LÜDERS, Else (née Peipers). Göttingen 20.10.1880 — Berlin 13.3.1945. German Indologist. Wife of —> Heinrich L. Daughter of David Peipers, Professor of Philosophy at Göttingen. From 1900 engaged to marry Heinrich Lüders, who also soon became her teacher in Sanskrit. After marriage she assisted her husband in his Mahābhārata studies and thus learned to read manuscripts. In 1909 they launched together the study of Turfan fragments in Berlin, a project, which she pursued also after the death of her husband in 1943, concentrating on preparing the material left by him for publication. Hon. Dr. phil. 1910 Rostock. Visited India with her husband in 1927–28. They had one daughter.

Else Lüders was not only the wife of a great Indologist, but herself a competent and recognized scholar, although she called herself “the modest helper of scholarship”.

Publications: Assisted her husband in many works, though her name is not printed on title-page, e.g. in the Bruchstücke buddhistischer Dramen. 1912; and Kalpanāmaṇḍiṭīkā. 1926.

– Translated: Buddhistische Märchen. 16+37 p. Jena 1922 (70 Jātakas).

– Unter indischer Sonne. Reisebriefe. 151 p. Lp. 1930.

– Prātimokṣasūtra der Sarvāstivādin. Nach Vorarbeiten von E. Lüders und H. Härtel hrsg. von G. von Simson. 1. Wiedergabe bisher nicht publizierter Handschriften in Transkription. 2. Der Schlussteil des Prātimokṣasūtra der Sarvāstivādin. 284+108 p. AGAW III, 155 & 171. Sanskrittexte aus den Turfanfunden 11 & 13. Göttingen 1986-89.

Sources: W. Schubring, ZDMG 99, 1945-49, 1-3; Stache-Rosen 1990, 170; German Wikipedia; photo in Rau 105, from Sardesai, another in Indologie … in Berlin. 2014, 42 (with HL).