Professor J. Markwart

Extract

The death, in tragic circumstances, of Professor Josef Markwart, of Berlin, on 4th February, ought not to pass unnoticed in this country. For although his name is here unfamiliar to all but a small group of scholars, he occupies, and must always occupy, a place in the forefront of European Orientalists, and it would be difficult to name any past or present scholar with a wider range of learning or a more brilliant critical faculty, whether as philologist, historian, or ethnologist. He was a fine classical scholar; he could read nearly every literary language of Asia, and he had a profound knowledge of African ethnology. Though his total output of published work was comparatively small—amounting only to four or five books and a number of articles in learned journals—it may be said that every sentence he wrote bore the hall-mark of his immense learning and his rare analytical power.