Alexander von Staël-Holstein

Baron Alexander Staël von Holstein (Chinese: 鋼和泰, January 1, 1877, in Testama manor, then Governorate of Estonia (Russian Empire) – March 16, 1937, in Peiping, Republic of China); was a German-baltic aristocrat, Russian and Estonian orientalist, sinologist, sanskritologist, specializing in Buddhist texts.

Related to Madame de Staël's husband, the future baron was born in the province of Estland (Estonia), then belonging to the Russian Empire,in an aristocratic family (with widespread relations in other German Baltic provinces of the Russian Empire, Sweden and Northern Germany) on the New Year's Day. He was educated at home during his childhood. When he reached 15, he was sent to a Gymnasium in the town of Pernau (now Pärnu). He pursued his higher education at the Dorpat University (Tartu), where some of his families had studied, majoring in comparative philology. After his graduation, he left for Germany, studying oriental languages in the Berlin University.

Prussian public records of 1898 show that the young Baron was involved in a duel in Berlin, which he apparently survived. In his second year in Berlin, as the only male heir he inherited the family estate in Testama (now Tõstamaa) and the baronage. In 1900, he gained his doctorate with his dissertation Der Karmapradīpa, II. Prapāthaka from the University of Halle-Wittenberg. The first Prapāthaka of the Karmapradīpa had been translated in 1889 by Friedrich Schrader, also as a dissertation in Halle. The supervisor of both dissertations was Professor Richard Pischel, at that time the world's leading expert on Prakrit, the ancient form of Sanskrit, and long-time head of the "Deutsche Morgenländische Gesellschaft", the German Orientalist Society.

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