August Hermann Francke (Gnadenfrei, Silesia

Silesia

Silesia is a historical region of Central Europe located mostly in Poland, with smaller parts also in the Czech Republic, and Germany.Silesia is rich in mineral and natural resources, and includes several important industrial areas. Silesia's largest city and historical capital is Wrocław...

, 5 November 1870 - Berlin, 16 February 1930) was a German Tibetologist.

His grandfather was Christian Friedrich Francke, a descendant of the eighteenth-century theologian August Hermann Francke

August Hermann Francke

August Hermann Francke was a German Lutheran churchman.-Biography:Born at the German city Lübeck, Francke was educated at the gymnasium in Gotha before he studied at the universities of Erfurt and Kiel - where he came under the influence of the pietist Christian Kortholt - and finally Leipzig...

 (1663–1727), after whom August was named. He married Anna Theodora Weize (b. 1875 Silo, South Africa) whom he met in Kleinwelka

Kleinwelka

Kleinwelka is a subdivision of the city of Bautzen, Germany.It was first mentioned in 1345. Its chronicle dates back to the 14th century...

, Saxony. Before they married she went to Amritsar

Amritsar

Amritsar is a city in the northern part of India and is the administrative headquarters of Amritsar district in the state of Punjab, India. The 2001 Indian census reported the population of the city to be over 1,500,000, with that of the entire district numbering 3,695,077...

 for a year to improve her English as a teacher. August Hermann joined her in India and married her there in 1897.

He was a Moravian Church missionary in the Himalayas

Himalayas

The Himalaya Range or Himalaya Mountains Sanskrit: Devanagari: हिमालय, literally "abode of snow"), usually called the Himalayas or Himalaya for short, is a mountain range in Asia, separating the Indian subcontinent from the Tibetan Plateau...

 serving in in that capacity in Ladakh

Ladakh

Ladakh is a region of Jammu and Kashmir, the northernmost state of the Republic of India. It lies between the Kunlun mountain range in the north and the main Great Himalayas to the south, inhabited by people of Indo-Aryan and Tibetan descent...

, a major region of Jammu

Jammu

Jammu , also known as Duggar, is one of the three administrative divisions within Jammu and Kashmir, the northernmost state in India.Jammu city is the largest city in Jammu and the winter capital of Jammu and Kashmir...

 and Kashmir Province

Kashmir

Kashmir is the northwestern region of the Indian subcontinent. Until the mid-19th century, the term Kashmir geographically denoted only the valley between the Great Himalayas and the Pir Panjal mountain range...

 frin 1896 until 1909. His return to Europe was occasioned by his wife's illness. He was subsequently appointed professor of Tibetan languages at Berlin University.

After Yoseb Gergan produced the first draft of the Tibetan Bible in 1910, Francke corrected it and then sent it to David Macdonald, the British trade agent in Yatung. Also involved was his Moravian colleague Heinrich Jäschke who produced A Tibetan-English dictionary.

Works

• A history of Western Tibet: one of the unknown empires
• Antiquities of Indian Tibet - Vol. I: Personal Narrative Of A Journey In 1910 From Simla To Srinagar; Through Kinnaur, Spiti And Ladakh. For The Express Purpose Of Investigating The Buddhist Antiquities; Vol. II: The Chronicles Of Ladakh And Minor Chronicles
• Tibetan Grammar;;
• Tibetische Geschichtsforschung und was man dabei erleben kann, 1911.