Andreas Johan Sjogren

Andreas Johan Sjögren ( Russian Андре́й Миха́йлович Шёгрен Andrei Michailowitsch Schogren , also Anders Johan Sjögren; * April 15 ^July / April 26,  1794 ^greg. In Sitikkala , Finland ; † January 6 ^jul. / January 18,  1855 ^greg. In Sankt Petersburg ) was a Finland-Swedish - Russian linguist , historian, and ethnographer .

Live and act

Sjögren was born into a Finnish-Swedish family in the village of Sitikkala in the east of what was then Nyland . In 1807 this area became part of the Grand Duchy of Finland to the Russian Empire and Sjogren became a Russian subordinate. In 1813 he graduated from high school in Borgå (Porvoo), then studied until 1819 at the academy in Åbo (Turku).

Under the impression of the early works of the Danish linguist Rasmus Christian Rask , Sjögren initially dealt with the history of the Russian north, especially with the ethnography and the languages ​​of the Finno-Ugric peoples of this area, according to the Komi .

His treatise On the Finnish Language and its Literature , published in 1823, caught the attention of the former statesman and patron of science Nikolai Rumjanzew , who hired Sjogren as a private librarian and arranged for state funds to be used to support his travels.

In 1835 Sjogren traveled to the Caucasus to study the Georgian and Ossetian languages . The most important result was an Ossetian grammar published in 1844 with a short Ossetian-Russian and Russian-Ossetian dictionary , which at the same time represented the first in-depth study of this language. Sjögren is considered to be the originator of the modern Ossetian alphabet based on the Cyrillic script , which is still used today with minor changes.

Since 1827 Sjogren was a corresponding member of the Russian Academy of Sciences , since 1831 its extraordinary member for "Russian History and Antiquities" and from 1844 a full member of the "Department of Philology and Ethnography of the Finnish and Caucasian Peoples of Russia". In 1845 he became director of the Academy's Ethnographic Museum .

Sjogren had to cancel a planned research trip to Siberia because of his health; However, he proposed in his place the younger Matthias Alexander Castrén , who is now considered to be the founder of the linguistics of the Uralic languages . However, Sjogren continued to make shorter trips, so in 1846 and 1852 to the Livs in Livonia and Courland .

Work (selection)

Sjögren published many of his writings, which appeared between 1823 and 1854, in German, some also in Russian.

• Anteckningar om församlingarne i Kemi-Lappmark (1828)
• The Sürjänen , a historical-statistical-philological attempt (1829)
• About the Finnish population of the St. Petersburg Governorate and about the origin of the name Ingermanland (1833)
• Ossetian linguistics (1841)
• Grammar of the Ossetian Language (1844)
• Ossetian Studies (1848)
• On the ethnography of Livonia (1849)
• Collected writings (posthumously 1861, edited by Ferdinand Wiedemann ; reprinted 1969):
  • Historical-ethnographic treatises on the Finnish-Russian north
  • Livian grammar and language samples
  • Livisch-German and German-Liv dictionary

literature

• Andreas Sjogren . In: Theodor Westrin, Ruben Gustafsson Berg, Eugen Fahlstedt (eds.): Nordisk familjebok konversationslexikon och realencyklopedi . 2nd Edition. tape 25 : Sekt – Slöjskifling . Nordisk familjeboks förlag, Stockholm 1917, Sp. 802 (Swedish, runeberg.org ).
• Michael Branch : AJ Sjogren. Studies of the North. Helsinki: Suomalais-ugrilainen seura 1973 (Mémoires de la Société Finno-Ougrienne 152). 292 pp.