Gustaaf Schlegel

Gustaaf Schlegel (30 September 184015 October 1903) was a Dutch sinologist and field naturalist.

Life and career Gustaaf Schlegel was born on 30 September 1840 in Oegstgeest. The son of Hermann Schlegel—a native of Saxony who had moved to the Netherlands in 1827 to work at the natural history museum of Leiden and became its second director—Gustaaf begun to study Chinese at the age of 9 with Leiden japanologist J. J. Hoffmann initially, it seems, without the knowledge of his parents. Gustaaf made his first trip to China in 1857 in order to collect bird specimens, but his notoriety as naturalist was overshadowed by that of Robert Swinhoe who completed much field work in China ahead of Schlegel.

In 1878 he married Catharina Elisabeth Gezina Buddingh. They had no children and divorced in 1890. The last years of his life were significantly affected by diabetes, as a result of which he lost sight in both eyes. He retired in 1902 and died next year. His chair at Leiden remained vacant until 1904 when Jan Jakob Maria de Groot accepted the position.

Schlegel's magnum opus was his Dutch-Chinese dictionary, published in 4 volumes between 1882 and 1891. It won international acclaim, including the Prix Stanislas Julien (1887). Although the German press even bracketed this work in the same category of achievements as the Forth Bridge and the Eiffel Tower, it had little impact outside Dutch sinology. The publisher, Brill, had apparently printed more copies than were ever ordered, and these were shredded only in 1975. Despite Schlegel's pleas, Dutch did not become a language of international scientific exchange in his field. (C.F.M. de Grijs, a contemporary colleague of Schlegel is almost totally forgotten today because he only published in Dutch.)

Perhaps Schlegel's most lasting contribution is the founding in 1890, together with Henri Cordier, of the journal T'oung Pao, providing a joint publishing venue for the then leading Sinological centers of Europe.

Schlegel also wrote extensively on the geographical accounts found in Chinese historical texts like the Book of Liang. His articles on this theme were published in T'oung Pao, initially in French in a series entitled Problèmes Géographiques: Les Peuples Étrangers Chez Les Historiens Chinois, and later continued in English as Geographical Notes. The first article in this series was on Fusang. His articles on ancient Chinese geography were later collected and republished as standalone books.

The scientific name of the Pechora pipit Anthus gustavi was named after him by Robert Swinhoe, after Schlegel discovered it in Amoy (now Xiamen) in southeast China in the early 1860s.