Lothar Ledderose

Lothar Ledderose ( born July 12, 1942 in Munich) is a German art historian and Director of the Institute of East Asian Art History at the University of Heidelberg.

Life

Ledderose (originally Ledderhose ) studied at Princeton, Harvard and the University of Tokyo in 1976 before he completed his habilitation at the University of Cologne. In the same year Ledderose was appointed to the Heidelberg Institute for the History of East Asian Art. Ledderose was a visiting professor at universities in the United States, Taiwan and Japan. Since 1986 he is a member of the Heidelberg Academy of Sciences.

From 1984-1990 he was president, 1978-1984 and 1990-1996 Vice- President of the German Oriental Society.

Ledderose has published numerous studies on the art of China and was also the editor of an important exhibition catalogs. His dissertation (published 1970) was the theme: The seal script ( Chuan -shu ) in the Ch'ing period.

2005 Lothar Ledderose received one of the four Balzan Prizes. Ledderose received the award for his outstanding research on the history of Chinese and Japanese art. He is the twelfth German so far under 106 award winners. The Balzan Prize is in addition to the Nobel Prize in the world's major scientific awards and is awarded by the International Balzan Foundation. He is endowed with 660,000 euros.