Sergey Oldenburg

Sergei Fedorovich Oldenburg (Russian: Сергей Фёдорович Ольденбург; * 14 Septemberjul / September 26 1863greg in Bjankino near Nertschinsk, .. † February 28, 1934 in Leningrad) was a Russian orientalist, specializing in Buddhism. He was a founder of Russian Indology and the teacher by Fyodor Ippolitowitsch Schtscherbatskoi. He was in 1900 elected to the Russian Academy of Sciences and served as its Permanent Secretary from 1904 to 1929.

Oldenburg was descended from the noble family of Oldenburg. His grandfather Friedrich Gustav von Oldenburg ( * 1791) was lieutenant-general in the army of the Tsar and commander of Brest- Litovsk. His parents were of Russian Major General Friedrich Otto von Oldenburg ( * 1827) and Nadezhda von Berg adH Kandel (* 1833, † 1909).

Oldenburg was a professor of Oriental and Indian Studies at the University of Saint Petersburg.

He made 1909/10 and 1914 to 1915 two trips to Central Asia. There he discovered a number of previously unpublished texts in Sanskrit. He suggested several scientific expeditions to Tibet and in Dzungaria, which promoted more unique Buddhist texts to light. In 1897 Oldenburg had brought out a collection of Buddhist texts. This Bibliotheca is Buddhica continued to this day. In 1917, he founded a commission of the Academy of Sciences, which examined the question of nationality in the Russian multiethnic empire.

From 1912 to 1917 Oldenburg was a member of the State Council of the Russian Empire and took over after the February Revolution the position of education minister in the provisional government. After the October Revolution, he decided, in contrast to many of his fellow party members of the Constitutional Democrats to spend the rest of his life in Russia. This was due to its longer lasting acquaintance with Lenin. He had met Lenin's brother Alexander Ulyanov as a student. After his execution after the failed assassination attempt on Alexander III. Oldenburg and met Lenin for the first time together in St. Petersburg.

Although Oldenburg was briefly arrested in 1919 by the Cheka, it was allowed him to lead the Russian Academy of Sciences until 1929. The rest of his life devoted Oldenburg the Soviet Institute of Oriental Studies, whose predecessor, the Asia Museum, he himself had initiated.