Anneliese Bulling

Anneliese Bulling (April 21, 1900, in Ellwürden, Wesermarch (today known as Lower Saxony) – February 9, 2004, in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania), also known as Anneliese Gutkind, was a German–American art historian specializing in Chinese art and architecture.

Life Anneliese Bulling came from a wealthy, long-established and well-educated German landowning family. She lived with her father, Henry Bulling (1858–1940), a banker, and her mother, Anna Umbsen (1867–1955). In 1927, she had a short-lived marriage to a farmer that was soon declared invalid. After her failed first marriage, Bulling went off to study Art History and Chinese Studies in Berlin at Friedrich Wilhelm University (now Humboldt University of Berlin) under Erich Haenisch and Brinkmann.

Bulling's research focus was Chinese art history, especially architecture and arts and crafts. She developed a theory that the Chinese characters are the result of prehistoric (Neolithic) astronomical calendar symbols.

In 1956, Bulling and Gutkind married and emigrated to the United States for his professorship at the University of Philadelphia.

In 1964 she joined Dr. Stackler's translation project, translating many Chinese books, and in 1966 she was promoted to Research Associate for Chinese Art and Archaeology at Columbia University in New York.

Her husband died in 1968.

Bulling died in 2004 at the age of 103. She had left the Oldenburg Municipal Museum an extensive collection of letters of correspondence from 1928 to 1946 (around 4,200 letters and postcards), was the inspiration for the 2009 book, From Ellwürden to Hampstead. The letters of the Oldenburg emigrant Anneliese Bulling. A contribution to the history of mentalities of the Oldenburg bourgeoisie in the period of National Socialism by Andreas Vonderach.

Publications

Monographs The Chinese Architecture of the Han Period to the End of the T'ang Period. Lyon, 1935 The Meaning of China's Most Ancient Kind. Leiden, 1952 The Decoration of Mirrors of the Han Period: A Chronology. Ascona: Artibus Asiae, 1960

Essays Neolithic Symbol and the Purpose of Art in China. The Burlington Magazine 82, 1943, pp. 91–101

Literature

Martin Kern: The emigration of sinologist 1933-1945. For the unwritten history of their losses. In: Helmut Martin, Christiane Hammer (ed.): China Sciences - German developments. History, people, perspectives. Hamburg 1999, pp. 222–242 Rudolf Hierl: Erwin Anton Gutkind. Dissertation, Marburg 1989