Reverend Ferdinand Kittel (7 April 1832 in Resterhafe, East Frisia

East Frisia

East Frisia or Eastern Friesland is a coastal region in the northwest of the German federal state of Lower Saxony....

 – 18 December 1903 in Tübingen

Tübingen

Tübingen is a traditional university town in central Baden-Württemberg, Germany. It is situated south of the state capital, Stuttgart, on a ridge between the Neckar and Ammer rivers.-Geography:...

) was a priest and indologist with the Basel Mission

Basel Mission

The Basel Mission is a Christian missionary society active from 1815 to 2001, when it was merged into Mission 21, the successor organization of Kooperation Evangelischer Kirchen und Missione founded in 2001....

 in south India and worked in Mangalore

Mangalore

Mangalore is the chief port city of the Indian state of Karnataka. It is located about west of the state capital, Bangalore. Mangalore lies between the Arabian Sea and the Western Ghat mountain ranges, and is the administrative headquarters of the Dakshina Kannada district in south western...

, Madikeri and Dharwad

Dharwad

Dharwad, also known as Dharwar, is a city and a DISTRICT PLACE in India's Karnataka state.Dharwad is the administrative seat of the Dharwad District. The municipality of Hubli-Dharwad covers an area of 200.23 km²...

 in Karnataka

Karnataka

Karnataka , the land of the Kannadigas, is a state in South West India. It was created on 1 November 1956, with the passing of the States Reorganisation Act and this day is annually celebrated as Karnataka Rajyotsava...

. He is most famous for his studies of the Kannada language and for producing the first ever Kannada-English dictionary of about 70,000 words in 1894. He also composed numerous Kannada poems.

He arrived in India in 1853. As a missionary, he endeavoured to follow Paul's first Epistle to the Corinthians

First Epistle to the Corinthians

The first epistle of Paul the apostle to the Corinthians, often referred to as First Corinthians , is the seventh book of the New Testament of the Bible...

 and "become as an Indian unto the Indians", and undertook exhaustive studies learning the Kannada language, customs and local music. This earned rebuke from the Basel Mission, where he was already an outsider on account of his North German origin and academic education (the other missionaries were chiefly from southwest Germany and the lower/middle classes, though Gottfried Weigle

Gottfried Weigle

Gottfried Weigle was a German missionary to Karnataka who translated the Bible into Kannada.He was based in Dharwad, under the Basel Mission in Mangalore. Herrmann Moegling, a fellow student from Tübingen also worked on translation projects. Ferdinand Kittel worked more independently...

 had studied at Tübingen). This marginalised him by pushing him to a remote station in the Nilgiris

Nilgiris (mountains)

The Nilgiri , often referred to as the Nilgiri Hills, are a range of mountains with at least 24 peaks above , in the westernmost part of Tamil Nadu state at the junction of Karnataka and Kerala states in Southern India...

 and later confining him to the mission's press in Mangalore. He returned to Germany, but visited India again in his fifties to complete his dictionary, which by then had become for him an end in itself, and not merely an instrument secondary to missionary work.

Reverend Ferdinand Kittel also wrote a book on Kannada grammar

Kannada grammar

The Kannada grammar is primarily based on Keshiraja's Shabdamanidarpana , which provides the fullest systematic exposition of the Kannada language...

 called A Grammar of the Kannada Language: Comprising the Three Dialects of the language. He translated Nagavarma's work on Kannada prosody.

He is today almost forgotten in Germany, but widely recognised in Karnataka. He is credited with shaping the Kannada language and the regional identity of Kannada speakers. Many educational institutions have been named after him. A statue at the end of Mahatma Gandhi

Mahatma Gandhi

Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi , pronounced . 2 October 1869 – 30 January 1948) was the pre-eminent political and ideological leader of India during the Indian independence movement...

 road in the city of Bangalore

Bangalore

Bengaluru , formerly called Bengaluru is the capital of the Indian state of Karnataka. Bangalore is nicknamed the Garden City and was once called a pensioner's paradise. Located on the Deccan Plateau in the south-eastern part of Karnataka, Bangalore is India's third most populous city and...

commemorates him. Austin Town in Bangalore was renamed "F Kittel Nagar".

The book An Indian to the Indians? On the Initial Failure and the Posthumous Success of the Missionary Ferdinand Kittel (1832–1903), edited by Reinhard Wendt, describes various aspects of his work.

External links

• Ferdinand Kittel and the Cultural Dialogue with India, International Seminar, Germany 2003
• Portrait of Kittel at Kamat's Potpourri