The Sinologist Wolfgang Franke as Researcher and Cultural Broker

The Sinologist Wolfgang Franke as Researcher and Cultural Broker

by Stefan Messingschlager (Hamburg)

Wolfgang Franke (1912-2007), a sinologist, historian, and from 1950 to 1977, the Chair of Sinology at the University of Hamburg, significantly contributed to the global reputation of the Seminar for Language and Culture of China during his tenure in Hamburg. As one of the first sinologists in Germany, he advocated for an increased focus on contemporary China shortly after World War II.

This CrossAsia thematic portal aims to provide an in-depth look into his life and work, based on the academic and personal estate of Wolfgang Franke preserved at the Berlin State Library. It encompasses a wide range of aspects, from his academic journey, research activities, and travels, to his role as a cultural broker in public discourse. A thematic portal dedicated to an individual who experienced and influenced nearly a century cannot be exhaustive; however, it offers insights into the defining phases and turning points of his biography, thereby also shedding light on closely related topics, such as the development of Sinology in the post-war period.

Wolfgang Franke’s Early Years in Hamburg and Berlin (1912-1937): Youth and Education

Wolfgang Franke (mid-1920s) ©unknown

Wolfgang Franke was born on July 24^th, 1912, in Hamburg, as the son of Otto Franke (1863-1946), a doyen of German Sinology, and his wife Louise, née Niebuhr. Growing up as the youngest of four children in a villa near the Outer Alster, his early life was marked by both privilege and personal tragedy, with both of his brothers dying young and a sister who was fourteen years his senior.

To shield him from the post-World War I turmoil, his parents provided a sheltered upbringing, beginning with a private primary school, followed by a prestigious preparatory school, and culminating at the humanistic Johanneum. In 1923, the family relocated to Berlin, where his father had been appointed to the chair of Sinology at the Friedrich-Wilhelms-Universität.

The omnipresence of China in the young Wolfgang Franke’s life, and the profound influence his father’s role as a full professor of Sinology must have had, is illustrated, among other things, by the following memory Franke shared about his time in Hamburg:

“The house I grew up in was filled with Chinese furniture and other Chinese items: In the salon, there were displays of Chinese porcelains and other small art objects, the hallway was adorned with beautiful cloisonné vases and plates; in my father’s study, there were numerous shelves filled with Chinese books (block prints). At the dinner table and elsewhere, there was frequent discussion about China, where my parents had spent the first years of their marriage. Often, Chinese visitors came to our house, among them Mr. Shang Yanliu, a renowned Chinese scholar of the old school, whom my father had managed to recruit for the development of the Seminar for Language and Culture of China.”

(Source: Franke, Wolfgang, Im Banne Chinas, Part: 1912-1950, Bochum 1995, p. 3)

In Berlin, the family moved into a settlement specially constructed for newly appointed professors in the Wilmersdorf district, whose houses, however, fell far short in size and construction of what the family was accustomed to in Hamburg. In the immediate neighborhood, stemming from a similar social milieu, Wolfgang Franke found numerous contacts, but he struggled with the climate of the Berlin schools. He changed high schools twice and eventually graduated from Grunewald Gymnasium in the spring of 1930.

Otto Franke, Wolfgang Franke’s father, was a professor of Sinology in Hamburg and Berlin from 1910 to 1931 (1934) ©unknown

To his father’s surprise, he immediately began studying Sinology afterwards. In his “Erinnerungen aus zwei Welten”, Otto Franke writes:

“The youngest and only son remaining to us passed the matriculation exam in Berlin in 1930 and decided immediately, without hesitation, but without any interference from my side and to my great surprise, to dedicate himself to Sinology. A strange influence of the environment, for the biological explanation will fail here.”

(Source: Franke, Otto, Erinnerungen aus zwei Welten, Randglossen zur eigenen Lebensgeschichte, Berlin 1954, p. 178)

Wolfgang Franke initially studied in Berlin, where he successfully passed the diploma examination at the Seminar for Oriental Languages in July 1932. After attending courses, among others, with his father and his successor, Erich Haenisch (1880-1966), he moved to Hamburg in 1934. He did so, by his own account, to avoid having to complete his doctorate under Haenisch, who had a different basic understanding of the field of Sinology than he did. His most important teacher in Hamburg was Fritz Jäger (1886-1957), a former student and assistant of his father, who served there from 1931 first as an associate and later as a full professor of Sinology. Franke completed his studies in January 1935 with a dissertation on the reformer Kang Youwei (1858-1927).

The Formative Years (1937-1950): Work and Life in China

Reception room at the German Institute in Beijing (1938) ©unknown

After completing his doctorate and a year of military service in a cavalry regiment, Franke realized his long-held wish to go to China. In Beijing, he found employment as a secretary at the Deutschland-Institut there, which had been established in 1931 to promote German-Chinese cultural exchange. From the autumn of 1937 until just after the end of the war, Franke was responsible for the various internal affairs of the Institute, including conducting German courses and editing the journal Research and Progress (研究与进步 / 中德学志, published 1938-1945). During these years, he made numerous contacts with Chinese people, particularly Chinese researchers, and maintained a lively exchange with sinologists who were in China, including Max Loehr (1903-1988), Gustav Ecke (1896-1971), and Alfred Hoffmann (1911-1997). Many of these contacts would ultimately become formative for his later academic life in Germany.

In his autobiography, Wolfgang Franke especially highlights the significance of the sinologist and Tungusologist Walter Fuchs (1902-1979), who worked with him at the Deutschland-Institut from 1940. Fuchs regularly invited German sinologists to a kind of sinological seminar, which Franke remembered as particularly fruitful. Fuchs was also a crucial catalyst for Franke’s early sinological research. Franke wrote in his memoirs:

“All my initial sinological works from 1940 to 1945 came about under the influence of Fuchs. Without his encouragement and help, I would hardly have acquired bibliographical knowledge and my own library.”

(Source: Franke, Wolfgang, Im Banne Chinas, Part: 1912-1950, Bochum 1995, p. 83)

The Sinologists Walter Fuchs and Wolfgang Ecke in Beijing (1938) ©unknown

For Franke and Fuchs, the Deutschland-Institut served as a sort of apolitical sanctuary, where, even after the war began, many things continued as before. They managed to keep the Institute largely free from National Socialist influences. Franke stated:

“Fuchs ensured harmonious cooperation with the Beijing embassy, which had been newly staffed the previous year. The German authorities did not concern themselves with the internal affairs of the Deutschland-Institut. Books banned by the Nazis were placed in a special section in the library. In the catalog of German-language books printed at the end of 1940, these titles were printed on a separate sheet, which could be included or removed depending on the recipient who was to receive the catalog.”

(Source: Franke, Wolfgang, Im Banne Chinas, Part: 1912-1950, Bochum 1995, p. 111)

Just before the end of World War II, Wolfgang Franke married the Chinese Hu Chün-yin (胡隽吟) (1910-1988), whom he had known since 1939 through her work as an editor and translator at the Deutschland-Institut. An earlier marriage would have jeopardized Franke’s position at the Deutschland-Institut, as a liaison with a Chinese woman was not accepted by the Nazi regime.

After the end of World War II, no financial resources were forthcoming from Germany to the Deutschland-Institut, so all employees had to be dismissed. Wolfgang Franke and his wife initially lived off their savings, then from Wolfgang Franke’s teaching assignment at Furen University and Hu Chün-yin’s income as the head of a city orphanage. Through his father-in-law’s mediation, Franke received teaching assignments at West China University and Sichuan University in Chengdu in September 1946, before being appointed to the prestigious Peking University in October 1948. However, the political developments ultimately made it impossible for him to remain in China. The victory of the Communists in the civil war against the Guomindang and the proclamation of the People’s Republic of China in October 1949 meant that almost all Western citizens had to leave the country. It was a fortunate turn of events that Franke was appointed to the chair of Sinology in Hamburg in 1950.

As Wolfgang Franke would often recount later, it was these 13 years in China that shaped his essence. He was under “the spell of China” (German: “Im Banne Chinas”) for the rest of his life, as aptly titled in his autobiography – and if one believes his self-characterization, from then on, he primarily saw himself as Chinese and felt somewhat alienated from his old German homeland.

In Otto Franke’s estate, one finds an extensive private correspondence with his family. This correspondence is now housed in the German Historical Museum and can be viewed there. The letter edition, compiled by Renata Fu-sheng Franke, contains eighty letters by Otto Franke in full text, as well as excerpts from the letters of his wife, his daughter, and his son in Beijing from the years 1937 to 1946. Below is a selection:

In Hamburg and the World (1950-2007): Franke as Researcher, Academic Teacher, and Cultural Broker

For the winter semester of 1950/51, Wolfgang Franke took over the professorship of Sinology at the University of Hamburg, a position previously held by his father, Otto Franke, from 1910 to 1923. Franke became the director of the Seminar for Language and Culture of China (1950-1970) and played a crucial role in the re-establishment and further development of Sinology in Germany until his retirement in 1977.

Wolfgang Franke’s appointment certificate (1950)

At the end of World War II, German Sinology was largely in ruins. Many libraries had been destroyed, and there was a scarcity of qualified personnel untainted by the past to rebuild the discipline. For Franke, as a chair holder, it was an urgent task to reconstruct the subject in its institutional structures and later to expand it. In this context, the creation of a second professorship for Sinology in Hamburg was of particular importance: in 1967, it was possible to appoint Liu Mau-Tsai (1914–2007), the first Chinese scholar to a sinological professorship in Germany. He complemented the Hamburg Sinology with a focus on Chinese literature.

During his tenure as a chair holder in Hamburg, Franke took advantage of the diverse opportunities and freedoms available to him as a professor. He spent extended periods on research stays and held visiting professorships in Japan, the USA, Malaysia, and, after his retirement, also in China. Meanwhile, he was represented by renowned international colleagues, which gave the Hamburg Sinology a special flair in the post-war period.

In his research, Franke focused intensively on the Ming Dynasty from the 1940s onwards. His initial goal was to fulfill his father’s wish and continue his “History of the Chinese Empire” for the Ming and Qing Dynasties. Although Franke reluctantly abandoned this project in the 1960s because he did not share his father’s state-political view of history, influenced by the Prussian school of historicism, he continued his sinological source collection and historical research on Ming China in a variety of contributions. This focus ultimately became influential in shaping the field: the majority of his students engaged in their qualification theses with historical and specifically sinological aspects of the rich history of the Ming – which also received broad international resonance.

Wolfgang Franke with graduates of the Department of Chinese Studies in Kuala Lumpur (1970s) ©unknown

From the late 1960s, Wolfgang Franke’s central research interest became the study of the history of overseas Chinese in the Southeast Asian region. In 1963, he was offered a visiting professorship at the University of Malaya in Kuala Lumpur. Over the next three years, he taught Chinese history there and further developed the newly founded Department of Chinese Studies. The stay in Malaysia not only allowed him to live in a Chinese environment while the People’s Republic of China was still largely isolated, but it also gave him the opportunity to meticulously collect epigraphic material on the history of the overseas Chinese who had been living there for centuries. The study of the history of overseas Chinese in the Southeast Asian region became Franke’s new research focus from the late 1960s, which was supported by the DFG (German Research Foundation) from 1971 to 1974. After his retirement in 1977, Franke spent most of the year in Malaysia, which had become a second home for him. In the 1970s and 1980s, he undertook numerous trips through many countries of Southeast Asia; the fruits of this field research, a vast collection of epigraphic material, were published in the 1990s in the form of several source volumes. In the study of the history of overseas Chinese in Malaysia, Thailand, and Indonesia, these works are now considered essential reading.

Unlike the majority of German Sinology from the 1950s to the 1970s, Wolfgang Franke’s work was also characterized by a dedicated focus on modern China.

In 1935, Franke earned his doctorate with a thesis on Kang Youwei’s reform attempts in the final years of the Qing Dynasty. Even in the post-war period, he extensively engaged in the younger Chinese history and the Sino-Western relationship through monographs and journal articles. Noteworthy are his study “Das Jahrhundert der chinesischen Revolution 1851-1949” (1958) and his work “China und das Abendland” (1962), both of which were translated into English and established Franke as a significant cultural broker in the contemporary popular discourse on China.

Wolfgang Franke and the Sinologist Eduard Solich (1893-1982) at the East Asian Banquet in Hamburg (1950s) ©unknown

His extensive commentary on these topics, however, was not because Franke was particularly political—in his autobiography, he even describes himself as apolitical. Rather, the reading of his autobiography and interviews with his contemporaries gives the impression that, on one hand, Franke was convinced that understanding contemporary China and its relations with Western societies was impossible without engaging with its recent history. On the other hand, he saw the urgent need for intercultural mediation between China and Western societies to enhance the understanding of the “other”. Precisely for this reason, Franke advocated for a concept of Sinology that focuses on the history, society, and everyday culture of a modern China, rather than dealing exclusively with classical texts philologically. This approach is particularly evident in the highly acclaimed “China Handbuch” of 1974, which he compiled with his former student, sinologist Brunhild Staiger (1938-2017), gathering over 130 authors who contributed more than 300 short articles on various aspects of China since 1840.

The publication of the China Handbuch under the auspices of the Deutsche Gesellschaft für Ostasienkunde (DGOA) exemplifies Franke’s role not only as an international research figure but also his engagement in various institutions and committees. Besides the DGOA, the German Research Foundation (DFG) and the Volkswagen Foundation are particularly worth mentioning. Franke placed special importance on the Institut für Asienkunde (IfA) in Hamburg, which, since the late 1950s, served as a non-university research institute funded mainly by the Foreign Office, providing relevant studies on contemporary China and the Southeast Asian region. For several decades, he was a member of the institute’s board and collaborated with its staff in teaching and research.

Wolfgang Franke at the Junior Sinologists Conference in England (1959) ©unknown

Franke’s commitment to intercultural brokerage is further evidenced by the emphasis placed on learning modern Chinese colloquial language at the sinological seminar. Well into the 1960s, Hamburg’s Sinology was the only seminar nationwide that began studies with modern Chinese and taught classical written language later. Beyond the confines of his seminar, he advocated for the inclusion of modern China as an integral part of Sinology studies at universities.

Franke’s multifaceted engagement with contemporary China and his intercultural efforts in public discourse, not least through relevant China booklets for the Federal Agency for Civic Education and its predecessor, made him a sought-after consultant in political contexts. Franke’s advisory role to the planning staff of the Foreign Office on initial considerations for a German East Asia policy in the late 1960s, as well as his role as a consultant to Walter Scheel in the context of establishing diplomatic relations in the fall of 1972, can certainly be considered two of the most important episodes.

Schütte: China (2016) ©Karl Baedeker Verlag

However, Wolfgang Franke was not only a significant research figure and a cultural broker between East and West; he was also an academic teacher whose students went on to become renowned professors, including Tilemann Grimm, Bernd Eberstein, Boto Wiethoff, Monika Übelhör, and also Manfred Pohl in Japanese Studies.

Notable personalities who consciously chose against an academic career also emerged from Hamburg Sinology. A prime example is the sinologist and publicist Hans-Wilm Schütte (1948-), who earned his doctorate under Franke in the late 1970s on Marxist historiography in the People’s Republic of China. In the following decades, he became one of Germany’s most-read China publicists through his travel literature.

Franke’s impact and achievements are challenging to summarize succinctly; nonetheless, publicist Hans-Wilm Schütte managed to do so in an interview with the authors:

Wolfgang Franke in his study (1986) ©unknown

“Many foreigners live in China for years but only learn as much Chinese as they need for daily life and never learn to write and read Chinese. Back home, they are considered experts on China, although they are not. Wolfgang Franke’s stay in China, thanks to his language skills, gave him a familiarity with the country and its traditions like few others had at that time (in the fifties to seventies).

This combination of scholarly depth with the vivid present is what I consider exemplary in his approach to China. Moreover, he recognized the importance of collecting and accessing sources for further research. That’s tedious work, and it doesn’t earn one great accolades, but it lays a foundation that potentially generations of researchers can build upon.”

(Source: Written interview of the authors with Dr. Hans-Wilm Schütte, September 15th, 2023)

In addition to private letters, Wolfgang Franke’s estate also contains a rich professional correspondence, including exchanges with sinologists Fritz Jäger and Roland Felber (1935 – 2001), and the China expert and journalist Fritz van Briessen (1906 – 1987).

Wolfgang Franke and His Family

Wolfgang Franke met his future wife, Hu Chün-yin (胡隽吟), in 1939 through their joint work at the Deutschland-Institut in Beijing. Hu Chün-yin came from a military officer’s family in Shouxian, Anhui Province. She was the eldest of seven daughters of the Chinese government official Hu Wanji (胡萬吉) and his wife, Yan Shuzhen (鄢淑真). With her mother’s support – her father was studying in Germany at the time – she fought against the traditionally minded family head to obtain a middle school education. Afterwards, she completed her studies in pedagogy, psychology, and philosophy at Nankai University in Tianjin. Starting in 1933, she taught as a teacher and in teacher training, both full-time and part-time, at various middle schools in her home province of Anhui, in Tianjin, and Beijing. From 1941 to 1945, she worked as an editorial assistant at the Deutschland-Institut, where she contributed to the publication of the journal Research and Progress (研究与进步 / 中德学制, published 1938-1945) and, in addition to editorial work, also published her own articles.

Hu Chün-yin in 1941 ©unknown

After Wolfgang Franke moved into his own courtyard house in 1940, their relationship deepened, especially as he often sought her advice for many linguistic matters. As an employee of the Deutschland-Institut, paid for by the German side, Franke was initially unable to enter into an engagement with Hu Chün-yin. Under the Nazi regime, this would likely have led to the termination of both their positions. However, as the Allies’ superiority became apparent, their engagement finally took place in the fall of 1944, followed shortly by their marriage on March 3^rd, 1945.

After the war, when employees at the Deutschland-Institut were no longer being paid, the Frankes initially lived off their savings and from Chün-yin Franke’s work as a social welfare official in Beijing and director of an affiliated orphanage. In the following years, the family was also supported by Franke’s teaching positions at various Chinese universities, first in Chengdu and then in Beijing. In early summer 1950, Wolfgang Franke and his wife, along with their two children, Renata Fu-sheng (1946-) and Peter (1950-), relocated their entire household and extensive library to Hamburg, where Wolfgang Franke had been appointed to the professorship of Sinology at the University of Hamburg.

While Wolfgang Franke served as a full professor at the Seminar for Language and Culture of China, his wife initially worked at the same seminar as a lecturer in Chinese. As Chün-yin Franke writes in her unpublished memoirs, she had to give up this position because the faculty refused to allow the couple to work at the same seminar indefinitely.

The Franke family in Hamburg (1953) ©unknown

Chün-yin Franke accompanied her husband on many of his trips, not just as a companion, but often took on teaching assignments at institutes during these periods. While Franke taught at the Center for East Asian Studies at Harvard University in 1957/58, she worked there as a research assistant. When Franke served as a visiting professor at the University of Malaya in Kuala Lumpur from 1963 to 1966, she worked at the Department of Chinese Studies as a lecturer. In 1965, she was awarded a scholarship by the Lee Foundation, which allowed her to spend two months in Hong Kong at the end of the year studying Chinese opera, for which she had a particular fondness.

In the 1960s, Chün-yin taught Chinese language at the state evening, commercial, and foreign language school; in 1973, she was finally offered a regular lecturer position at the University of Frankfurt – a late professional satisfaction for her as a highly educated academic, according to her daughter.

In Franke’s unpublished reflections shortly after Chün-yin’s death in 1988, he underscores his great appreciation for his late wife:

“As a personality of the briefly outlined kind, Hu Chün-yin was the ideal life companion for a Western sinologist for whom his profession means a living connection to the Chinese cultural world beyond the handling of book knowledge. Initially, in China, the more experienced and slightly older Chinese companion significantly eased the young, aspiring scientist’s understanding and grasp of the Chinese environment, thereby giving him a certain security. Later, in Germany, in Malaysia, and again in China, Chün-yin was able not only to provide valuable help in the philological and substantive understanding of classical Chinese texts but also, as a conversation partner always ready for discussion, she stimulated continual intellectual debate on all topics concerning China as well as general topics. She was also able to impart values of Chinese culture to her children, Renata, born in 1946, and Peter, born in 1950, both of whom grew up with German schooling in Germany, beyond their knowledge of the Chinese language.”

(Source: Unpublished eulogy by Wolfgang Franke for Chün-yin Franke, Beijing, December 1988)

After the death of Chün-yin Franke in Beijing on December 7^th, 1988, Wolfgang Franke moved his main residence from Hamburg to Malaysia but continued to visit his children in Germany every summer for several weeks. At the advanced age of nearly 90 years, he left Malaysia for good and spent his final years with his daughter in Berlin.

Franke, Otto: „Sagt an, ihr fremden Lande“ (2009)

During this period, Renata Fu-sheng Franke, together with her father, delved deeply into the life of her grandfather Otto Franke. Together, they wrote an essay on Otto Franke as an education commissioner in Qingdao, explored Otto Franke’s estate, and edited his East Asian travel diaries. In an interview with the authors of this thematic portal, Renata Fu-sheng Franke wrote about her grandfather, who had died shortly after her birth:

“The more I engaged with Otto Franke, the more interested I became, and the more I came to appreciate him. I had to acknowledge that many of his foundational ideas were found in subsequent sinological publications – most often without referencing him.”

(Source: Written interview of the authors with Dr. Renata Fu-sheng Franke, September 16^th, 2023)

Wolfgang Franke passed away on September 6^th, 2007, at the age of 95 in Berlin. He left a lasting impact on the field of Sinology and was a highly esteemed teacher, leaving behind a multifaceted scholarly oeuvre. As a sought-after intercultural broker, he undoubtedly lived a life “im Banne Chinas,” as the title of his two-volume autobiography aptly describes.

Selective Bibliography:

Eberstein, Bernd/ Staiger, Brunhild (Ed.): China: Wege in die Welt. Festschrift für Wolfgang Franke zum 80. Geburtstag, Hamburg 1992.

Eberstein, Bernd: „Hoch oben stand er und schaute in die Weite“ – Nachruf auf Wolfgang Franke (24. Juli 1912 – 6. September 2007), in: Oriens Extremus 46 (2007), pp. 1-4.

Eberstein, Bernd: Wolfgang Franke 85 Jahre, in: Mitteilungen der Hamburger Sinologischen Gesellschaft 5 (1998), pp. 22-23.

Franke, Otto (Author), Renata Fu-sheng Franke und Wolfgang Franke (Hg.): „Sagt an, ihr fremden Lande“. Ostasienreisen. Tagebücher und Fotografien (1888-1901),
Collectanea Serica. Sankt Augustin Institut Monumenta Serica, 2009.

Franke, Peter (Ed.): China in unseren Köpfen. Ein Symposium zum 100. Geburtstag des Sinologen Wolfgang Franke, Bochum 2012 (available online).

Franke, Wolfgang/ Staiger, Brunhild (Ed.): China-Handbuch: Eine Veröffentlichung d. Dt. Ges. f. Ostasienkunde in Verbindung mit d. Inst. f. Asienkunde, Düsseldorf 1974.

Franke, Wolfgang: China und das Abendland, Göttingen 1962.

Franke, Wolfgang: Das Jahrhundert der chinesischen Revolution 1851-1949, München 1958.

Franke, Wolfgang: Im Banne Chinas, Teil: 1912-1950, Bochum 1995.

Franke, Wolfgang: Im Banne Chinas, Teil: 1950-1998, Bochum 1998.

Franke, Wolfgang: Reisen in Ost- und Südostasien 1937 – 1990, edited by Hartmut Walravens, Osnabrück 1998.

Grimm, Tilemann/ Schneider, Roland: Gegenwartsbezogene Ostasienwissenschaften, in: Oriens Extremus 24 1/2 (1977), pp. 39-51.

Liew, Foon Ming: Wolfgang Franke 1912-2007, in: Ming Studies 1 (2008), pp. 1-23.

Schütte, Hans-Wilm (Hg.): Fünfzig Jahre Institut für Asienkunde in Hamburg, Hamburg 2006.

Schütte, Hans-Wilm: Die Asienwissenschaften in Deutschland. Geschichte, Stand und Perspektiven, Hamburg 2004.

Staiger, Brunhild/ Wiethoff, Bodo: Verzeichnis der Veröffentlichungen von Wolfgang Franke, in: Oriens Extremus 24 1/2 (1977), pp. 21-35.

Staiger, Brunhild: Nachruf: Prof. Dr. Wolfgang Franke (1912-2007), in: ASIEN 106 (2008), pp. 116-118.

Stumpfeldt, Hans: Zur Geschichte der Abteilung für Sprache und Kultur Chinas und des Arbeitsbereichs Koreanistik, in: Ludwig Paul (Hg.): Vom Kolonialinstitut zum Asien-Afrika-Institut: 100 Jahre Asien- und Afrikawissenschaften in Hamburg, Gossenberg 2008, pp. 52-80.

Van Ess, Hans: History of Pre-Modern Chinese Studies in Germany, in: Journal of Chinese History 7 (2023), pp. 491-524.

Walravens, Hartmut: Wolfgang Franke in Memoriam, in: Monumenta Serica 55:1 (2007), pp. 527-532.

Wiethoff, Bodo: Wolfgang Franke, in: Oriens Extremus, Vol. 24 1/2 (1977), pp. 2-20.

Editorial Note and Acknowledgment:

This article has been developed by the authors based on their work with the estate of Wolfgang Franke. Both his academic and personal estates are available for viewing upon registration at the Berlin State Library, East Asia Department.

The photographs originate from Wolfgang Franke’s estate. The copyrights of the photos are no longer identifiable; this has been accordingly noted in each photo caption.

Special thanks are extended to Dr. Renata Fu-sheng Franke, who not only made the estate and countless images from her private collection available but also closely accompanied the creation process of the thematic portal and provided many helpful editorial suggestions. Furthermore, the authors thank their interview partners, PD Dr. Hartmut Walravens and Dr. Hans-Wilm Schütte, for their fruitful exchange.

For inquiries about the thematic portal or the academic estate, please feel free to contact Stefan Messingschlager (Email: messingschlager@hsu-hh.de).

Citation:

Stefan Messingschlager: The Sinologist Wolfgang Franke as Researcher and Cultural Broker, in: CrossAsia Thematic Portals of the Berlin State Library (2024), DOI: https://doi.org/10.48796/20240806-000