Johannes Benzing
Johannes Benzing | |
|---|---|
Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Johannes Gutenberg University Mainz |
Johannes Benzing (born in
Life
After high school, Benzing discovered his profound interest in scholarly issues.
He was interned between 1945 and 1946. There is no information available about his
Together with his fellow professors
Benzing always dealt with the written word in a highly economic way and communicated many of his boldest – and perhaps most fruitful – ideas in oral discussions only, without ever committing them to paper. After the long mobile phases of his life, he did not want to leave Mainz, which meant that he never attended conferences and congresses. On the other hand, he permanently welcomed visiting scholars from all parts of the world, generously sharing his wide knowledge and deep insights with them.
On 31 March 1981 Benzing retired from his position at the University of Mainz. Soon after the retirement, he and his wife Käte left Mainz and settled in the borough of Erdmannsweiler in Königsfeld im Schwarzwald, close to their birthplace in the Black Forest. In March 1998, they moved to Bovenden to stay with their daughter, Professor Brigitta Benzing-Wolde Georgis, and her husband, Dr. Kahsai Wolde Georgis.
Work
With his profound knowledge and wide perspective, Benzing continued the tradition of Willi Bang-Kaup's Berlin school of linguistic Turcology, though broadening its scope and refining its scholarly working procedures.[2] Besides publishing books and articles, Johannes Benzing devoted much time and care to highly instructive book reviews containing profound analyses and complementary remarks on important scholarly questions. A selection of these reviews: Critical contributions to ancient literature and Turkology (German: Kritische Beiträge zur Altaistik und Turkologie), appeared in 1988 as volume 3 in the series Turcologica magazine (Harrassowitz). Historical-comparative research on Turkic, Tungusic and Mongolic languages was Benzing's main field of interest, to which he contributed outstanding studies. One example of this is Benzing's critical occupation with the so-called Altaic question, the still controversial problem of a possible genetic relatedness of Turkic, Mongolic and Tungusic (maybe even Korean and Japanese). In a truly visionary paper: Menless land: Inner and North Asia as a philological work area (German:Herrenloses Land: Inner und Nordasien als philologisches Arbeitsgebiet), he argued that the ‘ownerless’ territory of Inner and Northern Asia, filling a fifth of the world's surface, should finally be subject to comprehensive scholarly study.[2]
Dr Johannes Benzing joined
Publications
- Bolgarisch-tschuwaschische Studien. Harrassowitz, Wiesbaden 1988
- Critical contributions to Altaistic and Turkology (German: Kritische Beiträge zur Altaistik und Turkologie), Harrassowitz, Wiesbaden 1988
- Kalmyk grammar for reference (German: Kalmückische Grammatik zum Nachschlagen), Harrassowitz, Wiesbaden 1985
- Chwaresmischer Wortindex, Harrassowitz, Wiesbaden 1983
- Islamic jurisprudence as a folklore source (German: Islamische Rechtsgutachten als volkskundliche Quelle), Akademie der Wiss. u.d. Literatur, Mainz 1977
- Die tungusischen Sprachen : Versuch e. vergl. Grammatik. Verl. d. Akad. d. Wiss. u.d. Literatur, Mainz 1955
- Lamutische Grammatik : Mit Bibliographie, Sprachproben u. Glossar. Steiner, Wiesbaden 1955
- Introduction to the Study of Altaic philology and Turkish Studies (German: Einführung in das Studium der altaischen Philologie und der Turkologie) . Harrassowitz, Wiesbaden 1953
- Deutsch-tschuwaschisches Wörterverzeichnis nebst kurzem tschuwaschischen Sprachführer. O. Stollberg, Berlin 1943
- Turkestan, The Library of Ostraumes: (German: Turkestan, Die Bücherei des Ostraumes) : Special publication (German: Sonderveröffentlichung), ebd. 1943
- About the verb forms in Turcoman (German: Über die Verbformen im Türkmenischen), Berlin, Diss. phil. 1939
- The chwaresmische language material, of a manuscript of "Muqaddimat al-Adab" (Arabic-Persiandictionary) (German: Das chwaresmische Sprachmaterial einer Handschrift der "Muqaddimat al-Adab"), Steiner, Wiesbaden 1968
Literature
- Hürter, Johannes; Kröger, Martin; Messerschmidt, Rolf; Scheidemann, Christiane, eds. (2000). Biographisches Handbuch des deutschen Auswärtigen Dienstes 1871–1945, Band 1 A–F [Biographical Handbook of the German Foreign Service 1871–1945, Volume 1 A–F]. Biographisches Handbuch des deutschen Auswärtigen Dienstes 1871–1945 (Auswärtiges Amt – Historischer Dienst – Maria Keipert, Peter Grupp, series editors) (in German). Paderborn München Wien Zürich: Ferdinand Schöningh. pp. 107–108, section Benzing, Johannes (Hans) (with picture). ISBN 978-3-506-71840-2.
References
- ^ Doe, John (2011). "Verzeichnis der Professorinnen und Professoren der Universität Mainz 1946–1973". gutenberg-biographics.ub.uni-mainz.de. Johannes Gutenberg-Universität Mainz, Gutenberg-Biographics. Retrieved 31 October 2016.
- ^ a b c d e "Johannes Benzing". glottopedia.org. This article contains quotations from this source, which is available under a Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported.