R. G. Tiedemann

Rolf Gerhard Tiedemann (8 February 1941 – 1 August 2019), better known as R. G. Tiedemann or Gary Tiedemann, was a German historian of Christianity in China.

Biography
Born in Hartenholm, Schleswig-Holstein in wartime Germany, Tiedemann left school as a teenager. At 21 he settled with family in Wisconsin, and was later drafted to train in the US army's Medical Training Unit in Texas during the Vietnam War. He completed a BA at University of Wisconsin–Milwaukee, followed by an MA and a PhD at SOAS University of London. After taking several part-time posts, Tiedemann spent twenty years teaching Modern History of China in SOAS's Department of History, including a sabbatical at the Ricci Institute, University of San Francisco. After his retirement, he maintained a post as Professorial Research Associate at SOAS and as Professor of Chinese History, Shandong University, Jinan.

His research mainly concerned the history of Christianity in China, with a particular focus on Shandong and the Boxer Rebellion. He also edited the second volume of the Handbook of Christianity in China, which totalled over a thousand pages; about half of the entries he wrote himself. Tiedemann was also a review editor of Journal of Peasant Studies.

A festschrift was published in honor of Tiedemann, edited by two of his former students, entitled The Church as Safe Haven (2018).

Tiedemann died on 1 August 2019, after suffering from illness for many years.