(See English below)

Am 20. November 2025 ab 18 Uhr wird Prof. Joan Judge (York University) in einem Onlinevortrag mit dem Titel “New Conceptions: Modes of Knowing in Chinese Encyclopedias for Everyday Life” neue Perspektiven auf die alltägliche Nutzung medizinischer Praktiken im vormodernen China präsentieren. Neben gedruckten Materialien werden auch Handschriften aus der Sammlung Unschuld berücksichtigt.

Scholars have debated the epistemic status of the Comprehensive Compendia of Myriad Treasures (wanbao quanshu  萬寶全書), a genre of daily-use texts widely reproduced in China from the sixteenth through the early twentieth centuries. This presentation seeks to deepen our understanding of both the content and the potential readership for these texts in the late imperial and Republican Chinese contexts. It does so by engaging in a close and contextualized examination of one section of the compendia that remained remarkably stable over the course of this period, the section on “Pregnancy” (Zhongzi men 種子門).

I first probe the sources for this section in an effort to determine the register of knowledge that it reproduced. This requires unraveling a complex amalgam of what could be characterized as works on bedchamber arts on the one hand, and scholarly medical treatises on the other. I then examine the different components of the section: its crude illustrations and mnemonic verses which both describe the development of the embryo, together with numerical calculations for determining the health and sex of the fetus, and recipes for managing the various ailments that might afflict the gestating woman.

Throughout this analysis, I use intratextual methods to attempt to determine who the potential users of the text might have been: who, for example, would have been best served by the illustrations, the poems, the recipes, or a combination of them. I will also use intertextual methods to search for the audience for the “Zhongzi men.” Here I will examine a hand-written gynecological manuscript from the Unschuld Collection that copied the contents of the section almost verbatim. This manuscript offers some sense of who read and valued the material on “Gestation” in the myriad treasures enough to use it as an authoritative source.

Die Vortragssprache ist Englisch. Bei Fragen kontaktieren Sie uns unter: ostasienabt@sbb.spk-berlin.de.

Der Vortrag wird via Webex gestreamt. Sie können am Vortrag über Ihren Browser ohne Installation einer Software teilnehmen. Klicken Sie dazu unten auf „Zum Vortrag“, folgen dem Link „Über Browser teilnehmen“ und geben Ihren Namen ein.

Alle bislang angekündigten Vorträge finden Sie hier. Die weiteren Termine kündigen wir in unserem Blog und auf unserem X-Account, Mastodon und BlueSky an.

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On 20 November 2025 from 6 pm, Prof. Joan Judge (York University) will  present an online lecture entitled ‘New Conceptions: Modes of Knowing in Chinese Encyclopedias for Everyday Life’ providing new perspectives on the everyday medical practices in pre-modern China. Besides printed materials manuscripts from the Unschuld Collection will also be considered.

Scholars have debated the epistemic status of the Comprehensive Compendia of Myriad Treasures (Wanbao quanshu  萬寶全書), a genre of daily-use texts widely reproduced in China from the sixteenth through the early twentieth centuries. This presentation seeks to deepen our understanding of both the content and the potential readership for these texts in the late imperial and Republican Chinese contexts. It does so by engaging in a close and contextualized examination of one section of the compendia that remained remarkably stable over the course of this period, the section on “Pregnancy” (Zhongzi men 種子門).

I first probe the sources for this section in an effort to determine the register of knowledge that it reproduced. This requires unraveling a complex amalgam of what could be characterized as works on bedchamber arts on the one hand, and scholarly medical treatises on the other. I then examine the different components of the section: its crude illustrations and mnemonic verses which both describe the development of the embryo, together with numerical calculations for determining the health and sex of the fetus, and recipes for managing the various ailments that might afflict the gestating woman.

Throughout this analysis, I use intratextual methods to attempt to determine who the potential users of the text might have been: who, for example, would have been best served by the illustrations, the poems, the recipes, or a combination of them. I will also use intertextual methods to search for the audience for the “Zhongzi men.” Here I will examine a hand-written gynecological manuscript from the Unschuld Collection that copied the contents of the section almost verbatim. This manuscript offers some sense of who read and valued the material on “Gestation” in the myriad treasures enough to use it as an authoritative source.

The lecture will be held in English. If you have any questions, please contact us: ostasienabt@sbb.spk-berlin.de.

The lecture will also be streamed via Webex. You can take part in the lecture using your browser without having to install a special software. Please click on the respective button “To the lecture” below, follow the link “join via browser” (“über Browser teilnehmen”), and enter your name.

You can find all previously announced lectures here. We will announce further dates in our blog and on X, Mastodon and BlueSky.

(See English below)

Wir laden Sie herzlich zum ersten japanologischen CrossAsia Talk nach der Sommerpause ein: Am 4. September 2025 ab 18 Uhr (Berliner Zeit) wird Frau Prof. Sarah Panzer (Missouri State University) Einblicke in ihre Forschungsarbeit “Documenting the Lives of Germany’s ‘Forgotten’ Prisoners of War (POWs): Photographs in the Bandō-Sammlung” geben. Die Vortragende war im Frühling diesen Jahres im Rahmen des Stipendienprogramms der Stiftung Preußischer Kulturbesitz an der Staatsbibliothek in der Ostasienabteilung zu Gast und hat sich intensiv mit der Bandō-Sammlung beschäftigt.

On 7 November, 1914 the German garrison at Tsingtao (Qingdao), following a brief siege, surrendered to Japanese and British colonial troops. The German servicemen captured at Tsingtao were subsequently interned in Japan for the duration of the First World War. After early temporary arrangements—including barracks dating back to the Russo-Japanese War—proved inadequate, a series of POW camps were constructed across Japan. These camps became a kind of wartime ‘Ersatz Deutschland’ for their occupants, with multiple musical and theatrical ensembles organized within the various camps, as well as teams and training groups for popular sports and leisure activities. The differences between the camps notwithstanding, all variously functioned as sites where German identity was translated, represented, and negotiated within the context of extended internment. This fragile connection back to Germany became all the more important as the POWs began to suspect that their existence—to say nothing of their personal sacrifice as prisoners—had been forgotten.

Like their counterparts in Europe, some of the men interned in Japan during the First World War had access to private cameras, which they either brought with them from China or acquired in Japan. They used their cameras to document life in the camps, as well as to capture images of Japan and the Japanese. The photos produced within the camps, whether as discrete albums or as individual snapshots, provide insight into how POWs made sense of their experience in Japan and their ambivalent position as, on the one hand, emissaries of German Kultur, and, on the other, prisoners subject to the authority of the Japanese Empire. Drawing on the work of historians such as Maiken Umbach, who has argued that photographs are often more “usefully thought of as performative props than as documents of historical reality,” in this presentation I interrogate the photos and photo albums created by the German POWs and archived within the Bandō-Sammlung as a window into their understanding of themselves and their relationship to Germany and to Japan.

Die Vortragssprache ist Englisch. Bei Fragen kontaktieren Sie uns unter: ostasienabt@sbb.spk-berlin.de.

Der Vortrag wird darüber hinaus via Webex gestreamt und aufgezeichnet*. Sie können am Vortrag über Ihren Browser ohne Installation einer Software teilnehmen. Klicken Sie dazu unten auf „Zum Vortrag“, folgen dem Link „Über Browser teilnehmen“ und geben Ihren Namen ein.

Alle bislang angekündigten Vorträge finden Sie hier. Die weiteren Termine kündigen wir in unserem Blog und auf unserem X-Account, Mastodon und BlueSky an.

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We cordially invite you to attend the first japanological CrossAsia Talk after the summer break: On 4 September 2025 from 6 pm (Berlin time), Prof. Sarah Panzer (Missouri State University) will give insights into her research work ‘Documenting the Lives of Germany’s “Forgotten” Prisoners of War (POWs): Photographs in the Bandō Collection’. The lecturer was a guest at the State Library in the East Asia Department in spring 2025 as part of the grant programme of the Stiftung Preußischer Kulturbesitz and worked intensively on the Bandō Collection.

On 7 November, 1914 the German garrison at Tsingtao (Qingdao), following a brief siege, surrendered to Japanese and British colonial troops. The German servicemen captured at Tsingtao were subsequently interned in Japan for the duration of the First World War. After early temporary arrangements—including barracks dating back to the Russo-Japanese War—proved inadequate, a series of POW camps were constructed across Japan. These camps became a kind of wartime ‘Ersatz Deutschland’ for their occupants, with multiple musical and theatrical ensembles organized within the various camps, as well as teams and training groups for popular sports and leisure activities. The differences between the camps notwithstanding, all variously functioned as sites where German identity was translated, represented, and negotiated within the context of extended internment. This fragile connection back to Germany became all the more important as the POWs began to suspect that their existence—to say nothing of their personal sacrifice as prisoners—had been forgotten.

Like their counterparts in Europe, some of the men interned in Japan during the First World War had access to private cameras, which they either brought with them from China or acquired in Japan. They used their cameras to document life in the camps, as well as to capture images of Japan and the Japanese. The photos produced within the camps, whether as discrete albums or as individual snapshots, provide insight into how POWs made sense of their experience in Japan and their ambivalent position as, on the one hand, emissaries of German Kultur, and, on the other, prisoners subject to the authority of the Japanese Empire. Drawing on the work of historians such as Maiken Umbach, who has argued that photographs are often more “usefully thought of as performative props than as documents of historical reality,” in this presentation I interrogate the photos and photo albums created by the German POWs and archived within the Bandō-Sammlung as a window into their understanding of themselves and their relationship to Germany and to Japan.

The lecture will be held in English. If you have any questions, please contact us: ostasienabt@sbb.spk-berlin.de.

The lecture will also be streamed and recorded via Webex*. You can take part in the lecture using your browser without having to install a special software. Please click on the respective button “To the lecture” below, follow the link “join via browser” (“über Browser teilnehmen”), and enter your name.

You can find all previously announced lectures here. We will announce further dates in our blog and on X, Mastodon and BlueSky.

*Mit Ihrer Teilnahme an der Veranstaltung räumen Sie der Stiftung Preußischer Kulturbesitz und ihren nachgeordneten Einrichtungen kostenlos alle Nutzungsrechte an den Bildern/Videos ein, die während der Veranstaltung von Ihnen angefertigt wurden. Dies schließt auch die kommerzielle Nutzung ein. Diese Einverständniserklärung gilt räumlich und zeitlich unbeschränkt und für die Nutzung in allen Medien, sowohl für analoge als auch für digitale Verwendungen. Sie umfasst auch die Bildbearbeitung sowie die Verwendung der Bilder für Montagen. / By participating, you grant the Stiftung Preußischer Kulturbesitz and its subordinate institutions free of charge all rights of usage of pictures and videos taken of you during this lecture presentation. This declaration of consent is valid in terms of time and space without restrictions and for usage in all media, including analogue and digital usage. It includes image processing and the usage of photos in composite illustrations. German law will apply.