Gabelentz was born in
Poschwitz, near
Altenburg,
Saxe-Altenburg. His father was the minister and linguist
Hans Conon von der Gabelentz, an authority of the
Manchu language. Gabelentz taught himself
Dutch,
Italian and
Chinese during his
gymnasium years. From 1860 to 1864, following his father's steps, he studied law, administration, and linguistics at
Jena. In 1864 he entered the civil service of
Saxony at
Dresden. He continued his study of oriental languages at
Leipzig. He married Alexandra von Rothkirch in 1872. His father Hans died at the family castle of
Lemnitz in 1874. Gabelentz earned his doctoral from Dresden in 1876 with a translation of
Zhou Dunyi's
Taiji Tushuo ( "Explaining
taiji"). In 1878, a Professorship of Far Eastern Languages, the first of its kind in the German-speaking world, was created at the
University of Leipzig, and Gabelentz was invited to fill it. Among his students were the German sinologists
Wilhelm Grube (1855–1908) and
Johann Jakob Maria de Groot (1854–1921), the Austrian Sinologist
Arthur von Rosthorn (1862–1945), the Japanologist (1865–1939), the archaeologist
Max Uhle (1856–1944), the
Tibetologist Heinrich Wenzel and the
art historian Friedrich Wilhelm Karl Müller (1863–1930). In 1889, he divorced, and switched to the
University of Berlin. In 1891, he remarried, and published ("Linguistics"). His followed one year later. ==Views on Chinese dialects==