Edward Conze - Life and Work

Life and Work

Conze was born in London of mixed German, French, and Dutch ancestry. His father belonged to the German landed aristocracy, and his mother to what he himself would have called the "plutocracy". His background was Protestant, though his mother became a Roman Catholic in later life. He seems to have had a rather difficult relationship with his mother. Conze claimed to be related to Friedrich Engels.

He was born in England because his father happened to be posted there as German Vice-Consul, but this meant that he had British nationality. He was educated at various German universities, graduating with a Ph.D. from the University of Cologne in 1928, he then proceeded to carry out post doctoral studies in comparative European and Indian Philosophy at the University of Bonn and the University of Hamburg. Conze had a talent for learning languages and picked up fourteen of them, including Sanskrit, by age 24. Like many other Europeans, he came into contact with Theosophy early in life. He also took up astrology, and remained a keen astrologer throughout his life. While still a young man, he wrote a substantial book called The Principle of Contradiction.

Conze opposed Hitler's rise to power, joining the Communist Party and seriously studying Marxist thought. For a while he was the leader of the communist movement in Bonn, and his autobiography, Memoirs of a Modern Gnostic, talks about organizing communist street gangs in Hamburg, which briefly put his life in danger.

In 1933 he came to England, having earlier taken the precaution of renewing his British nationality, and he arrived at the age of 29, virtually without money or possessions. He supported himself by teaching German and taking evening classes, and he became a member of the Labour Party. He met many prominent figures and intellectuals in the Labour movement and was not impressed. However, Secretary of State for Education, Chair of the Labour Party and MP Ellen Wilkinson did impress him, and the two later published two books together entitled Why War? and Why Fascism?.

Conze became very active in the socialist movement in Britain, lecturing and writing books and pamphlets, until eventually becoming disillusioned with politics. At 35 he found himself in a state of intellectual turmoil and collapse. Even his marriage had failed. Indeed, in his memoirs he admits "I am one of those unfortunate people who can neither live with women nor without them."

From 1933 until 1960 he lectured in psychology, philosophy and comparative religion at the University of London and the University of Oxford. Between 1963 and 1973 he held a number of academic appointments in England, Germany and the United States, including a significant amount of time as a Visiting Professor in the Department of Religious Studies at the University of Lancaster.

At this point he discovered – or rather rediscovered – Buddhism. When 13 years old he had read Gleanings in Buddha Fields by Lafcadio Hearn. However, Conze's first significant contact with Buddhism was at this midpoint in his life, at the beginning of the Second World War, through the writings of D.T. Suzuki.

Once intrigued, Conze devoted the rest of his life to Buddhism, and in particular to translating the Prajnaparamita or Perfection of Wisdom sutras, which are the fundamental scriptures of Mahayana Buddhism. However, he wasn't just a scholar in the academic sense. During the war he lived on his own in a caravan in the New Forest and practised meditation, following very seriously the instructions given by Buddhaghosa in the Visuddhimagga, and allegedly achieving some degree of meditative experience. Being brutally honest, especially about himself, he would confess in his later lectures in America that he was just a Buddhist scholar and not a monk and therefore people should not be disappointed if his actions and behaviors did not live up to the Buddhist ideal. Reflective of Conze's prominent position as a Buddhist is the fact that he served as vice president of the Buddhist Society.

After the war he moved to Oxford and remarried. In 1951 he published Buddhism: Its Essence and Development, a very successful book, which is still in print. However, his real achievement over the following twenty years was to translate over thirty texts comprising the Prajnaparamita sutras, including two of the most well-known of all Buddhist texts, the Diamond Sutra and the Heart Sutra.

In the 1960s and '70s he met with university students of Buddhism in Canada and lectured at several universities in the United States; he was appreciated by his students. However, he was very outspoken, and gained the disapproval of the university authorities and some of his colleagues. With the combination of his Communist past and his candid criticism of American involvement in Vietnam, he was eventually obliged to leave. He died on September 24, 1979 at his home in Sherborne, Dorset.