Author Archives: corff

Obituary: Martin Gimm (1930–2025)

In Memoriam Martin Gimm (1930–2025)

Martin Gimm was born on May 25, 1930, in Waltershausen, Thuringia, and passed away on December 22, 2025 at Rösrath (near Cologne). After completing his secondary education and musical training as a pianist and later organist he studied musicology, mathematics, philosophy, and Oriental studies at the University of Jena from 1949, before turning his attention to East Asian studies at the University of Leipzig in 1951. There he studied Sinology, and after transferring to the Free University of Berlin in 1953, he continued with Chinese and Manchu (with Walter Fuchs) and Japanese. From 1959 to 1963, he worked as director of the German Cultural Center in Taiwan and, starting in 1960, taught as an associate professor at three universities in Taipei, where he also continued his Manchu studies (with Guanglu [in Manchu: Kunggur 廣祿‎ (1900–1973)], and Puru 溥儒 (1896–1963) a cousin of the last emperor). After returning to Germany in 1963, he earned his Ph.D. with a comprehensive dissertation on the Yuefu zalu 樂府雜錄, a collection of essays on the Music Office, by the Tang author Duan Anjie 段安節. In 1969 he habilitated in Cologne and in 1970, after his teacher Fuchs’ retirement, Gimm succeeded him as ordinary professor of Chinese and Manchu at the University of Cologne, the only place in Germany where the study of Manchu language and literature was officially available for a degree, until his retirement in 1996.

Martin Gimm was a good teacher, but his passion was research; in this respect, he was similar to his teacher Fuchs. Retirement gave him the opportunity to work through much of what he had accumulated over the years, and not a year went by without several substantial publications. Until two weeks before his departure, he worked tirelessly, even though his health and mobility were declining.

Gimm was extraordinarily knowledgeable, meticulous in detail, even fastidious, and it was easy to see from his numerous footnotes that Paul Pelliot and Walter Fuchs were his role models—he, too, loved the “bibliographic giant finger.” As a person, he was friendly, open-minded, and helpful, although he seemed reserved, even somewhat shy; he was reluctant to appear in public and at conferences. His friends and students will miss him greatly.

In honour of his outstanding achievements as a Manchurist, the PIAC awarded him the PIAC Prize for Altaic Studies in 2019.

As a full bibliography of Gimm’s publications was published in 2019 which includes his numerous contributions to Sinology and musicology, only some highlights in the Manchu field are presented here:

  • The edition of a Manchu translation of the classical Chinese literary anthology Wenxuan 文選 according to mss. in Leningrad and Cologne (1968), and of the Manchu version of the Qing literary anthology Guwen yuanjian 古文淵鑑 (1969) as well. The original works are both highly esteemed and considered selections of models of excellent literary style.
  • “Manchu translations of Chinese novels and short stories. An attempt at an inventory” (1988). Only a few such novels were printed in Manchu, therefore the identification of the respective manuscripts is of considerable value for the study of Manchu literature. A pioneering study!
  • The Qianlong emperor as a poet. Remarks on his writings (1993; new edition 2024). The volume is particularly strong as a bibliography, presenting an annotated survey of the emperor’s works, both in the original and in translation.
  • “Hans Conon von der Gabelentz and the first Manchu grammar in Germany” (1997). On the first scholarly grammar of Manchu.
  • “Chinese dogs and dogs’ names. On a trilingual series of portraits by the court painter Giuseppe Castiglione” (2002). This paper supplements Zhuang Jifa’s and Walravens’ earlier studies.
  • Conon von der Gabelentz and his translation of the Chinese novel Jin ping mei 金瓶梅. (2005). Gimm rediscovered the manuscript of Gabelentz’s translation, believed lost after WWII. The Manchu translation was praised for its superb style and therefore occasionally credited to a brother of the Kangxi emperor (which is but a legend).
  • Hans Conon von der Gabelentz: Jin Ping Mei. The first full translation into German from Manchu. (2005–2013). The German translation is clear and fluent and lacks the flowery terminology often found in translations from the Chinese, thus giving a true representation of the Manchu version. In 10 volumes. While this study edition was published in a very small number, a revised and annotated, illustrated version with an introduction was prepared by H. Walravens: Ein Herzensbrecher und seine Frauen (Jin Ping Mei 金瓶梅). for the trade (2024. 1985 pp., 200 woodcuts)
  • “Elementary Manchu grammar, edited from Georg von der Gabelentz’ manuscript” (2010). Georg v. d. Gabelentz, the author of an outstanding Chinese Grammar, never finished his basic Manchu grammar, mainly owing to his premature death.
  • “On the Manchu Rouputuan 肉蒲團.” (2011). Introduction to an edition of the Manchu translation of this erotic novel in the Berlin State Library (now in Cracow). The manuscript believed lost after WWII was rediscovered by the referee in the Jagiellonian Library and edited for publication.
  • Georg von der Gabelentz in memoriam. Materials on his life and work. (2013) Gabelentz Jr. was a highly gifted linguist; his special interest focused on East Asia, and he worked mainly on the Chinese and Manchu languages. Among his students were Wilhelm Grube (1855–1908) and Otto Franke, both later professors of Chinese at Berlin University.
  • P. Johann Adam Schall von Bell S.J. and the secret files on the court case of 1664–1665 in China. The secret Manchu documents on the trial of the German Jesuit missionary Adam Schall (1591–1666). (2021). Schall was in an influential position as advisor to the emperor, and his adversaries therefore accused him of having willfully jeopardized the imperial family and the empire by manipulating the burial rites for Prince Rong and falsifying the calendar.
  • The case of Prince Rong in the trial against Father Adam Schall (2018).
  • The secret shamanism of the Qing emperors. (2018).
  •  “Some additions to the history of the Buddhist canon in Manchu translation” (2020) provides additions to H. Walravens’ previous study (2007).
  • A selection of Gimm’s articles Kleine Schriften zur Geschichte und Kultur der Qing-Dynastie provides a reprint of nine papers on Qing history (2023).

Biobliographical information is to be found in

Ad Seres et Tungusos. Festschrift für Martin Gimm zu seinem 65. Geburtstag am 25. Mai 1995. Hrsg. von Lutz Bieg, Erling von Mende und Martina Siebert. Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz 2000. (Opera sinologica 11.)

H. Walravens: Sinologie in Köln. Von Adam Schall bis in die Gegenwart. Biobibliographien. Berlin: Staatsbibliothek 2017. 250 pp. (Staatsbibliothek zu Berlin. Neuerwerbungen der Ostasienabteilung. Sonderheft 48.)

H. Walravens: Verzeichnis der Veröffentlichungen von Professor Dr. Martin Gimm. Norderstedt: BoD 2020. 48 pp. 4°

H. Walravens: Skizze der deutschsprachigen Mandschuristik vom 17. bis Ende des 20. Jahrhunderts. Mit Briefen von Erich Haenisch (1880–1966) und Gottfried Rösel (1900–1992) an Walter Fuchs (1902–1979). Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz 2025. 186 pp. (Asien- und Afrika-Studien der Humboldt-Universität 69.)

Hartmut Walravens
January 2026

Obituary: Lars Johanson (1936–2025)

In Memoriam

Lars Johanson (1936–2025)

Lars Johanson, a linguist of Swedish origin, played a decisive role in establishing the study of the Turkic languages as a modern linguistic discipline. In addition to his substantial contributions to Turkic linguistics, his general linguistic work—above all in language typology—is of great significance. The theoretical models he developed for the investigation of verbal aspect systems and contact-linguistic phenomena have been applied to numerous languages.

Lars first joined PIAC in 1969, Berlin, his next fruitful participation was in 1987, Bloomington. At the 1988 Weimar meeting, he was elected to the Medal Committee. He gave a lecture at the Oslo meeting in 1989 and another in 1990 at the Budapest meeting. His vivid talks on different linguistic subjects also through breaks and excursions remain in the memory of many of us.

Lars Johanson was born on 8 March 1936 in the town of Köping in central Sweden. He pursued his university studies at Uppsala, in Germanic, Scandinavian, Sanskrit and Slavic studies, in Turkology and general linguistics. He received his B.A. in 1959 and his M.A. in 1961. In 1959–1960 he frequented Oriental studies in Vienna. From 1960 onward he finally devoted himself to the Turkic languages. In 1966 he obtained his doctorate at the University of Uppsala, followed in 1971 by the Habilitation on the basis of his studies in Turkic linguistics. His 1971 monograph Aspekt im Türkischen met with wide recognition in linguistic circles.

In the following years he pursued intensive research and travelled to numerous Turkic-speaking countries as well as to China. In 1979–1980 he was a visiting professor at the University of Frankfurt, and from 1981 at the University of Mainz. At the latter he was appointed full professor in 1982, in the highest German professorial category, C4. Alongside his research and teaching at Mainz, from 1985 onward he edited the highly successful monograph series Turcologica  at the Harrassowitz publishing house in Wiesbaden, a series in which more than 130 volumes have appeared to date. From 1995 he founded and edited there the journal Turkic Languages, which had reached its 29th volume by the time of his death.

Between 1966 and 2025 he published more than 500 works. Among the books he brought out in the last years of his life, the most important is Turkic, published by Cambridge University Press in 2021, a monumental comparative description of the Turkic languages. This unparalleled handbook is to appear in paperback in 2026. His theory of verbal aspect is presented in his book Aspect in the Languages of Europe, published in 2023, in which Johanson demonstrates that the theoretical framework he developed for the description of the Turkic verbal system is also eminently suitable for an adequate and innovative analysis of the verbal systems of the European languages. His contact-linguistic model is set out in his 2023 book Code Copying. The Strength of Languages in Take-over and Carry-over Roles. Besides presenting the model, this book aims to show that copying from other languages does not “corrupt” the recipient language; on the contrary, it can serve as a means of survival for endangered among the Turkic languages.

Throughout his career he was deeply engaged with the linguistic testimony of early Turkic texts written in non-Arabic scripts. His last book, published in 2025 together with his wife, Éva Á. Csató, is an edition of a seventeenth-century Latin-script Bible translation into Azeri.

Johanson continually expanded the online edition of the  Encyclopedia of Turkic Languages and Linguistics (Brill), a work he himself initiated and edited, which is to comprise several hundred articles. In future its editorship will be taken over by Éva Á. Csató.

He was an excellent teacher much beloved and followed by his pupils. He pursued his teaching with great enthusiasm and dedication. The fruits of this are visible in the fact that most of his doctoral students now hold professorships in various countries, continuing and further developing their supervisor’s work in the study of the Turkic languages.

As an internationally recognized scholar he served as visiting professor or researcher in many countries: in Tokyo, Kyoto, Melbourne, Beijing, Istanbul (at Boğaziçi University), Yakutsk, and at the Swedish Collegium for Advanced Study in the Social Sciences in Uppsala. Dearest to him, however, was his rich and enduring relationship with the Department of Altaic Studies at the University of Szeged. It was there that he was awarded an honorary doctorate in 1999.

On 24 November 2025, Lars Johanson laid his head down for eternal rest. His colleagues and pupils around the world will preserve his memory.

András Róna-Tas

Obituary: Klaus Sagaster (1933–2025)

– Ocean of Knowledge, Teacher of Generations –

Merged ɣarqu-yin oron

In Memoriam Klaus Sagaster

(March 19, 1933 – November 11, 2025)

Ἐν ἀρχῇ ἦν ὁ λόγος.

On November 11, 2025, the eminent scholar Klaus Sagaster passed away peacefully at his home in Königswinter, near Bonn, at the age of 92, after an active life up to the very last day. In the wide field of Central Asian studies, he is recognized as a scholar of exceptional gift, immense knowledge and refined erudition. His contributions to Mongolian and Tibetan studies go far beyond the boundaries of each discipline and encompass fundamental questions of the condition humaine between the secular and sacred domains.

Klaus Sagaster was born in a community of Sudeten Germans in the town of Mimoň (German: Niemes), Česká Lípa District in the Liberec Region of then Czechoslovakia, now Czech Republic, on March 19, 1933. After the Munich Agreement in 1938, the region was annexed by Nazi Germany and administered as part of the so-called Sudetenland. Klaus Sagaster began to attend elementary school in 1939 in Mimoň; in 1941 the family moved to Ústí nad Labem (German: Aussig an der Elbe); Klaus Sagaster completed elementary school in 1943 and attended secondary school there. In June 1945, the family fell victim to the expulsion of Germans from Czechoslovakia, at the time conducted by local militias, which, in Klaus Sagaster’s own words, was a terribly frightful experience from which the family only had a narrow escape. The family settled in the Sorbian village of Glinzig, near Cottbus, in the then Soviet occupation zone in Germany. In 1951, he graduated from classical high school in Cottbus, in the meantime German Democratic Republic (GDR). Driven by a keen interest in Chinese history and culture, he took up Chinese (Prof. Eduard Erkes), Tibetan (Prof. Johannes Schubert) and Mongolian (Dr. Paul Ratchnewsky) studies at the East Asian Seminar of Leipzig University in the same year, later followed by Sanskrit (Prof. Ulrich Schneider) as well as Pāli and Prākrit grammar studies (Friedrich Weller). Having decided to leave Leipzig, he went to the German National Library in Leipzig for consulting the course catalogues of West German universities in order to find a university which could offer Mongolian studies and possibly indology and sinology. He opted for Göttingen and left the GDR via Berlin where he arrived at the Marienfelde refugee transit camp in mid-March 1954. Decades later he continued to be impressed by the administrative efficiency of this institution (he revisited the place, now converted into a memorial site, more than 50 years later). Already in early May of the same year he could resume his studies, now in Göttingen, where he had the opportunity to introduce himself to Walther Heissig who accepted him as his student after an informal admission test. A life-long mutually fruitful scholarly bond was to emerge from this early encounter.

Two years later, in 1956, he was awarded a combined scholarship offered by the German Academic Exchange Service (DAAD) and the Government of Denmark. In Kopenhagen, he took up Mongolian studies under Kaare Thomsen, Tibetan studies under Erik Haarh and also took classes in Central Asian Turkic studies.

In 1957 he followed Heissig to Bonn. In 1964, the Seminar for Languages and Cultures of Central Asia was established with Heissig as chair. In an informal arrangement initiated by Heissig, Klaus Sagaster was charged with teaching Tibetan studies while Heissig took charge of Mongolian studies. Later, Klaus Sagaster also took up reading Mongolian classes. In 1982, Heissig retired and Klaus Sagaster became chair of the Seminar up to his retirement in 1998.

Already early in his scholarly career, Klaus Sagaster had the opportunity to travel to Asia. He participated in the 26th International Congress of Orientalists in New Delhi in January 1964. From there, he continued his voyage to the Tibetan settlements in Dharamsala where he had the chance to meet the Dalai Lama; this auspicious first encounter certainly left a lasting impression on the young Klaus Sagaster who assisted in arranging the visits of the Dalai Lama in Germany in the 1970s. Quite possibly these meetings with the Dalai Lama were a catalyst for Klaus Sagaster’s life-long reflections on the relationship between religion and state, as can be seen from two outstanding monographs, one submitted as doctoral thesis in 1960, to be published in revised form in 1969, the other submitted as postdoctoral thesis in 1976.

The subject of his doctoral thesis was a biography of Ṅag dbaṅ blo bzan č’os ldan (1642–1714), the First Changkya (lČaṅ skya) Khutuktu of Beijing, published under the title “Subud Erike. Ein Rosenkranz aus Perlen.” Being called to Beijing by the Kangxi Emperor in 1701, the First Changkya Khutuktu played a vital role as a facilitator of Manchu rule among the Mongols while at the same time persuing his genuine interest of strengthening the Lamaist Church. As Sagaster notes in the Introduction, the repercussions of the historical constellation of the diverging interests between state and religion remain to be an active focus of China’s domestic policy up to the very present. Sinor’s summary of Sagaster’s fine book is incontestable: “[H]e who thinks that he can write on early Ch’ing foreign policy, on the growth of the Lamaist Church or on Mongol history of the epoch without consulting this book is fooling himself and deceiving his readers.”

While in essence the vita of the First Changkya Khutuktu already is a practical example of the wide field of the diverging objectives of religion and state and the difficulty to reconcile these two realms of society, the concept was discussed much earlier in Mongolian history and became the subject of Klaus Sagaster’s postdoctoral thesis about the Čaγan teu͏̈ke (“Weiße Geschichte”). The relationship of secular order and sacral order, simply called ‘two systems’ or ‘two orders’, qoyar yosun / qous yosun; lugs gñis / lugs zuṅ, was a principle first documented in the 13th century. A codification of social and political reforms for a unified state system traditionally ascribed to the reign of Qubilai (1260–1294) preserved in a quasi-legal document, the Čaγan teu͏̈ke (“White History”), supposedly the earliest known Mongol work concerning the union of religion and state. The book, probably composed at the command of Qubilai, worked out by him and ‘Phags pa Lama between 1272–80, expressed the governing idea that the Mongol emperor and his lama stood as universal rulers in their respective secular and sacred domains (for an excellent summary of the concept, see Samuel M. Grupper’s review of the “Weiße Geschichte”). In Europe, a comparable constellation of rule over the secular and sacred domains was known as Caesaropapism. In his Introduction, Klaus Sagaster demonstrates a profound knowledge of ecclesiastical authority and regulations in Europe, thus revealing the universal commons of the immanent and transcendent spheres of human society between East and West. Denis Sinor’s appraisal, originally written about “Subud erike”, holds equally true for both works: “An immense amount of erudition, ingenuity and sheer work went into the preparation of this volume, a splendid example of German orientalist scholarship at its best.”

Klaus Sagaster published numerous articles on Chinggis Khan and related religious aspects. Here again, we come across the continuo of his life-long occupation with the ‘two orders’, albeit from a completely different perspective.

In the early 1980s, Klaus Sagaster spent many years researching the culture, history and oral literature of the Balti people. Frequently accompanied by his wife Ursula Sagaster who would later publish an exhibition catalogue about the Balti people, he made a number of field trips to Baltistan, the Pakistani-administered territory of Gilgit-Baltistan in Kashmir. He collected samples of the Gesar Epic and occupied himself with the translation and the compilation of a glossary of these specimens of oral literature in Balti, a Tibetan language retaining strong influences of old Tibetan. While Klaus did not live to see the fruition of this labour, we do know that the materials are in good hands and work in this subject will continue.

Klaus’ interests and scholarly publications cover a much wider range of subjects than touched here. He received numerous awards in recognition of his scholarly work, among them two recognitions awarded by the Mongolian Academy of Sciences. Being active in several learned societies (e. g. the Societas Uralo-Altaica and the Permanent International Altaistic Conference [PIAC]), he was the longest-serving active member of the PIAC and a witness of its very beginnings since the inaugural Meeting in 1958, spanning a history of 63 years with his last participation in 2021. He was awarded with the Indiana University Prize for Altaic Studies, colloquially known as “PIAC Medal”, in 2008.

Klaus Sagaster was a person of exceptional warmth and hospitality. His uncompromising rigour in scholarly dispute was most splendidly complemented by a wonderful sense of humour combined with profound modesty. Having been a guest at the Sagasters’ family home over many decades, I offer my deepest condolences to his daughter Börte and his son Matthias.

We pine and thirst for revelation; Klaus is no longer with us yet the ocean of his knowledge will continue to be a source of insight and inspiration for generations of scholars to come.

Oliver Corff
Secretary General
December 15, 2025

Sources:

Bawden, C. R.: [Review of the “Weiße Geschichte”]. Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London, 1978, Vol. 41, No. 2 (1978), pp. 400–401.

Grupper, Samuel C.: [Review of the “Weiße Geschichte”]. Mongolian Studies, 1981-2, Vol. 7 (1981-2), pp. 127-133.

Kollmar-Paulenz, Karénina: Klaus Sagaster. Curriculum vitae. In: Kollmar-Paulenz, Karénina (ed.): Tractata Tibetica et Mongolica: Festschrift für Klaus Sagaster zum 65. Geburtstag. Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz, 2002, pp. XV—XVIII.

Sagaster, Klaus (Herausgegeben, übersetzt und kommentiert): Subud Erike. Ein Rosenkranz aus Perlen. Die Biographie des 1. Pekinger lČaṅ skya Khutukhtu Ṅag dbaṅ blo bzaṅ č’os ldan, verfasst von Ṅag dbaṅ č’os ldan alias Šes rab dar rgyas. (= Asiatische Forschungen, Band 20) Wiesbaden : Harrassowitz, 1967.

Sagaster, Klaus (Herausgegeben, übersetzt und kommentiert): Die weisse Geschichte: Eine mongolische Quelle zur Lehre von den beiden Ordnungen Religion und Staat in Tibet und der Mongolei = (Čayan teu͏̈ke). Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz, 1976.

Sagaster, Ursula: Die Baltis : ein Bergvolk im Norden Pakistans. Frankfurt a. M.: Museum für Völkerkunde, 1989.

Sehnalova, Anna: An interview with Klaus Sagaster. Oral History of Tibetan Studies, November 23, 2018. https://oralhistory.iats.info/interviews/klaus-sagaster/ (last visited December 11, 2025).

Sinor, Denis: [Review of the “Subud erike”]. Journal of Asian History, Vol. 5, No. 2 (1971), pp. 159–160.

Stolpe, Ines: Wir trauern um Professor Dr. Klaus Sagaster (1933–2025) https://www.ioa.uni-bonn.de/mongtib/de/colloquien/bilder-und-pdfs/wir-trauern-um-prof-dr-klaus-sagaster.pdf (last accessed December 11, 2025).

 

Obituary: Zeynep Korkmaz (1922–2025)

Zeynep Korkmaz
July 5th, 1922 – February 6th, 2025

Zeynep Korkmaz

Zeynep Korkmaz

Born in Nevşehir and raised there until elementary school, Zeynep Korkmaz completed her primary and secondary education in Urla and İzmir after her family moved to İzmir. She then moved to Ankara for her higher education and enrolled in the Department of Turkish Language and Literature in the Faculty of Language, History, and Geography (Dil ve Tarih-Coğrafya Fakültesi) at Ankara University in the 1940–1941 academic year. During her studies, she was a student of renowned linguists such as Hasan Eren, Saadet Çağatay, Tahsin Banguoğlu, and Besim Atalay. After graduating from university in 1944, Zeynep Korkmaz (her maiden name was Zeynep Dengi) first became an assistant at the Gazi Eğitim Enstitüsü (Gazi Education Institute) and then at the Faculty of Language, History, and Geography in 1948.

While working as an assistant, Zeynep Korkmaz conducted fieldwork on the dialects of Western Anatolia. During this period, she married Mehmet Korkmaz and had a son in 1950. Her doctoral thesis, based on her fieldwork, was published under the title Southwestern Anatolian Dialects (Phonetic).

In 1954, she was sent to Hamburg, Germany, with the faculty’s budget. There, she took courses from A. von Gabain and O. Pritsak. She returned to Turkey in 1955 and became an associate professor the same year. In 1963, she was appointed professor with her work Nevşehir ve Yöresi Ağızları (Dialects of Nevşehir and its Surroundings).

In the following years, she continued her work on linguistics, Turkish suffixes, and the Turkish language reform. In addition, she conducted studies on Old Ottoman Turkish, Oğuz languages, and Oğuz Turkish, publishing the Old Ottoman Turkish Marzubannâme.

She taught not only at Ankara University but also at Hacettepe and Gazi Universities during various periods. In addition to her academic duties at the university, she also held various administrative positions in academic institutions, the Turkish Language Association (TDK), The Council of Higher Education (YÖK), and Turkish Radio and Television Corporation (TRT). She participated in numerous conferences in Turkey and abroad with papers on Turkish language and culture. Zeynep Korkmaz, who has received many awards, received the PIAC Medal in 2003. Although she ended her teaching activities at universities in the early 1990s, she continued to participate in national and international Turkology conferences until the end of the 2010s.

Zeynep Korkmaz participated in well over a dozen Annual Meetings of the PIAC, her earliest participation on record was at the 12th Meeting in Berlin (1969), the title of her paper being “Die Frage des Verhältnisses der anatolischen Mundarten zu ihrer ethnischen Struktur.” At the 29th Meeting of the PIAC in Tashkent (1986), she was the head of the Turkish delegation.

When Zeynep Korkmaz is mentioned, the first things that come to mind are her contributions to the grammar of Turkish, the grammar book she prepared, and her pioneering work on Anatolian dialectology.

Mehmet Ölmez
October 2025

Selected Works

Güney-Batı Anadolu Ağızları Ses Bilgisi (Fonetik), AÜ DTCF yayınları: 114, Ankara 1956 (2nd edition, Ankara 1994, TDK).

Türk Dilinin Tarihi Akışı İçinde Atatürk ve Dil Devrimi, AÜ DTCF yayınları: 147, Ankara 1963.

Nevşehir ve Yöresi Ağızları, I Cilt: Ses Bilgisi (Phonetique), AÜ DTCF yayınları: 142, Ankara 1963; 2nd edition, Ankara 1977; 3rd edition, Türk Dil Kurumu, Ankara 1994.

Sadrü’d-din Şeyhoğlu, Marzubân-nâme Tercümesi, Giriş- İnceleme-Metin-Sözlük-Tıpkıbasım, AÜ DTCF yayınları: 219, Ankara 1973; 2nd edition, Türk Dil Kurumu, Ankara 2017.

Gramer Terimleri Sözlüğü, Türk Dil Kurumu, Ankara 1992.

Türkiye Türkçesi Grameri: Şekil Bilgisi, Türk Dil Kurumu, Ankara 2003.

Türk Dili Üzerine Araştırmalar, Türk Dil Kurumu, Ankara 1995.

Festschriften

Prof. Dr. Zeynep Korkmaz’a Armağan, Türk Kültürü Araştırmaları, vol. XXXII, 1994, Ankara 1996.

Zeynep Korkmaz Armağanı, Türk Dil Kurumu, Ankara 2004.

Türklük Biliminin Ulu Çınarı Zeynep Korkmaz Armağanı, ed. Leylâ Karahan, Türk Kültürünü Araştırma Ensitüsü, Ankara 2017.

Articles about Zeynep Korkmaz (also used for this obituary)

Hamza Zülfikar, “Hocam Prof. Dr. Zeynep Korkmaz”. Zeynep Korkmaz Armağanı, Ankara 2004: 1–24.

Leyla Karahan, “95 Yılı Geride Bırakmış Bir “Ulu Çınar”ın Hayat Hikâyesi”. Türklük Biliminin Ulu Çınarı Zeynep Korkmaz Armağanı. Ankara: Türk Kültürünü Araştırma Enstitüsü, 2017: 3–12.

Leyla Karahan, Türkçeyle Yaşamak, Zeynep Korkmaz Kitabı. Ankara: Bengü Yayınları, 2018.

Leyla Karahan, “Hocam Prof. Dr. Zeynep Korkmaz’ın Ardından / After the Passing of My Professor, Prof. Dr. Zeynep Korkmaz”, Dil Araştırmaları / Journal of Language Studies, Year: 19, Period: 2025- Spring, Number: 36: 271–278.

Obituary: Sigrid Kleinmichel (1938–2024)

In Memoriam
Sigrid Kleinmichel
April 29, 1938 – September 06, 2024

Sigrid Kleinmichel, born April 29, 1938, died in Berlin, Germany, after short illness, on September 06, 2024.

In 1956, the German Democratic Republic sent Sigrid Kleinmichel to study Turkology in Leningrad, Soviet Union, a quite unusual field for a young woman from Germany to engage in. Yet it must have been a very good match, and until the end of her life, Sigrid Kleinmichel was a philologist with heart and soul who pursued the field of Turkology passionately. After graduating in 1961, she returned to Germany and became a member of the Humboldt University in Berlin where she taught and researched in the field of Turkic Studies for twelve years. In 1971, under the supervision of Prof. György Hazai (1932–2016), she completed her doctorate at Humboldt University with a linguistic study on the Marzubān-nāme, a mid-15th century text of the “mirrors of princes” genre, written in Old-Ottoman Turkish.

In 1974, Sigrid Kleinmichel moved to the Academy of Sciences of the GDR where she became a scholar at the Central Institute for the History of Literature (1969–1991). After learning Uzbek and Kazakh on site in Central Asia, she worked on the literatures of the Turkic-speaking peoples of the Soviet Union and of Turkey. Her expertise spanned a broad field in terms of time and genres, encompassing various Turkic languages, with a focus on Uzbek literature. By the time of the political changes in the 1990s, she built up an unusually large international network of Orientalists and scholars from other disciplines in various countries.

From 1994 to 2011, Sigrid Kleinmichel was affiliated with the Institute of Turkology, Free University of Berlin, where she continued her research and taught Uzbek and Kazakh language and gave seminars on Uzbek, Chagatay and Uyghur literature. Engaged in supporting students with her advices on theses and dissertations, always ready to share her extensive knowledge with colleagues; combined with her friendly and modest manner, Sigrid Kleinmichel was an appreciated conversation partner.

After the political changes in Germany in the 1990s, Sigrid Kleinmichel began to publish her research results and to implement innovative research approaches. In 1993, her first monography, a groundbreaking study on Uzbek literature appeared: Awakening from Oriental poetry traditions: studies on Uzbek drama and prose between 1910 and 1934.¹ This work deals with the Jadid Muslim national reform movement and the fate of Uzbek writers murdered during the Stalinist terror.

In 2000, Khalpa in Khorezm and ātin āyi in the Fergana valley: on the history of reading in Uzbekistan in the 20th century, an interdisciplinary study that focuses on women who recite religious texts, was published.² Located in the disciplines of ethnology, religious and cultural studies, literature and linguistics, popular Islam in Central Asia and the transmission of knowledge among women are analysed. The study represents a milestone in Central Asian literary research reaching far beyond the proper discipline of Turkic Studies.

In 2009, The Birth of the Prophet Muḥammad: three poems from Central Asia, a comprehensive work on Mevlid poetry in popular piety and scholarly literature since the Islamic Middle Ages followed.³ And finally, in 2016, the book Ijob between Self-Incrimination and Protest: poems from Central Asia, 19th to 20th century, a philological work, editing, translating, and commenting on a corpus of 86 Chagatay poems on Ijob, was published.⁴

Sigrid Kleinmichel attended four Meetings of the PIAC, in 1969, 1972, 1988 and 1991.

Sigrid Kleinmichel was a committed person with many social contacts. After her retirement, she volunteered to teach German as a Foreign Language, supported female Usbek students, and initiated and hosted a private literary salon in her home. Behaving humanely, taking social and historical circumstances into account, imparting culture and literature, and developing language skills were always important for her. With gratitude, we look back at her work and the time we could spend with her. We miss her as a conversation partner, as a very friendly person with an enormous knowledge who brought different worlds together.

Karin Schweißgut*
October 14, 2025

Anetshofer, Helga et al. (eds.): Über Gereimtes und Ungereimtes diesseits und jenseits der Turcia : Festschrift für Sigrid Kleinmichel zum 70. Geburtstag. Schöneiche bei Berlin : Scrîpvaz-Verl., 2008. Contains a bibliography of Sigrid Kleinmichel’s publications (pp. 19–28 op. cit.)

[1] Kleinmichel, Sigrid: Aufbruch aus orientalischen Dichtungstraditionen : Studien zur usbekischen Dramatik und Prosa zwischen 1910 und 1934. Wiesbaden : Harrassowitz, 1993. https://www.harrassowitz-verlag.de/Aufbruch_aus_orientalischen_Dichtungstraditionen/titel_432.ahtml

[2] Kleinmichel, Sigrid: Ḫalpa in Choresm (Ḫwārazm) und ātin āyi im Ferghanatal : zur Geschichte des Lesens in Usbekistan im 20. Jahrhundert. Berlin : Das Arabische Buch, 2000 und Berlin : Klaus Schwarz, 2021. https://doi.org/10.1515/9783112400227

[3] Kleinmichel, Sigrid: Die Geburt des Propheten Muḥammad : drei Dichtungen aus Mittelasien. Wiesbaden : Reichert, 2009. https://reichert-verlag.de/buchreihen/geographie_reihen/geographie_iran_turan/9783895006760_die_geburt_des_propheten_muhammad-detail

[4] Kleinmichel, Sigrid: Hiob zwischen Selbstbezichtigung und Protest : Gedichte aus Mittelasien (19. bis 20. Jahrhundert). Wiesbaden : Reichert Verlag, 2016. https://reichert-verlag.de/buchreihen/geographie_reihen/geographie_iran_turan/9783954901494_hiob_zwischen_selbstbezichtigung_und_protest-detail

* ORCID-ID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-0222-8522

67th Meeting Gotemba, 2025

Dear Reader,

the 67th Annual Meeting of the PIAC was held in Gotemba, Shizuoka Prefecture, Japan, from August 26 to 30, 2025. Held for the second time only in Japan, It was a very successful meeting with 51 participants, among them many young first-time participants.

The report of the Meeting is now online.

Oliver Corff
Secretary General
September 02, 2025

Obituary: Typhaine Cann (1986–2025)

Typhaine Cann (1986–2025)

It was with profound shock and sorrow that we learned of the death of the exceptionally talented young French Mongolist and Cultural anthropologist, Typhaine Cann, who passed away on June 7, 2025. This devastating news is difficult to grasp; in our grief, we join Typhaine’s family, friends, and colleagues in mourning her loss.

Born in 1986 in Brest, a coastal city on France’s western edge, Typhaine devoted her studies to the exploration of cultures in their many dimensions. Alongside her work in anthropology, she pursued studies in political science (Institute of Political Sciences, Lille) and social sciences (UBO / Lycée de Kérichen, Brest).

Her first encounter with Mongolia came in 2005, when she began working as an intern at the French Embassy in Ulaanbaatar. This experience, renewed over several years, marked the beginning of a lifelong dedication to Mongolian culture and history.

Typhaine earned her master’s degree in 2009 and her first PhD in cultural anthropology in 2014 at the University of Western Brittany (UBO), Brest. Her dissertation, L’invention du paysage culturel sous-marin: le traitement en patrimoine des épaves de la Mer d’Iroise et ses ambiguïtés (link), examined how scuba divers engaged in preserving underwater cultural heritage appropriate and reinvent history – both collective and personal memory – through their practices. Her city of Brest, occupied by the German Navy for four years and later destroyed by Allied bombardments, provided a poignant context for her research on the weight of memory. In 2016, her dissertation was published as the monograph Secrets d’épaves, plongeurs, archéologues, collectionneurs (Presses universitaires de Rennes, link).

From 2014, Typhaine worked as a Research Associate at the University of Western Brittany, teaching courses on Anthropology and patrimonialisation, Material civilisation, Tourism and identity, Introduction to anthropology, and Maritime anthropology. Beginning in 2015, she conducted extensive fieldwork in Mongolia, often for several months each year, in association with the Academy of Sciences, Department of History and Archaeology, focusing especially on Zuungov’ province. Alongside her scholarly pursuits, she also served as an official interpreter of Mongolian for French courts.

It was the late Alexander Vovin who first drew my attention to Typhaine, and after our initial exchanges, I was honored to become the supervisor of her second PhD, this time in Mongolian studies. After long preparations, she began her doctoral training at the University of Szeged. This period of collaboration proved extraordinarily fruitful, thanks to her tireless energy and intellectual curiosity. Despite the disruptions of the covid pandemic, Typhaine relocated to Ulaanbaatar to gather crucial material for her dissertation. In 2021, she presented on site at PIAC’s only hybrid session in Ulaanbaatar, delivering her paper The invention of the national hero in socialist Mongolia: Magsarzhav, Sükhbaatar, Choibalsan.

Her stamina and dedication were remarkable. While completing and defending her second doctoral dissertation at the University of Szeged – Heroes, exemplars and mediators. The concept of patriotism in the Mongolian historical novel of the socialist era (link) – she simultaneously undertook the monumental task of translating one of Mongolia’s literary classics, Chadraabalyn Lodoidamba’s Tungalag Tamir, published in 2024 as La Tamir aux eaux limpides (Transboréal, link). This translation represented a major contribution to the dissemination of Mongolian literature in Europe, extending its reach well beyond a specialist readership.

Following her successful defense, Typhaine immediately began translating Byambyn Rinchen’s novel Üüriin Tuyaa. She was full of plans for the future: her next academic ambition was to pursue the Doctor of Science degree at the Mongolian Academy of Sciences. Yet time was too short, and this extraordinary path was cut short by her untimely passing in the country she had chosen as her second homeland.

For those of us who knew her, her death leaves an irreplaceable void.

Dear Teegii, Бурхны оронд тайван нойрсдоо!

 

Ákos Bertalan Apatóczky
August 30, 2025

The Collected Works by Okada Hidehiro, Vol. VIII, new edition

Dear Reader,

It is the editor’s distinguished pleasure to announce that a new edition of the VIIIth volume of The Collected Works by Prof. Hidehiro Okada is now available. Published by Fujiwara-shoten (ISBN: 978-4-86578-469-5)  in Japan and ready for immediate release, this volume is in great part dedicated to the PIAC. Its title reads (in Japanese and English): Sixty Years in Eurasian Studies of the World. The title illustration shows the original PIAC medal (Indiana University Prize for Altaic Studies) which Prof. Okada was awarded in 1999. Prof. Okada was also the President of the 38th Annual Meeting held in Kawasaki, Japan, in 1995.

The revised and enlarged edition contains added materials, notably with reference to the PIAC.

Oliver Corff
— Secretary General —
August 30, 2025

Obituary: Michael Weiers

In Memoriam
Michael Weiers
(December 26, 1937 — July 17, 2025)

Michael Weiers was born in Bernried am Starnberger See, in one of the most beautiful landscapes of Bavaria, on the second day of Christmas of the year 1937. His grammar school years (the proper German term is Gymnasium) offered him a broad exposure to the world of classical languages as Greek and Latin were a mandatory part of the grammar school curriculum.

This exposure to the intellectual heritage of Europe is a core objective of the idea of humanism, a worldview the foundations of which are rooted in Classical antiquity.

It must have been this education in combination with the proximity of Bavaria to Italy (by far not only in the sense of geography, but also determined by those immaterial sentiments of life [“Lebensgefühl”, as the Germans would say] as reflected in Baroque decorative arts and religious life) that made the young Michael Weiers explore Italy during his university years. From 1958 onwards, he did not only attend university in Munich and (later) Bonn, but also spent years in Rome and Naples.

The subjects he studied truly reflected both the spirit of Renaissance Man, or, equally true, the ideals of the late 19th century idea of a linguist and philologist commanding a vast array of languages. He took courses in Semitic studies, followed by Manju, Mongolian, Chinese and Tibetan studies, and he broadened his horizon by taking classes in Turkology, Islamic studies, Central Asian studies in Language and Culture, as well as Comparative Religious studies. Throughout his academic life, his most productive focus was centered in the fields of Manju and Mongolian studies, assisted and supported by all the other fields he was interested in during his formative years at university.

During his university years (and later on), he had the privilege to attend classes held by the most prominent authorities in their respective fields. His curriculum vitae lists, among others, Herbert Franke, Helmut Hoffmann, Joachim Kissling, Giuseppe Tucci, Luciano Petech, Francesco Gabrieli, Alessio Bombaci and Walther Heissig, many of whom were later to become prominent contributors to the Permanent International Altaistic Conference (PIAC), or, in the case of Walther Heissig, one of the founding fathers of the PIAC.

In his scholarly work, Michael Weiers had a strong interest in the rule-based foundations of language in general, and their many expressions in linguistic and philological practice. His Ph.D. dissertation in 1965 on the historical grammar of preclassical Mongolian was considered outstanding (Latin: egregie) and was honoured with the Prize of the Association of Friends of the University of Bonn (short in German: “Geffrub-Preis”). He rose through the ranks of the University of Bonn which would become his life-long intellectual home base from where he undertook numerous expeditions. To name just one example, he conducted field work among the Moghol in Herat, Afghanistan (1969–1972); basis of an authoritative monograph and series of papers which qualified him for the post of professor in 1972. He would hold this status until his retirement in 2003.

One field in which he made singular contributions was the study and research of the so-called Old Manju Archive Materials, or Jiu Manzhou Dang 舊滿洲檔 being the precursor to—and sometimes erroneously taken for—the more widely known Manwen Laodang. He was the only European scholar working on this subject which traditionally was considered a Chinese and Japanese domain. His field work in Taiwan in 1971 brought a rich harvest of Manju and Mongolian materials, source for many of his later papers.

In his publications (his bibliography lists approximately 350 titles, the last one published recently, in 2022), he covered a number of fields. The languages of the Mongolian language family were but one of his fields of interest. He also was either editor or co-editor of journals like Zentralasiatische Studien or series like Aetas Manjurica, to name just two examples. Besides his scholarly work, he had a keen interest in disseminating the knowledge of his field to broader audiences. He contributed at least a dozen or more articles to the Brockhaus Enzyklopädie, a flagship of German encyclopediae with roots in the Age of Enlightenment. Yet, the encyclopedia as such was not only a means of disseminating knowledge, it was also subject of his research he conducted on the lexicology and lexicography of Mongolian and Manju. It is no wonder at all that he also contributed the article on “Mongolian Lexicography” in Wörterbücher. Ein internationales Handbuch zur Lexikographie (Dictionaries. An International Encyclopedia of Lexicography).

Michael Weiers attended three Meetings of the PIAC, in 1974, 1977 and 1984.

One of his closest colleagues broke the news of Michael Weiers’ departure to the author of these lines with the words “the ranks are thinning out”. True this is, and deeply saddening as well. The community of Altaic scholars mourns the loss of an outstanding peer.

Oliver Corff
Secretary General
July 20th, 2025