Today is the 80th birthday of Professor Zimmer, a German scholar known to the Turpan academic circles in Dunhuang, China. As a junior who studied under Mr. Zimmer, I have been taught a lot by Mr. Zimmer in the past thirty years. I would like to draft this article, briefly describing the achievements of Master Zun's virtues and international academic causes, shallow learning as I am, I dare not expect to be able to measure the depth of the knowledge of my predecessors, incomplete and inaccurate, I still hope that fellow scholars will make up for it. Take a small text, in the World Wide Web for Mr. Birthday!
Portrait of Professor Zimmer in an exclusive interview with The Paper's Shanghai Book Review (painted by Jiang Lidong)
Professor Zimmer lectures at Sun Yat-sen University (2014)
The formative years of the young Zimmer
Peter Zieme, a German, was born in Berlin on 19 April 1942. His father was a businessman and well-off. After the war, Germany was divided into east and west, and the Zimmer family remained in their hometown of East Berlin, and with the change of system, their identity changed from shopkeeper to salesman. In this era environment, according to the policy of the time, Zmer, who came from a non-proletarian family background, also had a difficult application to the university, but fortunately he had excellent grades and good performance, and he was finally admitted to the chemistry department of Humboldt University, the first university in East Germany.
In college, Zimmer was a young man with a wide range of interests, who was fascinated by learning various languages and showed a talent for languages. He studied Arabic at a night school (Abendschule) under the teacher Werner Sundermann (1935-2012), who was then a doctorate at Humboldt University. The teacher found that the student was gifted with language, and the student felt that the teacher was full of experience, and the two saw each other as they were, and began fifty years of career cooperation and lifelong friendship. This is a good story of the "German Orientalism Gemini Constellation", and it will be listed separately.
At Zündmann's suggestion, Zmer switched majors, probably in his second year of university, to the Institute of Iranian Studies at Humboldt University, where the chief professor at the time was Heinrich Junker (1889-1970), an old-school German scholar who did Iranian studies, engaged in Indo-European studies, was old-fashioned, well-educated, and was Zandmann's mentor. Zimmer majored in Iranian studies, but a new opportunity appeared halfway through: in 1963 Humboldt University hired the Hungarian scholar Hazai Gy rgy (1932-2016), a Mesozoic scholar who specialized in Turkic dialects and became Zimmer's guide on the path of Turkology, and the two were lifelong friends. Professor Hazai taught in Humboldt for twenty years, cooperated with Zmer to promote international exchanges in East German Oriental Studies with the study of Turpanese texts, especially with the Japanese academic community: since 1966, a team of Japanese scholars led by Professor Akira Fujieda of Kyoto University has visited the Berlin Academy of Sciences many times, read Turpan documents, carried out cataloguing cooperation, and invited East German scholars to visit Japan. Since the 1970s, West German scholars have also frequently visited the Turpan Research Group in the central district of East Berlin.
After graduating from Humboldt University in 1965, Zimmer entered the National Academy of Sciences of the GDR and studied Turpan literature as a research object, and received his doctorate in 1969. Zimmer was a "big early" researcher, and his doctoral dissertation, which was a seven-hundred-page tome at the time of his doctoral dissertation, was a seven-hundred-page tome: Untersuchungen zur Schrift und Sprache der manich isch-türkischen Turfantexte (Philology and Linguistics of Turpan Unearthed in Turpan of Turpan in Turmanic Scripts). Wearing a doctoral hat at this age is premature in the field of classical studies abroad. The normal doctoral dissertation writing cycle is the "Eight-Year War of Resistance", and in general, the year of wearing a hat is rarely before the stand-up. Another reason is that Germany does not register as a doctoral student, a mandatory system that stipulates that as long as the doctoral candidate issues a certificate of academic qualifications, reports a decent doctoral dissertation selection plan, and obtains the approval of the supervisor (Doktorvater/-mutter), he can start writing a doctoral dissertation, can register as a doctoral student for some preferential policies, or engage in any other occupation, use spare time to do research, and there is no time limit for the completion of the thesis. Whether to attend the school or not, belongs to the agreement with the tutor plus voluntary choice, everything is very relaxed. But the last level is very strict, that is, the review and revision before the thesis defense, the scene of the defense is also serious and solemn, after several hours, when it is completed, the candidates are rarely still idle and undeterred. After announcing the approval of the defense, the female secretary brought champagne, and with a bang, everyone raised a glass and smiled. I remember when Mr. Zimmer said to me after my own defense, "Jetzt sind wir Kollegen now." Also, consider the next step. "This is a digression.
Back to the point. In 1969, Dr. Zimmer was formally inducted into the Institute of Oriental Studies of the Academy of Sciences (Institut für Orientforschung, Deutsche Akademie der Wissenschaften), where he served until German reunification, when the Academy of Sciences was renamed the Brandenburg Academy of Sciences in Berlin under the federal system.
Scholar Zimmer
Mr. Zimmer is famous for interpreting texts, and is known as the "Supreme Court" in academic circles, which means that his knowledge is profound and extensive, he has a say in the overall situation of Turkology, his judgment is fair, and the final conclusion is difficult to overturn. Regarding the historical flow of Turkology, Mr. Zheng Shiliang once had an in-depth and wonderful interview with Mr. Zimer (Shanghai Review of Books, August 4, 2019, https://www.thepaper.cn/newsDetail_forward_4076792). Strict, objective, and authoritative, this is the best summary of his governance. Saying that his writings are equivalent, not fictional, and the works listed in the appendix at the end of the article are only a few of Mr. Zimer's monographs. It should be known that the interpretation of ancient languages is similar to the science in the liberal arts, and if you do not understand and cannot talk about correct interpretation, guess-work, even if you are not necessarily criticized and corrected by your peers, you must not be quoted, and you will eventually fend for yourself. Mr. Zimmer's interpretation is a model of Turkology, although I have heard himself say that a certain paper may not hold, should not be used, and should not be translated. This reflects the scientific spirit and humble attitude of a rigorous scholar.
At the beginning of his work at the Academy of Sciences, the young Zimmer, with the support of Professor Hazayi, accomplished a great feat: the creation of the Berliner Turfantexte (BTT) series of Tibetan Turfan Texts, published by the Akademie Verlag published by the Academy of Sciences press (Akademie Verlag), the first of which was the Francone der uigurischen Version des Jin' with the cooperation of Hazayi and Zimmer. gang-jing mit den Gāthās des Meister Fu" nebst einem Anhang von Taijun Inokuchi (Uighur Fragments of the Vajrayogini Sutra of the Liang Dynasty), appended to the book with a monograph by the Japanese scholar Inoguchi Taijun, shows the open-ended posture of this new East German academic series. By 1990, when germany was unified, BTT had published seventeen titles. The publishing house of the Academy of Sciences, which once had international prestige, entered a bumpy period with the political changes, and in just a few years changed to the Owner's House several times, and its humanistic part was successively replaced by the Oldenburg Publishing House in Bavaria (R. Berger). Oldenbourg Verlag), Cornelsen Verlag was acquired and is currently part of the Berlin-based Walter de Gruyter. Beginning with the eighteenth, Zimmer transferred BTT to brepols, an academic society in the Netherlands, which in 1996 named his Altun Yaruq Sudur. Vorworte und das erste Buch. Edition und bersetzung der alttürkischen Version des Goldglanzsutra (The Order of the Diamond Sutra and the Turkic Translation of Volume I) renews the BTT series. More than twenty years have passed, and now in its forty-seventh volume, it is also the work of Zimmer: Uigurorum veterum fragmenta minora (The Fragments of uighur literature, 2020).
The Turpan studies of the East German Academy of Sciences have an international reputation for two reasons:
First, the German expedition to the western region went to many areas in the north and south of Xinjiang four times, excavated, collected, and purchased many ancient relics, and there were 40,000 documents (written and printed) and more than 20 kinds of languages and scripts, including the "dead languages" that have been lost (such as Tocharian, Khotanese, "according to Historical German", Western Xia, Khitan and so on) and ancient religious classics and religious history records that have been lost for thousands of years (the most prominent is the thousands of Manichaean manuscripts in Germany and Tibet, which is the richest collection in the world). Scholars from the scientific research and cultural powers of the East and the West have always attached great importance to it, going to investigate and study, and mastering first-hand information. As the main collection unit of this treasure, the Berlin Academy of Sciences naturally became a place of pilgrimage, and its long and excellent tradition in the study of Western languages and history, although it was lost and lost through the two world wars, it was Heinrich Lüders and Hengning (W.B. Henning), Annemarie von Gabain (another Chinese name is Feng Gang), several "Turfaners" (a parody of scholars engaged in Turpan manuscript research by colleagues at the Academy of Sciences), and F.W.K. of the Berlin Museum of Ethnology. Müller), Albert von Le Coq, Willy Bang of the University of Berlin, Friedrich Carl Andreas of the University of Göttingen, opened the way for the interpretation of Turpanese writings, which were then continued and carried forward by the second generation of Mary Boyce, Zundmann, Zmer, The precious information contained in these small fragments of the Silk Road contained in these small fragments of even a few words has made the "Six Classics all history" and "four libraries all history" applicable in non-Chinese literature (see Rong Xinjiang's "Turpan Literature General Catalogue European and American Collection Volume" preface).
Second, the Turpan Institute of the Berlin Academy of Sciences is an "crossroads of civilization" and an academic resort that scholars from all over the world are happy to go to, and Zandmann and Zimmer are the leaders of the literature collation and research of the two major language families of Turpan, Iranian language and Turkic Uighur language. During my studies and doctoral dissertation in Berlin, I often went to the Turpan Institute of the Academy of Sciences for several years, and I was able to witness the heyday of the international Turpan studies center. There are foreign and foreign visitors to Morikawa, Livshitz, Hazai, Kara, McKenzie, Emmerick, Tezcan, R hrborn, Erdal, Maue, Weber, Gnoli, Morano, Sims-Williams, Sam Lieu, Laut, Hartmann, Wille, Dietz, Masahiro Shogaki, Shoudian Odano, Takao Mori, and Toshio Takada Scholars from eastern and western countries, such as Toyoyoshi Yoshida, Takashi Kitamura, and Toki Nishiwaki, were regular visitors, and the younger generation included Tai Matsui, Yukiyo Kasai, Pavel Lurje, and Ilya Yakubovitch. Among the Chinese scholars, zhang Guangda, Geng Shimin, Wu Yugui, Chao Huashan, Rong Xinjiang, Duan Qing, Li Xiao, Zhu Yuqi, Abdul Rexiti, Abulahat, Liu Yi, Yu Xin, Pan Huaqiong, and other teachers and friends visited. In 2002, Mr. Zimmer, as Director, co-organized with the Indian Art Museum "Gaochang Revisited: A Centenary of Silk Road Art and Culture Studies" (Turfan Revisited. The First Century of Research into the Arts and Cultures of the Silk Road), with 120 delegates, submitted 72 papers, including 13 Chinese delegates invited to the conference.
Zimmer and Chinese and international academia
Because of the times, China's academic circles have been isolated from the world for some years, with little contact with each other, no information, and only publications. Here's an example.
In the 1950s, Mr. Huang Wenbi's "Turpan Archaeology" was published. As early as the 1920s, Mr. Huang, as a Representative of the Chinese Side, followed the Chinese and Swedish delegations to the Western Regions and discovered many cultural relics, including a large number of ancient written documents. At the beginning of the founding of New China, Mr. Huang's research was successively published in the Science Press, "Turpan Archaeology" is one of them, including some of his discoveries in the Turpan area, published a number of materials, in addition to Chinese, there are also non-Chinese, some are Sanskrit Buddhist manuscripts, and some are not clear what language, Mr. Huang Wenbi is very cautious, published in plates. Zimmer read the book in East Berlin and found that it contained Uighur manuscripts with Manichaean clues, and although the photographs were neither clear nor complete, he grasped some key sentences and words, deduced from the context, and wrote in 1970 as Zu einigen Problemen des Manich ismus bei den Türken ("On Several Problems of Manichaeism among turks", published at the Thirteenth International Altai Permanent Conference, The proceedings of the conference, Tradetions religieuses et para-religieuses des peuples alta ques, published in 1972, boldly propose that this is a Manichaean document that records important historical documents of Manichaeism. The publication of the paper can be described as a stone-breaking and sensational. At that time, the "Archaeological Record of Turpan" had been published for nearly twenty years. In the late 1970s, Mr. Geng Shimin learned of this paper, so he went to the historical museum (now the National Museum) where Huang Wenbi's writings were collected, read all the texts, and made a full interpretation, confirming that Zimo's conjecture was correct. Mr. Geng's long paper , "Preliminary Interpretation of Uighur Manichaean Monastic Texts" was published in the Journal of Archaeology, No. 4, 1978. Later, Takao Moriyasu redided this topic on this basis and excavated deeply, so he not only went to the Libo to read the original, confirmed the doubts of interpretation, but also traveled to the Tianshan Mountains, went to Turpan to investigate the excavated sites of that year, and completed a "Study on the History of Uighur Manichaeism" (ウイグル=マニ教史の Research", "Osaka University Faculty of Letters Minutes" 31/32, 1991), and obtained a doctorate from the University of Tokyo, thus establishing his authoritative position in the field of international Manichaean studies. The German translation of the book was published in 2004 by Die Geschichte des uigurischen Manich ismus an der Seidenstra e. Forschungen zu manich ischen Quellen und ihrem geschichtlichen Hintergrund（ bersetzt von Christian Steineck, Harrassowitz Verlag）。 German is an important working language for international Oriental studies and Manichaean studies, and English writings are far inferior to German, and they still are.
Another thing that Professor Zimmer took me to do, the Manichaean texts that were interpreted were excavated in 1981 by the Turpan Heritage Administration In Berzi Creek. Most of the discoveries have been published one after another, but some old and difficult fragments have been left behind, and the families who have the conditions to see this batch of documents are tied for a while. In the autumn of 2009, when I was working at the University of Hamburg, Mr. Zimmer suddenly came to the e-mail saying: "I recently read a paperwork, when you return to Berlin, please find time to talk about the Academy of Sciences." "Next week, I'll go to the Academy of Sciences to meet him. He took out two printed pictures of the document, which had been glued together in clear tape, and said, "I've stitched together two fragments, you can look at it." "When I looked, it was two fragments of documents with very irregular edges, the unearthed state was not good, there was a "lack of meat", if in the state of separation, it was not easy to find that it could be conjugated. He said, "This is a Manichaean document, and I made an interpretation. "The results of this project, led by Mr. Umemura Tan of the Toyo Bunko, and Xinjiang, should be published in China and Chinese. Mr. Zimmer suggested that I co-write with him. He dictated a few points, which I made a record of, and went home to compile it according to his customary style, which is "A New Historical Material on the Uighurs of ManichaeanIsm" (Dunhuang Studies Series, No. 3, 2009, pp. 1-7).
Turpan unearthed the 1981 Berzi Creek Uighur Manichaean instrument 81TB10: 06-3
In this process, I found that the two western geographical names in the document were a bit circling according to Mr. Zimer's original interpretation, and the distance was a little far, not on the reasonable route from southern Xinjiang to mobei. I asked him to look at the map together, and he looked at it and said, "You're right." This confirms that the references in the document are to the "black car" (Grokanri) and the "Trailing River". In the article, he asked Mr. Sen An for his opinion, including the two place names, which were recognized by this scholar who was both a Manichaean and an expert in the history of the Western Regions. Later, in August 2014, Mr. Sen an was invited to Berlin to give a lecture entitled "New Developments in the History of the East Uighur Manichaeism", and when referring to this important discovery in 2009, he used the term Zieme-Wang-Fragment ("Zimmer-Wang Fragment"), I am afraid that he is the only one in the world to say so. It reflects his positioning of the importance of this instrument in the history of Manichaeism, and as for the award to me, it is only a passing encouragement to an academic descendant, and I am both ashamed and ashamed. Mr. Zimmer suggested that this paper be co-signed by him and me, and I insisted that I only assume the responsibility of the translator, because the conjugation and interpretation of the document was done by Mr. Zimmer alone. The successful publication of this paper was also strongly supported by the "Dunhuang Academic Journal", which specially arranged the layout and ranked this article as the first article of the current period. The responsible editor is an old friend Professor Feng Peihong, who tirelessly and carefully handled it, let me read the proof seven times before and after, and finally handled the phonetic alphabet and diacritica (diacritica) that are generally not specially handled in the domestic publishing industry according to international norms, which helped us successfully and on time to complete the cooperation project task between the Turpan Cultural Relics Bureau and the Oriental Library, leaving a good memory. I would like to take this opportunity to express my gratitude to the Dunhuang Academic Journal once again.
Mr. Zimmer enjoys a high reputation in the Chinese academic circles, not only the fellow scholars engaged in Turkic and Uighur languages regard him as Taishan Beidou, but also the scholars engaged in silk road research pay attention to reading and absorbing his achievements in many aspects. Because of Professor Geng Shimin's invitation, Mr. Zimmer went to the Central University for Nationalities to lecture for several months, and there were not only master's and doctoral students and young teachers, but also senior scholars from other academic units in Beijing.
From 2012 to 2017, I taught at Sun Yat-sen University, during which I twice invited Mr. Zimmer to give a special lecture in Guangzhou. The title of the first is The Uighur Text of the Manichaean Zan of lower parts. The second opportunity was for CUHK to prepare for the 90th anniversary and hold the "International Masters Frontier Lecture", and the school office asked me to invite the "(Nobel Prize-level) International Masters" to give lectures at the university. I don't know that there are Nobel Prize winners among the liberal arts scholars, so I can only ask Professor Zimmer, who is a multi-academician and highly respected, to support him. His chosen title was Multiscriptality and multilingualism on the Silk Routes. From Anonymous to Anzang—Old Uyghur examples from the 10th to 14th centuries）。 The lecture was held in the Lecture Hall of Xichang Hall, and on that day, Mr. Cai Hongsheng came to serve as a guest of honor, and the discussion was wonderful, and the audience inside and outside the school responded warmly.
2013 Professor Zimmer's lecture poster at the "Sun Yat-sen University Forum on the History of Religion"
Mr. Cai Hongsheng, Mr. Zimer, Professor Zhang Xiaogui
Many universities and research institutions in China have invited Professor Zimmer to lecture, which can supplement this information and form a complete form of "Zimer's Academic Circulation in China".
The "Collegium Turfanicum" (translated as "Turfan Lecture" by The Domestic Academic Circles), co-founded by Professor Zongdeman and Professor Zimmer in 1995, invites international experts to the Berlin Academy of Sciences for exchanges and lectures, and has held 94 sessions (http://turfan.bbaw.de/collegium-turfanicum-en), and the Chinese scholars invited over the years have been Rong Xinjiang (12th, 2001), Wang Ding (15th, 2003; 64th, 2013), Duan Qing (33th, 2008; 84th, 2016), Qing Zhaorong (36th, 2008; 70th, 2014), Wang Jianxin (38th, 2009), Li Xiao (49th, 2010; 58th, 2011), Luo Xin (77th, 2015), Chen Hao (81th, 2016), Fu Ma (83th, 2016), etc. The theme of the recently announced 95th lecture is to commemorate the eightieth birthday of the old director Professor Zimmer, the fellow scholars gather to celebrate, and the younger generations drink water and think about the source, which is very appropriate. If international traffic is resumed by then, it is conceivable that many scholars from afar will also participate.
Takao Mori at the 72nd Gaochang Lecture at the Berlin Academy of Sciences, Germany, chaired by Professor Zimmer, from right: R hrborn, Sander, Schwartz, Raschmann, Wilkens, etc. (http://turfan.bbaw.de/bilder/collegiumturfanicum2014, 2014)
Mr. Zimmer's academic contributions
Mr. Zimmer's proficiency in many ancient Central Asian languages, as well as Old Chinese, helped him solve many difficult problems with Turkic Uighurs, especially Buddhist scriptures. He also made wonderful discoveries in secular texts, such as the mapping of the Uighur translation of the "Five More Turns" from the Han chinese folk. I was particularly impressed that he found a Uighur translation of The Pipe in a set of tiny fragments, which was very difficult.
The vast majority of Turpan texts are religious, involving Buddhism, Manichaeism and Jingjiao, and Mr. Zimmer has made sufficient efforts in these three major areas to tackle them one by one. Because his doctoral dissertation was a Manichaean document in Uighur language, in 1974 he also produced a collection of Uighur Manichaean literature unearthed in Turpan, and made a comprehensive collection, identification and interpretation of hundreds of documents in this regard, and attached a manuscript plate at the back of the book, which became a basic document that scholars must refer to. Buddhist fragments are the areas in which he has devoted the most effort and written the most. In this regard, Mr. Zimmer is the world's largest scholar of Turpan jingjiao, which is the collection of Altuigurische Texte der Kirche des Ostens aus Zentralasien (Altuigurische Texte der Kirche des Ostens aus Zentralasien) published in the United States in 2015. Piscataway: Georgias Press, 2015）。
Mr. Zimmer's academic contributions are multifaceted and cannot be enumerated here. There are two characteristics that may be raised for interested friends to refer to. First, his work is scientific, an empirical science with verifiability. His arguments have always been straightforward, without repeated assumptions and roundabout arguments. I think this may be related to his initial choice of chemistry as a major, and this scientific literacy is implemented in the study of the humanities, and the result can only be to improve the accuracy of liberal arts research. This is particularly touching when I look back at many of the current liberal arts works, and Professor Takao Mori also proposed that the type of "science historiography" can be the program of positivist liberal arts scholars. The second is that he has discovered and then composed, so each article is either published in the material he has interpreted, or a new explanation of the old problem. This is actually the basic requirement of the work of natural science. The ancients, "rhetoric and sincerity", did not seek truth and pragmatism of sincerity, but only pretended to sway, even if there is a grand narrative trend, there is no siege to the truth, in the end can not be saved in the scientific patent office to obtain approval of the invention.
The more respectful the teeth, the shorter the article, although short and deep, small but large. This seems to be an academic law, and it is also reflected in Mr. Zimmer. In his sixty years of study, all the fragments of Turpan Uighur language are engraved in his mind, and many problems have been haunting his heart, and he has been really accumulating for a long time, often for a long time. I enjoyed reading these wonderful short works and did a little translation, such as "The Wine of the Ancient Turks" (Luo Feng edited the fifth series of "Silk Road Archaeology", Science Press, 2021), "Turkic Sart Word Rheology Examination" (Sart is "Sabao"; Xu Quansheng et al. edited "Collection of Inland Eurasian Historical Languages - Commemoration of Mr. Xu Wenkan's Ancient Rarity", Lanzhou University Press, 2014), "Textile Names of Ancient Turkic Languages" (translated by You Xiaoyu, Wang Dingxiao, Liu Jinbao, edited by "Silk Road Civilization" Fifth Series , 2020), other famous objects such as "Incense Burner Examination" and "Necklace Examination" are all texts, and it is necessary to translate them one by one and publish them in a collection.
Mr. Zimmer
As a researcher at the Academy of Sciences, Mr. Zimmer's job is to research, write, and plan academic cooperation projects in Germany, both nationally and internationally. He has also maintained close contact with colleges and universities, and has not interrupted teaching, which is also the tradition of scientific research and teaching advocated by Humboldt, and should be interested in research on the university side, and in the Academy of Sciences, it should be related to the teaching practice, pass on the latest mature achievements, and cultivate academic newcomers. Since 1994, Zmer has also been a visiting professor at the Free University of Berlin and for a time acted as director of the Institute of Turkology. During this time, Professor Chen Hao of Shanghai Jiao Tong University studied under Professor Zimmer. My doctoral dissertation was titled Research on the Collation of Mathematical Documents Unearthed in Turpan under the supervision of Professor Erling von Mende, and the thesis writing was done at the Academy of Sciences, when I listened to several classes in Iranian with Mr. Zandmann, and also learned Latin and Biblical Hebrew for the foundations of Jingjiao research. Mr. Zimmer has a wide range of academic interests, and he often asks me some questions about ancient Chinese or things that I seem to be familiar with, but in fact, he has studied and explored those problems quite a bit, but he wants to get a confirmation or more examples. Over time, I became acquainted with him, and later he even suggested that I stop calling him Herr Zieme, but just call him Peter. I still can't do this, but I don't dare to completely disobey the order, so I take a compromise approach, first call Peter, and then use "you" (siezen) when I speak and write, and never dare to say "you", after all, he is the master I used to fear and now love. Don't Manchus and Beijingers also call their elders "you" at home?
The preface to my doctoral thesis took some space to write about the sites in The North and South Provinces of Xinjiang that the German Turpan expedition had visited, which were not easy for outsiders to grasp, and the place names were too small to be examined, let alone transcribed in Latin letters. However, there is a lot of relevant material in the unpublished archives of the German expedition, which can be compared and determined. These sites are embodied in the "Find-Sigel Code" developed by early compilers of the German-Tibetan Turpan documents. Writing this part, I received the great help of several teachers and friends of the Turpan Institute of the Academy of Sciences, among whom Mr. Zimmer and Mr. Zandmann taught the most, after all, they were familiar with all the documents they handled. Mr. Zundman's paper", Completion and Correction of Archaeological Work by Philological Means: The Case of the Turfan Texts. In: Histoire et cults de l’Asie Centrale préislamique, P. Bernard, F. Grenet eds., Paris 1991, pp. 283-288) was written using this type of information. Mr. Zimmer also often uses the code of discovery as a reference to deduce the relationship between the land and the content of the document.
In the process of writing my doctoral dissertation, I often showed Mr. Zimmer some parts and asked him to give advice, and then it became a habit to let him read it, and then he simply said, you will show me the writing as soon as possible, so that it will come faster. I have found that the greatest benefit for students in doing so is that mistakes are corrected as soon as possible, so as not to write all the way, repeat the same mistakes, or go farther and farther on the wrong path. This included errors in German expression, hundreds of pages of papers by non-native writers, and rewriting them took up a lot of his precious time. Occasionally, Germans give me a false prize for my German-German, and I know in my heart that Mr. Zimmer has also assumed the role of a language teacher.
My first Turpan study, Ch 3586: Examination of Khitan Large Character Fragments, was also completed under the specific guidance of Mr. Zimmer, who assisted in interpreting the Uighur characters written in the interspersed lines of the document. Mr. Kara Gy rgy, who was visiting the Academy of Sciences in Berlin at the time, was also an expert in the study of Khitan languages and scripts, and when they discussed together, he said a joke: My Khitan materials are stored in the computer, and they follow me everywhere. Maybe one day, when I was blessed with my soul, I suddenly understood the Khitan language. Your discovery is important, keep working hard, crack the language, and you can win the Nobel Peace Prize! Mr. Carla was a student of Professor LiGeti, a disciple of Bo Xihe. I am deeply pleased to have the opportunity to be exposed to the right vein of Orientalism at the Academy of Sciences, at Mr. Zimmer.
The last two times I met Mr. Zimmer, once in Japan in June 2018 and once in Germany in June 2020. From 2012 to 18, Mr. Zimmer worked in Japan with his family, and he also lived in Japan with him, beginning a busy post-retirement work period, which was also a period of high academic productivity for him. As I was about to say goodbye to Tokyo, Professor Umemura Tan, the Toyo Bunko library, was going to hold a farewell event, sent me an e-mail suggesting that I go and give a table for german and Chinese fans, and by the way, give a lecture at the Toyo Liberal Arts Department. I gladly accepted the invitation and flew to listen to Mr. Zimmer's Farewell Speech and meet with Japanese teachers and friends. What particularly touched me was that on the day of the lecture, not only was professor Umemura enthusiastically chaired by the host, but professor Yasuori Kigazawa was also present for advice, and his old friend Professor Matsui even deliberately stayed in Tokyo for two more nights to wait for the event to be held. The title of my lecture that time was "The Discovery of Pingnan Texts and Manichaean Research", and after successfully completing the task of this lecture, I quickly wrote a text and published all the materials in its entirety to answer the domestic and international fans who were concerned about this batch of new materials.
See you in Berlin in 2020, when much of Europe is severely infected and Germany is semi-isolated. On the phone, I learned that Mrs. Zimmer was reluctant to let him go out because no one had been vaccinated at the time. Insisting on going into town to meet, he rode his bicycle to the light rail station and drove into the city, where he met at the old place: the sushi restaurant. After the meal, he suggested that we go to the Academy of Sciences together. After his retirement, he still often went to the institute and had a key card. We walked in through the back door, the office corridors were all dark, and the ancient perpetual paternoster elevator finally stopped, and we walked up the stairs to the institute and saw Dr. Alisher Begmatov, still working in the office, shaking hands and greeting each other.
Master Zimmer
A few years ago, in an interview with the Shanghai Review of Books ("Takada Shixiong on Dunhuang Studies", February 22, 2009), Mr. Takada Toshio made a tour of the international Dunhuang Turpan study, and the situation in the Eastern and Western countries that had been whipped in the early hundred years was not optimistic, "Japan's less and less Dunhuang studies should be related to the decline trend of Japanese sinology." Other countries are similar, and England and France are the same, because their Dunhuang studies are mainly necessary for collation and cataloguing, and this work will not be completed. Among several European countries, only Germany is fine", Germany seems to be thriving, referring to the Turfanforschung grand business pioneered by the two masters Zondemann and Zimmer (in the international academic world, Dunhuang studies and Turpan studies are not separated, even in the case of only mentioning the title of Dunhuang studies, Turpan studies are also included), not only editing and publishing the catalog (Verzeichnisse orientalischer, "Catalogue of Notes on German Tibetan Oriental Writings"). Handschriften in Deutschland/VOHD's Turpan series in Iranian, Turkic Uighur and other languages), special issues (Berliner Turfan-Texte/BTT), a dedicated Turfan Institute of Studies (Turfanforschung BBAW) at the Berlin Academy of Sciences, and a catalogued branch of several German universities or academies of sciences. The "International Dunhuang Studies Program (IDP)" digital project initiated by the United Kingdom and participated by many countries, in terms of the degree of completion, the German-Tibetan part is the most complete, well-maintained and well received. This is an example of the German "craftsman spirit", "German thoroughness" (Mr. Ji Xianlin's translation of deutsche Gründlichkeit).
Mr. Zimmer is a recognized master, and his achievements are so great that they are both productive and outstanding, and it is inevitable that people will feel like looking up at the palace walls. As a junior who has followed him for many years to study and ask for business, I have a very deep feeling, that is, his diligence and perseverance, and his solid efforts are admired and ashamed of me as a "young man". He is already an old man with a happy opening, still grasping his homework every day, not staying at hand, completing it as soon as possible, on a problem, often in a day several times the mail back and forth, not implemented more than once. Send him an e-mail and get a reply the next day at the latest, unless it happens on a weekend, he is a Christian, he obeys customs, and the weekend is generally a little resting pause, so there is still a constant.
Mr. Zimmer has told me more than once that he also has a wish to visit the Surrey Uighur homeland in Hexi. This remains to be achieved. During his lectures at the University of Minzu, he used the weekend time and the Italian scholar Pierre Borbone to visit quanzhou to visit the Manichaean ruins of the Jinjiang Cao'an, two foreign professors who did not know Chinese took a taxi at the airport, and almost no driver knew where the Manichaean Cao'an was located. The trip came and went in a hurry, and it was impossible to visit other ruins. In recent years, a large number of Manichaean factors found in folk writings in eastern Fujian have also aroused his interest for the first time, and in 2013 he ordered me to give an introduction to the "Collegium Turfanicum" (Neues zum Manich ismus in China) at the Berlin Academy of Sciences. The southeastern region that attracted many Gaochang Uighurs during the Mongol Yuan period was still unfamiliar to Mr. Zimo. I hope that the closure and barrier brought by the new crown epidemic to the world will be lifted quickly, so that he can revisit China as soon as possible, from Quannan to Tianshan, I will accompany him on a good trip.
April 19, 2022 is the eightieth birthday of Mr. Fule, I sincerely wish to still ride the 28 beam big bicycle, still deaf and discerning, still productive, still keep pace with the times, frequently update his account academia.com on the international network academic platform and first published papers here Professor Fowler Wisdom Zimo, Fu Ru Donghai, Shoubi Nanshan, Sadu sadu qutlug bolzun!
Appendix: Curriculum vitae of Professor Zimmer
Peter Zieme is an internationally renowned Turkologist and scholar of the history of ancient Turkic languages and religions in Central Asia. From 1960 to 1965 he studied Iranian studies and Turkic studies at humboldt University in Berlin, from 1965 to 1969 he studied postgraduate studies at the Institute of Oriental Studies of the GDR Academy of Sciences, and in 1969 he received a doctorate in philosophy from Humboldt University. Since then, he has worked at the Oriental Institute of the Academy of Sciences. In 1970 he joined the Ancient Orient Department of the Central Institute of Ancient History and Archaeology of the GDR Academy of Sciences, and in 1993 he transferred to the Turpan Institute of Studies of the Brandenburg Academy of Sciences in Berlin, where he served as director from 2001 to 2007. Professor at the Free University of Berlin since 1994. He has been elected as a Corresponding Member of the Bavarian Academy of Sciences, an Honorary Member of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences, an Honorary Member of the French Asian Society, an Honorary Fellow of the Turkish Turkic Society, a Fellow of the British Academy of Sciences and a member of several international academic professional committees.
The study focuses on collating ancient Turkic and Uighur texts written in various scripts found in The Study of Asia, involving Buddhism, Manichaeism, and Jingjiao (mainly during the Uighur Kingdom period from the ninth to the fourteenth centuries AD). Another area of study is Uighur socio-economic literature and lexicology. His major works include: Manich isch-türkische Texte (Uighur Literature in Manichaean Script, 1975); Fragmente tantrischer Werke in uigurischer ber setzung (Fragments of the Esoteric Uighur Translation, 1976); Buddhistische Stabreimdichtungen der Uiguren (Fragments of the Esoteric Uighur Translation), Buddhistische Stabreimdichtungen der Uiguren (Fragments of the Esoteric Uighur Translation), And Buddhistische Stabreimdichtungen der Uiguren (Fragments of the Translation of the Esoteric Uighurs) Rhyming Poems of Uighur Buddhism, 1985); Religion und Gesellschaft im Uigurischen K nigreich von Qo o. Kolophone und Stifter des alttürkischen buddhistischen Schrifttums aus Zentralasien (Religion and Society in the Uighur Kingdom of Gaochang, 1992); Altun Yaruq Sudur. Vorworte und das erste Buch (Preface and Volume I of the Uighur Text of the Golden Light Sutra, 1996); Magische Texte des Uigurischen Buddhismus (Uighur Tantric Texts, 2005); Fragmenta Buddhica Uigurica: ausgew hlte Schriften (Uighur Buddhist Fragments of Gold – A Collection of Zimer's Papers), Altuigurische Texte der Kirche des Ostens aus Zentralasien (Uighur Literature unearthed in Central Asia, 2015), hundreds of papers and numerous book reviews in German, English, French, Japanese, Chinese, and Turkish.