Hellmut Wilhelm

Hellmut Wilhelm (10 December 1905 – 5 July 1990) was a German Sinologist known for his studies of both Chinese literature and Chinese history.

Wilhelm was an expert on the ancient Chinese divination text I Ching (Yi jing), which he believed to represent the essence of Chinese thought.

He also produced one of the most widely used German-Chinese dictionaries of the 20th century.

He held teaching positions at Peking University and the University of Washington.

Wilhelm's father, Richard Wilhelm, was also a noted Sinologist, and held the first chair of Sinology at the University of Frankfurt.

Hellmut Wilhelm was born on 10 December 1905 in the Chinese city of Qingdao, which was then a German enclave due to the Kiautschou Bay concession of 1891.

Wilhelm was the third son of the German missionary and sinologist Richard Wilhelm.

His early education in China coincided with the Xinhai Revolution, when the Qing dynasty was overthrown and China moved toward republican government, and he was intimately familiar with the Chinese intellectual world of that era.

When Qingdao was occupied by the Japanese Army, Japan having declared war on Germany in 1914 at the beginning of World War I, Wilhelm's parents sent him to live with friends in Shanghai for his safety.

Following the war's conclusion, Wilhelm's family returned to Germany, where his father became the first chair of Sinology at the University of Frankfurt.

Wilhelm first attended a preparatory school in Stuttgart, then began studying at the University of Frankfurt, where he also served as his father's assistant.

He later attended Kiel University and the University of Grenoble, studying law and political science.

He passed the German Staatsexamen ("State Examination") in law in 1928.

After his father's death in 1930, Wilhelm decided to continue his father's work in ancient Chinese literature and pursue a career in Chinese scholarship.

Wilhelm pursued graduate study in Chinese at the University of Berlin.

He wrote a dissertation on Ming dynasty scholar Gu Yanwu, receiving a doctorate in 1932.

During the early 1940s, Wilhelm would frequently give lectures on Chinese history and thought to the German-speaking community in Beijing.

In 1944, Wilhelm published a set of lectures on the ancient Chinese classic Yi Jing entitled Die Wandlung: Acht Vorträge zum I-Ging – subsequently translated into English as Change: Eight Lectures on the I Ching – which have become the most widely read introduction to the Yi Jing in a Western language.

Wilhelm then returned to China, where he lived and worked in Beijing until 1948.

He taught German language and literature at Peking University and produced the Deutsch-Chinesische Wörterbuch, a well-known German-Chinese dictionary.

In 1948, Wilhelm moved to the United States to take up a position as a professor of Chinese at the University of Washington, where he taught until he was forced to retire in 1971 due to eye problems that affected his vision and reading abilities.

He authored dozens of articles and manuscripts, and was a key figure in establishing the Far Eastern and Russian Institute.

A collection that includes documents relating to his life, photographs, and manuscripts of his scientific work on Gu Yanwu and the Yi Jing can be found in the German Exiles Archive of the German National Library.