KARL

FRIEDRICH

See also:

• NEUMANN, FRANZ ERNST (1798-1895)
• KARL FRIEDRICH NEUMANN (1793-1870)

NEUMANN (1793-1870)  , German orientalist, was born, under the name of Bamberger, at Reichsmannsdorf, near Bamberg, on the 28th of December 1793 . He studied philosophy and philology at Heidelberg, Munich and Gottingen, became a convert to Protestantism and took the name of Neumann . From 1822 to 1825 he was a teacher at Spires; then he learned Armenian in Venice and visited Paris and London . In 1829 he went to China, 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 1831 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 died on the 17th of March 187o . Neumann's leisure time after his enforced retirement was occupied in historical studies, and besides his Geschichte des englischen Reichs in Asien (Leipzig, 1851), he wrote a history of the United States of America, Geschichte der Vereinigten Staaten von Amerika (Berlin, 1863-1866) . His other works include Versuch einer Geschichte der armenischen Literatur (Leipzig, 1836) ; Die Volker des siidlichen Russland (1846, and again 1855); and Geschichte des englischchinesischen Kriegs (1846, and again 1855) . He also issued some translations from Chinese and Armenian: Catechism of the Shamans (1831) ; Vahram's Chronicle of the Armenian Kingdom in Cilicia (1831) and History of the Pirates in the China Sea (1831) . The journal of the Royal Asiatic Society (London, 1871) contains a full list of his works .