Ernst Boerschmann

• Name — Ernst Boerschmann • Born — 18 February 1873 • Birthplace — Priekulė, Lithuania, Klaipėda Region, Lithuania • Died — 30 April 1949 • Place of death — Bad Pyrmont, Hamelin-Pyrmont, Lower Saxony, Germany • Education — Technische Universität Berlin • Occupation — Architect, photographer, sinologist

• Illustration — Photograph by Ernst Boerschmann. Source: the Stephan Loewentheil Collection Ernst Boerschmann was born in Priekulė, Klaipėda Region, Lithuania, on 18 February 1873. His brother Friedrich Börschmann (1870–1941) was a physician, and his sister Anna Börschmann (1871–1939) was an educator. As a child, Boerschmann attended the Humanistische Gymnasium in Memel. He entered the Technische Hochschule in Berlin (today Technische Universität Berlin) in 1891, majoring in Architecture, where he graduated in 1896. After college, he joined the Staatsexamen and graduated in 1901 as an Assessor. From 1902 to 1904, he was an Engineer with the East Asian Occupation Brigade (Ostasiatischen Besatzungsbrigade) in China, where he became interested in classical Chinese architecture. • Illustration — Photograph by Ernst Boerschmann. Source: the Stephan Loewentheil Collection In 1906, Boerschmann began his first expedition with the financial support of the German Empire. He traveled to China as a scientific advisor to the German Foreign Office, who would continue to support his studies until the outbreak of World War I in 1914. On this trip he documented many Buddhist pagodas with cameras and drawings, which formed the material for his later publications. In June 1912, the first major display of Boerschmann's photographic work was mounted at the Kunstgewerbemuseum Berlin. After the First World War, Boerschmann was a lecturer on China in Königsberg (now Kaliningrad) from 1918 to 1921. He worked initially only in East Prussia, but was soon extended to the entire empire. Beginning in 1921 he worked in Berlin as a lecturer at Technische Hochschule Berlin, where he was named a Professor in 1927. With the publication of three books of his photography of China in the 1920s – Baukunst und Landschaft (which was translated into French and English), Picturesque China, and Chinesische Architktur – Boerschmann became internationally well known, but as a photographer rather than a researcher. 1923's Picturesque China, which boasted a print-run of 20,000 copies in German alone and was published in two English versions (in London and New York), was to become his most successful book. • Illustration — The Abbott of the Monastery, Tíen túng sze, Chekiang Province. c. 1906, Ernst Boerschmann In 1931, Chinese architectural expert Zhu Qiqian (朱啓鈐) invited Boerschmann to join his newly-founded Society for Research in Chinese Architecture in Beijing as a corresponding member. From 1933 to 1937, Boerschmann embarked on his third trip to China. On this trip, he collected many documents, oral history accounts, photographs, building plans, and inscriptions. He returned to Germany in 1940 and became a lecturer at the University of Berlin on Chinese architecture. In 1943, his apartment was destroyed by WWII bombings. In 1945, Boerschmann was promoted to Professor of Sinology at the Humboldt University of Berlin, and later held the same position at Hamburg University. He died in Bad Pyrmont, Hamelin-Pyrmont, Lower Saxony, on 30 April 1949.

• The Architecture and Religious Culture of the Chinese, 1914 • Picturesque China, 1923 * *