Tribute in Memoriam to Rudolf G. Wagner, Forum 2017 Participant and China Scholar
We were saddened to learn that Forum 2017 participant and Senior Professor of Chinese Studies at Heidelberg University, Rudolf G. Wagner, died on October 26, 2019. Wagner had a long and influential career that focused on the interface between politics and culture in China. He held a variety of prestigious fellowships, including a Harkness Fellowship, a fellowship from the Society for the Humanities at Cornell University, and a fellowship from the John K. Fairbank Center for East Asian Research at Harvard. In 1993, Wagner received the highest German award for academic work, the Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz Prize and used the award money from this to develop the library and the digital archiving system at the Heidelberg Institute for Chinese Studies. Wagner was elected a member of the Berlin-Brandenburg Academy of Sciences in 1995. From 1992 to 1996, Wagner was Secretary General of the European Association of Chinese Studies. From 1996 to 1998, Wagner was president of the Association. From 2010 on, Wagner was one of the editors of the open-access Journal for Transcultural Studies.
At our Forum 2017, Libraries and Archives in the Digital Age, Wagner spoke about his efforts to digitize and preserve historical records of Chinese public discussion, saying, “I would suggest that for the health of the Chinese body politic and to avoid its imploding at some moment without more than a blank sheet to go back to, the preservation of the country’s memory outside the country is vital.” We are grateful to Wagner for contributing to a forthcoming publication that brings together revised essays from participants in Forum 2017, edited by Center Director Susan Mizruchi. Like the Forum, the book—titled Libraries and Archives in the Digital Age and slated for publication by Palgrave Macmillan in January 2020—continues to explore some of the most pressing concerns of humanists, scholars, and citizens worldwide.
We offer condolences to Wagner’s wife, Catherine Vance Yeh, professor of Chinese and comparative literature at Boston University, and to the rest of Rudolf Wagner’s family.