Omeljan Pritsak

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Omeljan Pritsak

Omeljan Pritsak ( Ukrainian Омелян Йосипович Пріцак Omeljan Jossypowytsch Prizak ; born April 7, 1919 in Luka , Western Ukrainian People's Republic ; † May 29, 2006 in Boston , United States ) was a Ukrainian- American linguist , philologist , orientalist and historian . Pritsak was the first Mykhailo Hrushevsky Professor of Ukrainian History at Harvard University and the founder and first director of the Harvard Ukrainian Research Institute .

Life

Omeljan Pritsak was born as Omeljan Jossypowytsch Prizak in the village of Luka in the short-lived West Ukrainian People's Republic in what is now the Ukrainian Oblast of Lviv . Pritsak's father was taken prisoner in Poland as a soldier in the Army of the Western Ukrainian Republic and was imprisoned in Brest-Litovsk , where he died in September 1919. His mother married a second time in 1920 and moved to Ternopil with her family . Since the family had supported the Ukrainian independence movement, all of their property was confiscated by the new Polish government. In order not to obstruct his son's future, he was brought up in Polish, attended a Polish-language school and, as the only student of Ukrainian descent, completed his Abitur at the Polish high school in Ternopil. Because of a Polish physics teacher who regularly reviled him in front of his classmates because of his Ukrainian ancestry, and through conversations with Ukrainian villagers who protested in Ternopil in 1930 against Polish influence in Galicia , he found his Ukrainian identity and bought books about the Ukrainian history and language as well as a Ukrainian-Polish dictionary and changed his name from Polish Emil to Ukrainian Omeljan.

After high school he studied at the, under Polish control, History Department of the University in Lviv with a focus on Ukrainian and Turkish history and philology. After the university was closed under Soviet occupation , he became secretary to his professor Ivan Krypjakewytsch at the newly established section of the Institute of History of the Academy of Sciences of the Ukrainian SSR . During this time he lived for almost a year in the building of the Basilian monastery of St. Onufrius and tried, together with his professor, to save the monastery library there. After an invitation from Ahatanhel Krymskyj to the Ukrainian Academy of Sciences in Kiev , he continued his studies there from 1940, but was shortly drafted into the Red Army , which deployed him in Central Asia.

Pritsak evaded further military service by fleeing to Kiev , which was occupied by the Wehrmacht . After he found the academy closed, he returned to Galicia and finally came to the German capital as an Eastern worker . The orientalist Richard Hartmann obtained the necessary documents for him to continue his studies at the Oriental Institute of the Friedrich Wilhelms University in Berlin . After Berlin was taken by the Red Army, he went to the British zone of occupation and continued his studies at the University of Göttingen , where he received his doctorate in 1948. There he taught after his doctorate and became a lecturer in 1952. After spending a year as a visiting professor at the University of Cambridge in 1954, he became professor of Turkish Studies at the University of Hamburg in 1957 . Further visiting professorships took him to the universities of Krakow and Warsaw in 1959 and to Harvard University in 1960.

In 1961 he emigrated to the United States, where he was naturalized and became Professor of Turkic Studies at the University of Washington in Seattle . In 1964 he moved to Harvard University in Cambridge , Massachusetts, as professor of linguistics and Turkish studies . Between 1968 and 1974 he was involved in the establishment of endowed professorships for Ukrainian history, philology and literature at Harvard University and founded the Harvard Ukrainian Research Institute in 1973 , of which he was first director from 1973 to 1989. Furthermore, in 1977 he supported the establishment of the journal Harvard Ukrainian Studies and participated in the organization of weekly seminars, the development of Ukrainian library collections and the worldwide availability of important works on Ukrainian history. In 1971 Pritsak was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences .

After retiring from his positions at Harvard University in 1989, after the collapse of the Soviet Union he became involved in the revival of humanities higher education in Ukraine. He spent three months a year in Kiev, where he founded the Institute for Oriental Studies named after Ahatanhel Krymskyj in 1990 with a branch in the Crimea . At the Taras Shevchenko University of Kiev he became the first holder of the Chair of Historiography and in 1997 he was the first foreigner to be appointed to the National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine.

He died of heart disease at the age of 87 in Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston .

plant

Omeljan Pritsak's research interests were in the languages and history of the Turkic peoples , Scandinavian and Oriental sources on Ukrainian history, and Ukrainian-Turkish relations in the Middle Ages. Pritsak, who was fluent in 12 languages, authored more than 500 books, articles and academic papers. In order to keep Pope John Paul II informed about developments in Central and Eastern Europe, especially in Ukraine, he was invited to the Vatican on a regular basis.

Publications (selection)

  • The origins of the Old Rus' weights and monetary systems: Two studies in Western Eurasian metrology and numismatics in the seventh to eleventh centuries ; Cambridge, Massachusetts: Distributed by Harvard University Press for the Harvard Ukrainian Research Institute, 1998.
  • From Kievan Rus' to modern Ukraine: Formation of the Ukrainian nation (with Mykhailo Hrushevski and John Stephen Reshetar). Cambridge, Massachusetts: Ukrainian Studies Fund, Harvard University, 1984.
  • Khazarian Hebrew documents of the tenth century ; with Golb, Norman Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1982.
  • The Polovcians and Rus (Journal Article in Archivum Eurasiae medii aevi), 1982.
  • The origin of Rus ; Cambridge, Massachusetts: Distributed by Harvard University Press for the Harvard Ukrainian Research Institute, 1981.
  • Studies in medieval Eurasian history London: Variorum Reprints, 1981.
  • On the writing of history in Kievan Rus ; Cambridge, Massachusetts: Ukrainian Studies Fund, Harvard University, 1980.
  • The Khazar Kingdom's Conversion to Judaism (Journal Article in Harvard Ukrainian studies, 1978)
  • The Pechenegs: A Case of Social and Economic Transformation (Journal Article in Archivum Eurasiae medii aevi), 1975
  • Two Migratory Movements in the Eurasian Steppe in the 9th-11th Centuries (Conference Paper in Proceedings: Proceedings of the 26th International Congress of Orientalists, New Delhi 1964, Vol. 2)
  • The Decline of the Empire of the Oghuz Yabghu (Journal Article in Annals of the Ukrainian Academy of Arts and Sciences in the United States), 1952.
  • The Bulgarian list of princes and the language of the proto-Bulgarians. Harrassowitz, Wiesbaden 1955.
  • Qarakhanid Studies 1-4. Studies on the history of the constitution of the Turk peoples of Central Asia. Dissertation Göttingen 1949.

Honors and memberships

Pritsak has received numerous academic prizes and honors, especially from Ukraine and Turkey. He was also awarded the Turkish honorary citizenship of the President of the Republic of Turkey . Pritsak was also honorary doctor of various prominent universities, full member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, Finnish and Turkish Academies of Sciences , honorary member of the Latvian Academy of Sciences . He was also a member of the Shevchenko Scientific Society in the US and the Ukrainian Free University .

The main belt asteroid (17519) Pritsak , discovered by Eric Walter Elst on December 18, 1992 , was named after him.

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Omeljan Jossypowytsch Prizak in the Electronic Library "Ukraine" of the Vernadskyj National Library of Ukraine ; accessed on February 15, 2019 (Ukrainian)
  2. ↑ a b c d Obituary: Omeljan Pritsak in The Ukrainian Weekly of June 11, 2006; accessed on February 15, 2019
  3. ↑ a b c Omeljan Pritsak, 87, professor, linguist in The Washington Times, July 27, 2006; accessed on February 15, 2019
  4. ↑ Book of Members 1780 – present, Chapter P. (PDF; 649 kB) In: American Academy of Arts and Sciences (amacad.org). Retrieved February 15, 2019 .
  5. ^ Entry on Omeljan Jossypowytsch Prizak on the website of the National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine ; accessed on February 15, 2019 (Ukrainian)
  6. ↑ a b Biography of Omeljan Pritsak on the website of the A.Krymskyi Institute for Oriental Studies; accessed on February 16, 2019
  7. ↑ 17519 Pritsak (1992 YE2) in the PL Small Body Database Browser ; accessed on February 16, 2019
  8. ↑ Kurzbiographie Omeljan Prizak on 1576.ua ; accessed on February 16, 2019 (Ukrainian)
personal data
SURNAME Pritsak, Omeljan
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Пріцак, Омелян Йосипович (Ukrainian); Prizak, Omeljan Jossypowytsch
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Ukrainian-American linguist, philologist, orientalist and historian
DATE OF BIRTH April 7, 1919
PLACE OF BIRTH Luka , West Ukrainian People's Republic
DATE OF DEATH May 29, 2006
Place of death Boston , United States