Alexander Hilferding

Alexander Hilferding (Russian: Александр Фёдорович Гильферди́нг; 14 July 1831 in Warsaw, Congress Poland – 2 July 1872 in Kargopol) was a Russian Empire linguist and folklorist of German descent who collected some 318 bylinas in the Russian North. A native of Warsaw, he assisted Nikolay Milyutin in reforming the administration of Congress Poland. In the late 1850s, he was a Russian diplomatic agent in Bosnia; he published several books about the country and its folklore, thanks to the collaborative efforts of Prokopije Čokorilo. Hilferding was elected into the Saint Petersburg Academy of Sciences in 1856. He died of typhoid while collecting folk songs in Kargopol, in the north of European Russia, and was later reburied in the Novodevichy Cemetery, St. Petersburg. Hilferding's collection of Slavonic manuscripts is preserved in the Russian National Library.

Hilferding is credited with having coined the name Slovincians (Polish, Słowińcy) to describe the Lutheranized Wends of Hinter Pomerania (also sometimes called Lebakaschuben). The story has spread all over the Internet, but it seems unlikely that he actually did so. The term Slovincian evidently existed long before Hilferding's time. The Lutheran pastors Simon Krofey (1586) and Michael Pontanus (German, Brüggemann; 1643) speak of a slowinzischen language (which they call wendisch in German and—by mistaken association—vandalicus in Latin). Friederich von Dreger, Prussian Kriegs- und Domänenrat in Pomerania, wrote in 1748: “Die meisten Dörfer, sonderlich in Hinterpommern, sind von Wenden bewohnt geblieben, wie denn auch jenseits dem Stolpischen Fluss die wendische Sprache von den Bauern noch gebraucht, auch noch der Gottesdienst in selbiger gehalten wird, welche Sprache man irrig die cassubische heisst, weil Cassuben, Pommern, Pohlen zwar eine sprache gehabt, das eigentliche cassubische Land aber gewesen, wo nun Belgard,. .. Neustettin, Dramburg und Schievelbein belegen ist.” (Most villages [in the region], especially in Hinter Pomerania, remain inhabited by Wends, who also still use the Wendish tongue of the peasants on the other side of the river Stolp [Polish, Słupia River], and church services are held in the same, a language wrongly called Cassubian, because Cassubians, Pomeranias, [and] Poles indeed had one language, but the actual Cassubian lands were where Belgard,. .. Neustettin, Dramburg and Schievelbein lie.) The Slovincians seem, however, to have used the name of themselves as merely a synonym for Cassubian, saying, when asked: "Wir sind Slowinzen, Slowinzen und Kaschuben ist dasselbe" (We are Slovincians, Slovincians and Kassubians are the same).Florian Ceynowa and Hilferding were not the only ones to study the language and legends of the Kashubians, but they had the greatest influence and prompted others to take up investigations. The individual character of the Kashubian character and language was first described by Hilferding, to whom we are indebted for the first data about the range of Kashubian dialects. In 1856 he travelled to the Kashubia and demarcated the borders of contemporary Kashubian Pomerania. He researched the Kashubian language, describing its properties and origins.

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