Professor Friedrich A. Bischoff, who taught Chinese and Tibetan at Indiana University from 1964 through 1982, died in his native Vienna, Austria, on Jan. 14, 2009.
He began his career in Bloomington in the fall of 1964 with a joint appointment in the former Department of East Asian Languages and Literatures and the Department of Uralic-Altaic Studies, where he offered the university's first course in Classical Tibetan.
Friedrich was born in Vienna on May 18, 1928, to Norbert Bischoff and Holda (Köchert) Bischoff. His father, Norbert Bischoff, served in the Austrian diplomatic corps his entire life, and in his memoirs, Friedrich indicates how very much the multilingual and multicultural experiences in his youth predicted his later academic career.
In 1930, when Friedrich was 2, the family moved to Turkey, where his father was sent for diplomatic service, and three years later, in 1933, to Paris. Friedrich would make Paris his home "with interruptions" until 1964. In his youth in Paris, Friedrich studied Greek, Latin, philology and philosophy. The family remained in France in "voluntary exile" from the 1938 Anschluss until 1942, at which time they were required to return to Vienna. There, Friedrich finished his studies at the Academic Gymnasium of Vienna in 1947 at age 19.
He immediately went back to Paris on his own, at which time he entered the Sorbonne to study Sinology and Indology; and later Turkish, Tibetan, Mongolian and Japanese languages and cultures; having been in some measure influenced toward these studies by his father's academic studies and diplomatic career. At the Sorbonne, Friedrich studied Chinese under the legendary French Sinologists Paul Demiéville (1894-1979) and Robert des Rotours (1891-1980) while taking Tibetan under Marcelle Lalou (1890-1967). Friedrich received his diploma in Chinese from the Sorbonne in June 1950, and remained there to do his advanced work.
During the course of his studies in the 1950s and early 1960s, he traveled extensively in China, India, Mongolia and Japan, during which time his father was Austrian Ambassador to the Soviet Union. Friedrich's status as son of a highest-ranking diplomat gained him access to places and experiences one could not otherwise have had, especially to acquire a visa and get into Mongolia, and to live in Mao's China during the "Great Leap Forward" in the late 1950s while attending Peking University.
In the autumn of 1950, Friedrich started writing his doctoral dissertation "La Foret des Pinceaux: Etude sur l'Academie du Han-Lin sous la Dynastie des T'ang et Traduction du Han Lin Tche" (finished 1958; published Bibliotheque de l'Institut des Hautes Etudes Chinoises, Paris, 1963), and a year later in the autumn of 1951, he began a second dissertation "Contribution l'etude des divinites mineures du Bouddhisme tantrique: Arya-Mahabala-nama-mahayana-sutra. Tibetain (mss. de Touen-houang) et Chinois" the latter of which was finished before the former (finished 1954; published Librairie Orientaliste Paul Geuthner, Paris, 1956).
Not having immediate support at the Sorbonne for the topic of this second thesis, Friedrich left the Sorbonne and went to the University of Hamburg to study, but lonely and missing Paris, and the Hamburg weather among other things, as he wrote in his journal "after semester's end [early 1952], I jumped on the motorcycle and roared — back to Paris." He finished his dissertation "La Foret ..." at the Sorbonne in 1958, then defended it to professors Gernet, Kaltenmark, and Nicolas-Vandier on June 6, 1959, for which was conferred upon him the degree "Docteur de l'Université de Paris."
In the first part of the 1960s Friedrich taught Mongolian at the University of Bonn, interspersed with more travel, and then in 1964, Indiana University Professor Liu Wu-chi brought Dr. Bischoff to Bloomington, where, in addition to Classical Tibetan, Professor Bischoff taught graduate-level courses in "Sinological Methods" and a reading seminar in classical Chinese literature.
The vast majority of students who received Ph.D. degrees in traditional Chinese literature between 1964 and 1982 passed through his seminars. This training from Professor Bischoff, together with the broad grounding in the Chinese humanities provided by Professor Liu Wu-chi, laid the foundations for a distinctive "Indiana School" of American Sinology, as represented by his many students who subsequently went on to professional careers at major American universities. His students include Professor William H. Nienhauser, Jr. at the University of Wisconsin, Professor Jerome P. Seaton at the University of North Carolina, Professor Michael Fishlen at the University of Oregon, Professor Charles Hartman at SUNY-Albany, and Professor Brad Langley, formerly of Colby College, and now with the federal government.
Students in Professor Bischoff's methods course regularly used the East Asian resources at several libraries on the Bloomington campus, but in the early to mid 1970s, students began to express interest in the collections at the Kinsey Institute, which they learned owns one of the richest collections of East Asian erotica in the world. Kinsey Institute Director Dr. Paul Gebhard at that time and his team made the collections available to Professor Bischoff and his students, and from then on, this was incorporated into the methods course.
In the late 1970's, Dr. Gebhard asked Friedrich to devise an East Asian area course that would be a part of their new interdisciplinary Ph.D. minor in Human Sexuality at IU Bloomington. At first, Dr. Bischoff declined, saying he was "no sexologist," but as Friedrich recounts in his memoirs, "the sexologists offered to help ... [but] gave me pencil and paper and locked me in the East Asian collection. In two hours I had the whole semester course worked out." His famous course was titled "Traditional concepts of sex in East Asian cultures."
In 1982, Dr. Bischoff left Indiana University to assume a position as Professor of Chinese at the Institute for Chinese Language and Culture at the University of Hamburg in Germany, where he continued to teach Chinese and his sexuality class.
He retired from the University of Hamburg in 1993, and returned to Vienna, where he maintained a residence, and where, right up to his death, he taught Mongolian and Classical Chinese as an Honorary Professor of Mongolian Language and Culture in the Department of South Asian, Tibetan and Buddhist Studies at the University of Vienna.
On the occasion of Professor Bischoff's 80th birthday, the Austrian Academy of Sciences honored him with a letter of recognition for his lifetime achievements.
Professor Bischoff was preceded in death by his father, Norbert, in 1960 in Vienna, and his mother, Holda, in 1993, also in Vienna.
Friedrich had one sister, Rhea, who in 1959 married the English belle-lettrist Anthony Hartley, who was by then a recognized (and today, famous) literary critic and political writer from London. Rhea died in 1997 in London.
Survivors include two nieces, Sophie (Hartley) Novarino (husband Gianfranco) of London, England, and Marie-Therese (Hartley) Jenkins (husband David) of Cambridge, England, and grandniece and grandnephew Eloïse and Alec Jenkins; and a cousin, Mr. Florian Gerhardus and family of Bad Fischau, Austria.
Funeral and interment were at the Tullnerbach Cemetery on January 31, 2009, in Tullnerbach, Austria.
A memorial service will take place on May 16, 2009, at 5 p.m. in the Chapel of the Brothers of the Society of Pius X, Bernardgasse 22, Vienna VII, Austria.
The Herald-Times, Bloomington, Indiana, April 12, 2009
Professor Friedrich A. Bischoff, who taught Chinese and Tibetan at Indiana University from 1964 through 1982, died in his native Vienna, Austria, on Jan. 14, 2009.
He began his career in Bloomington in the fall of 1964 with a joint appointment in the former Department of East Asian Languages and Literatures and the Department of Uralic-Altaic Studies, where he offered the university's first course in Classical Tibetan.
Friedrich was born in Vienna on May 18, 1928, to Norbert Bischoff and Holda (Köchert) Bischoff. His father, Norbert Bischoff, served in the Austrian diplomatic corps his entire life, and in his memoirs, Friedrich indicates how very much the multilingual and multicultural experiences in his youth predicted his later academic career.
In 1930, when Friedrich was 2, the family moved to Turkey, where his father was sent for diplomatic service, and three years later, in 1933, to Paris. Friedrich would make Paris his home "with interruptions" until 1964. In his youth in Paris, Friedrich studied Greek, Latin, philology and philosophy. The family remained in France in "voluntary exile" from the 1938 Anschluss until 1942, at which time they were required to return to Vienna. There, Friedrich finished his studies at the Academic Gymnasium of Vienna in 1947 at age 19.
He immediately went back to Paris on his own, at which time he entered the Sorbonne to study Sinology and Indology; and later Turkish, Tibetan, Mongolian and Japanese languages and cultures; having been in some measure influenced toward these studies by his father's academic studies and diplomatic career. At the Sorbonne, Friedrich studied Chinese under the legendary French Sinologists Paul Demiéville (1894-1979) and Robert des Rotours (1891-1980) while taking Tibetan under Marcelle Lalou (1890-1967). Friedrich received his diploma in Chinese from the Sorbonne in June 1950, and remained there to do his advanced work.
During the course of his studies in the 1950s and early 1960s, he traveled extensively in China, India, Mongolia and Japan, during which time his father was Austrian Ambassador to the Soviet Union. Friedrich's status as son of a highest-ranking diplomat gained him access to places and experiences one could not otherwise have had, especially to acquire a visa and get into Mongolia, and to live in Mao's China during the "Great Leap Forward" in the late 1950s while attending Peking University.
In the autumn of 1950, Friedrich started writing his doctoral dissertation "La Foret des Pinceaux: Etude sur l'Academie du Han-Lin sous la Dynastie des T'ang et Traduction du Han Lin Tche" (finished 1958; published Bibliotheque de l'Institut des Hautes Etudes Chinoises, Paris, 1963), and a year later in the autumn of 1951, he began a second dissertation "Contribution l'etude des divinites mineures du Bouddhisme tantrique: Arya-Mahabala-nama-mahayana-sutra. Tibetain (mss. de Touen-houang) et Chinois" the latter of which was finished before the former (finished 1954; published Librairie Orientaliste Paul Geuthner, Paris, 1956).
Not having immediate support at the Sorbonne for the topic of this second thesis, Friedrich left the Sorbonne and went to the University of Hamburg to study, but lonely and missing Paris, and the Hamburg weather among other things, as he wrote in his journal "after semester's end [early 1952], I jumped on the motorcycle and roared — back to Paris." He finished his dissertation "La Foret ..." at the Sorbonne in 1958, then defended it to professors Gernet, Kaltenmark, and Nicolas-Vandier on June 6, 1959, for which was conferred upon him the degree "Docteur de l'Université de Paris."
In the first part of the 1960s Friedrich taught Mongolian at the University of Bonn, interspersed with more travel, and then in 1964, Indiana University Professor Liu Wu-chi brought Dr. Bischoff to Bloomington, where, in addition to Classical Tibetan, Professor Bischoff taught graduate-level courses in "Sinological Methods" and a reading seminar in classical Chinese literature.
The vast majority of students who received Ph.D. degrees in traditional Chinese literature between 1964 and 1982 passed through his seminars. This training from Professor Bischoff, together with the broad grounding in the Chinese humanities provided by Professor Liu Wu-chi, laid the foundations for a distinctive "Indiana School" of American Sinology, as represented by his many students who subsequently went on to professional careers at major American universities. His students include Professor William H. Nienhauser, Jr. at the University of Wisconsin, Professor Jerome P. Seaton at the University of North Carolina, Professor Michael Fishlen at the University of Oregon, Professor Charles Hartman at SUNY-Albany, and Professor Brad Langley, formerly of Colby College, and now with the federal government.
Students in Professor Bischoff's methods course regularly used the East Asian resources at several libraries on the Bloomington campus, but in the early to mid 1970s, students began to express interest in the collections at the Kinsey Institute, which they learned owns one of the richest collections of East Asian erotica in the world. Kinsey Institute Director Dr. Paul Gebhard at that time and his team made the collections available to Professor Bischoff and his students, and from then on, this was incorporated into the methods course.
In the late 1970's, Dr. Gebhard asked Friedrich to devise an East Asian area course that would be a part of their new interdisciplinary Ph.D. minor in Human Sexuality at IU Bloomington. At first, Dr. Bischoff declined, saying he was "no sexologist," but as Friedrich recounts in his memoirs, "the sexologists offered to help ... [but] gave me pencil and paper and locked me in the East Asian collection. In two hours I had the whole semester course worked out." His famous course was titled "Traditional concepts of sex in East Asian cultures."
In 1982, Dr. Bischoff left Indiana University to assume a position as Professor of Chinese at the Institute for Chinese Language and Culture at the University of Hamburg in Germany, where he continued to teach Chinese and his sexuality class.
He retired from the University of Hamburg in 1993, and returned to Vienna, where he maintained a residence, and where, right up to his death, he taught Mongolian and Classical Chinese as an Honorary Professor of Mongolian Language and Culture in the Department of South Asian, Tibetan and Buddhist Studies at the University of Vienna.
On the occasion of Professor Bischoff's 80th birthday, the Austrian Academy of Sciences honored him with a letter of recognition for his lifetime achievements.
Professor Bischoff was preceded in death by his father, Norbert, in 1960 in Vienna, and his mother, Holda, in 1993, also in Vienna.
Friedrich had one sister, Rhea, who in 1959 married the English belle-lettrist Anthony Hartley, who was by then a recognized (and today, famous) literary critic and political writer from London. Rhea died in 1997 in London.
Survivors include two nieces, Sophie (Hartley) Novarino (husband Gianfranco) of London, England, and Marie-Therese (Hartley) Jenkins (husband David) of Cambridge, England, and grandniece and grandnephew Eloïse and Alec Jenkins; and a cousin, Mr. Florian Gerhardus and family of Bad Fischau, Austria.
Funeral and interment were at the Tullnerbach Cemetery on January 31, 2009, in Tullnerbach, Austria.
A memorial service will take place on May 16, 2009, at 5 p.m. in the Chapel of the Brothers of the Society of Pius X, Bernardgasse 22, Vienna VII, Austria.
The Herald-Times, Bloomington, Indiana, April 12, 2009
Gravesite Details
This may be the wrong cemetery. Please contact me if a correction needs to be made. I felt his life was too important not to be acknowledged.
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