Klaus Doring

Thursday, January 24, 2008

Philippine-German Relations (XVI)

I must confess, that I am an admirer of Jose Rizal since long time. I learned a lot of him during my time in Berlin together with my mentor Father Gene Bacareza.

One of the German scholars and scientists whom Rizal befriended was Dr. Alexander Schadenberg, who became his very personal friend. Schadenberg took great interest in Rizal and even made him the recipient of all his writings (as quoted from Otto Scherer, “Alexander Schadenberg, His Life and Work in the Philippines,” The Philippine Journal of Science, 1928, p. 453).

Another scientist friend of Rizal was Dr. Adolf Meyer, the director of the Royal Ethnographical Museum in Dresden/Germany. It was with Meyer and Blumentritt that Rizal discussed the Chao Jua-Account of Manila in the middle of the 13th century in 1887 in Dresden. The manuscript had been translated by Dr.Friedrich Hirth, an expert, who had worked on it since 1885. Through a letter of Blumentritt, Rizal was introduced to Feodor Jagor, wh invited heim to a meeting of Berlin’s Ethnographical Society. in the said conference, Rizal meet Dr. Rudolf Virchow ,an early German pathologist and ethnologist, as you could read in one of my earlier parts of this serial.