Thursday, December 4, 2008

A Jesuit For Over Sixty Years

Jesuit Weingartner receives Austrian Honorary Cross for Science and Arts

By Nancy T. Lu

Ninety-year-old Jesuit missionary Friedrich Weingartner received last November 28 the Austrian Honorary Cross for Science and Arts awarded by the Austrian Federal President Heinz Fischer.

The ceremony held in recognition of his extensive research and study of the languages of the indigenous people in Taiwan took place at the Fu Jen Catholic University's Faculty of Theology and Infirmary in Hsinchuang City, Taipei County. Sieglinde Spanlang, the director of the Austrian Tourism Office, decorated Weingartner with the medal and also presented him with a certificate.

Born in Meggenhofen near Linz in Upper Austria, Weingartner studied theology in Innsbruck, philosophy in Munich, as well as Mandarin and linguistics in Manila, Hamburg and the United States.

Weingartner was ordained a priest in Innsbruck, Austria, in 1947. He joined the army but got kicked out after his priesthood was exposed. Besides, he was very seriously sick with typhoid fever then and, therefore, had to be discharged from military service to the envy of his colleagues in the army.

Throughout his nearly 50 years as a missionary in Taiwan, he was engaged in the study up close of aboriginal languages. He took risks for some of the aborigines were known to be headhunters, venturing deep into remote areas with existing aboriginal communities.

After he retired in 1995, he focused in the next 10 years on the language, grammar, phonology and syntax of the Saisiat minority tribe in Paishou Tsun, Shihtan Hsiang, Miaoli County. He wrote down what he learned, thereby helping preserve what was otherwise an unwritten language.

The Aboriginal Languages Research Center at the Tien Educational Center in Taipei was founded by him. He equipped it with audio and tape recorders from Germany.

The television network Osterreichischer Rundfunk (ORF) sent a team in 2005 to do a special coverage on Weingartner. The film tracking down the life of Weingartner was shown to the small group gathered to celebrate with the Jesuit priest his awarding.

No comments: