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)
--------------------------------------------
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)
