KÖRBER, Hans Nordewin von (Koerber). Treptow-Köpenick 23.7.1896 — San Diego ?.4.1979. German Sino-Tibetologist in the U.S.A. Son of Friedrich Theodor Joachim von K. and Helene Elise von Otto. Gymnasium in Charlottenburg, studies at Berlin, Bonn, Marburg and Cambridge. In 1914 expedition to Khotan with A. H. Francke, sent by Scherman from Munich Ethnographical Museum. Because of WW I interned in Ahmednagar (letter to B. Laufer 1916). Ph.D. 1921 (1922) Marburg. Retained during the war in Kashgar, their collection finally arrived at Munich in 1928. He was a Theosophist and deeply interested in the Christian mysticism of Jakob Lörber (1800–1864). He emigrated to the U.S.A and was Professor of Oriental Studies at the University of Southern California Los Angeles in the mid-1930s. No longer Professor in 1962, when he founded The Divine Word Foundation. Married 1922 Margarete Elisabeth von Boetticher, three step-children.
Publications: Diss. Morphologie des Tibetischen. Manuscript, Marburg 1921.
– Morphology of the Tibetan Language. 12+230 p. L.A. 1935.
– Comparative study of the Turkish, Mongol, and Japanese languages. 19 p. L.A. 1937; “Kuan Yin, the Buddhist Madonna”, Theosophical Forum 19, 1941, 6-16; Tibetan literature: its contribution through Western explorers. 1945.; other works.
– Non-scholarly publications.
Sources: The Silk Road 4:1, 2006 contains an article about the Francke-Körber collection, with full details on Francke and nothing about Körber; briefly in www.encyclopedia.com/doc/1G2-3403802832.html as the founder of Körber Society; Who’s Who in California 1942-43 online gives parents, studies and marriage, but states that he was born in 1886 and made several ethnographic expeditions beginning 1905-07 and 1907-08 in Africa, 1909-10 and 1912-14 in Siberia, Central Asia, West China and Tibet.
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