Erwähnung in Interviews mit Elizabeth Huff und Richard C. Rudolph
In der Vergangenheit hat die University of California einige biographische Interviews mit prominenten Angehörigen durchgeführt (Oral History Projects), darunter auch eines im Jahre 1960 mit Ferdinand LESSING. Darin liegt der Schwerpunkt allerdings nicht auf der Orientalistik, sondern auf den frühen Jahren, insbesondere der Schulzeit in Deutschland, ein Thema, das die Interviewerin offenbar besonders interessierte. Immerhin geht daraus hervor, daß er die Anregung, Russisch zu lernen, einem seiner Lehrer verdankte. In seiner späten beruflichen Tätigkeit kam LESSING diese Kenntnis sehr zugute.
Einige Details sind einem späteren Interview mit der Sinologin und Bibliothekarin Elizabeth HUFF (1912-1988) zu entnehmen. Interviewerin war Rosemary LEVENSON.12
Elizabeth Huff.
Teacher and founding curator of the East Asiatic Library from Urbana to Berkeley by way of Peking. Berkeley: University of California 1977, 146-148 [vervielfältigt]
HUFF: Yes. The chairman of the Department of Oriental Languages at that time was Ferdinand Dietrich LESSING, who was a scholar primarily in the field of Chinese and Manchu, Lamaism, also Tibetan. He taught the Manchu language and was at that time working on his masterpiece, of which only the first volume appeared - he was working on the second at his death - on the famous temple and monastery in Peking, the Yung Ho Kung, in the northwestern part of the city, a Lamaist temple.
RL: Can you tell me a little more about Mr. LESSING, whom I knew only slightly, and who was then, I think, [1951] working on his Manchu dictionary13. What was he like as a teacher? He was one of the people whom we had hoped to have a memoir of, and in fact have just a preliminary sketch.
HUFF: I was so far outside his field, I can really only say that my opinion of him as a scholar is second-hand.
HUFF: I saw him primarily at the regular Monday luncheon meetings of the department at the Faculty Club. Socially, he was very amusing. He had quite a fund of jokes, amusing incidents in Germany when he was growing up. Well, of course, if he sat next to a visiting scholar in his own field, the conversation was quite over my head. [Laughter]
He had the German - I think of it as German - attitude toward university libraries that I've seen in others. He thought that they were built for the faculty, and that there should be no restraints, that a faculty member should not need to sign a charge slip, that he should be free to take the books, as such people always say, "Nobody else is interested in them," to his office and never return them. RL: How did you deal with this problem?
HUFF: Oh, with a customary compromise. I didn't want to offend him mightily, of course, and in certain cases it was perfectly true; nobody else read Manchu, that is, at that time. Later Chaoying FANG14, when he was on the staff of the library, studied the language under Mr. LESSING. We spent some years searching for a certain Mongol - Russian dictionary by KOWALEWSKI15 which had become rare, of which we finally acquired a copy. I put it in the reading room as a reference book where the cataloguers, among others, occasionally needed to consult it. It was our only copy and the only one we could afford. Mr. LESSING, instead of asking me if he could keep it in his office, was so incensed that he wrote a very long memo to Mr. CONEY16, saying that I was totally ununderstanding of scholarship. Mr. Coney was so overwhelmed he sent it to me [chuckle], and what was that expression that was - maybe it's still common? Oh, yes. Mr. Coney simply wrote across the head of the first page, "What's the pitch?" [Laughter]
RL: And how was that one resolved?
HUFF: I wrote an equally long memo to Mr. Coney to accompany the original one when I returned it and explained it, and, as I remember, we won. [Laughter] I'm quite certain that we did, and then, luckily, a pirated edition of the dictionary came out, and so I bought a copy two, and it went back to Mr. LESSING. Yes, I can still see the dictionary.
RL: Did Mr. LESSING develop a school of Manchu studies here?
HUFF: Not really. That term would be too grand for it. He had later, after Chaoying FANG studied with him, a very, very promising Korean student who did so well that he was given a fellowship in the East later; it was to Harvard. I don't know what became of him.
Mrs. LESSING was a formidable woman. They gave very nice parties. They built a charming house on Euclid. They also had a house in Carmel, I believe.
RL: She certainly is a formidable woman. I met her at a wedding recently. Unchanged, as far as I could tell. [Laughter]
HUFF: Oh. I haven't seen her for many years. After Professor LESSING'S death, she brought in a few Chinese books that he had owned that were in the house, and wanted the library to buy them. I think some of that same old attitude went over into her that the library's for the professor; he's not to do anything but use it. All of the books were duplicates except one, and it was incomplete. She said, "It couldn't be" and, of course, it being in Chinese, it would have been hard for her to tell. That was in a t'ao, in a Chinese case. It was a very attractive edition. I don't remember which work it was, but it wasn't a rare book, really. There would have been no point in the world in buying an incomplete set. She had an unfortunate accident soon after they came here, and I think that influenced her a bit. She was learning to drive and she crippled a woman on the campus.
RL: Dreadful.
HUFF: You know, it would be as hard for Mrs. LESSING as for the victim.
RL: Yes. And in what way were you suggesting that this influenced her?
HUFF: I think it may have made her a little doubtful of how she might be received by any person that she didn't know well or was just meeting. When I came, there was still a great deal of talk about it, much too much, and that may have been as much as ten years later. RL: That's very poignant.
LESSING findet auch Erwähnung in einem weiteren Interview des Programms "Mündliche Geschichte" der Universität von Kalifornien, einem Gespräch mit Richard C. RUDOLPH17 (1909- 2003), einem Schüler Lessings, der wesentlich zu der Gründung einer Ostasiatischen Abteilung und Bibliothek an der Universtät von Kalifornien in Los Angeles beitrug. Rudolph war vielseitig interessiert, so arbeitete er über Archäologie, Druckwesen, Mandschu18 (er hatte es bei LESSING gelernt), Rätsel, Naturwissenschaften - Themen, die die meisten Sinologen eher beiseite lassen.
Hier ein Zitat aus dem Interview:19 (S. 19-20):
Also verließ er die Universität Berlin und ging nach China, wo er unterrichtete, um seinen Lebensunterhalt zu bestreiten, und in der Zwischenzeit Chinesisch und Tibetisch, Mandschu und Mongolisch studierte. Er unterrichtete Deutsch und Sanskrit. Er hatte Sanskrit in Deutschland studiert und es gut genug gelernt, um es zu unterrichten. Er unterrichtete sowohl in Mukden als auch in Peking.
Er war ein weiteres Fast-Genie, denke ich. Wenn man entscheiden muss, wer das Genie ist, war BOODBERG wahrscheinlich das Genie, Lessing das Beinahe-Genie für gesprochene Sprachen und Grammatik und solche Dinge. Die Chinesen sagten, dass seine gesprochene Sprache fehlerfrei war, und er beherrschte eine große Anzahl von Sprachen, er beherrschte sie absolut. Ich habe die fernöstlichen Sprachen erwähnt. Und auch Russisch, und einige nahöstliche Sprachen. In dieser Hinsicht war er wirklich phänomenal.
Sowohl er als auch BOODBERG waren sehr freundliche Menschen. Sie waren diese höflichen Menschen aus der Alten Welt, die diese Art von Förmlichkeit nie überwunden haben. Und sie waren beide sehr, sehr nett. Und ich wurde mit beiden sehr eng befreundet. Ich glaube, dass LESSING mich in gewisser Weise wie einen Sohn betrachtete, denn er hatte eine sehr bittere Enttäuschung erlebt, als sein eigener Sohn, der zum Nazi geworden war, in einem Konzentrationslager starb. Diese enge Freundschaft zwischen BOODBERG und LESSING und mir hielt bis zu ihrem Tod an und bedeutete mir sehr viel.
Nun war LESSING, im Gegensatz zu BOODBERG, ein sehr guter Lehrer, ein sehr geduldiger Lehrer. BOODBERG wäre es auch gewesen, wenn er Probleme gesehen hätte, aber für ihn gab es überhaupt keine Probleme. Und er hatte keine nennenswerte Lehrerfahrung, als ich zum ersten Mal mit ihm in Kontakt kam - vielleicht ein oder zwei Jahre. LESSING hatte unterrichtet. LESSING hatte ein breites Spektrum an Lehrerfahrung in China, und als er dann nach Deutschland zurückkehrte, lehrte er.
LESSING wurde zum Vorsitzenden der Abteilung ernannt, und er hatte große Schwierigkeiten wegen des Krieges, des europäischen Krieges, der damals stattfand. Er kam mit dem Schiff und hatte in San Diego große Schwierigkeiten mit dem Zoll, weil er einige tibetische Texte mitgebracht hatte. Diese wurden mit großem Misstrauen betrachtet, weil sie dort niemand lesen konnte. Und als deutscher Staatsangehöriger unterlag er in Berkeley gewissen Einschränkungen in Bezug auf Reisen und so weiter.
Später, S. 37-40, erinnerte sich RUDOLPH an den...
