Walter Bruno Henning
Encyclopedia
Walter Bruno Henning was a scholar of Middle Iranian languages and literature, especially of the corpus discovered by the Turpan expeditions of the early 20th century.

Biography

Walter Henning was born in Ragnit, then in East Prussia
East Prussia
East Prussia is the main part of the region of Prussia along the southeastern Baltic Coast from the 13th century to the end of World War II in May 1945. From 1772–1829 and 1878–1945, the Province of East Prussia was part of the German state of Prussia. The capital city was Königsberg.East Prussia...

, but grew up in Köslin
Koszalin
Koszalin ; is the largest city of Middle Pomerania in north-western Poland. It is located 12 km south of the Baltic Sea coast. Koszalin is also a county-status city and capital of Koszalin County of West Pomeranian Voivodeship since 1999...

, in Pomerania
Pomerania
Pomerania is a historical region on the south shore of the Baltic Sea. Divided between Germany and Poland, it stretches roughly from the Recknitz River near Stralsund in the West, via the Oder River delta near Szczecin, to the mouth of the Vistula River near Gdańsk in the East...

 on the Baltic coast
Baltic Sea
The Baltic Sea is a brackish mediterranean sea located in Northern Europe, from 53°N to 66°N latitude and from 20°E to 26°E longitude. It is bounded by the Scandinavian Peninsula, the mainland of Europe, and the Danish islands. It drains into the Kattegat by way of the Øresund, the Great Belt and...

.

Henning initially attended the University of Göttingen to study mathematics
Mathematics
Mathematics is the study of quantity, space, structure, and change. Mathematicians seek out patterns and formulate new conjectures. Mathematicians resolve the truth or falsity of conjectures by mathematical proofs, which are arguments sufficient to convince other mathematicians of their validity...

, and although he would soon choose to study Iranian languages
Iranian languages
The Iranian languages form a subfamily of the Indo-Iranian languages which in turn is a subgroup of Indo-European language family. They have been and are spoken by Iranian peoples....

 instead, he would maintain an interest in mathematics for the rest of his life. At Göttingen, Henning was—together with Walther Hinz, Kai Barr and Hans Jakob Polotzky—among the last group of students of Friedrich Carl Andreas, chairman of the faculty for West-Asian languages, acknowledged authority on Middle Iranian literature and guiding force behind the analysis of the Turpan manuscripts.

In 1931, Henning received a Ph.D. summa cum laude for his study of the Middle Iranian verb as it appeared in the Turpan collection. In 1932, the Prussian Academy of Sciences
Prussian Academy of Sciences
The Prussian Academy of Sciences was an academy established in Berlin on 11 July 1700, four years after the Akademie der Künste or "Arts Academy", to which "Berlin Academy" may also refer.-Origins:...

 appointed Henning editor of the Manichaean
Manichaean script
Manichaean script is a sibling of an early form of Pahlavi script, and like Pahlavi is a development from Imperial Aramaic, the official language and script of the Achaemenid court. Unlike Pahlavi, Manichaean script reveals influences from Sogdian script, which in turn descends from the Syriac...

 manuscripts of that collection, for which Henning shifted to Berlin.

Between 1932-1936, Henning completed several studies that Andreas had begun, the results of which were published as the 3-volume Mitteliranische Manichaica aus Chinesisch-Türkestan. Independently of Andreas' Nachlass, Henning published Ein manichäisches Bet- und Beichtbuch, the first major publication of the difficult Sogdian language
Sogdian language
The Sogdian language is a Middle Iranian language that was spoken in Sogdiana , located in modern day Uzbekistan and Tajikistan ....

 texts. In the same period, Henning also made several significant contributions to the understanding of the history of Manichaeism
Manichaeism
Manichaeism in Modern Persian Āyin e Māni; ) was one of the major Iranian Gnostic religions, originating in Sassanid Persia.Although most of the original writings of the founding prophet Mani have been lost, numerous translations and fragmentary texts have survived...

.

While in Berlin, Henning became engaged to marry Maria Polotzky, the sister of Hans Jakob Polotzky, his colleague from student days. Marriage between non-Jews and Jews was dangerous in Nazi Germany
Nazi Germany
Nazi Germany , also known as the Third Reich , but officially called German Reich from 1933 to 1943 and Greater German Reich from 26 June 1943 onward, is the name commonly used to refer to the state of Germany from 1933 to 1945, when it was a totalitarian dictatorship ruled by...

, so in 1936 he accepted an invitation to succeed Harold Walter Bailey
Harold Walter Bailey
Sir Harold Walter Bailey , who published as H. W. Bailey, was an eminent English scholar of Khotanese, Sanskrit, and the comparative study of Iranian languages....

 as the Parsee Community's Lecturer in Iranian Studies at the School of Oriental Studies in London. With the permission of the Prussian Academy, Henning continued his research there using photographs of the Turpan manuscripts. He and Maria were married in 1937 in London.

In 1939, shortly before the outbreak of World War II
World War II
World War II, or the Second World War , was a global conflict lasting from 1939 to 1945, involving most of the world's nations—including all of the great powers—eventually forming two opposing military alliances: the Allies and the Axis...

, he was appointed Senior Lecturer at the School of Oriental Studies. In 1940, having not yet acquired British citizenship and with the threat of a German invasion looming, Henning was interned as an enemy alien on the Isle of Man
Isle of Man
The Isle of Man , otherwise known simply as Mann , is a self-governing British Crown Dependency, located in the Irish Sea between the islands of Great Britain and Ireland, within the British Isles. The head of state is Queen Elizabeth II, who holds the title of Lord of Mann. The Lord of Mann is...

. It was there that he completed his Sogdica. In poor health, he was released a year later, and spent the remainder of the war teaching and studying at Christ's College, Cambridge
Christ's College, Cambridge
Christ's College is a constituent college of the University of Cambridge.With a reputation for high academic standards, Christ's College averaged top place in the Tompkins Table from 1980-2000 . In 2011, Christ's was placed sixth.-College history:...

, where the School of Oriental and African Studies (as the School of Oriental Studies was by then known) had been temporarily relocated.

Shortly after the war, in 1946, Henning spent a year as Visiting Professor of Indo-Iranian languages
Indo-Iranian languages
The Indo-Iranian language group constitutes the easternmost extant branch of the Indo-European family of languages. It consists of three language groups: the Indo-Aryan, Iranian and Nuristani...

 at Columbia University
Columbia University
Columbia University in the City of New York is a private, Ivy League university in Manhattan, New York City. Columbia is the oldest institution of higher learning in the state of New York, the fifth oldest in the United States, and one of the country's nine Colonial Colleges founded before the...

, in New York City. Upon his return, he was appointed Reader in Central-Asian Studies at the University of London
University of London
-20th century:Shortly after 6 Burlington Gardens was vacated, the University went through a period of rapid expansion. Bedford College, Royal Holloway and the London School of Economics all joined in 1900, Regent's Park College, which had affiliated in 1841 became an official divinity school of the...

, and shortly thereafter, Professor.

In 1949, at the behest of the Indian Zoroastrian community's Rattanbai Katrak Foundation, he delivered his famous Politician or Witch-Doctor? series of lectures at Oxford
University of Oxford
The University of Oxford is a university located in Oxford, United Kingdom. It is the second-oldest surviving university in the world and the oldest in the English-speaking world. Although its exact date of foundation is unclear, there is evidence of teaching as far back as 1096...

. These lectures, which contributed to the dismissal of the respective theories of Henrik Samuel Nyberg and Ernst Herzfeld (both of whom had written books that misrepresented hypotheses as fact) and the eventual isolation of both, realigned the tone and direction of Iranian Studies towards scientific research, and away from extravagant speculation that had beset the field in the previous decades.

In 1950, and at the invitation of the Iranian government, Henning spent several months doing field-work in Iran, where he was the first to make several tracings of Pahlavi rock-face inscriptions at (otherwise) inaccessible locations. His tracings and their translations were not published until after his death.

In 1954, Henning was appointed the first Chairman of the Executive Council of the Corpus Inscriptionum Iranicarum, and in the same year, a Fellow of the British Academy
British Academy
The British Academy is the United Kingdom's national body for the humanities and the social sciences. Its purpose is to inspire, recognise and support excellence in the humanities and social sciences, throughout the UK and internationally, and to champion their role and value.It receives an annual...

. Henning spent early 1956 at the Institute for Advanced Study
Institute for Advanced Study
The Institute for Advanced Study, located in Princeton, New Jersey, United States, is an independent postgraduate center for theoretical research and intellectual inquiry. It was founded in 1930 by Abraham Flexner...

 in Princeton, New Jersey
Princeton, New Jersey
Princeton is a community located in Mercer County, New Jersey, United States. It is best known as the location of Princeton University, which has been sited in the community since 1756...

, where he furthered his study of the Khwarezmian language
Khwarezmian language
Khwarezmian, also known as Khwarazmian or Chorasmian, is the name of an extinct East Iranian language closely related to Sogdian. The language was spoken in the area of Khwarezm , centered in the lower Amu Darya south of the Aral Sea .Our knowledge of Khwarezmian is...

.

In 1958, Henning was appointed Head of the Department of Languages and Cultures of Near and Middle East at SOAS (he had been acting Head from the year before). He found the administrative duties irksome and the damp of English winters tiresome, so in September 1961 he accepted a position as Professor of Iranian Studies at the University of California, Berkeley
University of California, Berkeley
The University of California, Berkeley , is a teaching and research university established in 1868 and located in Berkeley, California, USA...

.

In 1967, Henning obtained a leave of absence to complete his dictionary of Khwarezmian, which he had been intermittently working on for 30 years. In December 1966, Henning fell and broke his leg. The accident precipitated a congestion of the lungs
Pulmonary edema
Pulmonary edema , or oedema , is fluid accumulation in the air spaces and parenchyma of the lungs. It leads to impaired gas exchange and may cause respiratory failure...

, from which he died on January 8, 1967. He was survived by his wife and daughter.

Contributions

Henning published over 70 articles in the course of his career. The majority were related to texts in Middle Iranian languages
Middle Iranian languages
Middle Iranian may refer to any of a group of the Indo-European Iranian languages spoken between the 4th century BC and the 9th century AD:Western:*Parthian *Middle Persian Eastern:*Bactrian*Aryan*Sogdian*Khwarezmian...

, in particular to Sogdian
Sogdian language
The Sogdian language is a Middle Iranian language that was spoken in Sogdiana , located in modern day Uzbekistan and Tajikistan ....

, but also in Bactrian
Bactrian language
The Bactrian language is an extinct Eastern Iranian language which was spoken in the Central Asian region of Bactria. Linguistically, it is classified as belonging to the middle period of the East Iranian branch...

, Khwarezmian
Khwarezmian language
Khwarezmian, also known as Khwarazmian or Chorasmian, is the name of an extinct East Iranian language closely related to Sogdian. The language was spoken in the area of Khwarezm , centered in the lower Amu Darya south of the Aral Sea .Our knowledge of Khwarezmian is...

, Parthian
Parthian language
The Parthian language, also known as Arsacid Pahlavi and Pahlavanik, is a now-extinct ancient Northwestern Iranian language spoken in Parthia, a region of northeastern ancient Persia during the rule of the Parthian empire....

 and Middle Persian
Middle Persian
Middle Persian , indigenously known as "Pârsig" sometimes referred to as Pahlavi or Pehlevi, is the Middle Iranian language/ethnolect of Southwestern Iran that during Sassanid times became a prestige dialect and so came to be spoken in other regions as well. Middle Persian is classified as a...

. His interest in the history of Manichaeanism also led him to work on Uigur Turkish
Uyghur language
Uyghur , formerly known as Eastern Turk, is a Turkic language with 8 to 11 million speakers, spoken primarily by the Uyghur people in the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region of Western China. Significant communities of Uyghur-speakers are located in Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan, and various other...

 and Chinese
Chinese language
The Chinese language is a language or language family consisting of varieties which are mutually intelligible to varying degrees. Originally the indigenous languages spoken by the Han Chinese in China, it forms one of the branches of Sino-Tibetan family of languages...

. His identification of the trilingual inscriptions on the Kaba-yi Zardosht as having been those of Shapur I
Shapur I
Shapur I or also known as Shapur I the Great was the second Sassanid King of the Second Persian Empire. The dates of his reign are commonly given as 240/42 - 270/72, but it is likely that he also reigned as co-regent prior to his father's death in 242 .-Early years:Shapur was the son of Ardashir I...

 were a significant contribution to Sassanid history. Invaluable to the understanding of Middle Iranian are Henning's studies into the non-Iranian languages and scripts of Middle Indic, Elymaic
Elymais
Elymais or Elamais was a semi-independent state of the 2nd century BC to the early 3rd century AD, frequently a vassalary under Parthian control, and located at the head of the Persian Gulf in the present-day region of Khuzestan, Iran...

 and Aramaic. Several works that were in progress when Henning died—including his Khwarezmian dictionary and his etymological dictionary of Middle Persian—remain unpublished.

Henning's Mitteliranisch (in Spuler & al. Handbuch der Orientalistik I Bd. IV I, 1958) remains the authoritative guide to Middle Iranian languages and writing systems.
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