Lithuanian made ‘visible’ through German linguists:

August Friedrich Pott and August Schleicher

Joan LeopoldOxford University

ABSTRACT: This paper deals with linguists of two different generations, A. F. Pott (1802-87) and A. Schleicher (1821-68) in part to see what factors influenced their development of pro-Lithuanian and anti-Pan Slavic views respectively. Apart from their own family backgrounds and educational patrons, their diverse attitudes to German nationalism, Russian repression of Lithuanian institutions and language, and to Pan-Slavism as a threat to Germanyemerge. Pott’s analogy of Lithuanian leading the choir of its Slavic-speaking sisters seems to point to the fuller differentiation of Lithuanian from its supposed origin in Slavic or other languages, while Schleicher’s analogy of Lithuanian being a (twin) sister of the Slavic languages of equal antiquity does not lead to a finding of need for independent development. The relation of this to Schleicher’s turn from Austrian to Russian funding, and increasing disenchantment with some Eastern European groups is brought out. Examination of centripetal and centrifugal processes of interpretation by these two linguists may provide a framework within which one may study other recent attempts to differentiate between languages, for example, Russian and Ukrainian.

1. Pan-Slavism

Often ‘Pan-Slavism’ has been used as a justification for excessive German nation-

alistic reactions to Slavic countries, particularly Russia, in the mid-nineteenth century.

We think it is time to re-evaluate this claim. One of our basic conclusions on this

point is that probably ‘Pan-Slavism’ was an imitation and ‘Slavicization’ of earlier

German nationalism – which is often not seen by modern historians as ‘pan-national’

even though it sought to unite separate German-speaking states or parts of states, in-

cluding German-speaking Switzerland, under one ‘Pan-German’ government, repres-

ented by Prussia, Austria[-Hungary] or some other entity. As Liulevicius (2009: 4)

has recently written: ‘. . . what was at stake in this discourse about the East [of

Europe] was often actually a definition of German national identity.’

Prior to the period after 1855, ‘Pan-Slavism’ had its origin and was used in a lin-

guistic sense rather than an ‘ethnic’ one. It also had not yet become a public move-

ment in Russia, which it became after the Crimean War and at the beginning of Czar

Alexander II’s reign in 1855, according to specialists. (Petrovich 1956: 3; Wollman

1968: 258-269) Pan-Slavism, which may have been an initially internationalist

concept, in this later period began to become a pawn trapped within the debate about

liberalism and repression of liberalism; it became associated with one nation, Russia,

and thus contributed more to the debate about clash of civilizations and antagonism of

‘races’ and nationalities than to international development or ‘liberation’ of the Slavs

linguistically or politically.

The period before 1855 saw the German language being used to promote Slavic

languages and nationalities also. The educated Serb nationalists who lived in Vienna

were called ‘German’ by the Serbs south of the Sava and Danube rivers. Sorbian or-

ganizers like Johann Ernest Schmaler (Smoler) (1816-84) continued to live in Ger-

many. The Sorbian speaker Johann Peter Jordan was a lector in Slavic languages at

the University of Leipzig, after his expulsion from Austria, who edited in Leipzig

from 1842-48 his Jahrbücher für slawische Literatur, Kunst und Wissenschaft. The

parallelism (and by Germans the antagonism) between German and Slavic develop-

ments was emphasized also in book titles such as the anonymous Slaven, Russen und

Germanen. Ihre gegenseitigen Verhältnisse in der Gegenwart und Zukunft (Leipzig,

1843) and the increasingly belligerent title, as time moved on of the Brandenburg

Gymnasium history teacher Moritz Wilhelm Heffter’s Der Weltkampf der Deutschen

and Slaven seit dem Ende des fünften Jahrhunderts nach christlichen Zeitrechnung,

nach seinem Ursprunge, Verlaufe and nach seinen Folgen dargestellt (Hamburg,

1847).

According to the historian Hans Kohn, at the beginning of the nineteenth century,

it was believed that ‘Slavic’ was one nation with one language, which had five dia-

lects. For example, in Austria there was Windish [Slovene], Czech, Polish, Russian;

in Slavonia and Croatia there was Serbian. ‘But by 1850’, he concludes, ‘it had been

generally accepted that the Slav languages were independent languages like the Ro-

mance languages and that the Slavs were divided into a number of different nations.’

This change would also reflect, or could even induce, the hostility and separation of

Slavic speakers from one another, so that ‘pan-Slavism’ became less of a threat. It

can be viewed as part of the turn away from Slavic cosmopolitanism and internation-

alism (partly induced by various German factions) that we have noted above. (Kohn

1953: 258-259 n. 13; quotation from 259; cf. on later classifications, Kamusella 2012)

2. Linguistic works

A politically conservative historian Heinrich Leo (1799-1878) could try to defeat

the supposed linguistic basis of pan-nationalism and nationalisms by saying that lan-

guage was a poor basis for unity. If it was legitimate, he said, the United States and

England would be one state. (Henderson, 177). He pointed out that since the spring of

1848 the question of what constitutes a nation had been in constant debate. (Hender-

son, 178) He considered both the criteria of language and shared historical memory

inadequate for ‘nationhood’, since those speaking a language were a mixture of differ-

ent peoples, and the historical memory was that of the middle class, concocted as a

faulty abstraction. (Henderson, 179)

The idea that languages were ‘mixed’ gave way to Franz Bopp’s focus upon the

primacy of grammar over lexicon. Much of the purpose of early comparative and his-

torical linguistics, in Prussia at least, was to separate out ‘purer’ origins from funda-

mentals of grammar than ‘mixed’ vocabulary could provide. By 1816, Bopp (1791-

1867) had ‘purified’ so-called ‘Indo-Germanic’ languages into five strands in his

Über das Conjugationssystem der Sanskritsprache in Vergleichung mit der griechis-

chen, lateinischen, persischen und germanischen Sprache (Frankfurt). Lithuanian

was after more than a decade to be added, for example, in the title of his Ver-

gleichende Grammatik des Sanskrit, Zend, Griechischen, Lateinischen, Litthauischen,

Gothischen und Deutschen (6 parts [with slightly varying titles]. Berlin, 1833-52),

without the highlighting of the Celtic and Slavic languages (which were already

known to be Indo-Germanic languages but were not a major part of his work) and

with the double mention of Germanic languages. Had he not moved to Berlin as pro-

fessor for Sanskrit and comparative grammar in 1821, largely at the recommendation

of Wilhelm von Humboldt, he might not so readily have been drawn to the compar-

ison of Lithuanian.

The central question we wish to address here, rather briefly, is how ‘Lithuanian’

(which at this time was conflated also with Latvian) did (or did not) become a ‘visible

language’, separated out from Russian, Polish and other Slavic languages, and what

political ends could this separation or visibility be furthering for German linguists?

Was there a separate Latvian-Lithuanian ‘family’ of languages, or as it came to be

called in this time period a ‘Baltic’ family of languages. Were Latvian-Lithuanian

and Slavic separate ‘families’ or were they branches of one earlier stem of the Indo-

Germanic category? It is perhaps more than by chance that the book titles of Bopp

and August Friedrich Pott which highlighted Lithuanian within “Indo-Germanic”

comparisons appeared in 1833, the year after the closing of Vilnius University in 1832

by Russia. (As far as we know only one, very mild, paper has been written on the Ger-

man linguistic influence on Lithuanian nationalism. While stating that ‘[i]n a sense,

one can say that Lithuanian linguistic nationalism was made in Germany’, it attributes

most of the Western impetus to Herder, Wilhelm von Humboldt and Fichte. Spires

1999: 490.)

We have selected two linguists, with whom we are more familiar, to examine this

phenomenon. They are August Friedrich Pott (1802-87) at the University of Halle/

Saale in Prussia and, in the following generation, August Schleicher (1821-68), who

taught at the University of Prague and from 1857 at the University of Jena.

August Friedrich Pott

A. Early influences: parents, heritage.

Pott’s father was a Hannoverian Lutheran cleric who died when his son was seven.

However, his mother also died when he was twelve. Rather than being educated by

his mother’s family, he moved to the city of Hannover where he was brought up in the

more bourgeois home of his paternal great aunt’s son (first cousin once removed), a

paper dealer. He also may have known of family connections to Russia, which might

have made him more favorably disposed to that country, such as the son of his pater-

nal great-uncle, August Heinrich Georg Pott (1781-1862) who was a Russian colonel

(Oberst) and awardee of the Order of Merit (Vecsey 1986). His son Georg had been

killed as a youth fighting on the Russian side in the wars against Napoleon. Even in

Hannover, Pott’s father’s family had a history of attachment to the co urt and fawning

requests for favors, a tradition which Pott continued in terms of salary requests, de-

spite his somewhat constitutional and even republican associations with people like

Arnold Ruge.

B. Influences from grantors, patrons, mentors.

From 1827-33 Pott did graduate study and became habilitated at the University of

Berlin with the support of Franz Bopp, and outside the university, the brothers Wil-

helm and Alexander von Humboldt. [Pott is perhaps also to be remembered for giving

the etymology of their family name as ‘‘a fabulous Hun of gigantic proportions’’.

(Lwenberg 1873: 3)] To them, as well as the Minister of Spiritual, Educational and

Medical Affairs, he probably owed his first and only position, as extraordinary (1833)

and then ordinary professor at the University of Halle/S in Prussia. Pott devoted him-

self to Indo-Germanic (in the West, Indo-European) phonology and comparative

grammar, but soon branched into ‘general linguistics’ and was able to have his chair

named ‘general linguistics’. Thus he would also write about gypsy, Amerindian and

ancient Egyptian languages, among others, on a broadly comparative basis. [We use

the term ‘Indo-Germanic’ here, although people in the West would usually replace it

with ‘Indo-European’, only because it serves to show how German philologists at this

time (and continuing) in effect placed Germanic languages at the Western extreme of

the Indo-European world, before Celtic’s relationship was well known, and thus ap-

propriated to themselves a central, some would say ‘imperial’ position in history.]

C. Own political views and activities [For fuller information, see Leopold 1983: xlvii-

lxxxvi.]

Pott continued Bopp’s already well-accepted expansion of the term Indo-Germanic

to the Slavic and Celtic languages (Rösel 1957: 3) and contemporaneously added at-

tention to Lithuanian by, like Bopp, in 1833 (when Pott was still a privat docent at

Berlin) including it in the title of his principal work Etymologische Forschungen auf

dem Gebiete der Indo-Germanischen Sprachen, mit besonderem Bezug auf die Lau-

tumwandlung im Sanskrit, Griechischen, Lateinischen, Littauischen und Gothischen

(Lemgo, 1833-36) [title slightly different in second volume] (Leopold 1982: 2-3).

The first volume he dedicated to his great uncle G. H. Deicke of Hannover and the

second volume to Wilhelm von Humboldt. From the index we can estimate that

Lithuanian and Latvian received more attention (II, 790-91 under “Littauisch-Slawis-

che Sprachen”, 1-3/4 columns) than “Germanische Sprachen” (II, 789, 3/4 column).

But they were not represented by a separate section. Rather their forms were inter-

spersed with relevant comparisons to forms in Sanskrit, Zend, Greek, Latin, Gothic,

Old High German, Italian, English, French, etc, but almost only in the second volume.

The only major reference to Lithuanian in volume I (xxxiii) was to conclude that it

belonged to the Slavic languages, not Gothic or Finnish and if rank is based on

“geringere Abweichung vom Urbilde als Maastab fr die Rangordnung in An-

wendung gebracht wird”, it beats out Old Church Slavonic.

Uebrigens gestehe ich gern zu, da die Kluft zwichen Littauischen und den slawischen Sprac-

hen im engeren Sinne immer noch bedeutend weiter sei, als etwa zwischen der Gothischen

und den brigen Germanischen; darum aber nicht das Littauische als eigner, vom Slawischen

abgesonderter Stamm hingestellt werden drfe.

This statement has led to Pott being classed with those who supported the theory of a

Balto-Slavic proto-language (Klimas 1967), but this may be simplistic. Pott may, in

fact, have come closer to representing the sceptical attitude towards a Balto-Slavic

proto-language of Georg Heinrich Ferdinand Nesselmann (1811-81) (Karl August

Jordan to Pott, Ragnit [now Neman in Russian Kaliningrad Oblast], 4 March 1848, in

Bense 2002: 205).

Two years before becoming an ordinary professor, with secure tenure, Pott in 1837

was called upon to represent the University of Halle at the centennial observance of

his alma mater, the University of Göttingen in Hannover. This part of the celebration

was in mid-September, after the new Hannoverian king Ernst August declared on 5

July that he would not feel bound by the existing (1833) relatively liberal constitution

which dated from the earlier period of Hannover’s personal union with Great Britain.

When he annulled the constitution on 1 November, the ‘Göttingen Seven’ professors,

including Jakob Grimm and Wilhelm Grimm, issued a protest against it. They were

tried by the University court and Jakob Grimm was exiled from the country. Because

of these events, Pott’s treatise would probably not have been widely noted or even un-

derstood, especially as it contained numerous examples from Lithuanian, Latvian and

Slavic. The University of Göttingen did not publish it. Nevertheless, Pott thought it

was of enough importance that he or the University of Halle/S. had it published in a

separate pamphlet at Halle by Gebauer Buchhandlung in that same year 1837. (Bense

1994: 16)

D. Linguistic and Philosophical Ideas; Attitude to Slavic and other Eastern European

Nationalisms, Pan-Nationalism

E. Application in Own Linguistic Works; Linguistic Philosophical Ideas; Slavic,

Lithuanian and ‘Indo-Germanic’ Relationships

In his 1837 Latin paper, called De Lithuano-Borussicae in Slavicis Letticisque lin-

guis principatu commentatio . . . (The Primacy of Lithuanian Prussian among the

Slavic and Latvian Languages or as translated in Schmalstieg 2000, ‘A Consideration

of the Primordiality of Prussian-Lithuanian in Regard to Slavic and Latvian [i.e.,

Baltic] Languages.’ Pott attributed the category of ‘Germano-Slavic-Lettic’ language

family to Johann Christoph Adelung and Johann Severin Vater’s Mithridates (Berlin,

1809), II, 696-723 (Pott 1837: 4) He preferred to remodel this as or break this down

into ‘Prussian-Lithuanian’, calling it the oldest in sound and forms, as measured by

comparative grammar, of all the Indo-Germanic languages which still remained alive

(1837: 4-5). He emphasized that the new field of comparative grammar and Bopp

were more forceful than Adelung and Vater’s Mithridates in separating ‘Lettic’ from

Gothic, despite the history of the invasion of Lettic peoples by Goths (1837: 3, 5, 12).

[from Latin] The languages moreover about which we now dispute shout with a loud clear

voice against the suspicion of blending and corruption under which, among others popularly

noted, the Ottoman and modern English labour. . . .Because it has been handed down in

memory that the hordes of Goths have again and again invaded the regions which the Lettic

peoples hold, adjacent to the Baltic sea, I comprehend [these arguments about the relation of

Lettic to Gothic]; however, I do not recognise history as a sufficient witness, when the testi-

mony of languages is needed. (Pott 1837: 5)

He explained that he was following Karl Christian Ulmann’s (1793-1871) and Wil-

helm von Humboldt’s work on the “dual” in proving the antiquity of Lithuanian forms

and sounds.

He took, as he, unlike most German linguists often did, a gibe at German national-

ism by warning that they might be allowing themselves to be carried away from the

truth by associating the Letts with the Goths, when the truth of comparative grammar

concluded the ‘Lettic’ languages showed Slavic ‘blood’ [sanguis] (1837: 11-12).

[in Latin] Let us not indeed, perhaps with some critics, as I sense myself, who are led less by

love of the truth, than by allowing themselves to be carried away by a rather unjust zeal for

the fatherland, envy praise of aliens; but truly, if my hope does not fail me [and] not without

the approval of those who have some authority in the study of comparative languages, as has

been once before doubtfully signified by me, so now, fear having been cast aside, [let us]

more freely declare and affirm for certain --- not, as they commonly imagine it to themselves

in their mind, [that the Lettic languages] ought to be thought to have descended from Russian

or some other Slavic language, which we may call it (in a stricter sense) as from a mother and

founder of the race --- but that [the Lettic languages] themselves ought to be thought to lead

the Chorus of their Slavic Sisters as choir masters. (Pott 1837: 11)

Here we get into the early influence of Pott and other Indo-Germanists in contributing

to the idea that language ‘family’ could be equated with genetic, biological family, or

‘blood’ relationship, a correlation that Pott was after this usually eager to warn

against. Here he seems to be warning more against German nationalistic additives to

linguistics that might defeat the methods of comparative grammar.

Pott did not want the educated public to miss his points about Lettic-Lithuanian in

his 1837 treatise, however. Apparently he had it republished [but still with the 1837

date of publication] with a change of the incorrect title on the cover sheet [from

‘Lithuano-Borussicae’ to ‘Borussio-Lithuanicae’], and then reviewed it anonymously

in the Allgemeine Literatur-Zeitung (published at Halle) in 1839 (Pott 1839).1 Here

Pott also emphasized that the earlier relations of ‘Baltic’ [from Nesselmann, but not

used by Pott; see Bense 2002: 194,on Nesselmann in his book Die Sprache der alten

Preußen an ihren Überresten erläutert (Berlin: G. Reimer, 1845), xxxix] and Slavic

languages needed to be separated from later contacts. Then one could show the

greater antiquity preserved by Lithuanian compared with even Old Church Slavonic.

This review has a somewhat different emphasis from the 1837 original. It seems to try

to influence Slavists, Indo-Germanists and comparative grammarians to study Latvian

and Lithuanian, and not to consider Latvian languages, for example, a mix or ‘bas-

tard’, as it was called, of Slavic, Germanic and Finnish dialects, or a form of Slavic

language in decline. He compared Lithuanian to Gothic as seen by Jakob Grimm in

relation to the Germanic languages; for Pott, Lithuanian was thus a least corrupted

form of Slavic languages (Pott 1839: col. 390).2 He had in the 1837 treatise boldly

pointed to early forms of Indo-Germanic vowels from Lithuanian being ‘e-’ and ‘o-’

or ‘e-’ and ‘i-’, not found in Indic ‘a-‘ and ‘ā-‘, thus somewhat anticipating Saus-

sure’s 1878 famous change in the theory of Indo-European proto-vowels (Pott 1839:

col. 400; Lehmann 2005: ch. 1; but Joseph 2009: 192 and n. 30). But, in the 1839 re-

view, he did not push this point, but deferred to Grimm and Bopp to look at this issue

1 1 Dr. Bense attributes the discovery of this anonymous review by Pott (1839) to herself (Bense 1994:

17), but it was already pointed out in Leopold 1983: 7, which work she cited elsewhere in her article

(Bense 1994: 20 n. 9).

and explain it (Pott 1839: col. 400). He thus implied that Lithuanian might be a sister

rather than a derivative of Sanskrit. He noted that Prussians especially were interested

in Lithuanian because it was a nearby language. These included Peter von Bohlen

(1796-1840), Bopp, Eberhard Gottlieb Graff (1780-1841) and Wilhelm von Humboldt

(Pott 1839: col. 389).

Not having attracted the attention he thought the subject deserved, Pott wrote a

2 Jakob Grimm clearly had received Pott’s Commentatio (1837) by January 1838, when he sent a copy

to Jernej Bartol [also known as Bartholomaeus] Kopitar (1780–1844) Kopitar, a librarian and Slavic

censor at Vienna, who was of an older generation and supportive of Austro-Slavism [see below under

Schleicher] rather than Slovene nationalism (Kopitar to Grimm, Vienna, 6 January 1838, in Vasmer,

(ed.). 1937: 168. Pott himself sent Kopitar a copy by the end of March 1838 (Kopitar to Grimm, Vi-

enna, 30 March 1838, in Vasmer, (ed.). 1937: 170). Pott may have sent his anonymous 1839 book re-

view to Kopitar, because around October 1840 Kopitar began writing in his letters about Pott’s inter-

pretation of Lithuanian’s “primacy” and the need for a society to help preserve it. Kopitar, after receiv-

ing a copy of Pott’s encylopedia article ‘Indogermanischer Sprachstamm’ (1840) from the publisher

Brockhaus, wrote to Pott on 3 October 1840 from Vienna that Pott’s comment on page 14 of that article

was: ‘R e –c h t vom Lithauischen; wenn man’s nur g a n z kennte. Wer aber hätte mehr B e r u f, d a h

e r auch Pflicht, hierin Vorsehung zu treffen, als e b e n Sie, der das Principat [‘Primacy’] e r g r ü n d

e t hat! Eine litthauische Sprachgesellsch.[aft] nach englischer Art in K ö n i g s b e r g, unter Ihrer

Oberleitung, würde noch zu r e c h t e r Zeit retten, was zu retten ist. Auf Russen und Polen warten,

wäre zu spät.— Sie erkennen selbst, daß [Christian Gottlieb] Mielke’s [or Milkus’s 1733-1807] Er-

läuterung[en, in his Erweiterung des Ruhigschen Wörterbuches, Königsberg 1800 cited by Kurschat =

his Littauisch-deutsches und deutsch-littauisches Wörterbuch] der Aussprache c h a o t i s c h

sind. Eine einfachere und consequentere Schreibung mit l a t.[e i n i s c h e n] L e t t e r n wäre zu wün -

schen.— Wie, wenn die s l a w i s c h klingenden Nom.[ina] propr.[ia] im Illyrico [probably meaning

the kingdom of Illyria then under Austrian rule] l i t h a u i s c h wären? Merkwürdig, daß z.B. nur uns

Krainern von allen Slawen das Bier ol heißt, = alua litth.[auisch] ---- Dieß und alles Übrige soll uns I h

r e preussiche [sic] Gesellschaft von Königsberg aus ins Reine bringen.----‘ (Kopitar to Pott, Vienna, 3

October 1840, in Vasmer, ed. 1937: 204)

Kopitar was writing to Jakob Grimm (Kopitar to Grimm, Vienna, damaged 1840 ([collector says

maybe 23 October 1840 based on Kopitar’s diary], in Vasmer, ed. 1937: 189) asking his opinion of the

1837 work and advising that Grimm, if he did not move to Berlin, should involve Lachmann, Hum-

boldt or others in having the Prussian Academy or a special society for that subject preserve what could

be preserved of the Lithuanian language:

second part to his 1837 treatise, which he had published in 1841 at Halle as part of a

prizegiving to honor the official birthday of the new Prussian king, Friedrich Wilhelm

IV, whose accession had recently occurred. Pott apparently hoped that the new king

would now operate milder policies towards Lithuanians in the kingdom, pointing to

nationalist aspirations in such earlier works as August Gotthilf Krause’s (1787-1855)

chapter 35 on ‘Ist es Zeit, die lithauische Sprache zu verdrängen oder auszurotten?’ in

his 1834 Lithauen und seine Bewohner (Pott 1841:1 and n. 2) . This treatise tried to

bring to the King’s and country’s attention that: ‘Latvian’ including Lithuanian was

not three-quarters of Slavic origin, as maintained by Johann Thunman’s Unter-

‘Wie gefällt Ihnen Pott’s Principat [meaning Primacy] des Litth.[auischen] für die Slawen, analog

dem des Gothischen für . . . [die Germanen]. Jedenfalls sollten auch Sie, sollten Sie auch nicht

nach Berlin gehen (ich bestimme Sie zurück n[ach Go”ttingen]) durch Lachmann, Humboldt etc.

dahin wirken, daß die A c a d e m i e oder eine G e s e l l s c h a f t ad id[.?] sci. davon

[Lithuanian] rette, was n o c h z u r e t t e n i s t.’

Kopitar reiterated this reminder to Jakob Grimm in a letter of 11 November 1840:: ‘Haben die Zeitun-

gen doch am Ende Recht, daß S i e und W.[ilhelm Grimm] nach Berlin gehen? Dann vergessen Sie

auch auf die Litva nicht.’ (Vasmer, ed. 1937: 191). Again on 20 April [1841], Kopitar embraces the

Lithuanian question in addressing Grimm and suggests that Grimm establish a society for Lithuanian at

[Prussian] Königsberg (194):

'Ich kann zu wenig Litt.[auisch] um zu entscheiden, ob man es mit Pott an die Spitze der slaw.

[ischen] Sprachen stellen k ö n n e, wie das Gothische an die der deutschen; ich fürchte die Unter-

schiede gehen weiter auseinander. Acumincum an der Donau weißt auf litt.[auische] Bewohner in v

o r h i s t o r i s c h e r Zeit; k l e i n ist die Nation jetzt, aber auch olim? ‘

In response to receiving Pott’s 1841 Commentatio, Kopitar again urged Pott, whom he assumed

would be anti-Catholic, anti-non-Latinate orthography and anti-pan Slavism, but also searching for

a ‘protoslavica’ language like himself, to support Lithuanian studies at Königsberg: ‘Ist von K ö -

n i g s b e r g nichts hiefür zu erwarten? (So lang es n o c h T a g ist, und die Sprache n

o c h l e b t). Wer a l s S i e sollte so was vor allen anregen! Fac facias [do it willingly]

(¶) Vale et fave tuo cultori Kopitario.’[Farewell and be favourable to your supporter Ko-

pitar] (Vienna, 27 March 1842, in Vasmer, (ed.). 1937: 207-208, quotation from 208)

suchungen über die alte Geschichte einiger Nordischen Völker (1774) (Pott 1841:

3) , or related to Finnish, a view he attributed in his 1837 work to Carl Christian Ull-

man (1796-1865), a Halle colleague supporting Rasmus Rask (Pott 1837: 6, 10).

Rather it was in a sisterly relationship to the Slavic languages. Some words of Gothic

were in the ‘body’ of the Latvian and Lithuanian languages, not just mixed in, for ex-

ample, by external trade, and even more convincing were grammatical forms similar

to the Gothic language, but not necessarily ‘borrowed’ from it (Pott 1841: 5). He rued

the demise of the ‘old Prussian’ language [known to be related to Lithuanian-

Latvian], but hoped the mild rule of the present Prussian monarchy would allow the

Lithuanian speakers in Prussia ‘free’ use of their old language which they were fast

abandoning for German. The ‘reipublicae universae’ [which we translate as ‘univer-

sal human good’] would not want the majority of these Lithuanian speakers to be-

come Prussians, for the change of language would mean their [former] spirit and life

is extinguished, he wrote in Humboldtian vein (Pott 1841: 1). [In Latin] ‘The [Lettic]

languages [though Pott would rather call them “Lithuanian”] stand on their own feet

with upright heel nor do they depend at all on fulcrums set underneath them from

other [languages]. . .’ (Pott 1841: 6) The ‘guilt’ of the Prussians could be expiated if a

complete description of the Lithuanian language was made, to be handed down to

their descendants (1841: 2). [The Teutonic Order] had the effect on Lithuanians of

saving remants of their religious literature, but this only expiates “für all die Unbill,

welche von dem Orden durch einen dreiundfunfzigjährigen [sic] blutigen Erober-

ungs-, ja Vernichtungskrieg, sowie unter dessen dreihundertjähriger harter und un-

menschlicher Herrschaft das tapfere, aber ungluckliche Preuβenvolk [= Old Prussians,

speaking a language related to Lithuanian] erfahren . . .” (Pott 1856: 140. similar to

Pott 1841: 2 in Latin) Prussia’s ‘Lithuanian citizens’ should not have their language

lost to posterity (Pott 1841: 2). He went on to emphasize that Lettic languages could

be an older, more primitive form of [Indo-Germanic] languages, different in sounds,

vocabulary, inflections and joining [syntax?] from Slavic, Gothic or Finnish (‘ab ori-

gine’) from the beginning and thus ‘older brothers’ to the language of the Slavs (Pott

1841: 10). In a final bow to Prussian nationalism itself, he accepted the Royal judg-

ment — and what he said etymology showed — that the word ‘Prussian’ was not de-

rived from ‘Russian’ (Pott 1841: 15-16).

Pott never visited Lithuania, Latvia or East Prussia, despite invitations, as far as

we know now. He did continue to write, particularly up to about 1856, in relation to

Lithuanian, Old Prussian and Finnish, including a review of August Schleicher’s first

article and grammar of Lithuanian which sought to describe Lithuanian grammar in

comparison with that of other parts of the Indo-Germanic family (Pott 1856. Bense

1994: 19 n. 7.) By 1839 Pott was a member of the Courland Society (from a Latvian-

speaking area) as he stated on the title page of his 1839 work. He was invited to and

did join the Latvian Literary Society in 1852. In 1879 he signed the manifesto for the

foundation of the Lithuanian Literary Society (Bense 1994: 18), headquartered in the

East Prussian city of Tilsit, and became an honorary member. This was also the first

year in which mass petitions were organised defending the use of Lithuanian in

schools and churches. (Vareikis 2001: 61) The ‘living’ language Lithuanian was still

invisible to Pott, although he had met Lithuanian-speakers at Halle, where a visiting

Lithuanian scholarship holder was under his care in 1852. (Bense 2002: 194, 195,

198, 202, 209, 212)

August Schleicher

A. Early influences: parents, heritage

Schleicher’s father Johann Gottlieb Schleicher (1793-1864) was district physi-

cian from 1822 at Sonneberg, in Saxe-Meiningen. Many of his relatives worked as

doctors or lawyers (Dietze 1966: 16) for the Meiningen government, a royal house

connected with the British one.

B. Influences from grantors, patrons, mentors

From 1835 Schleicher attended Gymnasium in Coburg, where he studied Latin

and Greek and took private lessons in Arabic. He further developed his family’s exist-

ing interest in botany with botanical excursions in the neighborhood. At Bonn, pro-

fessor of Sanskrit Christian Lassen (1800-76) of Danish heritage showed him the fu-

ture importance of study of Slavic and Baltic languages and may have influenced him

in favor of emphasizing the great antiquity and ‘Aryanness’ of Sanskrit. (Rabault-

Feuerhahn 2008: 126-138, 152) On Lassen’s advice, Schleicher learned Polish from a

fellow student. He also read and took notes by 1847 on the two Commentatio of Pott

on Lithuanian. Although not easy to decipher, his notes appear to state the occasion

for which the first commentary was written and briefly to describe how Pott compared

words in Lithuanian, Latvian and Slavic, showed the change from ‘t’ to Slavic ‘d’,

and divided the Lithuanian into three parts: Old Prussian, Lithuanian (the Prussian

and the Polish or Żemaitish) and Latvian. In the second commentary he merely noted

that Pott compared substantives in order [of names for animals, plants, clothing and

tools respectively] (Schleicher [1846?]: Notebook 5, item 14).

After difficulty finding funds to support his linguistic career, Schleicher re-

ceived a grant of £400 from the Meiningen heir apparent Georg [later II] (1826-1914)

which the latter obtained from his aunt, the royal widow Adelaide (1792-1849) [wife

of William IV (1792-1849) of Great Britain, and Queen from 1830-37] of Great Bri-

tain. (Dietze 1966: 20-21. Erck and Schneider 2004; Hopkirk 1946) In summer

semesters 1847 and 1848 Schleicher gave lectures at Bonn as a privat docent. After

the February days of revolution in Paris, at the end of summer semester 1848, he went

to Paris and did research at the Bibliothèque Royale where Ernest Renan (1823-92), a

later librarian there, was starting to work out more racial linguistic views (Leopold

2010: 97). Probably he did this due to the need to do work under the British grant. It

is not known exactly what happened to Schleicher in the next two years [1848-50],

since he destroyed his files. Until 1850 he earned his living as an anonymous corres-

pondent for the Augsburger Allgemeine Zeitung and Kölnische Zeitung. (The articles

he wrote have been identified in Syllaba 1995: 24-27.) Meanwhile in 1848 he went

from Paris to Brussels, and then to Vienna where he is said to have been an eyewit -

ness to the October 1848 uprising as he was probably to the Dresden one of May

1849. He reported on the Austrian Reichstag’s moving to the radical Moravian small

town of Kromí [= Kremsier]. After the Reichstag was dissolved and its constitution

nullified, Schleicher went to Prague and learned Czech. He became friendly with

Alois Vaníek (1825-1883), who was doing linguistic research there, and Georg Cur-

tius (1820-1885) who was extraordinary professor of classical philology at the univer-

sity from 1849. (Dietze 1966: 20-22) 3

His first Czech language publication was in 1849. He then did two more art-

icles in Czech for the asopis eského Museum [Journal of the Czech Museum], about

Slavic languages, including in relation to Lithuanian (1853a) He had already on 12

October 1849 written to Vaníek that he especially wanted to devote himself to the re-

lationship between Slavic and Lithuanian in the future. (Dietze 1966: 29) He wrote to

Pott on 21 October 1849 from Bonn asking if Pott was going to go to Prussian Lithua-

nia to do this type of research and, if not, he would dare to try to do it. Pott, who did

not go, probably encouraged Schleicher to do so, although his return letter has not

been found (Bense and Drotvinas 2004: 299-314).

Schleicher’s first Czech works caught the attention of the new pro-Czech Aus-

trian education minister Leo Count von Thun und Hohenstein (1811-88), who contac-

ted him indirectly through his advisor the new Viennese University professor Her-

mann Bonitz (1814-88) in November 1849 to offer him an extraordinary professor-

ship at Prague University. On 8 March 1850 Schleicher was appointed exraordinary

professor of ‘classical philology and literature’ at Prague. (Dietze 1966: 27-29)

C. Own political views and activities

Schleicher was at times considered by the Austro-Hungarian government in Prague

to be a seditious republican revolutionary who wrote articles against Prague Univer-

sity’s existing educational standards. His friend Vaníek thought him freethinking and

radical. (Dietze 1966: 39) However, he was shown approval by the government in

Vienna, which had introduced German teachers to Prague University with a reforming

zeal. Signs of support from Vienna included: his receiving in May 1851, as he wished,

the title of his extraordinary professorship changed to ‘comparative linguistics and

Sanskrit’ (vergleichende Sprachwissenschaft und Sanskrit) (a new chair which could

include Germanic, Slavic and Baltic language; a grant through the Academy of Sci-

ences for his field trip to [Prussian]3 Lithuania in 1852; promotion in June 1853, as a 3 Schleicher had hoped also to go to the Żamaitian-speaking area if this could be done without special permission of the Russian embassy in Vienna. This language, although more mixed with Slavic words, he considered to be older in the origin of its sounds (phonology). (1853b: 525). But he contented him-self with using long-distance informants and printed materials from that area without going himself.

result of this field trip, to ordinary professor of ‘German and comparative linguistics

and Sanskrit’ (deutschen und vergleichenden Sprachwissenschaft und des Sanskrit);

attempts to have the Prague government leave him in peace. 4 The Liberal, Western

tradition, to which Schleicher appears then to have belonged, was against pan-Slav-

ism, fearing a Russian universal monarchy. Those in Austria-Hungary tended to sup-

port ‘Austro-Slavism’, that Austria-Hungary, not Germany, would provide the bul-

wark against Russian expansion by arranging a federation of Western Slavs, led by

the Poles. (Kohn 1953: 83, 65. Rösel 1957) Schleicher, fearing the pan-Slavic ad-

vances by Russia, would help support the position of then current Austro-Slavism.

Schleicher’s support for Lithuanian linguistic nationalism seems to have been min-

imal. Although he did refer to the ‘poor’ Lithuanians (1853b: 527 n. 1, 528), and hav-

ing to share their backward living conditions, including fleas (1853b: 540 n. 1), he

never seems to have had the poetic parts of his Chrestomathy (1856) published in in-

expensive editions so that the ‘poor Lithuanians would have something more to read’

as he recommended to the Vienna Academy (1853b: 528). His attention was perhaps

also diverted away by interest in explaining comparative linguistics, mythology and

folk tales to a scholarly audience, when he began writing for (1856) and editing with

Adalbert Kuhn (1812-81) of Beitrage zur vergleichenden Sprachforschung auf dem

Gebiete des arischen, celtischen und slawischen Sprachen in 1858.

D. Attitude to Slavic and other Eastern European Nationalisms, Pan-Nationalism

Schleicher taught at Prague from 1850-56. Despite his public support for Czech lit-

erary advancement and linguistic standardization, in private Schleicher while in

Prague became increasingly anti-Slavic, anti-Catholic and anti-Jewish (August

Schleicher, ‘Sieben Jahre als Professor in K.K. Österreichischen Diensten’, Son-

neberg, 20 April 1857, (ed.) Erhart Schleicher, printed in Syllaba 1995: 100-112; see

4 Schleicher already from East Prussia explained how he would write to his Excellency [Thun?] and ask to be made an ordinary professor. Then he could bring a Lithuanian servant back with him to help him with his works and with speaking the language. Schleicher by this time intended to do a grammar, chrestomathy and dictionary of Lithuanian, if he lived long enough. Schleicher 1852: 4. The ‘servant’, it turned out, was probably his teacher the schoolmaster Kumutátis whom he was later visited by in Prague and whom he called ‘a dear house companion and friend’ (Schleicher 1856: vii). We have un-fortunately been unable to obtain a copy of Lemeškin and Zabarskaitė 2008 to confirm their interpreta-tion of this correspondence.

especially 108, 111 [against Prague Germans as well]). He privately expressed his

gratitude for having been raised a German and a Protestant. (Vaníček 1868: 222) He

turned his back on Prague allegedly for a number of reasons, including that the na-

tionalist anti-German reaction of the Czechs was making teaching and supporting

Germanic studies by a German increasingly problematic. (See Dietze 1966: 38, 40-41;

Syllaba 1995: 36, 63-64, 120) 5

In the middle of 1855 Schleicher made chance contact, it is said, with a Bonn ac-

quaintance, Moritz Seebeck (1805-84), who had been a reforming Gymnasium dir-

ector at Meiningen and the tutor accompanying Prince Georg to Bonn, who was from

1851-77 Kurator of Jena University. Schleicher directly asked him if he could go to

Jena. With the help of the Meiningen heir apparent Georg and Schleicher’s old friend

Rochus von Liliencron (1820-1912), who was now cabinet adviser and court librarian

in Saxe-Meiningen, Seebeck was able to propose for Schleicher an honorary ordinary

professorship. At the end of his leave of absence from Prague in March 1857 he was

named ordinary honorary professor for ‘comparative language study and German

philology’ (vergleichende Sprachkunde und deutsche Philologie) at Jena. No mention

was made in the title of his Slavic or Lithuanian teaching [which had also not been

mentioned in his Prague titles], which therefore to Western eyes remained ‘invisible’,

although he had said he did intend to use examples of Lithuanian poetry in his printed

Chrestomathy in his lecturing at Prague (1853b: 550). He expected never to come

back to Slavic studies (Syllaba 1995: 60) His salary was lower than his prior salary,

as he made 1300 Gulden as an ordinary professor at Prague and 600 Taler as an hon-

orary ordinary professor in Jena; he even offered to teach for no pay during the first

year. (Syllaba 1995: 55; also later 61, 62 on Martin Hattala (1821-1903), 63. We do

not believe, as Syllaba says, that his new salary was half his old. The conversion rate

would mean he earned about 250 Gulden less at Jena initially, but it was raised there-

after.)

5 Schleicher was a good friend of F. Tempský, the Prague publisher, by 1852. Schleicher 1852: 4. The first two volumes of his Handbuch der litauischen Sprache were published at Prague by J. G. Calve, but the third (1857) was published at Weimar. His no longer publishing in Prague might indicate his disenchantment as well as the distance.

After he left Prague in 1857, Schleicher began to be wooed by the Russian Empire,

in which he had never worked, even during his fieldwork in [Prussian] Lithuania in

1852. He was elected a corresponding member of the St. Petersburg Academy of

Sciences in October 1857 (a position Pott had held from 1855), with the supposed

help of Grandduchess Maria Pavlovna (1796-1859), daughter of Czar Paul I, who

was Grandduchess of Saxe-Weimar-Eisenach living at Weimar (Dietze 1966:

46.Stiftung Weimarer Klassik und Kunstsammlungen 2004) Whether at his own

urging or not, resident members of the St. Petersburg Academy such as Otto

Böhtlingk (1815-1904) and Franz Anton von Schiefner (1817-79) (both German

native speakers) recommended him for a grant from that organization. He began

work from Jena under this grant. He turned down a call to the Bavarian university at

Würzburg in 1859. In September 1862 Schleicher was recruited by the Russian

government for the new [Polish] Warsaw university (Szkoa Gówna or central

school) which was converted into a Russian university in 1869. (Zeil 1984: 117 n.

91). In 1862 he also received a call from the St. Petersburg Academy of Sciences to

settle there. He was also in 1863 offered a professorship with a lavish salary in

Dorpat, again in the Russian Empire. He turned these offers down. (Dietze 1966: 46)

Schleicher was somewhat disparaging about other German scholars who were being

‘captured’ by Russian prestige by having been awarded Imperial Russian St. Stanislas

Orders. (Schleicher to Georg Curtius, 11 September 1859, in Zeil 1984: 122; Syllaba

1995: 58) In a letter of 1863 to the librarian and literary historian Reinhold Köhler

(1830-92) at Weimar he wrote that he had decided he would never turn his back on

Germany, presumably after what had happened at Prague, calling his decision not to

go to Warsaw one of the ‘few sensible strokes’ he had ever pursued. He rued that

anyone had to be an ‘official’ in Prussian or Austrian education and preferred the

‘noble freedom’ of the ‘pirate states’ [those smallest German states]. (Letter to

Reinhold Köhler, of 4 March 1863, quoted in Dietze 1966: 47. On ‘pirate states’,

Meyer 1908: 623.) While one can see this as purely a reaction against

authoritarianism, it is also clear that Schleicher declined being a researcher or

professor in the Russian Empire from feelings of superiority, believing that moving to

the Russian Empire would mean a decline in academic status and immersing himself

in an alien (barbaric?) world. But he also saw large states in general as a threat to

small ones. For example, he saw Prussia and France as threats to Belgium and

Switzerland, thus claiming in effect to support the small, federated states against the

larger dictatorial ones. This siding with Belgium and Switzerland was probably also a

reflection of his support for the British position. (Letter to Georg Curtius of 9

November 1866, quoted in Dietze 1966: 44)6

He had accepted the honorary professorship at Jena although, later in 1866, at the

time of the Austro-Prussian war, his xenophobia began to extend even to the larger

German states. He wrote to Georg Curtius, then professor at Leipzig, after having

been professor at Kiel, that he had no real trust in the German people (deutschen

Volke), for now it was like a mindless herd of sheep, which moved wherever the dogs

drove it. (Letter of postmark 12 August 1866, quoted in Dietze 1966: 42; Syllaba

1995: 62; also letter of 16 June 1866 to Johannes Schmidt, in Zeil 1984: 124) When

Curtius then surmised that Schleicher might be pro-Austrian (unlike any other Ger-

man scholar), Schleicher responded that that was ridiculous, but he could not because

he hated one enemy of the German cause, that is Austria, love the more powerful state

[France] that once tore Germany to pieces and introduced Cesarism in one part of it

[through Napoleon]. Yet we would have to say that Schleicher’s [normally unpub-

lished or anonymously published] expressions indicated he saw Catholics and Slavs

as inferior culturally and even racially, despite the fact that he was stung by what he

referred to as the [Prussians] calling the South Germans, such as he was, an ‘inferior

race’. (Letter to Johannes Schmidt, 10 December 1866, in Zeil 1984: 127) Like

Friedrich Max Müller (1823-1900) he maintained a virtually life-long fear of what he

professed to love, saying that no matter how poor he had been, he was still glad he

had never gone to India to work. (Schleicher, in Zeil 1984: 131; Müller 1902: I, 357

[on not going to India; also on his avoidance of accepting posts at St. Petersburg and

in Bavaria despite insistent solicitations, on the advice of Baron Bunsen, I, 39-47; for 6 Schleicher’s connections with the British interest in Germany can be hinted at by pointing to his participation in a radical drinking group (after he moved back to Jena) called ‘the lower house’, after the House of Commons, along with a Jena teacher Charles Grant (1841-1889). (Zeil 1984: 121, 121 n. 128. Capper 1897; Trainer 1975 and 1999)

this Otto Böhtlingk made sure he never became a corresponding member of the St.

Petersburg Academy of Sciences, 45, although he was an honorary founding member

of the Litauische Litterarische Gesellschaft, II, 463 ]).

He did, however, continue to accept grants from and be published by the St. Peters-

burg Academy, without apparently ever going there. Schleicher had published his

German theoretical article ‘Zur Morphologie der Sprache’ in the memoirs of the St.

Petersburg Academy in 1859 (Ser.7: I, Nr. 7). He also prepared an edition and trans-

lation of Christian Donelaitis' compilation of Lithuanian dainos [folk songs] which

was published by the Academy in St. Petersburg in 1865 and provided the Russian

translation (1865) for their publication of his Über die Bedeutung der Sprache für die

Naturgeschichte des Menschen (Weimar: H. Boehlau, 1865). Schleicher had planned

to write 1) a comparative Slavic grammar (Zeil 1984: 124, 128), 2) a comparative

Lithuanian-Slavic grammar and 3) a comparative grammar of Proto-Balto-Slavic un-

der the Russian grants, but his sudden death in December of 1868 cut short his further

plans. (Syllaba 1995: 59; website www.lituanus.org)

E. Application in Own Linguistic Works; Linguistic Philosophical Ideas; Slavic,

Lithuanian and ‘Indo-Germanic’ Relationships

Joachim Dietze said that Schleicher in his 1848 Zur vergleichenden

Sprachengeschichte began to write about his linguistic philosophical ideas, which

were greatly influenced by Hegel and remained the same throughout his life, until in

the 1860s they became more precise under the influence of Darwin. (Schleicher 1848:

17, in Dietze 1966: 25. Dietze: 24) In the 1850 successor to that work, Die Sprachen

Europas, Schleicher began to see language as not historical, or he interpreted ‘history’

as a growth and becoming, so that it was really more a natural organism than a part of

man’s spiritual sphere, as it had been in Hegel (Schleicher 1850: 16, in Dietze 1966:

25). In this same 1850 work Sprachen Europas (Schleicher 1850: 191 n.**), Schle-

icher said he had wanted for a long time to research Lithuanian on location and also

‘Latvian-Slavic’ languages, and maybe make them his entire future. By the time he

wrote on Lithuanian in 1853, after his field trip, he concluded that Slavic was gram-

matically older that Lithuanian, but that Lithuanian was at an older stage of phonetic

development (Dietze 1966: 34). He here for the first time in his writings used the

Stammbaum (family tree) diagram, which showed, as he continued to do, that Lithua-

nian and Slavic was one branch of the Indo-Germanic languages, arising from a stem

which he called ‘Germanic-Slavic-Lithuanian’[see Fig. 1]. He had the Lithuanian and

Slavic arising from the stem at the same point, not one earlier than the other. Schle-

icher, from the French point of view of Michel Bréal (1832-1915), was singled out as

the one after Bopp who postulated a Germano-Lithuano-Slavic stage of languages,

thus bringing Lithuanian closer to Germanic and European than to Sanskritic and Ori-

ental links.

[Bopp takes the Letto-Slavic peoples to be] the last to arrive in Europe, and their languages to be more closely related than the other members of the family to Zend and to Sanskrit. It should be mentioned that Professor Bopp’s view has been disputed by a particularly well-versed Slavic and Lithuanian scholar. Professor Schleicher rejects the special relationship which some have sought to establish between the two Asiatic and the Letto-Slavic languages; he connects them instead to the Germanic family. (Bréal 1866 in 1991: 36)

Schleicher even, as the advanced scholar now still does, belittled the idea that Lithua-

nian, merely because of its seemingly ‘older’ vowel sounds and final sounds of some

declensions, could be said to be closer to the Indo-Germanic original language (Ur-

sprache). (Schleicher 1858: 9 n.**) Thus he may have helped further the idea of the

Germanization and the Europeanization of the Lithuanian area, perhaps a further sign

of encroaching German imperialist inclinations in theory.

But Schleicher recognized, perhaps unlike Bopp, that Pott had been trying in his

1837 and 1841 articles to provoke a distancing of Lithuanian from Slavic. In line

with this, Schleicher suggested in 1866 to his student Johannes Schmidt (1843-1901)

(who intended doing his habilitation in Berlin) that he address issues concerning the

relationship of Lithuanian to Slavic or Latvian: such as, what loan words were in the

Slavic proto-language; a critical analysis and overview of the Slavic loan words in

Lithuanian; or whether Latvian had linguistic features which could not be found in

Lithuanian. (Schleicher to J. Schmidt, 13 February 1866, in Zeil 1984: 120) Schle-

icher followed this suggestion up again in 1868, by recommending that Schmidt use

for his Probevorlesung (trial lecture) at Bonn the topic:

Why has one up to now mostly been more or less deceived (getäuscht) about the relationship

of Lithuanian to Slavic? (On account of not separating out the loan words and foreign words

in Lithuanian one has --- [according to] Pott --- the Lithuanian bound too closely with the

Slavic (Schleicher to J. Schmidt, 11 February 1868, in Zeil 1984: 133 and n. 203)

After the 1863 Polish and Lithuanian revolt against Russia, Lithuanian in Latin

typeface was banned for forty years for Lithuanian (although Schleicher’s 1865

edition of Donaleitis (1714-80) was published in St. Petersburg in Roman characters),

supposedly to help Lithuanians learn Russian and to standardize Lithuanian with it,

avoiding Polish influences. This also would help make Lithuanian invisible to the

West. But only about sixty books were published between 1864-1904 in Cyrillic

Lithuanian. Almost 4,000 books and pamphlets were published in Latin or Gothic

typeface, almost all (2,687) in East Prussia and smuggled back in. (Subačius 2005:

29-30; Staliūnas 2007)

Conclusion

Thus we have evaluated to some extent the contribution of these two men in Prus-

sian Germany and Czech Austria and Saxe-Weimar-Eisenach to bringing a regional

variation of the Lithuanian language to the forefront of thinking about East European

‘Indo-Germanic’ languages. For Pott, Lithuanian became the choirmaster to a chorus

of Slavic languages with which it was allied as either the co-eval or the ancestor in

certain sounds and forms at least; for Schleicher, the Darwinian, it was now made

visible as part of his linguistic tree of rooted, interrelated and evolutionized Indo-Ger-

manic languages. He did not go so far as Pott in praising the Lithuanian language’s

antiquity. Writing from East Prussia, he thought the Russian area he had not visited

had older phonological characteristics in its form(s) of Lithuanian. He there wrote of

Prussian Lithuanian being to Żamaitian (Samogitian) as high German was to low Ger-

man, or the Ionic-Attic Greek to the Doric-Aeolian language. (1853b: 523) But he

also said Lithuanian had very ancient, even unique forms, particularly in sounds and

in grammar, most ‘still at a very ancient level of development. Lithuanian is the most

ancient of all still living languages of the Indo-Germanic family and is even therefore

so extraordinarily important and valuable for the elucidation of related languages, thus

also of the related Slavic languages to which it was most nearly related.’ (1853b: 538)

Shortly after, he began regularly to describe Lithuanian’s relationship to Slavic as be-

ing only [compared to Pott] that off a ‘sister’ or ‘twin sister’ language. (1854: 113.

118). He, like most linguists after him, did not place Lithuanian in his family free of

languages as a language family coming off the Lithuanian-Slavic branch at an earlier

point than Slavic. It was for him co-eval in time with the branching off of the Slavic

languages.

For Pott, by 1856 Lithuanians had revealed themselves to be a hardy ‘nationality’

(Pott 1856: 143) whose language, unless it died out as he and others had previously

thought, was and would be incorporated in popular and literary works and possibly a

nation, not replaced by Prussianized German. While one might consider that both

Pott’s and Schleicher’s interest in Lithuanian was a product or a projection of ‘colo-

nial’ circumstances, in that both investigated in detail only ‘Prussian’ Lithuanian

which was found in a ‘colonized’ area incorporated in Prussia --- and thus Germany’s

linguistics was to some extent as based upon ‘colonialism’ as that of the British or

French empires ---, we conclude that Pott, and possibly Schleicher, were concerned

with supporting such a nationalistic movement in Eastern Europe as proponents of di-

versity, minority peoples and a counterweight to larger countries, such as Austria,

Russia and even Prussia. For Pott, the idea must have been to protect Lithuanian as a

language of education in Prussian Lithuania, which was done, until the more imperial-

istic sway of the Second Reich passed a law banning all foreign languages in Prussian

schools (15 October 1872). He would not have been directly encouraging a union of

Prussian and Russian occupied parts of Lithuania, which did not occur in an extensive

way until the end of World War II in 1945; all of the area mentioned in this paper

was, however, incorporated into Poland. (Vareikis 2001: 54-55, 56, 61; see also de-

tails under ‘Lithuania minor’ in Wikipedia) except for Kaliningrad (Königsberg)

which was put under Russian control. We cannot say that each’s linguistic views were

directly determined by their sources of financial support (cf. Park 2006: 77, on Bopp).

Pott appealed to both Hannover and Prussia in seeking to preserve Lithuanian through

study, and perhaps favored the superior antiquity of ‘Prussian’ Lithuanian to Slavic

and Latvian languages and the alliance of Lithuanian linguistic studies with Germany,

although he did not express an overt fear of Russian influence or pan-Slavism. Schle-

icher, whether he was funded by the Austrian or by Russian empires does not seem to

have changed his view that Lithuanian and Slavic were from the same language fam-

ily and basically needed to be studied together as such. Perhaps his Prague experi-

ence or Russian support dampened down Schleicher’s references or support for any

kind of Lithuanian nationalism. But Schleicher, although his contribution to the study

of Lithuanian was considerably greater, also represents a post-1848 or post-1850 turn

away from tolerance of other languages and cultures, reflected in his persistent Ger-

man fear of pan-Slavism and his unwillingness to really consider working in Russia or

Poland (see also Schott refusing to go to Russia in 1840; Max Müller in 1847-49),

which a former generation of linguistic and ethnographic scholars from German states

(Julius Klaproth (1783-1835), Christian Martin Frähn (1782-1851), Bernhard Dorn

(1805-81) , Ernst Eduard Kunik (1814-99) or German speakers born in the Russian

Empire (Franz Anton von Schiefner, Otto Böhtlingk) were willing to do. (Benes 2004:

117, 124, 129. Some doubt has been cast on early German Orientalists willingness to

learn Russian or to integrate into Russian life, in Schimmelpenninck van der Oye

2010.)7 Both Pott and particularly Schleicher can be considered to have highlighted

7 See also Leopold 2010 on a similar change within one individual, Ernest Renan, over the period

1847-50.

Neither Pott nor Schleicher was pro-Catholic and the history of Lutheran and other Protes-

tant pastors in the study of Lithuanian has often been separately written from that of Catholic

priests. To counterbalance this, see on the Catholic contributions, e.g., Schmalstieg 1982.

Nevertheless, correspondents of Pott, such as Kopitar and Karl August Jordan, were

Catholics. Kopitar did assert independent Jansenist views and was recalcitrant to accept the ul-

tramontane control by the Vatican (Bonazza 1982: 180).

the influences of the Germanic languages on Slavic and Lithuanian, and thus their be-

ing seen from a ‘Western’ perspective. Schleicher’s recommendations to his student

Schmidt (who was like Pott in Prussia) to continue to investigate Pott’s views on

Lithuanian shows that the interest in Lithuanian and related Baltic languages was

sought to be perpetuated as part of a linguistic tradition of parly politically-motivated

scholarship.

References

A version of this paper was first given to the International Conference on the History of the Language Sciences, St. Petersburg, Russian Federation, September 2011. We would like to thank John W. Leopold for help with the Latin translations.

Benes, Tuska. 2004. ‘Comparative Linguistics as Ethnology: In Search of Indo-Ger-mans in Central Asia 1770-1830.’ In: Comparative Studies of South Asia, Africa and the Middle East 24. 117-132.

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Fig. 1

Schleicher’s first linguistic family tree (1853a: 331): of the connection of German, Slavic and Lithuanian ‘people’ [languages] to the Indo-Germanic foundational people. Note that the ‘people’ arising from the Indo-Germanic foundational people is named as the ‘Slavic-Germanic people’, not the ‘Slavic-Lithuanian-Germanic people’, although the Germanic people and ‘Slavic-Lithuanian people’ branch off from it. Thus in part Lithuanian languages are rendered invisible.