Lucian Scherman

Lucian Scherman ( born October 10, 1864 in Poznan, † May 29 1946 in Hanson, Massachusetts ) was a German Indologist, director of the Museum of Ethnology in Munich and professor at the local university.

Studies and scientific activity

Scherman was the son of a merchant and landlord of poses. After attending high school in Wroclaw and Poznan in 1882, he began a study of Sanskrit at the University of Wroclaw in Adolf Friedrich Stenzler. In 1883 he moved to Munich, where he continued his studies at the Ludwig- Maximilians- University in Munich. Scherman received his doctorate in the summer semester 1885 with the thesis " An in-depth discussion of the philosophical hymns from the Rig - and Atharva -Veda - Sanhita, both in itself and in relation to the philosophy of the older Upanishads ." This work presented simultaneously represents the answer to a question of price, which had asked his teacher, Ernst Kuhn (1846-1920) in the Faculty. For his work Scherman received the advertised price.

In 1892 he completed his habilitation with a thesis on "Materials for the history of Indian visionary literature ". From 1893 he taught as a lecturer and from the winter semester 1901/1902 as an associate professor the basics of Sanskrit, the Ethnology of India and rear of India, Buddhism and general books customer. 1907 took over as curator Scherman the management of the "Royal Ethnographic collection in the gallery building ", the later Museum of Ethnology, for its move to the present house in the Maximilian street, he was responsible.

From October 1910 to December 1911 took Lucian Scherman and his wife Christine an extensive research trip to Ceylon ( now Sri Lanka), Burma (now Myanmar ) and India (now India and Pakistan). Shear Mans reputation at home and abroad was so significant that in 1916, a separate Chair "for the ethnology of Asia with special consideration of the Indian cultural sphere " was created for him. Scherman was extraordinary in 1912 and in 1929 a full member of the Bavarian Academy of Sciences.

Family

1889 married Lucian Scherman Munich-born Christine Reindl ( 1865-1940 ), with whom he had a son and a daughter. His wife was for Scherman until her death in 1940 not only wife, but also employee and colleague.

Persecution and emigration

On October 1, 1933 Lucian Scherman was forced into retirement by the Nazis and not emeritus, because he was a Jew. In the following years he and his wife under the National Socialist regime had to suffer and finally emigrated in April 1939 in the United States according to Hanson, Massachusetts about 30 miles south of Boston. There, her son was already working as a doctor at a hospital. Christine Scherman was with her ​​emigration already seriously ill and died in 1940 in the U.S.. The loss was hard on her husband. Nevertheless, he was until his death six years later still scientifically active. He was even in the Journal of the American Oriental Society, which had appointed him in 1939 to its member, in the war on German publishing an essay.

Scherman, who had been deprived of, among others, in 1940 by the Nazis, the doctorate, received through the efforts of his remaining in Germany daughter Frieda Hörburger before his death a certain rehabilitation. On April 1, 1946, he received all the rights back as a retired professor, a few weeks before he highly honored on May 29, 1946, died in Hanson.