Heinrich Wilhelm Ludolf

Heinrich Wilhelm Ludolf (born December 20, 1655 in Erfurt , † January 25, 1712 in England ) was a German scholar. He wrote the first grammar of the Russian vernacular , the Grammatica Russica .

Life

Heinrich Wilhelm Ludolf was born on December 20, 1655 in Erfurt . He came from an influential bourgeois family who had been a full patrician ever since his grandfather was promoted to the city council . His brother Georg Melchior Ludolf (1667–1740) was a lawyer and author. Heinrich Wilhelm attended the Erfurt Ratsgymnasium and then enrolled at the University of Jena , where he dealt mainly with mathematics and theology. His uncle Hiob Ludolf , who is considered the founder of German oriental studies , gave him lessons in oriental languages, especially Hebrew and Arabic. Heinrich Wilhelm Ludolf also spoke English, French, Latin, Italian, ancient and modern Greek, Turkish and Ethiopian. In Job Ludolf's house he also met Spener , who introduced him to pietism .

Ludolf got a job in the diplomatic service under the Danish ambassador Christian von Lenthe ; later he became secretary to Prince George of Denmark , later Duke of Cumberland . For health reasons he retired and settled permanently in England. He received a pension of 500 thalers a year and continued to serve in the UK.

In the spring of 1692 Ludolf received secret instructions to go to Russia , presumably with a commercial diplomatic mission. So he traveled, without saying goodbye to his friends, via Hamburg, where he received his instructions, to Liibeck, and from there sailed to Reval . At the beginning of November he wrote to friends from Narva , where he was prevented from entering Russia for weeks because Tsar Peter I was seriously ill and xenophobic riots were expected in the event of his death. Ludolf used this time to learn Russian. In January 1693 he was able to continue his journey.

The further course of the journey is unclear and can only be reconstructed on the basis of later correspondence from Ludolf and linguistic studies. He was certainly in Moscow, as he later had many friends there, as well as in Saint Petersburg , where he became personally acquainted with Peter I. Otherwise, he probably stayed mainly in Belarus and the Novgorod area .

In June 1694 Ludolf returned to England and began to work on his Russian grammar, the Grammatica Russica , which is considered the first grammar of the Russian vernacular.

In January 1698 he appeared in Halle with August Hermann Francke , directly from Holland, where he had taken part in the peace negotiations in Rijswijk . For four months he led a Russian language course at Francke's Institute, in which Francke himself took part, and from then on he wrote letters to Ludolf in Russian.

Later trips took him to Constantinople , Jerusalem and Cairo, where he endeavored to unite the Christian churches and establish a universal church, but not again to Russia. He retained his residence in England and died there on January 25, 1712.

The Grammatica Russica

Ludolf wrote his grammar in what was then the scientific language of Latin. It is entitled Henrici Wilhelmi Ludolf Grammatica Russica quæ continet non tantum præcipua fundamenta russicæ linguæ, Verum etiam ma-nuductionem quandam ad grammaticam slavonicam with the addition Additi sunt in forma dialogorum modi loquendi communiores, Germanice æque ac latine explicati., In gratiam qui linguorum quandam Latinam ignorant. Una cum brevi vocabulario rerum naturalium . Ludolf is not only interested in a linguistic analysis of Russian, but rather a practical handbook not only for learning the language, and also a more far-reaching introduction for those who come into (business) contact with Russia.

Before Ludolf there was no study of the Russian language on which he could have relied in his work. At most, the very widespread Church Slavonic grammars, for example in the division of the declension of nouns, were a certain model for him . However, Ludolf is making a lot of simplifications and restructuring to better suit Russian.

In the foreword, Ludolf notes, on the one hand, the importance of Russian as a commercial language throughout the Russian Empire; on the other hand, he points to the wide spread and importance of Church Slavonic in many areas (especially church, science and literature). Ludolf characterizes the state of language in Russia de facto as diglossia by claiming: "Loquendum est Russice et scribendum est Slavonice" ( Russian is spoken and Slavic is written ).

For this reason, Ludolf has added another section to the actual grammar in which he describes the most important differences between Russian and Church Slavonic.

The actual grammatical part covers only about half of the whole book. It begins with a brief introduction to the writing and pronunciation of Russian. Here Ludolf only goes into the sounds that give German readers the most problems.

Instead of a theoretical treatment of Russian syntax , Ludolf adds 40 pages of common sentences and expressions to his grammar, which at the same time are intended to familiarize the user of his book with everyday conversations and Russian life - a kind of phrasebook . The structure is mostly dialogic, from time to time there are also individual sentences. The dialogues are always bilingual, Russian and Latin, for the first six sections Ludolf gives the German translations in the footnote.

literature

• N. Koulmann: La première grammaire russe . In: Le monde slave , 9 (1932), Vol. 1, pp. 400-415
• Susanne Schuldes: Networks of the book trade. Book export from the bookstore of the orphanage (Halle / S) to the Protestant diaspora in Russia . In: Alles Buch. Studies in book studies in Erlangen . 2003 ( PDF file ; 504 kB)
• Robert Stupperich:  Ludolf, Heinrich Wilhelm. In: New German Biography (NDB). Volume 15, Duncker & Humblot, Berlin 1987, ISBN 3-428-00196-6 , p. 304 f. ( Digitized version ).
• Joachim Tetzner: HW Ludolf and Russia . Berlin 1955.
• BO Unbegaun (Ed.): Henrici Wilhelmi Ludolfi Grammatica Russica . Oxford (reprint) 1959.
• BO Unbegaun: Russian Grammars before Lomonosov . In: Oxford Slavonic Papers 8 (1958), pp. 98-116