Slawistik in Deutschland. Forschungen und Informationen über die Sprachen, Literaturen undVolkskulturen slawischer Völker bis 1945 by Wilhelm ZeilReview by: Gerald StoneThe Slavonic and East European Review, Vol. 74, No. 1 (Jan., 1996), pp. 112-113Published by: the Modern Humanities Research Association and University College London, School ofSlavonic and East European StudiesStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/4211992 .

Accessed: 15/06/2014 22:36

Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at .http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp

.JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range ofcontent in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new formsof scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact support@jstor.org.

.

Modern Humanities Research Association and University College London, School of Slavonic and EastEuropean Studies are collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to The Slavonic andEast European Review.

http://www.jstor.org

This content downloaded from 195.34.79.49 on Sun, 15 Jun 2014 22:36:44 PMAll use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions

I I2 THE SLAVONIC REVIEW

Zeil, Wilhelm. Slawistik in Deutschland. Forschungen und Informationen uiber die Sprachen, Literaturen und Volkskulturen slawischer Vdlker bzs I945. Bausteine zur Slavischen Philologie und Kulturgeschichte, Reihe A: Slavistische Forschungen. Neue Folge, vol. 9 (69). Bohlau, Cologne, Weimar and Vienna, I 994. x + 6o6 pp. Notes. Index. DM 248.oo.

SINCE the I 960s Dr Wilhelm Zeil has been publishing in articles the results of his research, based on archival sources, into the history of Slavonic studies in Germany. He now brings all the strands together in one substantial book. As his account shows, the German contribution to Slavonic studies is distinguished by an unusual degree of intimacy between the researcher and the subject of research. The Slavs are not only neighbours of the Germans; they are also, to some extent, part of the family. Interest in the Slavonic relics in German territory as far west as the Elbe and the Saale, including the area where Sorbian is still spoken today, occupies a prominent place in Zeil's story, but he also records a reluctance by some to be reminded of their Slavonic past. In I 675 (as mentioned on p. 24) the Sorb Georg Kruger (Juro Krygar) in his Wittenberg dissertation De Serbis, Venedorum natione, vulgo dictis Die Wenden observed that many of his contemporaries disliked the Sorbian language. It was, he said, even hated. Hatred is in fact a recurrent feature in German-Slav relations, though it is mitigated in Zeil's account by the virtues of German Slavists in promoting objectivity and tolerance.

His history covers more than four hundred years, but the main emphasis is on the period from the foundation of the German Empire in I 871 to the end of the Second World War. The first chapter deals briskly with the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, managing even so to remind us in passing that the history of the subject really begins around AD IOOO. The sixteenth century, however, particularly in view of the changes in approach resulting from the Reformation and the invention of printing, seems a good place to start. This was the century that produced Albert Krantz's Wandalia (Cologne, I5I9) and Saxonia (Cologne, 1520), both based on medieval sources and dealing with the westernmost Slavs, and Siegmund Freiherr von Herberstein's encyclopaedic Rerum Moscoviticarum commentarii (Vienna, 1549), the product of the author's participation in embassies to Muscovy in I 5 I 6- I 8 and I 526-27. In the following century Slavonic studies found a home for a time at the University of Wittenberg, as we may see from the dissertations on Slavonic subjects approved there, including Michal Frencel's De idolis Slavorum (Wittenberg, I69I), which Zeil (p. I8) mistakenly attributes to Frencel's elder brother Abraham.

The first course of instruction in Russian at a German university was given by Heinrich Wilhelm Ludolf at Halle in I 697-98, using his own Grammatica Russica (Oxford, I696), in which the crucial innovatory distinction had been made between Church Slavonic and vernacular Russian. A few years later Polish too was being taught at Halle. During the Enlightenment German Slavonic studies came to assume serious proportions under the leadership of August Ludwig von Schlozer, Karl Gottlob von Anton, Johann Severin Vater, and others; but it was only in the nineteenth century that German universities institutionalized the subject by making professional appointments. The first were at Breslau (I84]1), Berlin (I841) and Leipzig (I843). The activities of the great Slavists working in

This content downloaded from 195.34.79.49 on Sun, 15 Jun 2014 22:36:44 PMAll use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions

REVIEWS I I3

Germany in the hundred years following this juncture form the bulk of Zeil's narrative. It is an admirable book, the culmination of many years of hard work, and in almost all respects an exemplary achievement. Its only weakness is a failure to deal thoroughly with studies hostile to the Slavs. This is particularly obvious in the pages dealing with the period I933-45. Of such as Albert Brackmann (given a perfunctory mention on p. 430), manipulators of evidence to serve ideology, we may, of course, read elsewhere (for example, in Michael Burleigh's Germany Turns Eastwards. A Study of 'Os~forschung' in the Third Reich [Cambridge, I 988]), but without them a history of Slavonic studies in Germany is incomplete.

Hertford College GERALD STONE

University of Oxford

Aroutunova, Bayara. Lives in Letters. Princess Zinaida Volkonskaya and her Correspon- dence. Slavica, Columbus, Ohio, 1994. 224 pp. Notes. Index. Illustrations. $24.95.

PRINCESS Zinaida Volkonskaia is one of those remarkable Russian women of the first half of the nineteenth century, who, along with such as Smirnova-Rosset and Rostopchina, and, in a different way, Panaeva, have been remembered more because of the people they knew than because of what they achieved themselves. This approach has changed somewhat in recent years, especially in the wake of feminist analyses. Bayara Aroutunova's annotated edition of letters to Volkonskaia, and to two of her relatives, goes some way to establishing her as a figure of importance in her own right, although the method is very much of the old school.

Zinaida Volkonskaia was certainly a woman of many parts. She was an outstanding singer, a famous beauty and a writer of some, if minor, significance in both French and Russian. She was on friendly terms with hosts of celebrated persons from all over Europe for more than thirty years. Pre-eminent among her acquaintance were Tsar Alexander I and Pushkin, but one should also mention Madame de Stael, Mickiewicz, Baratynskii, Viazemskii, Odoevskii, Venevitinov, Chaadaev and Gogol'. For several years in the late I 820S, indeed, her salon was at the very heart of Russian literary life, and even if her significance in Russian literary history declined markedly after her emigration in I829, she remained a woman of influence, especially within Italian Catholic circles, for the last third of her life, until her death in I 862, at the age of seventy-two.

The book under review comprises thirty-two letters to Volkonskaia, as well as some others. The centrepiece of this collection must be the fifteen from Alexander, nine of which have not been published before. Other correspondents include de Stael, Baratynskii, Kozlov, Glinka, Viazemskii and Zhukovskii, as well as the prominent Catholic Cardinal Ercole Consalvi. (These are merely the most interesting letters from the Volkonskaia archive, according to Aroutunova, who plans a second volume based on the archival materials, which will include a detailed treatment of Volkonskaia's life and work.) Apart from a long introduc- tion and many general notes, each letter is furnished with a very informative commentary and excellent annotations. There are also over twenty illustrations.

This content downloaded from 195.34.79.49 on Sun, 15 Jun 2014 22:36:44 PMAll use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions