Marianne Winder

Marianne Winder (10 September 1918 – 6 April 2001) was a Czech-British specialist in Middle High German and a librarian at the Institute of Germanic Studies at the University of London. She later was associated for more than thirty years with the Wellcome Library of the Wellcome Institute for the History of Medicine where she was successively Assistant Librarian (1963–1970), Curator of Eastern Printed Manuscripts and Books (1970–1978) and finally, after having retired, a Tibetan medical consultant (1978–2001). After the German occupation of Czechoslovakia, Winder fled on 29 June 1939, when he crossed the Polish border illegally with his family, his journey taking him across Poland and Scandinavia to England, where he arrived with his wife and daughter Marianne on 13 July 1939. His youngest daughter, and Marianne's younger sister, Eva, born in 1920, remained in Prague. She died in 1945 in the concentration camp at Bergen-Belsen. Six weeks after their arrival in England the Winders were evacuated to Reigate, where they lived in a refugee hostel and where Marianne was registered as a student aged 18. When the inn was closed in 1941, the family moved to Baldock, then a small village in Hertfordshire. In the summer of 1941 Ludwig Winder was diagnosed with coronary thrombosis and he succumbed to his heart disease in Baldock on 16 June 1946.

Studies After the War, Marianne Winder began studying German as an external student at the University of London. On gaining her honours degree in 1948 she obtained a post as Tutorial Assistant in the Department of German at the University of Nottingham. At Nottingham she completed a Master's thesis on the etymology of High Middle German words, an excerpt from which was published in 1952 as a supplement to Maurice Walshe's dictionary, A Concise German Etymological Dictionary. As no etymological dictionary of High Middle German in medieval German texts existed at that time her contribution was significant in the field. the second in 1986 entitled From Paracelsus to Van Helmont. In 1957 she had published the German translation of Edward Conze's Buddhist Texts Through the Ages but emphasized that she did not associate herself with all the points of view expressed in this autobiography, let alone with the passages on the President of the Buddhist Society Christmas Humphreys who, according to her, had had the most beneficial influence on her life. Winder was also interested in the language and culture of Tibet When the position of Curator of Oriental Manuscripts and Prints was created at the Wellcome Institute in 1970 she gained it. This was the beginning of Winder's second career. for which she also wrote the Introduction and which, through its foreign editions in Chinese and French and its revisions, became a classic on Tibetan medicine Always willing to learn, the new Curator attended all the classes of the English Tibetologist David Snellgrove.

Retirement Upon her retirement from the Wellcome Institute in 1978 Winder was appointed Consultant in Tibetan Medicine at the Institute which allowed her to continue her work on the Catalogue of Tibetan manuscripts and xylographs, and the catalogue of thankas, banners and other paintings and drawings in the Library of the Wellcome Institute for the History of Medicine, which was published in 1989. Her successor at the Wellcome Institute was Nigel Allan.

In September 1985 she participated in an international workshop on the study of Indian medicine where she presented her paper 'Vaidarya' which was published in the Proceedings of the Symposium as Studies in Indian Medicine.

In 1986 Winder organized a conference on aspects of classical Tibetan medicine in Central Asia together with a leading exhibition, 'Body and Mind in Tibetan Medicine', at the Wellcome Institute in London, and for which she also produced the exhibition catalogue. The Proceedings of the conference were under her direction and were published in 1993 under the title Aspects of Classical Tibetan Medicine. Winder sat on the Council for Ambix, the Journal of the Society for the History of Alchemy and Chemistry, and acted as a consultant for the book Eastern Healing: the practical guide to the healing traditions of China, India, Tibet and India published just before her death.

Marianne Winder died in London in April 2001 aged 82 after a short illness.

Books Im Zeichen Buddhas, Fischer Bücherei, Frankfurt am Main u. a. 1957 (Fischer-Bücherei 144), traduction en allemand de Buddhist texts through the ages d'Edward Conze with Rechung Rinpoché Jampal Kunzang, Tibetan medicine: illustrated in original texts, 1973 with Walter Pagel, Religion and neoplatonism in Renaissance medicine, Variorum Reprints, 1985, 346 p. with Rechung Rinpoché, Histoire de la médecine tibétaine. Vie de gYu-thog-pa l'Ancien, traduit de l'anglais par Jean-Paul R. Claudon, Sylvaine Jean et Martine Pageon-Tarin, Édition Le Chardon, Saint-Dié (Vosges), 1989, 279 p., Catalogue of Tibetan manuscripts and xylographs, and catalogue of thankas, banners and other paintings and drawings in the Library of the Wellcome Institute for the History of Medicine, London, Wellcome Institute for the History of Medicine, 1989, pp. XIII, 112S, illus.

Articles with Walter Pagel, 'Gnostiches bei Paracelsus und Konrad von Megenberg', in Fachliteratur des Mittlelalters, 1968 'The Eightness of Adam and related to "gnostic" ideas in the Paracelsian corpus', in Ambix, 1969 'Modern and traditional medicine: rivals or friends? Some solutions attempted by India, China, Japan and Tibetans in exile'. Bulletin of the British Association of Orientalists, 1979-1980, 11, p. 35-39. 'Tibetan Medicine Compared with Ancient and Medieval Western Medicine', Bulletin of Tibetology, 1981, Vol. 17, N. 1, p. 5-22. 'The Buddhist antecedents of Tibetan medicine', Tibet News Review, 2(1/2) (1981), p. 29-34. 'Buddhism and Tibetology', Bulletin of Tibetology, 1984, Vol. 20, N. 1, p. 10-13. Tibetan Buddhist medicine and psychiatry. The diamond healing, Med Hist. 1985; 29(2) : p. 224. 'Malli Ka', Bulletin of Tibetology, 1988, Vol. 24, N. 3, p. 5-11. 'Tibetan medicine', Bulletin of Tibetology, 1989, Vol. 25, N. 2, p. 5-16. 'Vaidurya', Bulletin of Tibetology, 1990, Vol. 26, N. 1-3, p. 31-37. 'Aspects of the history of the prayer wheel', Bulletin of Tibetology, 1992, Vol. 28, N. 1, p. 25-33. 'Tibetan Medicine, its Humours and Elements', Bulletin of Tibetology, 1994, Vol. 30, N. 1, p. 11-25. 'Der Buddhismus und die tibetische Medizin', Tibet Forum, no. 2, (1985), p. 7-10.