Medaille Brockhaus, Fleischer, Pott, Roediger 1870

Hermann Brockhaus (January 28, 1806 – January 5, 1877) was a German Orientalist born in

Amsterdam Amsterdam ( , , , lit. ''The Dam on the River Amstel'') is the capital and most populous city of the Netherlands, with The Hague being the seat of government. It has a population of 907,976 within the city proper, 1,558,755 in the urban ar ...

. He was a leading authority on

Sanskrit Sanskrit (; attributively , ; nominally , , ) is a classical language belonging to the Indo-Aryan languages, Indo-Aryan branch of the Indo-European languages. It arose in South Asia after its predecessor languages had Trans-cultural diffusion ...

and

Persian language Persian (), also known by its endonym Farsi (, ', ), is a Western Iranian language belonging to the Iranian branch of the Indo-Iranian subdivision of the Indo-European languages. Persian is a pluricentric language predominantly spoken an ...

s. He was the son of publisher

Friedrich Arnold Brockhaus Friedrich Arnold Brockhaus (4 May 1772 – 20 August 1823) was a German encyclopedia publisher and editor, famed for publishing the '' Conversations-Lexikon'', which is now published as the Brockhaus encyclopedia. Biography Brockhaus was educ ...

and brother-in-law to composer

Richard Wagner Wilhelm Richard Wagner ( ; ; 22 May 181313 February 1883) was a German composer, theatre director, polemicist, and conductor who is chiefly known for his operas (or, as some of his mature works were later known, "music dramas"). Unlike most op ...

.ADB:Brockhaus, Hermann
In:

Allgemeine Deutsche Biographie ''Allgemeine Deutsche Biographie'' (ADB, german: Universal German Biography) is one of the most important and comprehensive biographical reference works in the German language. It was published by the Historical Commission of the Bavarian Ac ...

(ADB). Band 47, Duncker & Humblot, Leipzig 1903, S. 263–272. In 1870 he received a combined medal (together with (

Fleischer Fleischer (or Fleisher) is a common German language, German and Yiddish language, Yiddish family name. Its literal meaning is "butcher". Other German family names with the same meaning include Metzger (disambiguation), Metzger, Mezger, Fleischman, a ...

, Pott and Rödiger) in occasion of the 25th anniversary of the DMG.

Academic career

He studied Oriental languages at the Universities of

Leipzig Leipzig ( , ; Upper Saxon: ) is the most populous city in the German state of Saxony. Leipzig's population of 605,407 inhabitants (1.1 million in the larger urban zone) as of 2021 places the city as Germany's eighth most populous, as ...

Göttingen Göttingen (, , ; nds, Chöttingen) is a university city in Lower Saxony, central Germany, the capital of the eponymous district. The River Leine runs through it. At the end of 2019, the population was 118,911. General information The ori ...

and

Bonn The federal city of Bonn ( lat, Bonna) is a city on the banks of the Rhine in the German state of North Rhine-Westphalia, with a population of over 300,000. About south-southeast of Cologne, Bonn is in the southernmost part of the Rhine-Ru ...

where he was a student of

August Wilhelm von Schlegel August Wilhelm (after 1812: von) Schlegel (; 8 September 176712 May 1845), usually cited as August Schlegel, was a German poet, translator and critic, and with his brother Friedrich Schlegel the leading influence within Jena Romanticism. His tra ...

, the founder of German

Indology Indology, also known as South Asian studies, is the academic study of the history and cultures, languages, and literature of the Indian subcontinent, and as such is a subset of Asian studies. The term ''Indology'' (in German, ''Indologie'') i ...

. Afterwards he spent several years in France and England. In 1839 he was appointed associate professor of oriental languages at the

University of Jena The University of Jena, officially the Friedrich Schiller University Jena (german: Friedrich-Schiller-Universität Jena, abbreviated FSU, shortened form ''Uni Jena''), is a public research university located in Jena, Thuringia, Germany. The ...

, teaching

and Hebrew beginning in the summer term of 1840.Herausragende Gelehrte der Alma mater , Der Indologe und Orientalist Hermann Brockhaus
Leipziger Universitäts- und Wissenschaftsgeschichte. Together with his colleague Johann Gustav Stickel (who taught

Semitic languages The Semitic languages are a branch of the Afroasiatic language family. They are spoken by more than 330 million people across much of West Asia, the Horn of Africa, and latterly North Africa, Malta, West Africa, Chad, and in large immigrant ...

), Brockhaus established oriental philology at the School of Humanities at Jena.German Orientalism: The Study of the Middle East and Islam from 1800 to 1945
by Ursula Wokoeck In 1841 Brockhaus followed an appointment to Leipzig, where in 1848 he was appointed a full professor of ancient Indian language at the university.Pierer's Universal-Lexicon
(translated biography) After his death, he was succeeded at the university by Ernst Windisch.

Published works

Among his better-known works are an edition of '' Kathâsarit-sâgara'' (a large collection of tales by Somadeva) and an edition of songs by the Persian lyric poet Hafez (''Lieder des Hafis''). He also published an edition of the '' Vendidâd Sâde'', an edition of a philosophical drama by Krishna Mishra called ''Prabodhachandrodaya'' and was the author of the influential ''Über den Druck sanskritischer Werke mit lateinischen Buchstaben'' (Concerning Sanskrit Works Printed in Latin Letters). From 1853 he was editor of the ''Zeitschrift der Deutschen Morgenländischen Gesellschaft'' (Journal of the German Oriental Society), and for a period of time was editor of the Ersch-Gruber ''Allgemeine Encyklopädie''.

Notes

References

Stefan Heidemann Stefan Heidemann (born 1961 in Versmold in Westphalia) is a German orientalist at Hamburg University, Hamburg. Biography Islamic studies including Islamic Art and economics in Regensburg, Berlin, Damascus and Cairo 1982–1993; Ph.D. in I ...

, "Zwischen Theologie und Philologie: Der Paradigmenwechsel in der Jenaer Orientalistik 1770 bis 1850." In ''Der Islam'' 84 (2008), pp. 140–184. * H.C. Kellner, in: ''Allgemeine Deutsche Biographie'' vol. 47, pp. 263–272. {{DEFAULTSORT:Brockhaus, Hermann German orientalists German Indologists Writers from Amsterdam Leipzig University faculty University of Jena faculty 1806 births 1877 deaths German male non-fiction writers Brockhaus family