Dr des. Andrea Schlosser receives Ernst Waldschmidt Prize of the Prussian Cultural Heritage Foundation / Award honours outstanding academic achievements in the field of Indology
Press release from 12/02/2014
Dr des. Andrea Schlosser was awarded this year's Ernst Waldschmidt Prize for her dissertation "On the Bodhisattva Path in Gandhāra. Edition of Fragment 4 and 11 from the Bajaur Collection of Kharoṣṭhī Manuscripts". The prize, endowed with 5,000 euros, is awarded by the Ernst Waldschmidt Foundation at the Prussian Cultural Heritage Foundation for scholarly achievements in the field of Indology. It serves in particular to promote young academics and can be awarded every five years.
We would like to cordially invite you to the award ceremony:
Location: Villa von der Heydt, Von-der-Heydt-Str. 16-18, 10789 Berlin
Time: 5 December 2014, 6-8 pm
Hermann Parzinger, President of the Prussian Cultural Heritage Foundation and Chairman of the Board of the Ernst Waldschmidt Foundation, says: "With this prize, we are promoting outstanding academic achievements in a subject that is now only taught at a few universities in Germany. As an academic institution, the Prussian Cultural Heritage Foundation is thus providing direct support for research."
Dr des. Andrea Schlosser receives the Ernst Waldschmidt Prize for her dissertation on a text from the Bajaur Collection, a collection of Kharoṣṭhī manuscripts from the 1st/2nd century with primarily Buddhist content. Schlosser studied Indian philology, Indian art history and cultural studies at the Free University of Berlin, where she also worked as a research assistant at the Institute for the Languages and Cultures of South Asia. She then worked on a project on Turfan research at the Berlin-Brandenburg Academy of Sciences and Humanities. Since 2012, Andrea Schlosser has been a research associate at the Institute of Indology and Tibetology at the Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich, where she is involved in the project "The Early Buddhist Manuscripts from Gandhāra: Religious Literature at the Interface of India, Central Asia and China".
The Ernst Waldschmidt Foundation was established in 1968 to promote German research on India, in particular at the Museum of Indian Art (now the Indian Art Collection of the Museum of Asian Art) of the National Museums in Berlin. It is part of the Prussian Cultural Heritage Foundation, whose president is also its chairman. In addition to awarding the Ernst Waldschmidt Prize, the foundation finances the publication of selected monographs on Indian archaeology, art and philology and supports Indological projects.
Ernst Waldschmidt (1897-1985) headed the Indian Department of the Berlin Museum of Ethnology from 1929 and became director of the museum in 1934. He had previously worked on the manuscripts and artefacts of the so-called "Turfan Expeditions" (1902-14) at the museum. During his tenure, he acquired numerous artefacts, especially during a trip to India and Sri Lanka (1932-34). From 1936 until his retirement in 1965, Ernst Waldschmidt taught as a full professor of Indology at the University of Göttingen. He published numerous works on Indian and Central Asian art history and Buddhist studies. To promote Indology, Ernst Waldschmidt donated his house and his extensive Indological library to Göttingen University and established the Ernst Waldschmidt Foundation in Berlin.
Further information
Accreditation for the award ceremony
Please register by 3 December 2014 by e-mail.