Eduard Erkes

His father Heinrich Erkes was a merchant and member of the German Social Democratic Party who later became an Icelandic scholar.

After graduating from high school in 1910, he accompanied his father on a three-month geographical research expedition to Iceland.

In 1913 he received his doctorate in Leipzig under August Conrady with a thesis on The Calling Back of the Soul (Chao-hun) by Sung Yüh (a poet from the Warring States Period in the 3rd century BC).

He was professionally connected to the Leipzig School of Sinology, which emerged from the tradition of Georg von der Gabelentz and Erkes's teacher and father-in-law August Conrady.

After the Nazis came to power in 1933, they burned Erkes’s atheistic book Wie Gott erschaffen wurde ("How God Was Created").

[4] Due to the Law for the Restoration of the Professional Civil Service, the Saxon Ministry for National Education withdrew his venia legendi.