Heinrich Wilhelm Ludolf

Heinrich Wilhelm Ludolf (20 December 1655 – 25 January 1712) was a German Pietist, secretary to Prince George of Denmark, and ecumenical traveller. He is known also as a linguist.

Life

Ludolf was the nephew of Hiob Ludolf the linguist.^[1] He acted as a Danish and as an English diplomat. A friend of August Hermann Francke, he travelled to Russia in the 1690s.^[2] He had persuaded Francke that the territories related to the Eastern Orthodox Church were important for the future.^[3] Gottfried Leibniz saw the importance of Ludolf's efforts on an even larger scale, bridging the gap to China.^[4]

Ludolf was also one of the founders of the Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge in London, and with Anton Wilhelm Böhme linked it to Francke's organisations in Halle.^[5]

Works

Ludolf's Grammatica Russica was published at Oxford in 1696.^[6] This Russian grammar had an introduction that showed, among other remarks, that Russian-speakers themselves distinguished between the spoken Russian language, and Church Slavonic.^[7]

Notes

1. Nicholas Hope (1999). German and Scandinavian Protestantism 1700-1918. Oxford University Press. pp. 123–. ISBN 978-0-19-826994-6.
2. Pieter N. Holtrop; C. H. Slechte (2007). Foreign Churches in St. Petersburg and Their Archives: 1703 - 1917. BRILL. p. 117. ISBN 978-90-04-16260-0.
3. W. R. Ward (11 April 2002). The Protestant Evangelical Awakening. Cambridge University Press. p. 304. ISBN 978-0-521-89232-2.
4. Franklin Perkins (19 February 2004). Leibniz and China: A Commerce of Light. Cambridge University Press. p. 132. ISBN 978-0-521-83024-9.
5. Norbert Finzsch; Robert Jütte (30 January 2003). Institutions of Confinement: Hospitals, Asylums, and Prisons in Western Europe and North America, 1500-1950. Cambridge University Press. p. 138. ISBN 978-0-521-53448-2.
6. The Structure and Development of Russian. CUP Archive. 1953. p. 142. GGKEY:24YXEZXTZLT.
7. J. A. Dunn, What Was Ludolf Writing About?, The Slavonic and East European Review Vol. 71, No. 2 (Apr., 1993), pp. 201-216. Published by: the Modern Humanities Research Association and University College London, School of Slavonic and East European Studies. Stable URL: https://www.jstor.org/stable/4211207