Lecture by
Dr. Dirk Kuhlmann
Monumenta Serica Institute
3 July 2025, 7 p.m.
at the Missionary Seminary Sankt Augustin
Arnold-Janssen-Str. 30, 53757 Sankt Augustin, Germany
This lecture in German whose title translates as “The Printed Word Connects: The Bibliotheca Sinica Christiana, a Catalog of SVD Publications in China” introduced the fascinating diversity of the books printed by the Divine Word Missionaries in Southern Shandong for almost 70 years, from 1882 to 1950.
These publications included books on the transmission of faith, such as catechetical works and selections of biblical texts, prayer and song books, but also literary works. They were mostly written in an accessible, colloquial style (baihua 白話) in order to reach people from all walks of life. The Divine Word Missionaries aimed at contextualizing and rooting Catholicism among the Chinese faithful.
The S.V.D. printing enterprise also included secular works such as Chinese school books, dictionaries and grammars for learning Chinese, German and Latin, as well as introductions to Chinese culture. Though deeply informed by the colonial context of their time, they were tools for cultural exchange and understanding, with a strong focus on teaching the local language and culture of Southern Shandong for male and female missionaries of the Arnoldus family and on introducing German and classical Latin culture to a Chinese audience.
The individual titles were often very skillfully and attractively designed, aiming equally at a Chinese and a Western readership. They incorporated traditional Western copperplate engravings, flowing Jugendstil as well as modernized Bauhaus style elements, traditional Chinese images, and syntheses of Western and Chinese art styles.
The nucleus for compiling this catalog were the S.V.D. publications from China held in the Sankt Michael Mission House in Steyl, which were rediscovered there in the 1970s and recorded in a list by the former China missionary and librarian Bernhard Kolanczyk SVD (1903–1983). In the 1980s, these holdings were transferred to the S.V.D.’s Monumenta Serica Institute in Sankt Augustin and integrated as a book collection in the Institute’s library. In more than 20 years of persistent research, Father Roman Malek S.V.D. (1951–2019), then director and editor-in-chief, collected and meticulously these works. More S.V.D. titles could be added thanks to donations. After five years of editing, the fruits of his labor have been made available to the interested public in the form of a printed catalog last year.
A substantial part of the S.V.D. publications from China – 316 titles – is physically available in the Institute’s library. The materials can serve as points of departure for a wide range of studies, including the history of Christianity in China, missionary studies, research on religions, philosophies and other aspects of Chinese culture, ethnology, language teaching (among others research on the impact of auto-images and hetero-images), school education, and book design. They are available to interested scholars for research by appointment at the Monumenta Serica Institute in Sankt Augustin, Germany.