Karl Friedrich Neumann
Karl Friedrich Neumann was a German orientalist.
Life
Neumann was born into a poor Jewish family, under the name of Bamberger, at Reichsmannsdorf, near Bamberg. After his Bar Mitzwa he had to leave his family and with the support of relatives ended up in Frankfurt as a house teacher. He studied philosophy and philology at Heidelberg, Munich and Göttingen, became a convert to Protestantism and took the name of Neumann. From 1821 to 1825 he was a teacher in Würzburg and Speyer; then he learned Armenian in Venice at the San [Lazzaro degli Armeni] and visited Paris and London.From April 1830 to May 1831 he undertook a journey from London to Kanton in China on the East Indiaman Sir David Scott, where he studied the language and amassed a large library of valuable books and manuscripts. These, about 12,000 in number, he presented to the royal library at Munich. Returning to Germany in 1833, Neumann was made professor of Armenian and Chinese in the university of Munich. He held this position until 1852, when, owing to his pronounced revolutionary opinions, he was removed from his chair. Ten years later he settled in Berlin, where he remained until his death in 1870.
Works
Neumann's leisure time after his enforced retirement was occupied in historical studies, and besides his "Geschichte des englischen Reichs in Asien", he wrote a history of the United States of America, Geschichte der Vereinigten Staaten von Amerika.His other works include:
- Versuch einer Geschichte der armenischen Literatur
- Geschichte des englisch-chinesischen Kriegs
- The Catechism of the shamans, or, The laws and regulations of the priesthood of Buddha in China.
- ; translation of Vahram of Edessa.
- History of the pirates who infested the China Sea from 1807 to 1810.