Prof. Dr. Michael Lackner

University of Erlangen–Nuremberg
Sinology

External Senior Fellow (FRIAS School of Language & Literature)
July 2013
March 2012 – April 2012
May 2011 – June 2011

Last Update: 31.08.2013

Curriculum Vitae

Michael Lackner studied Sinology, Ethnology, Political Science and Philosophy in Heidelberg, Munich, and Taipei. His M.A. thesis (1979) analysed prophetic children’s ditties in the 4. Century C.E. He holds a Ph.D from Munich University (1985, with a thesis on Chinese dream interpretation in the 16th and 17th centuries), and passed the Habilitation examination in 1990 (with research on the Jesuit missionaries’ presentation of European humanism in China). Lackner has worked as a librarian in the Bavarian National Library (with contributions to the catalogue of the Rara Sinica collection), as a research fellow in the Munich Institute for Chinese Studies (with contributions to a bibliography in 4 volumes on the reception of German literature and philosophy in China). Lackner has taught at the universities of Göttingen, Geneva, and Erlangen. He was invited to the Wissenschaftskolleg zu Berlin, the Institute for Advanced Study, Princeton, and the Maison des Sciences de l’Homme, Paris and as a visiting professor to Fudan University, Shanghai, Kansai University, Osaka, and the EHESS, Paris. In 1996, he established the research project “Modern Chinese Scientific Terminology” that produced a large database and two volumes related to the birth of modern vocabulary and disciplines in China (www.mcst.uni-hd.de). His research works focus on Chinese philosophy during the Song-Yuan period (11th – 14th centuries) and its representation both in textual and diagrammatical form; Chinese intellectual history from the mid-19th century to the present; the impact of the Jesuit mission in China and Europe, and Chinese mantic arts. In 2009, he established, with the generous support of the German Ministry of Education and Research, the International Research Consortium in the Humanities “Fate, Freedom and Prognostication. Strategies of Coping with the Future in East Asia and Europe” (www.ikgf.uni-erlangen.de)

Selected Publications

Der chinesische Traumwald. Traditionelle Theorien des Traumes und seiner Deutung im Spiegel der mingzeitlichen Anthologie Meng-lin hsüan-chieh, Frankfurt/Bern/New York , Peter Lang, 1985
Das vergessene Gedächtnis. Die jesuitische mnemotechnische Abhandlung Xiguo jifa. Übersetzung und Kommentar, Stuttgart, Franz Steiner, 1986
Das chinesische Deutschland-Bild der Gegenwart.
a) Deutsche Kultur, Politik und Wirtschaft im chinesischen Schrifttum 1970-1984, Stuttgart, Franz Steiner, 1989 (with Wolfgang Bauer and Chang Peng)
b) Karl Marx und Friedrich Engels im chinesischen Schrifttum 1970-1984, Stuttgart [Franz Steiner], 1989 (with Wolfgang Bauer and Chang Peng)
Chang Tsai: Rechtes Auflichten. Berichtigung falscher Vorstellungen der Jugend oder Richtiges Verständnis unklarer Stellen in den Klassikern. Aus dem Chinesischen übertragen und mit Einführung, analytischem Kommentar, Quellennachweisen, Literaturhinweisen und Indices herausgegeben, Hamburg, Felix Meiner, 1996 (with Michael Friedrich and Friedrich Reimann)
Der cultural turn in den Humanwissenschaften. Area Studies im Auf- oder Abwind des Kulturalismus?, Bad Homburg 1999, Schriftenreihe Suchprozesse für innovative Fragestellungen in der Wissenschaft, Nr. 2 (with Michael Werner)

FRIAS Project

The Use of Diagrams in Chinese Mantic Arts.

Diagrams have played a rather unique role in the history of knowledge in China. Far from being merely considered an instrument for illustration (of a scheme, an argument or a technical device), many diagrams were credited with possessing a revelatory and sometimes even magic power. The hexagrams in the “Book of Changes” (Yijing or Zhouyi), one of the “Confucian Classics”, represent diagrams at the deepest structural level. The different possible configurations of the hexagrams led to increasingly sophisticated visual representations of their permutations. However, since the “Book of Changes” had an impact on a large variety of other forms of divination, diagrams can be found in treatises dealing with geomancy, hemerology, physiognomy and many other mantic arts. My project aims at inquiring into the impact of Yijing-based diagrams on visual representations of divinatory practices.