Friedrich Hirth

Friedrich Hirth Ph.D. (16 April 1845 in Gräfentonna, Saxe-Gotha – 10 January 1927 in Munich) was a German-American sinologist.

He was educated at the universities of Leipzig, Berlin, and Greifswald (Ph.D., 1869). He was in the Chinese Maritime Customs Service from 1870 to 1897. In 1902, Professor Hirth was appointed to the first Dean Lung Professorship of Chinese at Columbia University (New York City).

Prior to World War II, a collection of Chinese manuscripts and printed books made by him was in the Royal Library at Berlin, and another of porcelains of considerable historical importance in the Gotha Museum; most of the Hirth collection from the Staatsbibliothek in Berlin is now in Kraków. As an investigator he conducted researches in Chinese literature by imitation of the methods of classical philology.

Works by or about Friedrich Hirth at Wikisource