Friedrich Carl Andreas (14 April 1846 in

Batavia Batavia may refer to: Historical places * Batavia (region), a land inhabited by the Batavian people during the Roman Empire, today part of the Netherlands * Batavia, Dutch East Indies, present-day Jakarta, the former capital of the Dutch East In ...

– 4 October 1930 in

Göttingen Göttingen (, , ; nds, Chöttingen) is a university city in Lower Saxony, central Germany, the capital of the eponymous district. The River Leine runs through it. At the end of 2019, the population was 118,911. General information The ori ...

) was an orientalist of German, Malay and

Armenian Armenian may refer to: * Something of, from, or related to Armenia, a country in the South Caucasus region of Eurasia * Armenians, the national people of Armenia, or people of Armenian descent ** Armenian Diaspora, Armenian communities across the ...

parentage (descendant of the Bagratuni or Bagratid royal family (

: Բագրատունի). He was the husband of psychoanalyst

Lou Andreas-Salomé Lou Andreas-Salomé (born either Louise von Salomé or Luíza Gustavovna Salomé or Lioulia von Salomé, russian: link=no, Луиза Густавовна Саломе; 12 February 1861 – 5 February 1937) was a Russian-born psychoanalyst and a ...

. He received his education in

Iranian Iranian may refer to: * Iran, a sovereign state * Iranian peoples, the speakers of the Iranian languages. The term Iranic peoples is also used for this term to distinguish the pan ethnic term from Iranian, used for the people of Iran * Iranian lan ...

and other oriental studies at several German universities, obtaining his doctorate at

Erlangen Erlangen (; East Franconian: ''Erlang'', Bavarian: ''Erlanga'') is a Middle Franconian city in Bavaria, Germany. It is the seat of the administrative district Erlangen-Höchstadt (former administrative district Erlangen), and with 116,062 inhab ...

in 1868 with a thesis on the

Pahlavi language Middle Persian or Pahlavi, also known by its endonym Pārsīk or Pārsīg () in its later form, is a Western Middle Iranian language which became the literary language of the Sasanian Empire. For some time after the Sasanian collapse, Middle Per ...

. Following graduation, he continued his research of Pahlavi in

Copenhagen Copenhagen ( or .; da, København ) is the capital and most populous city of Denmark, with a proper population of around 815.000 in the last quarter of 2022; and some 1.370,000 in the urban area; and the wider Copenhagen metropolitan ar ...

. From 1875 he spent several years conducting field studies in

Persia Iran, officially the Islamic Republic of Iran, and also called Persia, is a country located in Western Asia. It is bordered by Iraq and Turkey to the west, by Azerbaijan and Armenia to the northwest, by the Caspian Sea and Turkmeni ...

and

India India, officially the Republic of India (Hindi: ), is a country in South Asia. It is the seventh-largest country by area, the second-most populous country, and the most populous democracy in the world. Bounded by the Indian Ocean on the so ...

, during which time, he also worked as a postmaster.Andreas, Friedrich Carl
In: Neue Deutsche Biographie (NDB). Band 1, Duncker & Humblot, Berlin 1953, , S. 284.Andreas, Friedrich Carl
Iranica Online From 1883 to 1903 he gave private lessons in Turkish and

in Berlin, and afterwards became a professor of Iranian philology at the

University of Göttingen The University of Göttingen, officially the Georg August University of Göttingen, (german: Georg-August-Universität Göttingen, known informally as Georgia Augusta) is a public research university in the city of Göttingen, Germany. Founded ...

. Here, he was tasked with deciphering manuscript fragments that were collected by the

German Turfan expeditions The German Turfan expeditions were conducted between 1902 and 1914. The four expeditions to Turfan in Xinjiang, China, were initiated by Albert Grünwedel, a former director at the Ethnological Museum of Berlin, and organized by Albert von Le C ...

in western China. Not a prolific author of books, he preferred to share his knowledge with students and colleagues orally. His primary focus were the

Iranian languages The Iranian languages or Iranic languages are a branch of the Indo-Iranian languages in the Indo-European language family that are spoken natively by the Iranian peoples, predominantly in the Iranian Plateau. The Iranian languages are groupe ...

in their development from antiquity to the present; e.g.

Afghan Afghan may refer to: *Something of or related to Afghanistan, a country in Southern-Central Asia *Afghans, people or citizens of Afghanistan, typically of any ethnicity ** Afghan (ethnonym), the historic term applied strictly to people of the Pas ...

, Balochi, Ossetian and

Kurdish languages Kurdish (, ) is a language or a group of languages spoken by Kurds in the geo-cultural region of Kurdistan and the Kurdish diaspora. Kurdish constitutes a dialect continuum, belonging to Western Iranian languages in the Indo-European language ...

. He was also thoroughly familiar with

Sanskrit Sanskrit (; attributively , ; nominally , , ) is a classical language belonging to the Indo-Aryan branch of the Indo-European languages. It arose in South Asia after its predecessor languages had diffused there from the northwest in the late ...

, Hindustani,

Arabic Arabic (, ' ; , ' or ) is a Semitic language spoken primarily across the Arab world.Semitic languages: an international handbook / edited by Stefan Weninger; in collaboration with Geoffrey Khan, Michael P. Streck, Janet C. E.Watson; Walter ...

Aramaic The Aramaic languages, short Aramaic ( syc, ܐܪܡܝܐ, Arāmāyā; oar, 𐤀𐤓𐤌𐤉𐤀; arc, 𐡀𐡓𐡌𐡉𐡀; tmr, אֲרָמִית), are a language family containing many varieties (languages and dialects) that originated in ...

Hebrew Hebrew (; ; ) is a Northwest Semitic language of the Afroasiatic language family. Historically, it is one of the spoken languages of the Israelites and their longest-surviving descendants, the Jews and Samaritans. It was largely preserved ...

and Turkish. In addition, he was considered an excellent decipherer of manuscripts and inscriptions. Due to his linguistic talents, he was appointed to the "Königlich Preußische Phonographische Kommission" (Royal Prussian Phonographic Commission). The purpose of the commission was to record the approximately 250 languages spoken by the prisoners of German WWI PoW camps.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Andreas, Friedrich Carl 1846 births 1930 deaths People from Batavia, Dutch East Indies University of Erlangen-Nuremberg alumni University of Göttingen faculty German orientalists Iranologists Members of the Göttingen Academy of Sciences and Humanities