Walter Liebenthal

Walter Liebenthal[1] (12 June 1886 – 15 November 1982), was a German philosopher and sinologist who specialized in Chinese Buddhism.

During those years Walter Liebenthal met Paul Dahlke, who had founded the first German Buddhist monastery in Berlin-Frohnau in 1924 and he became deeply interested in Buddhism.

In 1937, he joined Peking University as lecturer in Sanskrit and German and followed it to its successive wartime seats in Changsha and Kunming.

[3] In 1952 he left Peking and moved to the Visva-Bharati University of Santiniketan in India, founded by Bengali writer, Rabindranath Tagore, first as a senior research fellow, and later as professor and director of the Department of Sino-Indian Studies until he became emeritus in 1959.

On his seventieth birthday, the University of Santiniketan published a Festschrift, with articles from "fellow scholars of Dr.Liebenthal the world over, who warmly responded to the idea of paying him their tribute" [4] Upon the death of his dear wife Charlotte in 1958, he decided to leave India.

[5] He remained active giving classes, lectures and continuing work "On World Interpretations", his opus magnum until his death in 1982.

"The lengthy and intensive engagement with the religious and philosophical teachers of India and China have led him beyond the reaches of his own specialties to comparative study of the basic themes and thought structure that determine a culture.

He has laid down his thoughts on this problem in his writing, "On World-Interpretations" (Santiniketan 1956), which is at the same time a plea for mutual understanding among peoples".