Petzold Collection

The Petzold Collection has around 830 books mainly relating to Buddhism but also to Hinduism, Indian history and Western philosophy. They include works in German, French and English and mostly published from 1870 to 1945.

Religion and philosophy

Key items in the collection

The original collection consisted of about 960 books, mainly relating to Buddhism but also to Hinduism, Indian history and Western philosophy. They were written in German, French and English and were mostly published in the period from 1870 to 1945, although there are a few earlier imprints. Subsequently, the Library disposed of 130 titles, as they were duplicates.

Among the authorities on Buddhism and Asian philosophy represented in the collection are:

Paul Deussen
Julius Dutoit
Georg Grimm
Arthur Lillie
F Max Műller
Karl Eugen Neumann
Caroline Rhys Davids
Thomas Rhys Davids
Daisetz Teitaro Suzuki
Max Walleser
FL Woodward.

Other writers include:

Henri Bergson
René Descartes
Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel
Immanuel Kant
Josiah Royce
Albert Schweitzer
Georg Simmel
Rudolf Steiner
Max Weber.

About Bruno Petzold

Bruno Petzold (1873–1949) was born at Breslaw, Silesia, which at that time was part of the German Empire. He attended Leipzig University and Berlin University.

Newspaper correspondent

For several years he was the correspondent in Paris for the Berliner Tageblatt and other German newspapers and periodicals and became acquainted with Georges Clemenceau, Emile Zola and other literary and political figures. He was later a correspondent in London and China.

Petzold in Japan

In 1910, Petzold moved to Japan. He lived there for the rest of his life. He taught German at a school, Dai Ichi Kotogatta, in Tokyo, while his wife taught at the Ueno Academy of Music.

Conversion to Buddhism

Petzold converted to Buddhism and he eventually became a priest of the Tendai sect. Most of his published articles and monographs related to Buddhism. They include:

Die Triratna; Grundsätzliches űber das Wahre des Buddhismus (1933)
Goethe und der Mahāyāna Buddhismus (1936)
Les classifications du Bouddhisme (1937)
Japanese Buddhism: A Characterization.

Posthumous publications

His most important writings were published posthumously:

Tendai Buddhism: Collection of the Writings of Bruno Petzold (1979)
Die quintessenz der T’ien-t’ai (Tendai) (1982)
The Classification of Buddhism=Bukkyō Kyōhan (1995).

Background to the collection

The Petzold Collection was purchased by the Library in 1952 from Arnulf H Petzold, the son of Bruno Petzold.

The books in the Petzold Collection have been catalogued individually and integrated in the general collection. There is a Catalogue of the Buddhist library of the late Bruno Petzold by Arnulf Petzold (his son).

Harvard University Library at Cambridge, Massachusetts, holds the bulk of the library of Petzold, comprising over 10,000 volumes and including 416 scrolls, mainly emanating from Japan.

Harvard-Yenching Library houses over 6,000 Japanese books from Petzold’s collection, acquired in 1951. Around 500 scrolls have been digitized and are available online.

This guide was prepared using these references: