7
People
On 17 February 2006 we bid farewell
to Monika Boehm-Tettelbach, head of
the Department of Modern South Asian
Studies (Languages and Literatures)
from 1994 to 2006. A symposium under
the title ''Unnütze Spielereien?'' (Idle
Games) was organized to mark the oc-
casion. Papers by three people who have
been closely related to Monika Boehm-
Tettelbach at various stages of her aca-
demic career - Michael Hahn from Mar-
burg, Winand Callewaert from Leuven
and Heike Bill from Berlin - gave an
idea of the wide range of her academic
interests. Michael Hahn's talk on San-
skrit alamkaras (ornaments of speech
and sound) represented her grounding in
classical Indology, Winand Callewaert's
contribution ''Why do we bother with
manuscripts?'' dealt with the literature
of pre-modern religious sects which con-
stituted her main research interest over
the last decades, and her former student
Heike Bill's talk on administration in
Afghanistan under the Taliban referred
to her Iranian studies. This well-attended
function was an appropriate way to cel-
ebrate her passage into a new stage of
life - freedom from the burden of admin-
istrative duties, which means ample time
for field work, reading and writing.
Monika Boehm-Tettelbach completed
her PhD at the FU Berlin in 1966 on the
topic of Sadani, a Bhojpuri dialect spo-
ken in the Chotanagpur, and in 1975 she
completed her habilitation in Indology
from Bonn University on Sadani songs.
After assignments as Assistant Professor
in Berlin and Bonn and as Professor of
Indology in Bonn, Köln and Bamberg,
she was appointed in 1994
to the chair of
Modern Indian Languages at the SAI.
The academic output of Monika
Boehm-Tettelbach (author's name: Mo-
nika Horstmann) is tremendous, espe-
cially when viewed in the context of her
numerous administrative and organisa-
tional obligations. Over the years, her
geographic focus shifted from the east
of North India (Chotanagpur) to the west
(Rajasthan), and her academic interest,
which had begun with language, widened
to include literary, religious and social
phenomena. She has written and edited
a score of books and published innumer-
able articles on the Sikhs and their litera-
ture, on bhakti and especially Sant litera-
ture, modern Hindi literature, different
Farewell to Monika Boehm-Tettelbach
aspects of the religious, literary and in-
tellectual history of North India from the
sixteenth century to the present, and lit-
erary translations from modern standard
Hindi as well as Sadani, old Hindi and
Punjabi into German. She initiated, con-
ducted und coordinated several research
projects, contributed to the collaborative
research centre ''Ritual Dynamics'' and is
actively involved in the Hindi Database
project which she continues to head.
Outside Germany, Monika Boehm-
Tettelbach is well-known not only due
to her publications but to the conferences
and workshops she organized, the pa-
pers she presented at international con-
ferences and the lectures she delivered
at prestigious universities and institutes
all over the world. She received awards
and honorary fellowships in Germany,
India, Italy, the Netherlands and Aus-
tralia and taught at the Sorbonne, Paris,
and the Australian National University,
Canberra.
What was even more remarkable than
her other academic achievements, how-
ever, was her commitment to teaching. It
is a quite common, though unfortunate,
attitude in academia to regard teaching
as an annoying obligation, a nuisance.
Not so with Monika Boehm-Tettel-
bach. She devoted her full energy and
knowledge to each and every class and
lecture. Nobody who ever attended any
of her classes can have failed to notice
that her heart was always in it. Thus she
was able to pass the enthusiasm for the
material she dealt with and for her aca-
demic discipline on to her students and
colleagues. Much of her time was spent
on designing courses and curricula. As
an outstanding result of her efforts one
may mention the intensive Hindi course
for beginners which constitutes the core
of the department's language teaching
programmes and attracts students from
several European countries every year.
For this course Monika Boehm-Tettel-
bach and her team, together with Axel
Michaels and the Department of Clas-
sical Indology, were honoured with the
Teaching Award of Baden-Württemberg
in 2005. Through her personal efforts
she organized intensive Hindi courses in
Jaipur during the winter vacations which
are taking place for the third time this
year. Apart from her own courses, Mon-
ika Boehm-Tettelbach also took a keen
interest in guaranteeing the high quality
of all courses taught in the department
and encouraged the lecturers in Bengali,
Hindi, Tamil and Urdu to develop teach-
ing materials in German.
Right after the farewell function Moni-
ka Boehm-Tettelbach set out to continue
her work in Rajasthan. We are looking
forward to the results of her current re-
search and wish her all the best for many
years to come.
Christina Oesterheld
n40@ix.urz.uni-heidelberg.de
Prof. Monika Boehm-Tettelbach in Rajasthan. - Photo: SAI