Die Bewandtnisse des ersten Hongloumeng-Exemplars in Der Königlichen Bibliothek zu Berlin

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The excellent Sinologist and translator from Chinese and Russian Rainer Schwarz (1940–2020), who worked as a professional interpreter for the GDR industry, is known for his literary translations, in particular for the 80 chapters of the novel Shitouji (Hongloumeng) which are safely ascribed to Cao Xueqin (Schwarz intentionally left out the sequel by a different author). His meticulous work, which resulted in the first German full-length translation of the Shitouji, led him to wonder at what time the first original copy arrived at the Berlin Royal Library, which holds the oldest Chinese book collection in the country. He searched the historical accession lists, investigated catalogues and card files, and checked the library’s archives, a task which offered many obstacles – missing books and library records, loss of archival material, mainly owing to the destructions of WWII, and the division of the remaining library holdings into two parts – East and West, separated by the Berlin Wall. The author identified the first copy of the Shitouji but did not track down the physical copy which turned out to be a war loss. He was able, however, to follow the way of the Shitouji copy from Guangzhou where it was acquired with the help of the missionary Peter Parker and shipped to Bremen on behalf of a merchant with China interest, who soon realized that without a bilingual dictionary and other learning tools he would not be able to use the books; therefore, he decided to donate them to the Berlin Royal Library. All this is meticulously documented and almost reads like a scholarly detective story.