In 1972, the Monumenta Serica Institute (MSI) moved from the University of California Los Angeles (UCLA) to Sankt Augustin in Germany. On the occasion of the 50th anniversary of this move, the MSI invited two contemporary witnesses to share their recollections of this event. The Institute was happy to welcome Fr. Dr. Wilhelm K. Müller S.V.D. (Rome), a member of the MSI and for some years associate editor of the journal, and Mrs. Haruko Kuijlaars, longterm editorial assistant of the MSI in Sankt Augustin, for a series of interviews over the course of three days, from 12 till 14 July.
Fr. Müller was associated with the MSI during his Ph.D. studies of Sinology at UCLA and was instrumental in shipping the institute’s library to Germany. While Fr. Müller stayed in California to finish his studies, the other members of the institute, editor-in-chief Fr. Heinrich Busch S.V.D. (1912–2002), associate editor Fr. Eugen Feifel S.V.D. (1902–1999), and managing director Fr. Gerhard Schreiber S.V.D. (1911–1972) all left Los Angeles to resume the institute’s activities at the new location in Germany.
Fr. Müller’s and Mrs. Kuijlaars’s recollections were extremely valuable as they shed further light on the history of the MSI’s transfer from the UCLA to its current site at Sankt Augustin, where the institute finally settled after an eventful history with many changes of location, from Beijing via Tokyo and Nagoya to Los Angeles .
The talks (in German) have been documented in audio and video, key insights will be made available for a wider audience by the MSI in due time.