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ArticleInterdisciplinary Studies of Translation http://dx.doi.org/10.26855/tfll.2026.02.014

Measuring the Middle: My Way toward Understanding Richard Wilhelm’s Sinological Achievements (Part I)

Lauren Pfister

1Hong Kong Baptist University, Kowloon Tong, Hong Kong, China.

2Hephzibah Mountain Aster Academy, Hephzibah 30815, USA.

*Corresponding author: Lauren Pfister

Published: February 28, 2026

Abstract

The current article is a reworked version of an article originally written in 2007, which is now much lengthier and enriched by findings and interpretations of Richard Wilhelm’s (1873-1930) life and works made by others and myself in the past two decades. My initial way of noting the unusual character of Wilhelm’s German translations of Chinese classical works came about by comparing his German versions to those that had also been translated into English by James Legge (1815-1897). Subsequently, after pursuing research in the Wilhelm archives now housed in Germany, other German scholars and I realized that Wilhelm’s life had been transformed through a number of traumatic situations. Besides some moments in the early years of his life in Qīngdǎo (1899-1912), I pinpoint historic moments of transition in Wilhelm’s life as occurring particularly in 1922, 1924, and 1927. I argue that Wilhelm began to promote an unusual synchretistic reli-gious worldview that sought to harmonize claims from Ruist, Daoist, Jewish, Christian, and modern German intellectual works as early as 1911, and continued to work on this project till 1922. Afterwards, he turned toward producing in 1924 in German a somewhat Christianized version of the Yìjīng and Yìzhuàn, changed his Chinese family name from 尉to 卫 (both pronounced Wèi), and began his career as a Professor of Chinese at the University of Frankfurt am Main. Subsequently, I offer six new perspectives for justifying an interpretation that Wilhelm passed through three major worldview transitions during the years of 1922, 1924 and 1927, in order to explain some of the non-standard ways he produced his German translations of the I Ging (1924) and the Li Gi (1930).

Keyword

Richard Wilhelm; James Legge; synchretistic religious worldview; canons-in-translation; non-standard translations

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How to cite this paper

Measuring the Middle: My Way toward Understanding Richard Wilhelm’s Sinological Achievements  (Part I)

How to cite this paper: Lauren Pfister. (2026). Measuring the Middle: My Way toward Understanding Richard Wilhelm’s Sinological Achievements  (Part I). Translation and Foreign Language Learning2(2), 266-280.

DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.26855/tfll.2026.02.014