Iranian Languages and Texts from Iran and Turan: Ronald E. Emmerick Memorial Volume

by Werner Sundermann

This Memorial Volume is dedicated to one of the most prolific and renowned scholars in the field of Iranian Studies, the late Professor Ronald E. Emmerick, who held the chair of Iranian Studies in Hamburg until his untimely death in 2001. The volume consists of thirty-three papers, written by some of the foremost scholars in the field of Iranian Studies. The articles are essentially concerned with Old, New and especially Middle Iranian languages and texts, reflecting the predominant scholarly interests of Ronald Emmerick, whose reasearch also focused on Indian and Tibetan Studies. Nine papers deal with the Khotanese and Tumshuquese language, one of Emmericks main fields of research. The volume is accompanied by an updated Bibliography and Indices of quotations and of words.

490 pages, Hardcover

First published November 28, 2007

About the author

Sunderman was born on December 22, 1935, in Thale, Germany. After completing elementary and secondary education, he entered Humboldt University in Berlin and studied with Heinrich Junker and the great Alawite to study Iranology. In 1963, he succeeded in obtaining a doctoral degree from a dissertation entitled "The Rules of the Sassanid Kings".

From 1958 to 1970 he was an assistant and then senior assistant to the Vorderasiatisches Institute of Humboldt University, and since 1968, he was the head of the Department of Asian Studies at that university. He began research in the field of the Turfan texts since 1967 and began scientific collaboration with the Archaeological Institute of the East German Academy of Sciences since 1970.

After several years of research, Sunderman joined the Turfan Research Group in the German Academy of Sciences in 1970. The valuable work of this researcher is in the field of linguistics. The digitization of the Turfan texts was based on the ideas of Sunderman. His bibliography contains 35 pages, none of which have been translated into Persian, with the exception of a few.

He is an honorary professor at the Free University of Berlin.

Werner Sunderman died at the age of 77 after suffering 10 years of cancer disease on October 12, 2012.