906
• A list of the more important works on Indian ethnography . In: Baines, Jervoise Athelstane: Ethnography . Strasbourg 1912
• Tocharian, the language of the Indoskythians. Preliminary remarks on a previously unknown Indo-European literary language. Berlin: 1908 [Reprint from session reports of the Royal Prussian Academy of Sciences Berlin , 1908, 2, pp. 915–934, 1 fold-out sheet, ill. - 2., unchanged. Special reprint. Berlin: Verl. Der Königl. Akad. Der Wiss. 1916]
• Tocharian language remnants. Language A. 1, The texts; A. Transcription. 1, The texts; B. Boards. Berlin: de Gruyter 1921
• The feeding of the bodhisattva before enlightenment, according to a manuscript sheet found in Turfan in the B dialect of Tocharian . Leipzig: In aedibus quae Asia major appellantur 1925, pp. [277] –283
• Tocharian grammar. Edited by Emil Sieg and Wilhelm Siegling on behalf of the Prussian Academy of Sciences in cooperation with Wilhelm Schulze . Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht 1931
• Tocharian language remnants. Language B. Hgb. By Emil Sieg and Wilhelm Siegling, from the estate hgb. by Werner Thomas. Part 1: The Udānālaṅkāra fragments. Translation and glossary. Part 2: Fragments No. 71-633. Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht 1949-53. - rework. and with e. Commentary and register provided by Werner Thomas. Göttingen: Vandenhoeck and Ruprecht 1983–

literature

• Emil Sieg : Wilhelm Siegling (1880–1946) . In: Journal of the Deutsche Morgenländische Gesellschaft (ZDMG) 99 (nF 24), No. 2 (1945–1950), pp. 147–149
• Ernst Waldschmidt : Biographical introduction . In: Siegling, A Glossary , 1985, pp. VII-XII

Web links and photo

• Obituary by Emil Sieg in ZDMG 99, 2 (1945–1950), pp. 147–149. With a portrait photo on p. 148 A