Paul Thieme
Paul Thieme ( born March 18, 1905 in Berlin, † April 24, 2001 in London ) was a German Indologist.
Life and work
Studies in Göttingen and Berlin
After Paul Thieme and his triplet brother Francis as an adolescent by her father Oscar Thieme (1868-1943), a priest - Thieme came from an old Thuringian family of pastors August Thieme - in Mechelroda, lessons had received, they were included in the Eisenach grammar school in 1917. Your training in ancient Greek and Latin was very good. Paul chose to Hebrew and taught himself by the book by Richard Fick in Sanskrit.
He graduated from high school in 1923 and began studying in the Indology, Indo-European Studies and Iranian Studies at the University of Göttingen. His teachers were Edward Hermann, a student Berthold Delbruck, Emil Sieg, who studied under Albrecht Weber and Franz Kiel horn, and Friedrich C. Andrew. In 1925, he moved for a year at the University of Berlin. Here he had the opportunity Wilhelm Schulze and Heinrich Lüders to hear. " Both teachers have had an extraordinary influence on Thieme, the strictly methodological technique of etymological (on thorough textual study based ) word research Wilhelm Schulze on the one hand, the detection based on philological detail of Indian cultural life in its historical context of Heinrich Lüders on the other page ". Thieme was probably also influenced by the unpretentious disposition Lüders '. He finally opted for Indian Studies as a major subject. In 1929 he received his doctorate in Göttingen with an award-winning work, The Plusquamperfektum in the Veda.
The " aim of the study was mainly to show of their syntactic use of her that only augmented those and reduplicated verbal forms for the perfect stem ( ie as Plusquamperfektformen ) may be claimed, have the imperfective meaning and which have no Präsensindikativ aside. " on an impulse from Kiel Horn himself Thieme then dealt with the native grammatical tradition and completed in 1932 his habilitation in Göttingen with the work of Panini and the Veda to the important and difficult issue to what extent the traditional Sanskrit grammar the language especially the oldest text of the Vedic corpus, which affects the Ṛgvedasaṃhitā. "The title of this book, the two focal points are, so to speak buzzwords are expressed, which were at the center of his other work. "
Allahabad and Wroclaw
At first he was given the opportunity to take a job as a lecturer in French and German at the University of Allahabad in India. There he could receive instruction in the Sanskrit scholars, the Kamalakanta Pandit Mishra, the necessity - the two spoke no common language - took place in Sanskrit. For this lesson Thieme was later work on the Bhasya to vārttika 5 Panini 1,1,9 and its indigenous commentators.
He came into contact with English circles in Allahabad. In 1933 he married Dorothy Cearns, an officer's daughter. 1934, the son Conrad was born. 1935 the family moved to Göttingen and they found it right away the oppressive mood in Germany. 1936 Thieme was hired as an assistant professor in Breslau, where he then starting in 1939 as an associate professor taught Indology. His wife was heavily impacted by the situation in Germany and the couple decided to separate. She went with her son to her parents back to India. 1938 appeared one of the most important works of Thieme, the famous alien in the Rgveda.
This material had to be at that time, whether consciously or not, a certain urgency in itself, because it is about the meaning of "Aryan - name". Werner Knoblock writes: " Under the influence of scientific achievement that represents the stranger undeniable, but one should not forget that this work appeared in 1938 than it was in Germany not opportune to prove arya meant fremdlingsbeschützend, foreign friendly ' and ' Lord ' only in the sense of convivial, generous Lord .' " Johanna Narten writes: " He probably knew that under the Nazis who abused the word Aryan, this statement could be dangerous for him, but let such considerations him unconcerned. "It appears at this time also a variety of smaller word studies as journal articles.
Halle and Frankfurt q.s.
Thieme was appointed in 1941 as Professor of Indo-European studies to Halle, but was initially recruited for the Russian campaign. In the Force, he joined with the Indo- Iranisten Karl Hoffmann friendship. Thieme was spared by the fact of the fate of many soldiers died in Russia, he was displaced in 1942 as an interpreter for Hindustani on the Indian Legion. In 1945 he went into American captivity, from which he was released only after a year.
Then Thieme returned to Halle. In 1949 he married Carola Schneider, and the same year he became a member of the Saxon Academy of Sciences, as well as the studies published to the word customer and interpretation of the Rigveda, which treat " problem words" had not found a solution for the Hermann Oldenberg. Appeared in 1952, the important essay Brahman, the " Thieme's championship in the text-based and context of the citations interpretation of such an important for the ancient Indian belief concept shows only at the end of an etymological explanation is added ." Among his students in hall were such prominent representatives of the discipline as Klaus Ludwig Janert, Hartmut Scharfe and Friedrich Wilhelm.
William writes: " By 1953, Hall was a kind of niche University of the East ... It was always here among friends, talking nonchalantly ... Under a professor Paul Thieme you could feel safe. He told sometimes, as he clearly political bigwigs said the opinion had ". Thieme 1953 received a call to Frankfurt am Main on the Indo-European Institute. He decided with his partner and their son and daughter from a previous marriage to flee from the East Zone. In Frankfurt, the time already doctorate Bernfried Schlerath one of his listeners, Janert and Georg Buddruss doctorate at that time with him.
Yale University and Tübingen
In 1954 moved Thieme as Edward E. Salisbury professor of Yale University in New Haven ( Connecticut ). His predecessors in this prestigious Chair of the American Sanskrit research had been William Dwight Whitney, Edward Washburn Hopkins, Franklin Edgerton and Louis Renou. His American students included George Cardona and Stanley Insler. 1957 appeared the monograph on Mitra and Aryaman.
" Dedicated by Thieme accurate and enlightening review of the hymns that this God ( Aryaman ) in the Rig Veda and Avesta, the result is (...) clearly states that it is the gods of this kind is not, how else believed to are personifications of natural phenomena, but personifications of ethical terms that are of the Indoiraniern considered ( the common ancestors of the Indians and Iranians ) as the highest gods. "
Thieme 1960 took up an appointment at the University of Tübingen; Chair of the local, which represents Indology as well as comparative religion since Rudolf von Roth, had become vacant. One reason for the renewed change was, among others, better pensions. Here, formed a " Thieme- circle," the Buddruss, Albrecht Wezler, Oskar von Hartmut - Ortwin Feistel Over and belonged Insler came from the U.S. to Tubingen, a little later Schmidt and Janert came to. There were held with selected students Privatissima whose content was traditional grammar or sophisticated art seal. During the period in Tübingen important journal articles, translations emerged in a funded by UNESCO set of representative Asian plants and some monographs on the history of Indian culture, including the Indian theater. An honorable position at the University of Bonn on the oldest Sanskrit professorship in Germany, the first August Wilhelm Schlegel held, leaned from Thieme, after had been offered by the Ministry of Baden- Württemberg him respectable budget increases.
After the retirement
Even after his retirement in 1973 Thieme published continue. In the essay on the crane and heron in Sanskrit it cleared up on the important in India, always re-emerging in the literature distinction between vegetarian and non-vegetarian crane species herons.
Died in 1977 his wife Carola. In 1981 he received the honorary degree of Sanskrit studies extremely prestigious Banaras Hindu University in Varanasi. The acceptance speech he gave freely to Sanskrit, which made a big impression in India. He also held in Tübingen further from unscheduled Privatissima.
In 1982 he was elected a corresponding member of the Berlin Scientific Society and in 1983 the Bavarian Academy of Sciences. He was an honorary member of the German Oriental Society, the American Oriental Society, the Royal Oriental Society in London and the Société Asiatique. 1988 Kyoto Prize he was awarded a Nobel Prize after the world's highest awards for science, "for excellency in the field of Creative Art and Moral Sciences". In the same year he also got the Rabrindanath Tagore Medal of Asiatic Society of Bengal.
In 1991, he married Renate sons, and " Thieme was 86 years with the oldest groom, which the Tübingen registrar had ever dared ." His last public lecture was given by Thieme with 90 years in the Oriental Studies in Leipzig in 1995.
Paul Thieme 's certainly been one of the greatest Indologists of the 20th century, "especially in the last two decades as a kind Nestor of Indology, at best comparable with the great and groundbreaking pioneers of the field from the 19th century " ( Butzenberger ). He has been called " one of the leading commentators in particular the Rigveda proven " (R. Schmitt), " a Durchblätterung the new etymological dictionary of the Vedic (M. Mayrhofer ), Etymological Dictionary of Altindoarischen ... shows his omnipresence ".
Thieme has influenced a whole generation of scientists, and its worked out principles for dealing with the ancient Indian texts also act still continues. " For success leads alone, Thieme, accurate grammatical analysis, and that is for him: Consideration of word form and word function, optionally with the inclusion of closely related languages. In this sense, his work on Vedaforschung distinguished by the fact that they freely analyze with meticulous care and quite sober, of preconceived views the texts themselves, while at the same time provide with findigem acumen imaginative interpretations, interpretations, for Thieme even two has called for ...: a) a faithful literal translation did desists from explaining, b ) analytical Explanations did desist from taking literally. '"
Johanna Narten writes: " For those who had the good fortune to know him personally, he has left an indelible impression. He was a very pleasant and likeable person who could manage it again and again to infect other people through his charisma and his fascinating scientific enthusiasm and delight. " Its tradition is now (2009 ) at German universities of direct disciples like Thomas Upper Lies in Göttingen the continued or Catharina Kiehnle in Leipzig, by students of his students as Axel Michaels in Heidelberg, Rahul Peter Hall, Karin PREISENDANZ in Vienna, Ulrike Niklas in Cologne or Klaus Butzenberger in Tübingen and even students of the students of his students such as Hans Harder in Heidelberg.
Certainly the majority of his work is accessible only to specialists, or those who are about to become. There is absolutely nothing to do "dry" treatises. His empathy, humanity with which he succeeds again and again to bring the application behind the examined texts ancient human culture in the mind's eye to life is masterful. An example of this is the excursus on " path " and " street " in the stranger, pp. 110-117.