Hans Georg Conon von der Gabelentz
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Hans Conon von der Gabelentz (March 16, 1807, Poschwitz near Altenburg - December 11, 1874, Lemnitz) was a noted German philologist and sinologist, as well as famed hyperpolyglot.
Gabelentz's father had an amateur interest in languages, including Chinese. At the age of 17 Gabelentz had learned Chinese. From 1859 to 1863 he studied jurisprudence and government in Jena and Leipzig, and from 1864 to 1878 worked in the civil service of the Saxon state. In 1872 he married Alexandra von Rothkirch, and in 1891 he was remarried to Gertrud veuve von Adelebsen.
He gained a doctorate with a sinological thesis at Leipzig in 1876. In 1878, he became an extraordinary professor at the University of Leipzig, after a new chair for East Asian languages had been created there, the first one in Germany. His most important work, Chinesische Grammatik, appeared in 1881. In 1889 he became the ordinary professor of East Asian languages and of linguistics at Berlin. In 1891, he published the work Die Sprachwissenschaft, ihre Aufgaben, Methoden und bisherigen Ergebnisse.
This article incorporates text from the public domain 1907 edition of The Nuttall Encyclopaedia.
