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China Studies in Germany
LI Xuetao*

Abstract
China studies in Germany has undergone great changes since the 1960s.
Influenced by burgeoning area studies in the United States, German scholarship shifted from traditional philological studies focused on translating andinterpreting Chinese classics to practical studies of modern Chinese politics,
economy, law, etc. Hence, there was also a shift in research methodologies tothose of the social sciences. However, this shift, significant as it is, can neverreplace traditional Sinological studies aimed at Chinese history and classics.
This paper uses Chinese history as an example to explore the development ofGerman academic Sinology. It points out that research in traditional Sinology,
as well as in modern China studies, no longer focuses on a particular discipline, but rather follows the trend toward interdisciplinary, comprehensive
research. Hence we can expect that China studies will become increasingly
decentralized and interactive in the future development of the field.
Keywords: German Sinology, German China studies, Chinese history inGermanyI
The notion of a paradigm shift signifies a change in the intellectual climate
of an age to a deeper level. Progress in an age inevitably gives rise to newtheories incompatible with the old paradigm. As a result, there is movement
to a new set of standards, which eventually results in a paradigm shift. The
paradigm shift in research on China is an inevitable result of changes in thethought and circumstances of society from one age to the next. German
research on China and its traditions of knowledge and culture was at firstcarried out in helter-skelter fashion in areas such as translation and interpretation, traditional China and cultural China, contemporary China and actual
China, and Chinese spiritual traditions and cultural traditions. In German
research on China, there was no translation era distinct from an interpretation* Li Xuetao 李雪涛 is director of the Institute for Global History at Beijing Foreign
Studies University.

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era, nor was there a Sinology period clearly separate from a China-studies
period. From the beginning, these different focuses were woven together.
German Sinology began with the founding of the practically motivatedSeminars for Oriental Languages at Humboldt University of Berlin in 1887,
and many of the early Sinologists started out as practically minded missionaries and diplomats. In fact, the history of Sinology is a history of paradigm
changes. By investigating the individual cases of paradigm changes, we canunderstand the basic German, and also Western, assumptions for knowing
about China.
In fact, in addition to concern with its own tradition and development,
German Sinology might also react to changes in Chinese society. Early on, in
the 1950s, the Federal Republic of Germany began establishing Chinese
research institutions outside of the university system. For instance, in 1956
West Germany’s Foreign Office and the city of Hamburg together establishedthe Institut für Asienkunde (Institute of Asian Studies).1 Its most importanttask was research on actual political issues in the Chinese mainland, and it
also published the journal China aktuell (now published as the Journal of
Current Chinese Affairs). In 1959 the Foreign Office revived the Seminars for
Oriental Languages, established in Berlin in 1887, at the University of Bonn,in order to train specialists in East Asian languages, including Chinese. And
in 1967 the German Association for Asian Studies was established in the West
German capital of Bonn with support from the Volkswagen Foundation andthe Ford Foundation. Its mission was to expand German fields of study from
Sinology and Japanology to such fields as politics, economics, and law; topromote interaction and cooperation between Germany and East Asia; toconsult on research on contemporary East Asia; etc.
Most academics recently retired from German departments of Sinology
participated in the 1968 European student movement, and most were leftists.
Hence, they have been influenced by the Chinese revolutionary thought and
Mao Zedong thought current at the time. As the 1968 student movement
deconstructed traditional Sinological research at the time, students called forrelevant studies of China’s revolutionary progress. Because study of theclassics using simple philological methods obviously could not be adapted tothe study of Mao Zedong thought, it became necessary to introduce themethods of the social sciences. The East Asian Department of the Free
University of Berlin initiated relevant innovations, and Sinology departments
at other German universities followed suit. China’s reform and opening up in
1 See Fünfzig Jahre Institut für Asienkunde in Hamburg (Fifty Years of the Instituteof Asian Studies in Hamburg), edited by Hans-Wilm Schütte (Hamburg: Instituts fürAsienkunde, 2006).

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the late 1970s opened up China’s market to Western Europe and West
Germany in particular. The hope was that the China market would give
Germany huge economic profits, but the Sinology departments of Germany’s
universities were in no position to train the required talent. Hence, many
German universities began to institute dual majors of China studies andeconomics. One of the earliest was the University of Tübingen, which introduced programs combining different fields, including the combination ofpolitical economics (Volkswirtschaftslehre) and East Asian cultural studies.
Recently, dual programs are increasingly popular. Many Sinology departments, in addition to offering traditional majors (called “Sinology I”), haveadded China study programs (called “Sinology II”), which can be combinedwith such popular majors as political economics or business administration(Betriebswirtschaftslehre). This too is part of the effort to meet the demand
for China specialists.
The challenges and issues presently encountered by research on China
cannot be solved by the pure Sinology of the past. Hence, China studies(Chinawissenschaften) has arisen of necessity. Sinology and China studies aredifferent but connected types of study. Classical studies, philology, andhistorical studies are still needed to understand the culture and history of
China, and they will never disappear, but at the same time, they are considered exotic subjects. In contrast, in China studies, which concerns real issues
in Chinese society, the focus is on various areas of Chinese society, such aspolitics, economics, military affairs, diplomacy, law, and medical care. The
methodologies used come from various social sciences and even naturalsciences.
It is difficult to evaluate the trend toward China studies in research on
China. A century ago, many people never even heard of the field of Sinology,
but now China studies has become a popular subject pursued by quite a few
students. One scholar thinks that the transition from Sinology to China
studies in the United States was in fact a transition from an exotic subject toa popular subject: “John K. Fairbank moved the core of research on China
from premodern times to the modern and contemporary age, and applied themethods of the social sciences. At the same time he essentially retreated to theshortcomings of traditional European Sinology prior to Edouard Chavannes,
even though his treatment seemed more practical.”2 “The problem that
Fairbank faced was not so much to advance the field of Sinology, as he said,
2 Sang Bing 桑兵, Guoxue yu Hanxue: Jindai Zhong-wai xuejie jiaowang lu 国学与汉
学: 近代中外学界交往录 (National Studies and Sinology: A Record of Modern
Contact between Chinese and Foreign Academic Circles) (Hangzhou: Zhejiang
Renmin Chubanshe, 1999), p.15.

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but to transform a calling for a select few into a program for the more ordinary many. The many graduates of the standardized program are an indicationof the success and practical value of his method.”3 Thus, in contrast to thehumanities scholars trained in Sinology programs, the students trained in
China-studies programs studied a greater variety of subjects at a greater
variety of levels. As a matter of fact, under Otto Franke (1863 1946), firstchair of the Seminars for Oriental Languages, Stefan Balázs in 1932 wrote a
doctoral dissertation titled “Contributions to the Economic History of theTang Dynasty (618 906),” in which he used Max Weber’s socioeconomic
methods to study the economy of the Tang dynasty.4 In his dissertation,
Balázs explained the development of Chinese society in terms of China’s
bureaucratic system, and in examining the structure of Chinese society, hepointed out that the relationship between the scholar-official class in Chinesesociety and the system for occupying positions of power was a complex one.
In short, in analyzing the history of China’s economy from Sui and Tangtimes, Balázs took Weber’s methodology as his paradigm to investigate theuniversal aspects and peculiarities in changes in Chinese society. Without
doubt, this was a declaration of revolt against the Sinology of the time, with
its heavy emphasis on philological studies of the classics.
China studies in the United States is a component of its area studies,supporting its strategy of global domination. Since U.S. China studies
received money from the U.S. government and various foundations during thecold war, this money gave its China studies the flavor of a countermeasure,made such studies seem ideologically motivated, and put pressure on
programs to achieve noticeable results in a short period of time. As a result,group collaborative teamwork became the norm. This mode of operation canachieve quick results in such social-scientific fields as political science, sociology, economics, and anthropology, and in the compilation of large dictionaries, but truly creative advances in the humanities are often the result ofindividual labors. Moreover, research programs initiated by the government
often become a means for particular ends. Under these circumstances, evenhistorical research could be affected by practical concerns. As a matter offact, China studies, which make use of methodologies of the social sciences,
can never replace Sinology, which focuses on the study of classics andhistory. For this reason, European Sinologists are critical of U.S. China
studies for seeking to adopt new methodologies and engage in new theoret3 Sang Bing 1999, p.17.
4 Stefan Balázs, “Beiträge zur Wirtschaftsgeschichte der T’ang-Zeit (618 906)”(Contributions to the Economic History of the Tang Dynasty, 618 906), dissertation,
Seminars for Oriental Languages at the Friedrich Wilhelm University in Berlin,
1932. Reprinted by de Gruyter.

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ical interpretations while neglecting the close reading of texts.
In the final analysis, the situation in the West promoted in its China studies
a problematique that sought to further Western development. Edward Said
(1935 2003) thought that it is inappropriate for Western scholars to engage in
research of the Other for their own needs. Later scholars have thought that
Western scholars and East Asian scholars alike should engage in equal
research and comparison, that the West is not the only center of worthwhile
research.

II
Already in the latter half of the nineteenth century, experts in particularfields entered China to do research in their fields of expertise, the mosttypical example being Ferdinand von Richthofen (1833 1905), the wellknown geologist, cartographer, and explorer. From 1868 to 1872 Richthofen
entered China seven times on exploratory journeys, and during this period, hepointed out the location of Lop Nur, the salt lake bed by the Loulan ruins. In
fact, the English name of the Qilian Mountains, at the southern edge of theGansu Corridor, bears his name: Richthofen Range. Using materials
researched while he was in China, Richthofen wrote China: Ergebnisse
eigener Reisen und darauf gegründeter Studien (China: Results of One’s Own
Travel and Studies Stemming Therefrom), a five volume work with twocollections of maps. In the first volume, published in 1877, the term “Silk
Road” (Seidenstraße) appeared for the first time. After he returned from
China to Germany in 1872, he served, from 1873 to 1878, as president of the
Berlin Geographical Society. In 1875 he received an appointment as professorof geography at the University of Bonn, and in 1886 he moved to Humboldt
University of Berlin. His most well-known student concerned with researchon China was the Swedish explorer Sven Hedin (1865 1952). In many areasof geography, Richthofen is viewed as an important pioneer. Indeed, he hasreceived praise from experts for his geological records and investigative
results and writings. But German Sinologists regard him as a non-Sinological
China hand. Though Otto Franke criticized Richthofen especially harshly, healso offered this impartial evaluation: “By the stir that Richthofen’s work
caused everywhere, one can hope that the major academic institutions turntheir full attention to these vast new areas of research. Politics and science
both in the same way point toward the Far East.”5 To be fair, Richthofen’s
work offers important revelations for comprehensively investigating and5 Otto Franke, “Die sinologischen Studien in Deutschland” (Sinological Studies inGermany), in his Ostasiatische Neubildungen (A New History of East Asia)(Hamburg: Verlag von C. Boysen, 1911), p.361.

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understanding China’s geography and typography. One cannot deny theappropriateness of his conclusions just because he was insufficiently proficient in Chinese and made mistakes in quoting from the Chinese.
From the latter half of the twentieth century on, every academic subject
became increasingly specialized, and the field of Sinology was no exception.
If German scholars were to insist on philological studies of the classics asfound in traditional Sinology and make efforts to train only scholars versed in
Chinese literature, history, and philosophy, German Sinology would probably
lag behind the pace of development of China studies in the rest of the world.
But departments of Sinology were hard pressed to accommodate the various
fields of research on China. Already in the 1960s scholars were achieving
significant results outside the field of Sinology, such as a group at the Free
University of Berlin that conducted research on Chinese Mainland politics.
The main member of this group was Jürgen Domes (1932 1999), professor ofpolitical science at the university and a right-wing anticommunist.6 Then,since China’s reform and opening up in the late 1970s, this tendency became
increasingly apparent, with more and more teachers in non-Sinological fields
making significant contributions to research on China. For instance, Prof. PaulU. Unschuld (b.1943) was director of the Institute for the History ofMedicine at Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich from 1986 to 2006
and later director of the Horst-Görtz Institute for the Theory, History, andEthics of Chinese Life Sciences at Charité University Hospital in Berlin(founded with support from the Horst-Görtz Foundation). Prof. Thomas
Heberer (b.1947), who studies China from the perspectives of ethnology andpolitical science, has served as professor of political science and East Asianstudies at the University of Duisburg-Essen since 1998. Robert Heuser, alegal scholar at the Institute of Contemporary China Studies at the Universityof Cologne, studies China’s legal system and is active mostly in jurisprudence circles. Prof. Jürgen Osterhammel (b.1952) has taught at the Universityof Konstanz since 1999 and is a professor at the Institute of Modern andContemporary History there. These scholars teaching in various disciplines
have contributed to Sinology and China studies from core Western fields ofstudy.
The important histories of China written by Sinologists all belong to
6 Jürgen Domes’s works deal mainly with the history and circumstances of the
Guomindang and the Communist Party, and include Politik und Herrschaft in
Rotchina (Politics and Control in Red China) (Stuttgart, 1965), Vertagte Revolution:Über die Politik der Kuomintang von 1923 bis 1937 (Delayed Revolution: On the
Policies of the Guomindang from 1923 to 1937) (Berlin, 1969), and Politische
Landeskunde der Volksrepublik China (The Circumstantial Politics of the People’s
Republic of China) (Berlin, 1982).

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collections of world history. Johann Christoph Gatterer (1727 1799), founderof the eighteenth-century Göttingen school of history, devoted 345 pages toChina in his Handbuch der Universalhistorie nach ihrem gesamten Umfangevon Erschaffung der Welt bis zum Ursprunge der meisten heutigen Reiche und
Staaten (Manual of Universal History, from the Creation of the World Up to
the Origin of Most of Today’s Empires and States, 1761 1764). Relying on
historical materials from the Jesuits, Gatterer divided Chinese history into
three epochs: (1) from the founding of China up to the fourth century BCE,
(2) the fourth and third centuries BCE, and (3) from the second century BCE
on, the epoch of increasing abundance and purpose.7 In 1910 August Conrady
published his Geschichte Chinas (History of China) as part of the well-known
three-volume work Ullsteins Weltgeschichte (Ullstein’s World History).
Conrady used the methodology of ethnology to thoroughly examine Chinese
history up to and including the Qin dynasty (221 207 BCE). Another
Sinologist of Leipzig, Eduard Erkes (1891 1958), published his Geschichte
Chinas (History of China) in Berlin in 1948. The publisher was Volk andWissen, a text publisher, and Erkes’s Chinese history was but part of the
publisher’s complete set of world history. The Sinologists Herbert Franke(1914 2011) and Rolf Trauzettel (b.1930) wrote Das chinesische Kaiserreich(The Chinese Empire, 1968), which appeared as number 19 in the series
Fischer Weltgeschichte (Fischer World History).
These German works on Chinese history are all considered part of world
history. Though there are many such sets of world history, they all basicallyfall within three types. One type linearly traces human development along theline seen in Europe and ignores other patterns of development and otherforms of civilization in the world. Another type simply piles up the histories
of various regions one on top of another without drawing any connections or
showing any reciprocal influences. And a third type focuses on historicalphenomena in particular regions, ethnic groups, or cultures, making it difficult for the reader to gather a view of world history as a whole.
Jürgen Osterhammel was the first to really deal with modern China in thescope of world history. He emphasized that by breaking down national
barriers, we can explore and understand history through broad mutual interactions and mutual influences, and that what is most important here is themutual nature of the influences. His book Die Verwandlung der Welt: Eine
Geschichte des 19. Jahrhunderts (The Transformation of the World: A Historyof the Nineteenth Century, 2009) does not simply lay out the history ofcountries of the nineteenth century, but seeks the origins of the present by
7 Johann Christoph Gatterer, Handbuch der Universalhistorie ( Göttingen:
Vandenhoeck, 1764), vol.1, pt.2, Einleitung, p.4.

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tracing back in time, and tries to show the reader how the nineteenth century
caused the whole world to arrive at the present historical period.
Osterhammel does not stand out for his grand narration of events, nor does hefollow chronological order in narrating events. On the contrary, he is notable
for taking the rich materials of world history to the present and dividing theminto three different areas and then further dividing them into eighteen themesin order to create an accurate exposition. These motifs of world history
include domains (such as time or space), problem areas (such as borders),
surveys of changes in conditions (such as standards of living), processes(such as revolutions), structures (such as cities or nation-states), or the scopeof the notion of production or reproduction (such as work or knowledge). Bymeans of this methodology, one can avoid neglecting external-logic analysesof historical figures, anecdotes, and narrations. Osterhammel thinks that world
history is a history of mutual influence in the global system. Even though heis a Sinologist, he clearly sees that the development of historiography based
European history already cannot adequately explain European history in aself-contained way. Osterhammel’s influence is clearly not limited to the fieldof Sinology. His works nearly always take on the perspective of world
history. For this reason he received the prestigious Leibniz Prize. On July 17,
2014, on the occasion of the sixtieth birthday of Chancellor Angela Merkel( b.1954 ) , Osterhammel gave a report on world history titled“Vergangenheiten: Über die Zeithorizonte der Geschichte” (Varieties of the
Past: On the Time Horizons of History) before a thousand invited guests at
the Konrad Adenauer House. China was, of course, an important part of thereport.

III
Lucien Febvre (1878 1956), a well-known historian of the Annales
School, noticed that a closed discipline at present has no value and novitality. He wrote, “All discoveries are made not at the heart of each discipline, but at the borders, margins, and frontiers of disciplines, where they
permeate one another.”8 John King Fairbank (1907 1991), in his autobiography where he describes his oral defense, wrote, “I learned how to be a
Sinologist among historians, or to put it a little differently, how to be ahistorian among Sinologists. It is like being a Chinese bandit who always
eludes capture: he establishes a base at the border of two provincial jurisdic-

8 Lucien Febvre, Combats pour l’histoire (Battles for History) (Paris: Armand Collin,
1953), p.30. Available at http://classiques.uqac.ca/classiques/febvre_lucien/
Combats_pour_lhistoire/febvre_combats_pour_histoire.pdf.

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tions, and when one side comes for him, he flees to the other side.”9 By
conducting research at the junction between history and Sinology, Fairbank
could forge new paths and become the reason that the United Statesembarked on China studies.
If we look at the present development of Sinology in Germany, we seethat because power over culture and education resides at the state level, thedevelopment of Sinology departments is very uneven, and that researchinterests and teaching content depends on the interests and knowledge ofparticular professors. For example, after Wolfgang Kubin (b.1945) left the
University of Bonn, the historian Ralph Kauz took his place, and the researchemphasis at Bonn changed from Chinese literature and history of thought toChinese history, and in particular to relations between China and Persia since
the Yuan dynasty (1279 1368). The University of Hamburg focuses onancient Chinese philosophy and modern Chinese history from the late Qing
period. The University of Berlin emphasizes contemporary social-scientificresearch. Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich leans toward the historyof Chinese thought and philosophy. The University of Erlangen-Nürnberg and
Goethe University of Frankfurt offer excellent exchange programs forresearch in the history of Chinese science and ideas. And Heidelberg
University has a outstanding research institute for research in the history of
East Asian fine arts. This academic scene, compared with China studies in the
United States, has both an advantage and a disadvantage: the advantage isthat it allows greater academic freedom, and the disadvantage is that it
discourages systematic development of a large-scale program in Sinology.
Nonetheless, Germany has made efforts to integrate European Sinology.
For instance, in 1998 the Sinology Department of Heidelberg University, led
by Rudolf Wagner (b.1941), established the European Center for Digital
Resources in Chinese Studies. As a result, Sinology resources in Europe havebecome more integrated in such systems as the European Virtual OPAC for
Chinese Studies, an online public-access catalog that includes the resources ofimportant Sinology libraries in Austria, Germany, Switzerland, Belgium,
Holland, France, England, and Scandinavia, as well as those of the German
Union Catalogue.
Since 2003, the European Union has tried to introduce the Bologna
Process, a set of uniform regulations, modeled on those in the United States,
designed to gain recognition of bachelor’s and master’s course programs in
9 John King Fairbank 费正清, Fei Zhengqing zizhuan 费正清自传 (The Autobiographyof John King Fairbank), (Tianjin: Tianjin Renmin Chubanshe, 1993), p.170.
Translated from John King Fairbank, Chinabound: A Fifty-Year Memoir (New York:
Harper and Row, 1982).

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Europe and the world at large. In recent years, these policy requirements
have sparked continuous discussions in German Sinology circles and in
Chinese academic circles. To take bachelor requirements in Sinology departments as an example, though students are required to acquire a level ofproficiency in Chinese and learn a lot about Chinese culture in four terms,
they cannot possibly accomplish all this.
Since the start of the twenty-first century, German Sinology has tended
to become more specialized and to increasingly rely on social-scientificmethodologies to carry out research on China. In 2006 the Institut fürAsienkunde (Institute for Asian Studies) in Hamburg changed its name toGerman Institute of Global and Area Studies, and it changed its journal froma large-format journal of German and English papers to a small-format
journal entirely of English papers, with an accompanying name change from
China aktuell to Journal of Current Chinese Affairs. And in November 2013
the Stiftung Mercator (Mercator Foundation) announced that in the next five
years it would donate 18.4 million euros to establish Europe’s largest China
research center, a China think tank, in Berlin, so that Germany can more
effectively interact with China, the world’s second largest economy, andthereby win the future.
In the universities, a move toward interdisciplinary links is already wellunderway. Heidelberg University has established the Karl Jaspers Centre forAdvanced Transcultural Studies, part of the Cluster of Excellence “Asia andEurope in a Global Context: Shifting Asymmetries in Cultural Flows”
program receiving support from the federal government. This program canreceive assistance from the federal government because of its interdisciplinary, intercultural nature. In fact, all of the large clusters of excellence
supported by the German government have a basic orientation toward interdisciplinary, intercultural research. This policy toward research seeks to break
down the academic silos built around individual disciplines. In this way,
Sinology can be integrated into an interdisciplinary framework, and in thisframework develop a new significance. Changes in the framework of knowledge will hasten the demise of traditional Sinology departments and their wayof conducting scholarship and, of course, further denigrate study of the classics, with its focus on the philosophical and literary literature.
In the 1990s Maren Eckhardt (b.1964) gave a prospective on the futureof regional East Asian research, using developments at Ruhr University
Bochum as an example. She noted three trends for future development ofresearch on East Asia in general and China in particular: (1) German regions
permeate one another. They seldom are confined to a particular sphere ofresearch and often change. (2) Research in the regions is no longer internallymotivated. Rather, it is based on global concerns and international themes. (3)China Studies in Germany

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Interdisciplinary interaction is not confined to theory, but in fact is moreconcerned with practical application.10 Hence, China studies must continue todecentralize and strive for mutual influence in the field.
Sinology and China studies are no longer pure research specializations.
Rather, they have started to become an interdisciplinary, comprehensive
research interest. The participation of German China scholars has helped togive research on China a global significance. Such research by German
scholars has without doubt given scholars in China a different perspective forconsidering, interpreting, and criticizing China’s culture and modernization.
The coming of the age of globalization means that China, with one-fifth of theworld’s population, cannot separate itself from the world, and at the sametime that it will exert a tremendous influence on the world.

10 Maren Eckhardt, “Ostasienwissenschaften an der Ruhr-Universität Bochum:
Historiographische Ansätze, dargestellt am Beispiel der Chinawissenschaften” (East
Asian Studies at Ruhr University Bochum: Historiographical Approaches, Illustrated
by the Example of China Studies), in Chinawissenschaften – deutschsprachige
Entwicklungen: Geschichte, Personen, Perspektiven (The Development of China
Studies in the German Language: History, People, Perspectives), edited by Helmut
Martin and Christiane Hammer (Hamburg: Institut für Asienkunde, 1999), pp.368
379. Translated into Chinese as “Dongyaxue zai Luerqu Bohong Daxue: YiZhongguoxue wei li chanshu qi lishi yuanyuan” 东亚学在鲁尔区波鸿大学: 以中国学
为例阐述其历史渊源, in Deguo Hanxue: Lishi, fazhan, renwu yu shijiao 德国汉学：历发展、人物与视角人物与视角 (Zhengzhou: Daxiang Chubanshe, 2005), pp.357 365. The史、发展
relevant passage occurs on p.364 of the Chinese translation.