Józef Kowalewski

Józef Kowalewski (Palikarp Jutejka, Lithuanian Art Museum )

Józef Szczepan Kowalewski , also Osip Mikhailovich Kowalewski and Joseph Étienne Kowalewski , ( Russian Осип Михайлович Ковалевский * December 28, 1800 ^{. Jul} / 9. January  1801 ^greg. In Brzostowica Wielka ( Grodnenskaya oblast ); † October 26 ^jul. / 7th November  1878 ^greg. in Warsaw ) was a Polish - Russian Mongolist , Buddhism watchers and university teachers .

Life

Kowalewski's father was a low-income Uniate Orthodox priest, while the mother was of Polish descent. Kowalewski had two brothers and remained Catholic all his life . The children received a home education. As early as 1808, Kowalewski was sent to the grammar school in Swisslatsch, which was subordinate to the University of Vilnius . During the Franco-Russian War in 1812 , Swisslatsch was occupied by Saxon troops under Karl Philipp zu Schwarzenberg . The high school was looted, so that Kowalewski lost his belongings and a school year.

In 1817 Kowalewski began studying at the Faculty of Literature and Liberal Arts at the University of Vilnius. He studied ancient Greek and Latin with Gottfried Ernst Groddeck . Soon he joined the secret Philomaths Association on the recommendation of Adam Mickiewicz , where he took part in the activities of the Union of Friends and the Society of Philaretes. He earned his living with private lessons. In 1819 Groddeck recommended Kowalewski to the university rector Szymon Malewski , whereupon Kowalewski received a job at the University's Pedagogical Institute and an official apartment. At the same time Groddeck took him into his seminar . In 1821 Kowalewski became secretary of Section I of the Philomaths Association and in 1821 chairman of the department, but he was not very active because of the burden of his scientific work. In 1821 his first scientific work on the description of life in the Letters of Longinos appeared , with which he was promoted to candidate for science . Kowalewski taught Polish and Latin literature at the Vilna grammar school and prepared a translation of the histories of Herodotus into literary Polish . In 1823 he published the translation of the treatise Peri hýpsous ("On the Sublime") by Pseudo-Longinos, dedicated to Groddeck, and a critical edition of the first six books of Ovid's Metamorphoses for high school students. For this edition he received a bonus of 250 rubles . Groddeck envisaged him as his successor on the chair .

In May 1823 Nikolai Nikolayevich Novossilzew became curator of the Vilnius Science District , which immediately introduced a strict policy of repression. When a high school student wrote the demand for the restoration of the constitution of May 3, 1791 on a school blackboard, Philareten and Kowalewski were arrested. Kowalewski was accused of belonging to an illegal organization and of having written verses against the government in his apartment. He was imprisoned in the Basilian monastery with Mickiewicz . In April 1824, at the request of the university rector Wacław Pelikan, 27 teachers and Kowalewski were released from custody under the guarantee of their colleagues. Kowalewski went to see his relatives in Levkowo. After Alexander I had signed the judgment in October 1824 , six of the accused were banished to Kazan . This included Kowalewski, who with two others were assigned to the University of Kazan to study the Eastern languages.

In October 1824, Kowalewski arrived in Kazan, where he was under police surveillance. In the University of Kazan he held the office of interior supervisor from autumn 1825. In January 1827 he became the inspector's assistant. During this time he studied Tatar , Arabic and Persian with Ibrahim Chalfin , Franz von Erdmann and Alexander Kassimowitsch Kasembek . He also commented on his translation of the Histories of Herodotus and translated the Bíoi parálleloi (οἱ βίοι παράλληλοι, "parallel descriptions of life") Plutarch . He made a Tatar dictionary and collected materials for a history of the Kazan Khanate .

When the new curator Mikhail Nikolayevich Mussin-Pushkin decided to set up a chair for Mongolian Studies , Kowalewski and the student Alexander Vasilyevich Popov were seconded to Siberia based in Irkutsk for four years of research . In May 1828 Kowalewski left for Siberia. Only in July did Kowalewski arrive in Irkutsk, where nothing had been prepared for the Kazan scientists and the governor Ivan Bogdanowitsch Zeidler approached them very carefully. Kowalewski was accepted by the teacher of the Mongolian language Alexander Wassiljewitsch Igumnow , with whom he quickly learned Mongolian. Kowalewski became interested in the epic poem about the Tibetan King Gesar . The planned trip to the Buryat steppes threatened to fail because neither money nor instructions came from Kazan. Kowalewski contacted the curator in Kazan for the necessary assistance from the local authorities and access to the libraries of the Trans-Baikal Buddhist Dazane .

For the return of the Russian 10th Spiritual Mission from Beijing , an officer had to be sent to Urga with the necessary documents for Lifanyuan . Despite the difficulties of the winter trip , Kowalewski made it from Irkutsk to Troitskossawsk on the Chinese border in three days . Back in Irkutsk he wrote a travelogue that appeared in the Kasanski Westnik in 1829. During his absence, he and Popov had received new instructions from the Kazan University Rector Nikolai Ivanovich Lobachevsky for researching the history and origins of the tribes of Siberia and Mongolia with careful study of the sources. As early as March 1829, Kowalewski, Popow and Igumnow traveled on the ice of the Angara and Lake Baikal to the Buryat steppes to Verkhneudinsk . In TAMCHINSKY DATSAN they stayed one month. In Selenginsk an der Selenga (since 1840 Novosselenginsk, near today's Gussinoosjorsk and about 200 km above Selenginsk, founded in 1961 ) he met with the missionaries of the London Bible Society who had lived there since 1819 , with whom he toured Transbaikalia until late autumn. He copied 15 Mongolian manuscripts . The head of the 18 Selenginsk tribes Lombozeren gave Kowalewski a manuscript, which he translated into Russian in 1835 and which then became the basis for his Buddhist cosmology .

Back in Irkutsk, Kowalewski met Hyacinth Bitschurin at the beginning of 1830 , who was on a research trip to Transbaikalia and who was now working with Kowalewski. With the approval of the Minister for Popular Education, Kowalewski joined the 11th Spiritual Mission as the clerk of the caravan guide on the trip to Beijing to improve his knowledge of Mongolian . In July 1830 the caravan left Troitskossawsk and in September was in Ugar, which Kowalewski already knew. Mongolia and the Gobi desert were crossed during the favorable autumn travel time , so that the mission entered Chinese territory in November . Kowalewski spent seven months in Beijing. There he enjoyed the support of the scientists of the mission Iossif Pawlowitsch Woizechowski and Daniil Siwilow , who later became professors of the University of Kazan for Chinese and Manchurian , and their director Pyotr Kamensky . In June 1831 Kowalewski left Beijing with the missionaries and returned happily to Troitskossawsk in September. His letters and reports had been printed regularly in Kazan and St. Petersburg . The reports of corruption and xenophobia in China caused a stir. In addition, there was concern that the reported topographical details could be interpreted by Chinese authorities as espionage, so that the director of the Asian Department Konstantin Konstantinowitsch Rodofinikin asked the minister of education, Karl von Lieven, and the post director of Eastern Siberia to send the corresponding newspaper edition to Troitskossawsk and China to prevent.

Kowalewski's and Popov's four-year research assignment ended in May 1832, after which they had to present themselves to the academician Isaak Jakob Schmidt in St. Petersburg for examination. Kowalewski asked Lobachevsky and Mussin-Pushkin for an extension, whereupon he was sent to Selenginsk in April 1832 for an in-depth study of the grammar of the Mongolian and Tibetan literary language for reading the Buddhist theological scriptures. In October Kowalewski traveled to Troitskossawsk to open a military school for the children of the Buryat NCOs. Four of its best graduates were sent to high school in Kazan in 1835. In January 1833 he was back in Irkutsk. He immediately traveled on to Kazan, where he arrived in March. In his report he described the results of his research trip: the prepared Mongolian grammar, the large Mongolian-Russian dictionary with 40,000 entries and 189 Mongolian and Tibetan treatises in 2,433 books, including 48 manuscripts and 870 books handed over by Buryats. To check his results, he traveled as an exile with Nicholas I's special permit to St. Petersburg, where Isaak Jakob Schmidt gave a very positive assessment and recommended Kowalewski and Popow for the new chair for Mongolian Studies in Kazan. In 1833 Kowalewski was appointed head of this chair.

In June 1833, Kowalewski and Popow were appointed adjuncts at the University of Kazan. In 1835 Kowalewski became an associate professor and in 1837 a full professor. Among his students were Alexei Alexandrovich Bobrownikow , Dordji Banzarov , Galssan Gombojew , Nikolai Ivanovich Sommer and Vasily Pavlovich Wassiljew . In 1837 Kowalewski was elected a corresponding member of the Imperial Academy of Sciences . 1837-1841 he was dean of the 1st department of the philosophical faculty of the University of Kazan. The election of Kovalevsky as a real member of the Imperial Academy of Sciences in 1847 was not approved by Nicholas I. Kowalewski was a member of the Société asiatique in Paris and the Danish Society of Antiquities in Copenhagen . Kowalewski's main work was the Mongolian-Russian- French dictionary, the first volume of which appeared in 1844. For this he received the Demidow Prize in 1846 . The second volume followed in 1846 and the third in 1849. When Karl Karlowitsch Voigt left the University of Kazan in 1852 and became rector of the University of Kharkov , Kowalewski took over the office of dean of the historical and philological faculty. After the rector Ivan Michailowitsch Simonow fell ill in 1854, Kowalewski took over his office. In 1855 he was appointed rector himself as well as the real council of state (4th class ). In 1857 he was confirmed for another 5 years. Due to student unrest, Kowalewski was dismissed in 1860 on the personal orders of Alexander II .

Kowalewski immediately returned to Vilnius, where his relatives and friends lived, including Karol Kowalewski, who owned a printing works in Warsaw next to the Warsaw High School (successor to the university, which was closed in 1831). In 1862 Kowalewski went to Warsaw, where revolutionary enthusiasm prevailed, and accepted the proposal of the Government of the Kingdom of Poland to become dean of the historical-philological faculty of the Warsaw High School. He had taken his entire library and archive with him to publish materials on China and Mongolia. He lived right next to the Warsaw secondary school. In September 1862 the Commission for Religion and National Education appointed him professor at the Warsaw secondary school and dean of the historical-philological faculty.

During the January uprising 1863–1864, in September 1864, the governor of Poland Friedrich Wilhelm Rembert von Berg was shot from Kowalewski's house in his absence and a bomb was thrown, whereupon everyone in the house was arrested. This was picked up by the international press, especially since when the house was searched, the soldiers threw the piano from Chopin's possession into the street. This episode was the basis of a poem by Cyprian Kamil Norwid . Kowalewski lost a substantial part of his archive through fire and looting, especially his diaries, which he wanted to publish. The translations from Mongolian books on the history of Buddhism and on Genghis Khan were lost . During the uprising, he continued to serve as dean as a loyal public servant. He received the Medal For the Suppression of the Polish Uprising and the Order of St. Stanislaus 1st Class. At the same time he was rehabilitated regarding his conviction in 1824. In the academic year 1864-1865 he lectured on the history of China, India and Persia . At the beginning of 1865 he moved to the house on Königsstrasse, where the Karol Kowalewskis print shop was located. In his private life, Kowalewski Alexander Iwanowitsch read Herzens magazine Kolokol ("The Bell") and copied Vissarion Grigorjewitsch Belinski's letter to Nikolai Wassiljewitsch Gogol and other prohibited texts.

Józef Kowalewski's grave

Kowalewski campaigned for the Warsaw secondary school to be recognized as a university. In 1869 the Warsaw High School was closed and the Imperial University Warsaw opened, with only doctors being taken on. It turned out that Kowalewski was a candidate for science and had never defended a doctoral thesis . Thereupon the curator of the scientific district S. Witte arranged the appointment of Kowalewski as professor by circumventing the official rules by a ukase from Alexander II in October 1869. In 1872 he was appointed to the Privy Council (3rd class). On the III. Despite being invited, he did not attend the International Congress of Orientalists in St. Petersburg in 1876. In 1878 the University of Warsaw celebrated 50 years of scientific work by Kowalewski, and the University of Kazan made him an honorary member.

Kowalewski was married to a Kazan woman. Their children were Russian Orthodox . Nikolai Ossipowitsch Kowalewski was a physiologist and became rector of the University of Kazan. Pawel Ossipowitsch Kowalewski was a battle painter . Maria Ossipowna Kowalewskaja met the orientalist Wassili Wassiljewitsch Grigoriev while on vacation in Riga in 1869 .

Kowalewski's grave is in the Warsaw Powązki Cemetery . In 1883, Kowalewski's widow handed over writings and documents to the library of the University of Vilnius.

Honors

• Order of Saint Stanislaus I Class (1864)
• Russian Order of Saint Anne I Class (1869)
• Order of Saint Vladimir II Class (1877)

Individual evidence

1. ↑ ^{a b c d} Шамов Г. Ф .: Профессор О. М. Ковалевский: Очерк жизни и научной деятельности . Издательство Казанского университета, Kazan 1983.
2. ↑ ^{a b c d e f g h i} Валеев Р. М., Ермакова Т. В., Кульганек И. В. и др .: Монголовед О. М. Ковалевский: биография и наследие (1801–1878) . Алма-Лит, Kazan 2004, ISBN 5-98245-011-1 .
3. ↑ ^{a b c d e} Kotwicz W .: Józef Kowalewski (1801–1878). Orientalista . Wrocł. Tow. Naukowe, Breslau 1948.
4. ↑ ^{a b} Vilnious universiteto bibliotheka: Paroda “Vilniaus universiteto auklėtinis orientalistas Juozapas Kovalevskis (1801–1878)” (accessed on August 17, 2018).
5. ↑ ^{a b} Институт восточных рукописей РАН: Осип Михайлович Ковалевский (accessed August 17, 2018).
6. ↑ University of Kazan: ГОРДОСТЬ РУССКОГО ВОСТОКОВЕДЕНИЯ (accessed on August 17, 2018).
7. ↑ Nikolai Ivanovich Wesselowski : Ковалевский (Осип Михайлович) . In: Brockhaus-Efron . XVa, 1895, p. 504-505 ( Wikisource [accessed August 17, 2018]).
8. ↑ Novosselenginsk
9. ↑ Ковалевский О. М .: Буддийская космология . Kazan 1837 ( runivers.ru [accessed August 17, 2018]).
10. ↑ PM Валеев, И. В. Кульганек: Россия - Монголия - Китай: Дневники монголоведа О. М. Ковалевского. 1830-1831 гг . Изд-во "Таглимат" Института экономики, управления и права, Kazan 2006.
11. ↑ Ковалевский О. М .: О приобретении восточных книг и рукописей для библиотеки Казанского университета . In: Учёные записки, издаваемые Императорским Казанским университетом . No. 2 , 1834, p. 61-62 .
12. ↑ J. É. Kowalewski: Dictionnaire mongol-russe-français (édition française) . 1844 ( archive.org [accessed August 17, 2018]).
13. ↑ Виссарион Григорьевич Белинский: Письмо Н. В. Гоголю . In: Н. В. Гоголь в русской критике . 1953, p. 243-252 ( Wikisource [accessed August 17, 2018]).