Gustaaf Schlegel

Gustaaf Schlegel
Portrait of Schlegel by Thérèse Schwartze
Born	(1840-09-30)30 September 1840 Oegstgeest, Netherlands
Died	15 October 1903(1903-10-15) (aged 63) Leiden, Netherlands
Nationality	Dutch
Institutions	Leiden University
Notable students	J.J.M. de Groot
Known for	Chinese-Dutch dictionary; founding editor of T'oung Pao
Chinese name
Chinese	施古德
Transcriptions Standard Mandarin Hanyu Pinyin Shī Gǔdé Wade–Giles Shih1 Ku3-te2 Yue: Cantonese Yale Romanization Sī Gú-dāk Southern Min Hokkien POJ Si Kóo-tik

Gustaaf Schlegel (30 September 1840 – 15 October 1903) was a Dutch sinologist and field naturalist.

Gustaaf Schlegel was born on 30 September 1840 in Oegstgeest. The son of Hermann Schlegel—a native of Saxony who had moved to the Netherlands in 1827 to work at the natural history museum of Leiden and became its second director—Gustaaf begun to study Chinese at the age of 9 with Leiden japanologist J. J. Hoffmann initially, it seems, without the knowledge of his parents. Gustaaf made his first trip to China in 1857 in order to collect bird specimens, but his notoriety as naturalist was overshadowed by that of Robert Swinhoe who completed much field work in China ahead of Schlegel.

In 1861, after having learned the Fuzhou dialect, he moved to Canton to study Cantonese. In 1862, Schlegel took a job as an interpreter for the supreme court of the colonial government of Batavia. While working on this job, in 1866 he published a monograph on the Tiandihui (Heaven and Earth Society)—the first on the topic in Dutch—, and another one on prostitution in Canton. In 1869 he was awarded a doctorate from the University of Jena; his thesis was on the customs and pastimes of the Chinese, but this writing was apparently a formality because his reputation had been established by his previous publications.

Schlegel fell seriously ill in 1872 and was granted two years' sick leave to Holland. On his return, Hoffmannn met him and asked Schlegel to take his place in educating Dutch-Chinese translators. Schlegel accepted, and in 1873 he pursued the matter further writing a pro domo letter to the Colonial Minister, asking for the government to establish a university position. He was successful, and in 1875 was appointed as an "extraordinary professor" of Chinese at Leiden University, on the first position of its kind, and advanced to full professor in 1877. In 1873 he became correspondent of the Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences, he resigned four years later, in 1877. In 1888 he became member of the Academy once more.