Metadata: A M Shegren
Collection
- Country:
- Russia
- Holding institution:
- St. Petersburg Branch of the Archive of the Russian Academy of Sciences
- Holding institution (official language):
- Санкт-Петербургский филиал архива Российской академии наук
- Postal address:
- 199034, St. Petersburg, Universitetskaia naberezhnaia, d. 1
- Phone number:
- (812) 323-08-21
- Web address:
- www.ranar.spb.ru
- Email:
- archive@spbrc.nw.ru
- Reference number:
- F. 94
- Title:
- A M Shegren
- Title (official language):
- Шёгрен А. М
- Creator/accumulator:
- Shegren, A M
- Date(s):
- 1785/1899
- Language:
- Danish
- Latin
- German
- Russian
- French
- Swedish
- Hebrew
- Armenian
- Georgian
- English
- Dutch; Flemish
- Hindi
- Chinese
- Latvian
- Lithuanian
- Arabic
- Akkadian
- Official Aramaic (700-300 BCE); Imperial Aramaic (700-300 BCE)
- Tatar
- Finnish
- Estonian
- Romany
- Czech
- Japanese
- Extent:
- 418 archival storage units
- Type of material:
- Textual material
- Physical condition:
- Good
- Scope and content:
-
The fonds contains journals from A M Shegren’s research trips (1835-1838); material on the history, archeology, geography, ethnography, linguistics, and topography of the Novgorod, Vologda, Arkhangelsk, Olonets, Viatka, Kazan’, Perm, and Petersburg provinces (1823-28); letters from Tiflis, Vladikavkaz, Mozdok, and Piatigorsk (1835-38); excerpts from documents on the history of Scandinavia and translations thereof; and numerous grammars of the Nenets, Lithuanian, Komi-Zyrian, Mari, Ossetian, and other languages; and materials pertaining to A M Shegren’s service in the Academy of Sciences and its library (1834-90).
There are files and file fragments pertaining to Jewish history and culture in both series of the fonds, including a report by A M Shegren to the history and philology department on seven works by the Nizhny Novgorod Hieromonk Makarii, including “A Brief Grammar of the Hebrew Language” (1850), as well as linguistic materials collected by the traveler and naturalist Academician P-S Pallas for his work Comparative Dictionaries of All Languages and Dialects Collected by Her Majesty’s (Empress Catherine II’s) Right Hand and presented by him in 1810 to the linguist and historian Friedrich von Adelung, upon whose death they came to A M Shegren; these materials include manuscripts titled “A Collection of Russian Words with Hebrew Translations” by Andrei Grader (undated) and “The Pronunciation of Chaldean Words”; as well as a “List of Russian Words Translated into Hebrew” (undated).
- Administrative/biographical history:
-
Andrei Mikhailovich Shegren (Andreas-Johann Shegren, 1794-1855) was a historian, ethnographer and linguist. He was born in the family of a shoemaker in the village of Sitikkala, Finland. In 1813, he enrolled at the University of Abo; upon graduating in 1819 with a PhD, he was appointed assistant librarian. In 1820, he moved to St. Petersburg, where in 1821 he wrote a work titled On Finnish Language and Literature that drew the attention of Count N P Rumiantsev, who published it. In 1823, he received the position of librarian to Count Rumiantsev and made an ethnographic research trip through the Novgorod and Olonets provinces. He subsequently received a two-year state grant for a study on Finnish inhabitants of Russia. In 1828 he published, in Helsinki/Helsingfors, a Swedish-language research work titled Anteckingar om forsamlingarne i Kemi-Lampark (Remarks on the Kemi-Lapland Parishes). In 1835, he went to the Caucasus (where he would remain until 1838); here he studied the Georgian, Ossetian, and Kabardian languages and collected ethnographic information about ethnic groups of the Caucasus. In 1844, he published a work titled An Ossetian Grammar, with a Short Ossetian-Russian and Russian-Ossetian Dictionary. In 1846, as a member of the Imperial Russian Geographic Society, he traveled to Livonia and Courland; he would publish some of the materials he collected on this trip in 1848 and 1849, and a grammar and vocabulary of the Livonian language was published posthumously. In 1829, he became an adjunct member of the St. Petersburg Academy of Sciences, in 1831 a provisional member and in 1844 a permanent member. In 1834, he was appointed librarian of the foreign department of the Library of the Academy of Sciences, and in 1845, director of the Kunstkamera. He was a member of the Kazan’ Society of Lovers of Literature (1828), the Finnish Economic Society in Abo (1831), the Moscow Society of History and Russian Antiquities (1833), the Helsingfors Finnish Literature Society (1834), the Stockholm Antiquities Society (1847), etc.
The archive of the Academy of Sciences was established by decree of Emperor Peter I in 1728 to house documents of the Conference (supreme assembly) of the Academy. At the same time, Academy of Sciences President L L Bliumentrost appointed Gerhard Friedrich Müller, a student of the Academy gymnasium (subsequently an academician, and the first historiographer to the Russian Empire), to organise the files of the Conference of the Academy of Sciences. During the 18th to 20th centuries, separate archives of other subdivisions of the Academy of Sciences existed as well: the archives of the Chancellery of the Academy of Sciences (18th century) and the Committee of the Board of the Academy of Sciences (the chancellery’s institutional successor; documents date from 1803) as well as archives of departments. In 1922, all Academy archives were merged into a single Archive of the Russian Academy of Sciences, renamed in 1930 the Archive of the USSR Academy of Sciences (and in 1991, once again the Archive of the Russian Academy of Sciences). In 1936, a Moscow branch of the archive was created in connection with the Academy’s relocation to that city. In 1963, the Archive of the USSR Academy of Sciences in Leningrad was reorganised as the Leningrad Branch of the Archive of the USSR Academy of Sciences, while the Archival Directorate was transferred to Moscow. In 1991, the Leningrad branch was renamed the St. Petersburg Branch of the Archive of the Russian Academy of Sciences (SPF ARAN). The archive houses over 1,600 fonds containing approximately one million items.
- System of arrangement:
- The fonds comprises two series arranged by structure, theme, and in part chronologically.
- Finding aids:
- Inventories are available.
- Yerusha Network member:
- Jewish Theological Seminary
