Gerhard Friedrich Müller ( Russian: ''Фёдор Ива́нович Ми́ллер'', ''Fyodor Ivanovich Miller'', 29 October 1705 – 22 October 1783) was a Russian-German historian and pioneer ethnologist.

Early life

Müller was born in Herford and educated at

Leipzig Leipzig ( , ; Upper Saxon: ) is the most populous city in the German state of Saxony. Leipzig's population of 605,407 inhabitants (1.1 million in the larger urban zone) as of 2021 places the city as Germany's eighth most populous, as ...

. In 1725, he was invited to St. Petersburg to co-found the Imperial Academy of Sciences.

Career

Müller participated in the second Kamchatka expedition, which reported on life and nature of the further (eastern) side of the Ural mountain range. From 1733 until 1743, nineteen scientists and artists traveled through

Siberia Siberia ( ; rus, Сибирь, r=Sibir', p=sʲɪˈbʲirʲ, a=Ru-Сибирь.ogg) is an extensive geographical region, constituting all of North Asia, from the Ural Mountains in the west to the Pacific Ocean in the east. It has been a part ...

to study people, cultures and collected data for the creation of maps. Müller, who described and categorized clothing, religions and rituals of the Siberian ethnic groups, is considered to be the father of

ethnography Ethnography (from Greek ''ethnos'' "folk, people, nation" and ''grapho'' "I write") is a branch of anthropology and the systematic study of individual cultures. Ethnography explores cultural phenomena from the point of view of the subject ...

. On his return from Siberia, he became historiographer to the

Russian Empire The Russian Empire was an empire and the final period of the Russian monarchy from 1721 to 1917, ruling across large parts of Eurasia. It succeeded the Tsardom of Russia following the Treaty of Nystad, which ended the Great Northern War ...

. He was one of the first historians to bring out a general account of Russian history based on an extensive examination of the documentary sources. His accentuation of the role of Scandinavians and Germans in the history of that country – a germ of the so-called

Normanist theory Anti-Normanism is a movement of historical revisionism in opposition to the mainstream narrative of the Viking Age in Eastern Europe, and concerns the origin of Russia, Ukraine, Belarus and their historic predecessor, Kievan Rus'. At the cent ...

– earned him enmity of

Mikhail Lomonosov Mikhail Vasilyevich Lomonosov (; russian: Михаил (Михайло) Васильевич Ломоносов, p=mʲɪxɐˈil vɐˈsʲilʲjɪvʲɪtɕ , a=Ru-Mikhail Vasilyevich Lomonosov.ogg; – ) was a Russian polymath, scientist and wr ...

, who had previously supported his work, and dented his Russian career. In the early 1760s he rediscovered the

List of Russian Cities, Near and Far The ''List of Russian cities, near and far'' (russian: Список русских городов дальних и ближних, lit=, translit=) is a 14-15th century work found in the Novgorod First Chronicle, , and under the appendix "And ...

, after which his colleague August Ludwig von Schlözer published in Russian in 1816. In 1766, after many attacks by his colleagues, Müller was appointed keeper of the national archives. He drew up for the government a collection of its treatises.

Later life

In 1761, Müller was elected a foreign member of the

Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences The Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences ( sv, Kungliga Vetenskapsakademien) is one of the royal academies of Sweden. Founded on 2 June 1739, it is an independent, non-governmental scientific organization that takes special responsibility for prom ...

. He died, aged 77, in

Moscow Moscow ( , US chiefly ; rus, links=no, Москва, r=Moskva, p=mɐskˈva, a=Москва.ogg) is the capital and largest city of Russia. The city stands on the Moskva River in Central Russia, with a population estimated at 13.0 million ...

References

* Kerstin Holm, '' Stuttgarter Zeitung'', No. 303 (29 December 2005), p. 38. * *
М. Н. Тихомиров. Список русских городов дальних и ближних
. N. Tikhomirov. List of Russian cities, near and far litopys.org.ua (in Russian). Retrieved 2022-05-17.

* Joseph Lawrence Black, ''G.F. Müller and the Imperial Russian Academy of Sciences, 1725-1783: First Steps in the Development of the Historical Sciences in Russia.'' Kingston-Montréal: McGill-Queen's University Press, 1986. * Joseph Lawrence Black and Dieter K. Buse, ''G.-F. Müller and Siberia, 1733-1743.'' With translations of German materials by Victoria Joan Moessner. Kingston, Ontario/Fairbanks, Alaska: Limestone Press (Russia and Asia Series 1), 1989. * Aleksander Christianovich Elert, ''Ekspedicionnye materialy G. F. Millera kak istocnik po istorii Sibiri'' xpedition Materials of G.F. Müller as Sources for the History of Siberia Novosibirsk, 1990. * Gudrun Bucher, ''"Von Beschreibung der Sitten und Gebräuche der Völcker": Die Instruktionen Gerhard Friedrich Müllers und ihre Bedeutung für die Geschichte der Ethnologie und der Geschichtswissenschaft''. Stuttgart: Franz Steiner Verlag (Quellen und Studien zur Geschichte des östlichen Europa 63), 2002. * * Claus Priesner, Müller, Gerhard Friedrich von. ''Neue Deutsche Biographie (NDB)'' 18 (1997), S. 394 f. On-line edition: http://www.deutsche-biographie.de/pnd118953362.html * Peter Hoffmann, ''Gerhard Friedrich Müller (1705-1783): Historiker, Geograph, Archivar im Dienste Russlands''. Frankfurt am Main: Peter Lang, 2005. * Gerard Fridrich Miller erhard Friedrich Müller ''Opisanie sibirskich narodov. eschreibung sibirischer Völker'' Edited by Aleksandr Christianovich Elert and Wieland Hintzsche. Moskva: Pamjatniki Istoricheskoj Mysli (Quellen zur Geschichte Sibiriens und Alaskas aus russischen Archiven Band VIII/1), 2009. * Gerhard Friedrich Müller, ''Ethnographische Schriften I''. Bearbeitet von Wieland Hintzsche und Aleksandr Christianovich Elert unter Mitarbeit von Heike Heklau. Halle: Verlag der Franckeschen Stiftungen zu Halle, Harrassowitz Verlag in Kommission (Quellen zur Geschichte Sibiriens und Alaskas aus russischen Archiven VIII), 2010. . Band I: Beschreibung der sibirischen Völker

a. 1736-1747 A is the first letter of the Latin and English alphabet. A may also refer to: Science and technology Quantities and units * ''a'', a measure for the attraction between particles in the Van der Waals equation * ''A'' value, a measure of ...

* Han F. Vermeulen: 'Ethnography and Empire: G. F. Müller and the Description of Siberian Peoples'. In: Han F. Vermeulen: ''Before Boas: The Genesis of Ethnography and Ethnology in the German Enlightenment''. Lincoln & London, University of Nebraska Press, 2015.

External links

* * {{DEFAULTSORT:Muller, Gerhardt Friedrich German emigrants to the Russian Empire Explorers from the Russian Empire German ethnographers 1705 births 1783 deaths Full members of the Saint Petersburg Academy of Sciences Members of the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences People from Herford Fellows of the Royal Society Leipzig University alumni 18th-century explorers 18th-century scientists from the Russian Empire Explorers of Siberia Great Northern Expedition Writers about Russia Historians of Russia

Early life

Career

Later life

See also

References

Further reading

External links