Lithuanian made visible through German linguists:

August Friedrich Pott and August Schleicher

Joan Leopold
Oxford 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
Germany
emerge. Potts 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 Schleichers 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 Schleichers 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
nationalistic 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 pannational even though it sought to unite separate German-speaking states or parts of
states, including German-speaking Switzerland, under one Pan-German government,
represented 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
linguistic sense rather than an ethnic one. It also had not yet become a public
movement in Russia, which it became after the Crimean War and at the beginning of
Czar Alexander IIs 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
organizers like Johann Ernest Schmaler (Smoler) (1816-84) continued to live in
Germany. 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 Jahrbcher fr slawische Literatur, Kunst und Wissenschaft. The
parallelism (and by Germans the antagonism) between German and Slavic
developments was emphasized also in book titles such as the anonymous Slaven,
Russen und Germanen. Ihre gegenseitigen Verhltnisse in der Gegenwart und Zukunft
(Leipzig, 1843) and the increasingly belligerent title, as time moved on of the
Brandenburg Gymnasium history teacher Moritz Wilhelm Heffters Der Weltkampf
der Deutschen and Slaven seit dem Ende des fnften 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 dialects.
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

Romance 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
internationalism (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
language 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.
(Henderson, 178) He considered both the criteria of language and shared historical
memory inadequate for nationhood, since those speaking a language were a mixture
of different 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 Bopps focus upon the
primacy of grammar over lexicon. Much of the purpose of early comparative and
historical linguistics, in Prussia at least, was to separate out purer origins from
fundamentals of grammar than mixed vocabulary could provide. By 1816, Bopp
(1791-1867) had purified so-called Indo-Germanic languages into five strands in
his ber das Conjugationssystem der Sanskritsprache in Vergleichung mit der
griechischen, lateinischen, persischen und germanischen Sprache (Frankfurt).
Lithuanian was after more than a decade to be added, for example, in the title of his
Vergleichende

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 professor 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 comparison 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 IndoGermanic 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
German 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.
Potts 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 mothers family, he moved to the city of Hannover where he was brought up in the
more bourgeois home of his paternal great aunts 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
paternal 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, Potts fathers 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, despite 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
Wilhelm 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 himself 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 Celtics
relationship was well known, and thus appropriated to themselves a central, some
would say imperial position in history.]

C. Own political views and activities [For fuller information, see Leopold 1983: xlviilxxxvi.]
Pott continued Bopps already well-accepted expansion of the term Indo-Germanic
to the Slavic and Celtic languages (Rsel 1957: 3) and contemporaneously added
attention 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
Lautumwandlung 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-Slawische 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 interspersed 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
Anwendung gebracht wird, it beats out Old Church Slavonic.
Uebrigens gestehe ich gern zu, da die Kluft zwichen Littauischen und den slawischen
Sprachen 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 Gttingen 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 Hannovers personal union with Great Britain.
When he annulled the constitution on 1 November, the Gttingen 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, Potts treatise would probably not have been widely noted or even
understood, especially as it contained numerous examples from Lithuanian, Latvian
and Slavic. The University of Gttingen 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
linguis 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 Vaters 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 Vaters 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
testimony of languages is needed. (Pott 1837: 5)

He explained that he was following Karl Christian Ulmanns (1793-1871) and

Wilhelm von Humboldts 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
nationalism 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: 1112).
[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
Preuen an ihren berresten erlutert (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
bastard, 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 -, thus somewhat anticipating
Saussures 1878 famous change in the theory of Indo-European proto-vowels (Pott
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).

1839: col. 400; Lehmann 2005: ch. 1; but Joseph 2009: 192 and n. 30). But, in the
1839 review, he did not push this point, but deferred to Grimm and Bopp to look at
this issue 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).
2

Jakob Grimm clearly had received Potts Commentatio (1837) by January 1838, when he sent a copy

to Jernej Bartol [also known as Bartholomaeus] Kopitar (17801844) 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,
Vienna, 30 March 1838, in Vasmer, (ed.). 1937: 170). Pott may have sent his anonymous 1839 book
review to Kopitar, because around October 1840 Kopitar began writing in his letters about Potts
interpretation of Lithuanians primacy and the need for a society to help preserve it. Kopitar, after
receiving a copy of Potts encylopedia article Indogermanischer Sprachstamm (1840) from the
publisher Brockhaus, wrote to Pott on 3 October 1840 from Vienna that Potts comment on page 14 of
that article was: R e c h t vom Lithauischen; wenn mans nur g a n z kennte. Wer aber htte 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 n d e t hat! Eine litthauische Sprachgesellsch.[aft] nach englischer Art in K n i g s b e r g,
unter Ihrer Oberleitung, wrde noch zu r e c h t e r Zeit retten, was zu retten ist. Auf Russen und Polen
warten, wre zu spt. Sie erkennen selbst, da [Christian Gottlieb] Mielkes [or Milkuss 17331807] Erluterung[en, in his Erweiterung des Ruhigschen Wrterbuches, Knigsberg 1800 cited by
Kurschat = his Littauisch-deutsches und deutsch-littauisches Wrterbuch] 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 wre
zu wnschen. 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 wren? Merkwrdig, da
z.B. nur uns Krainern von allen Slawen das Bier ol heit, = alua litth.[auisch] ---- Die und alles
brige soll uns I h r e preussiche [sic] Gesellschaft von Knigsberg 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 Kopitars 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, Humboldt or
others in having the Prussian Academy or a special society for that subject preserve what could be
preserved of the Lithuanian language:

Not having attracted the attention he thought the subject deserved, Pott wrote a
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 Krauses (1787-1855)
chapter 35 on Ist es Zeit, die lithauische Sprache zu verdrngen oder auszurotten? in
his 1834 Lithauen und seine Bewohner (Pott 1841:1 and n. 2) . This treatise tried to
bring to the Kings and countrys attention that: Latvian including Lithuanian was

Wie gefllt Ihnen Potts Principat [meaning Primacy] des Litth.[auischen] fr die Slawen, analog
dem des Gothischen fr . . . [die Germanen]. Jedenfalls sollten auch Sie, sollten Sie auch nicht
nach Berlin gehen (ich bestimme Sie zurck n[ach Gottingen]) durch Lachmann, Humboldt etc.
dahin wirken, da 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
Zeitungen doch am Ende Recht, da 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] Knigsberg (194):
'Ich kann zu wenig Litt.[auisch] um zu entscheiden, ob man es mit Pott an die Spitze der slaw.
[ischen] Sprachen stellen k n n e, wie das Gothische an die der deutschen; ich frchte die
Unterschiede gehen weiter auseinander. Acumincum an der Donau weit 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 Potts 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 Knigsberg: Ist von K

-n i g s b e r g nichts hiefr 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 Kopitar] (Vienna, 27 March 1842, in Vasmer, (ed.). 1937: 207-208, quotation from 208)

not three-quarters of Slavic origin, as maintained by Johann Thunmans

Untersuchungen ber die alte Geschichte einiger Nordischen Vlker (1774) (Pott
1841: 3) , or related to Finnish, a view he attributed in his 1837 work to Carl Christian
Ullman (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
example, 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 LithuanianLatvian], 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

universal human good] would not want the majority of these Lithuanian speakers to
become 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 fr
all die Unbill, welche von dem Orden durch einen dreiundfunfzigjhrigen [sic]
blutigen Eroberungs-, ja Vernichtungskrieg, sowie unter dessen dreihundertjhriger
harter und unmenschlicher Herrschaft das tapfere, aber ungluckliche Preuenvolk [=
Old Prussians, speaking a language related to Lithuanian] erfahren . . . (Pott 1856:
140. similar to Pott 1841: 2 in Latin) Prussias 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 origine) 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 judgment and what he said etymology showed

that the word

Prussian was not derived 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 Schleichers 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 Latvianspeaking 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
Schleichers father Johann Gottlieb Schleicher (1793-1864) was district
physician 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 familys
existing interest in botany with botanical excursions in the neighborhood. At Bonn,
professor of Sanskrit Christian Lassen (1800-76) of Danish heritage showed him the

future importance of study of Slavic and Baltic languages and may have influenced
him in favor of emphasizing the great antiquity and Aryanness of Sanskrit. (RabaultFeuerhahn 2008: 126-138, 152) On Lassens 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 emaitish) 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
received a grant of 400 from the Meiningen heir apparent Georg [later II] (18261914) 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
Britain. (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 Bibliothque 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
correspondent for the Augsburger Allgemeine Zeitung and Klnische 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
eyewitness to the October 1848 uprising as he was probably to the Dresden one of
May 1849. He reported on the Austrian Reichstags moving to the radical Moravian
small town of Krom [= Kremsier]. After the Reichstag was dissolved and its
constitution nullified, Schleicher went to Prague and learned Czech. He became

friendly with Alois Vanek (1825-1883), who was doing linguistic research there, and
Georg Curtius (1820-1885) who was extraordinary professor of classical philology at
the university from 1849. (Dietze 1966: 20-22) 3
His first Czech language publication was in 1849. He then did two more
articles in Czech for the asopis eskho Museum [Journal of the Czech Museum],
about Slavic languages, including in relation to Lithuanian (1853a) He had already on
12 October 1849 written to Vanek that he especially wanted to devote himself to the
relationship 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
Lithuania 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).
Schleichers first Czech works caught the attention of the new pro-Czech
Austrian education minister Leo Count von Thun und Hohenstein (1811-88), who
contacted him indirectly through his advisor the new Viennese University professor
Hermann Bonitz (1814-88) in November 1849 to offer him an extraordinary
professorship 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
Universitys existing educational standards. His friend Vanek 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 Sciences for his field trip to [Prussian] 3 Lithuania in
1852; promotion in June 1853, as a 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.

The Liberal, Western tradition, to which Schleicher appears then to

have belonged, was against pan-Slavism, fearing a Russian universal monarchy.

Those in Austria-Hungary tended to support Austro-Slavism, that Austria-Hungary,
not Germany, would provide the bulwark against Russian expansion by arranging a
federation of Western Slavs, led by the Poles. (Kohn 1953: 83, 65. Rsel 1957)
Schleicher, fearing the pan-Slavic advances by Russia, would help support the
position of then current Austro-Slavism.

Schleichers support for Lithuanian

linguistic nationalism seems to have been minimal. Although he did refer to the poor
Lithuanians (1853b: 527 n. 1, 528), and having 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 inexpensive 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
3

Schleicher had hoped also to go to the amaitian-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
himself with using long-distance informants and printed materials from that area without going
himself.
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 Kumuttis whom he was later visited by in
Prague and whom he called a dear house companion and friend (Schleicher 1856: vii). We have
unfortunately been unable to obtain a copy of Lemekin and Zabarskait 2008 to confirm their
interpretation of this correspondence.

Schleicher taught at Prague from 1850-56. Despite his public support for Czech
literary 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. sterreichischen Diensten,
Sonneberg, 20 April 1857, (ed.) Erhart Schleicher, printed in Syllaba 1995: 100-112;
see especially 108, 111 [against Prague Germans as well]). He privately expressed his
gratitude for having been raised a German and a Protestant. (Vanek 1868: 222) He
turned his back on Prague allegedly for a number of reasons, including that the
nationalist 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
acquaintance, Moritz Seebeck (1805-84), who had been a reforming Gymnasium
director 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 Schleichers 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
5

Schleicher was a good friend of F. Tempsk, 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.

honorary 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
thereafter.)
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
Bhtlingk (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
Wrzburg in 1859. In September 1862 Schleicher was recruited by the Russian
government for the new [Polish] Warsaw university (Szkoa Gwna 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 Khler
(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 Khler, 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
German 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 Schleichers
[normally unpublished 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
6

Schleichers 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)

1984: 127) Like Friedrich Max Mller (1823-1900) he maintained a virtually lifelong 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;
Mller 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 this Otto Bhtlingk 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.
Petersburg 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
translation 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 ber die Bedeutung der
Sprache fr 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 under 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

mans 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.**),
Schleicher 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
grammatically 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
Lithuanian 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. Schleicher, from the French point of view of Michel Bral (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 Oriental 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 Bopps view has been disputed by a particularly wellversed 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. (Bral 1866 in 1991: 36)

Schleicher even, as the advanced scholar now still does, belittled the idea that
Lithuanian, 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
(Ursprache). (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)
Schleicher 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 (getuscht) 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 Schleichers 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. (Subaius 2005:
29-30; Stalinas 2007)

Conclusion
Thus we have evaluated to some extent the contribution of these two men in
Prussian 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-Germanic languages. He did not go so far as Pott in praising the Lithuanian

languages 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 amaitian (Samogitian) as high German
was to low German, 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 Lithuanians
relationship to Slavic as being 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
Potts and Schleichers interest in Lithuanian was a product or a projection of
colonial circumstances, in that both investigated in detail only Prussian Lithuanian
which was found in a colonized area incorporated in Prussia --- and thus Germanys
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
diversity, 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
imperialistic 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
details under Lithuania minor in Wikipedia) except for Kaliningrad (Knigsberg)
which was put under Russian control. We cannot say that eachs 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.
Schleicher, 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 family and basically needed to be studied together as such. Perhaps his
Prague experience or Russian support dampened down Schleichers 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 German 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 Mller in 1847-49), which a former generation of linguistic and
ethnographic scholars from German states (Julius Klaproth (1783-1835), Christian
Martin Frhn (1782-1851), Bernhard Dorn (1805-81) , Ernst Eduard Kunik (1814-99)
or German speakers born in the Russian Empire (Franz Anton von Schiefner, Otto
Bhtlingk) 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
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

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

can be considered to have highlighted the influences of the Germanic languages on

Slavic and Lithuanian, and thus their being seen from a Western perspective.
Schleichers recommendations to his student Schmidt (who was like Pott in Prussia)
to continue to investigate Potts 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
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Fig. 1

Schleichers 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.