H.W. Schumann

After an apprenticeship as a book publisher, Schumann studied Indology, religious studies, ethnology, comparative religions and social anthropology at the University of Bonn in 1951. In 1957 he received his Ph.D. degree for a thesis on Buddhist philosophy, while there he worked under Gustav Mensching in the subject of Indology with an investigation into the Bedeutung und Bedeutungsentwicklung des Terminus Samkhara im frühen Buddhismus (Meaning and development of the meaning of the term Samkhara in early Buddhism). From 1960 to 1963 he worked as a lecturer at the Banaras Hindu University in India. In 1963, he had joined the Foreign services of the Federal Republic of Germany and served in consular and diplomatic capacities at the West German missions such as Kolkata Indian, Yangon Myanmar, Chicago US and Colombo Sri Lanka as a lecturer to teach German language through the German Academic Exchange Service. In 1985 to 1986 he held a teaching position in Buddhism at the University of Bonn. Until his retirement in 1988 he was the Consul-General of the Federal Republic of Germany in Mumbai. Later Schumann was the recipient of the Rabindranath Tagore Literary Prize for his works about Buddhism.

Hans Wolfgang Schumann (born January 31, 1928 in Düsseldorf, Germany; died June 26, 2019 in Bonn) was a German diplomat as well as an Indologist and Buddhologist.