Albert Grünwedel

Albert Grünwedel

Albert Grünwedel (July 31, 1856 – October 28, 1935) was a German indologist, tibetologist, archaeologist, and explorer of Central Asia. He was one of the first scholars to study the Lepcha language.

Life

Grünwedel was born in Munich in 1856, the son of a painter. He studied art history and Asian languages, including Avestan, and in 1883 earned his doctorate at the University of Munich. In 1881 he began work as an assistant at the Museum of Ethnology in Berlin and in 1883 he was appointed deputy director of the ethnographic collection. Grünwedel won accolades for his numerous publications on Buddhist art, archaeology Central Asia, and Himalayan languages. Two notable works were Buddhist art in India (1893) and Mythology of Buddhism in Tibet and Mongolia (1900), which concerned the Greek origins of the Gandharan Greco-Buddhist artistic style and its development in Central Asia.

Buddhist stupa at Gaochang.

In 1899 Grünwedel was invited to join a Russian archaeological research expedition led by Vasily Radlov into the north of Xinjiang province, China. In the same year he was appointed a member of the Bavarian Academy of Sciences. In 1902-1903 Grünwedel led the first German expedition to Turpan, in Xinjiang, becoming the first modern European to study the massive ruins near Gaochang. He recorded the events of this expedition in his book Report on Archaeological work in Idikutschahri and Surrounding areas in Winter 1902-1903 (1905). The next expedition was led by Albert von Le Coq, who became famous for removing large numbers of frescos from sites across Xinjiang.[1] Grünwedel himself headed the third German Turfan expedition in 1905-1907, the results of which were published in Ancient Buddhist Religion in Chinese Turkistan (1912). Grünwedel's expeditions were largely funded by the Krupp family.[1] Grünwedel was joined by Heinrich Lüders who made major contributions to the epigraphical analysis of the Turpan-Expedition findings after being called to the Friedrich-Wilhelms-University Berlin as Professor for oriental languages in 1909.

Grünwedel retired in 1921, and in 1923 moved to Bavaria, where his spent his last years at Bad Tölz writing a number of scientific papers. He died in Lenggries in 1935.

Works

Verhandlungen der Berliner Gesellschaft für Anthropologie, Ethnologie und Urgeschichte. 1890,(31 )-(37)

Paris: Leroux 1900. XXXVII.247 S., 1 Bildn., 188 Leipzig: F. A. Brockhaus 1900. Reviews: Revue critique. 1900. Nr 51, S.471-472 (Sylvain Levi). T'oung-pao 11,1.1900,349-353 (G. Schlegel). Luzac's Oriental List. 11.1900,181.

Leipzig: Harrassowitz 1911. X,264 S. 8°

Bäßlerinstituts.) Reviews: OLZ 1921,101-109,145-154 (Hans Haas), Ostasiatische Zeitschrift 7.1918/19,245-246 (Selbstanz.), Zeitschrift für Ethnologie.52/53,1920/21,488-490 (H. v. Glasenapp)

102. Die Sternschnuppen im Vaidürya dkar po. Von Albert Grünwedel. Mit vier Abbildungen. Festschrift Eduard Seier dargebracht zum 70.Geburtstag von Freunden, Schülern u. Verehrern. Stuttgart: Strecker & Schröder 1922, S. 129-146,4

Works about Grünwedel

References

  1. 1 2 Hopkirk, Peter (1980). Foreign Devils on the Silk Road: The Search for the Lost Cities and Treasures of Chinese Central Asia. Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press. pp. 110–147. ISBN 0-87023-435-8.

External links

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