Walter Simom, A Scholar-Librarian and his East Asian Collection

Walter Simon at home with his books in Twickenham, England Pictorial Collection

 Photograph courtesy of Harry Simon 

Andrew Gosling describes the life of an outstanding linguist and academic

      You may be aware that my father was a professional librarian as well as an academic, and that he had a great interest in           seeing books used to their best advantage, even if this should entail some risks. 
Harry Simon, then Professor of Chinese at the University of Melbourne, wrote these words about his late father, Walter Simon. This was in a letter of 19 October 1981 offering to donate the remainder of Walter Simon's collection on Tibetan, Manchu, Mongolian and related languages and studies to the National Library of Australia.

Walter Simon (1893-1981) was born in Berlin and spent the first half of his life in Germany. At university he first specialised in Romance and Classical philology, before becoming a librarian. After completing his doctorate he turned to Sinology and began a parallel career as an academic. His linguistic skills were exceptional. When asked in the 1930s which languages he could read he replied 'almost all European languages as well as Chinese and Japanese'. Years later his son Harry asked him a similar question. After some thought he said that he could read a newspaper in virtually any European language. Walter Simon's research included ancient and archaic as well as modern Chinese, Tibetan philology and Manchu studies. The Simon Collection reflects his interest in an extraordinarily wide range of ancient and contemporary languages and cultures. It is surely the only collection in the Library where Homer and Ovid sit side by side on the shelves with Confucius, Chinese poems in Russian translation, Tibetan grammars and Sanskrit dictionaries.

Simon's twin careers as an academic and librarian flourished during the 1920s and early 1930s. He began studying Chinese in 1920, became a teacher of East Asian linguistics at the University of Berlin in 1926 and Professor there in 1932. As a librarian he was sent on study visits to Britain in 1929 and to China in 1932-33 on an exchange with the National Library in Peking, where one of his tasks was cataloguing Manchu books. The rise to power of the Nazis soon forced him out of Germany. As a Jewish scholar he was forbidden to teach at university from 1934. His students protested courageously against this injustice, but to no avail. The following year he was also dismissed from his library post. Early in 1936 he left his homeland for England. He was 43, married with two young sons, and faced an uncertain future.

Beginners' Chinese-English Dictionary by Walter Simon . (London: Lund Humphries & Co. Ltd, 1947) 

This copy was presented to Gordon Luce Asian Collections (Luce Collection) 

Starting a new life in England was not simple. Money was tight and jobs scarce. However he had excellent references from the leading European China scholars of his day and was offered a lecturing position at the School of Oriental Studies (later the School of Oriental and African Studies), University of London. In September 1939 he and his family obtained permanent residence and became British citizens. As Reader in Chinese he made a considerable contribution to the war effort by developing a major Chinese language training program for the armed forces and government. During that time he published a series of textbooks on standard Chinese as well as a Beginners' Chinese-English Dictionary, as suitable teaching materials were unavailable.

In 1947 he was appointed to a new Chair of Chinese at the University of London, where he remained until retirement in 1960. In this position he is credited as being one of the founders of modern Chinese studies in the United Kingdom, replacing the more traditional approach through classical texts which had prevailed well into the twentieth century. He also led his Department at an exciting time of major expansion for Asian Studies after World War II.

Early in his professorship he spent September 1948 to August 1949 buying books and renewing contacts in China and Japan. This was a difficult time in China where inflation and corruption marked the dying days of the Republican government. However he managed to make extensive purchases of Chinese, Japanese, Manchu, Mongolian and Tibetan works for the School of Oriental and African Studies' library.

Simon's many publications reflect a range of research interests. He wrote on various aspects of classical and modern Chinese grammar. A series of articles on the Chinese particle erl won him the humorous nickname the Erl-King. During and after World War II he concentrated on practical teaching materials, including his successful Beginners' Chinese- English Dictionary. In his dictionary and other works he promoted use of the then official Chinese system for romanising Chinese, Gwoyeu Romatzyh or GR. Although no longer widely used, GR has the unique advantage of incorporating the four tones of standard Chinese in its spelling system.

His interest in Manchu is reflected in several catalogues to which he contributed. As a result of his visit to Peking in 1932-33 he assisted with a catalogue of Manchu books at the National Library and Palace Museum in that city. He jointly produced Manchu Books in London, which listed holdings at the British Library, the School of Oriental and African Studies and several other institutions. He also oversaw the preparation of a catalogue of the Manchu collection at the Bibliotheque Nationale in Paris.

Book published in 1894 providing Chinese explanation for Manchu language terms. 

The title in Manchu is Dasame foloho Manju gisun-i  untuhun hergeni-i temgetu jorin-i bithe 

and in Chinese Ch 'ung k '0 Ch'ing wen hsu tzu chih nan pien Asian Collections (Simon Collection)

In his later years he turned increasingly to Tibetan, on which he contributed numerous articles to Asia Major and the Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies. Well into his eighties he was still producing learned articles such as 'Some Tibetan etymologies of semantic interest'. A number of Simon's books and articles are also held in the Luce Collection at the National Library. Gordon Luce (1889-1979) is widely regarded as the foremost European scholar on Burma. His interests extended well beyond Burmese studies and included Chinese and other East Asian languages. The Luce Collection contains several works on Chinese and Tibetan by Simon, signed and presented by the author.

Letter from Walter Simon to Sydney Wang (3 April 1974) after a visit to the National Library

In retirement Simon remained active. He was Visiting Professor at the University of Toronto in 1961, at the Australian National University in 1962 and in Tokyo, Canberra and Melbourne in 1970. He edited the journal Asia Major for a number of years and was also President of the Philological Society from 1967 to 1970.

The Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies dedicated its second issue of 1973 to him. In it C.R. Bawden paid tribute:
Walter Simon, whom his friends, colleagues and former pupils greet with respect and affection on his 80th birthday with this volume of essays, inspired a new academic professionalism, which was Germanic in its philological exactitude, but at the same time humane in its appreciation of the civilization to which the study of language is the key. 

As Simon himself wrote in a wartime letter to a colleague:
I think it is good for the students to know that Chinese, while enabling them to say '1 walk towards the blackboard', or '1 get up from my chair', has also been the vehicle of sublime thoughts, expressed in an incomparable way. 

Dr Igor de Rachewiltz, a specialist in Mongolian studies, describes Walter Simon as a perfect gentleman of the older generation. He compares him to a good, well-matured wine, as a man of enormous competence and meticulous scholarship, who had a sense of humour as well. Igor also stresses that the support of his devoted wife Kate allowed Walter Simon to keep writing articles almost up to the time of his death.

Harry Simon remembers his father as a man who was completely dedicated, for example covering the dinner table with pieces of paper when compiling his dictionary. As a language teacher he was concerned for his students, and developed a system of mnemonics to help the beginner faced with the daunting task of looking up Chinese characters in a dictionary.

SydneyWang (left)in December 1979. He was the Chief Librarian,

Orientalia from 1964 to 1985  Pictorial Collection' 

The National Library acquired the Walter Simon Collection in stages between 1970 and 1982. Sydney Wang, who was Chief Librarian, Orientalia for more than 20 years, recalls that Simon first visited the Library in April 1970. Sydney Wang suggested that his collection come to Canberra, later noting in his annual report that some publications on 'Chinese, history and literature and the teaching of the Chinese language [had been] purchased from Professor Walter Simon'.

Two cases of Chinese and Manchu works from Simon were dispatched for Australia in February 1973 on board the Discovery Bay. This Manchu acquisition was of particular significance. The 234 volumes of books and the 13 manuscripts more than doubled the size of the Library's modest Manchu collection. Igor de Rachewiltz and the historian Professor Otto van der Sprenkel, both at the Australian National Universiry, had together recommended purchase of this material.

On 3 April 1974, Walter Simon wrote to Sydney Wang from London not long after another visit to the National Library. He referred to the dispatch of the '.remaining 150 books or so of the Western books in the fields of Sinology, general linguistics, Romance and Classical philology'.

After Walter Simon's death, his son Harry wrote to the Library on 4 April 1981:
Since the Australian  National Library holds the major part of my father's books in Chinese, Japanese and Manchu, it occurred to me that you might be interested in acquiring his working collection on Manchu, Tibetan and Sanskrit, together with some books in Buddhist studies.

In June of that year Christies in London, which had been asked to assess this material, described it as containing 'many works that would have been expensive when new and which would now be hard to find'.

Harry Simon later formally offered to donate: [My] father's working collection on Tibetan, Manchu, Mongolian and related languages and studies to the National Library... to serve the needs of any scholar who may be working in this field from time to time.My family and I would be very pleased if this could be done and if his  name could be associated with the collection.

Fifteen boxes containing 850 books were shipped from England on the Jervis Bay in January 1982. In addition to the books there was a small collection of Walter Simon's correspondence, research notes and journal articles, now in the Library's Manuscript Collection.

 The Simon Collection of more than 2000 books is housed in Asian Collections on the Third Floor of the Library. While the Western language component of just over 1000 titles has already been catalogued onto the online catalogue, plans are under way to add the East Asian language books. The latter are currently searchable through the card catalogue in the Asian Collections Reading Room. Books in Manchu are included in a guide to Manchu holdings in Australia produced by the German librarian Hartmut Walravens.

During the past 50 years the National Library of Australia has acquired a number of important Asian formed collections from scholars and book lovers. Among these collections Walter Simon's is the richest resource on the languages of East Asia, especially Chinese, Tibetan and Manchu.

A fourteenth-century image of the Taoist philosopher Lao-tzu proclaiming his teachings Reproduced from  Die chinesische Literatur [Chinese Literature] by Richard Wilhelm (Wildpark-Potsdam: Akademische Verlagsgesellschaft Athenaion, c.1926)  Asian Collections (Simon Collection)

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ANDREW GOSLING is Chief Librarian in the National Library's Asian Collections. He would like to thank Harry Simon, Igor de Rachewiltz and Sydney Wang for advice and assistance with this article.



(National Library of Australia News, vol. 11 (3), December 2000, pp. 3–6)