Vorträge Freitag, 12. Juni 2026, 18:30–20:00 Leslie Helm: „Robert Schinzinger: The man, his philosophy and his mission in Japan“

As a teacher, a writer and speaker, Robert Schinzinger was perhaps the most important cultural mediator between Japan and German during his 65 Years in Japan. He taught at Osaka Kōtō Gakkō from 1923–1942, at Gakushūin from 1942–1982 and at Tōdai (Universität Tokyo) from 1942–1959.

In the Nazi era, he said his mission was to continue to teach the “real Germany of Goethe and Schiller” to his Japanese students. His work won him the Goethe Medal in Gold of the Goethe Institute in 1968, The Imperial order of the Rising Sun in 1969, and the grand BVK (Bundesverdienstkreuz) in 1986, the Grand Cross Medal of Merit presented to him by the German president for his role in improving German-Japanese relations. The German-Japanese dictionary he wrote together with several colleagues was for decades the most commonly used dictionary by German students of Japan. As President of the German East Asiatic Society (OAG) he played an important role over many decades.

Leslie Helm will talk about how his Grandfather was shaped by his early life and the unique ways in which he engaged with students as well as the broader German community in Japan.
Leslie Helm is the grandson of Robert Schinzinger. He has an MA in Asian Studies from the University of California, Berkeley, and an MS in Journalism from Columbia University. He was Tokyo Correspondent for many years first at Business Week and later at the Los Angeles Times and Business Week in the early 1980s and early 1990s, and was later executive editor at two business publications in Seattle. He is the author of Yokohama Yankee: My Family’s Five Generations as Outsiders in Japan.

Helm has been working on his grandfather’s memoir together with his cousin Barbara Schinzinger over the past two years. The work sparked an interest in his German heritage and last year Helm took a one-month intensive course in Germany at the Goethe Institute and spent several weeks traveling in Germany and researching his German part of the family.

Time: 6.30-8.00 p.m. (Japan), 11.30-13.00 a.m. (MESZ)
Zoom-Link: https://us02web.zoom.us/j/83246174425?pwd=tcrblsDrB9vXcjoLYnZNabZq0opK9a.1
Meeting ID: 832 4617 4425
Passcode: 284712

Book review of
Leslie Helm
Yokohama Yankee
My Family´s Five Generations As Outsiders In Japan
(Sebastian Hofstetter M.A.)

in OAG Notizen September 2013
https://oag.jp/books/oag-notizen-september-2013/
https://oag.jp/img/images/reports/rez-Hofstetter.pdf