August Ludwig Schlözer

August Ludwig von Schlözer (5 July 1735, Gaggstatt – 9 September 1809, Göttingen) was a German historian who laid foundations for the critical study of Russian history. He was a member of the Göttingen School of History.

August Ludwig von Schlözer was born at Gaggstatt, Hohenlohe-Kirchberg (today Kirchberg an der Jagst), Württemberg. His father, grandfather, and great-grandfather all were protestant clergymen. In 1751 he followed them and began his studies in theology in University of Wittenberg, moving in 1754 to the increasingly famous University of Göttingen to study history. After his studies he went in 1755 as a tutor to , where he spent a year and a half as tutor in the family of the minister of the German congregation, and during 1756/1757 in Uppsala, studying Old Norse and Gothic with the philologist Johan Ihre, then again in Stockholm as secretary of a German merchant. While in Sweden he wrote in Swedish an Essay on the General History of Trade and of Seafaring in the most Ancient Times (1758) on Phoenicians, which together with a publication on Swedish history made him fairly well known. In 1759 he returned to Göttingen, where he began the study of medicine.

In 1761 he went to St. Petersburg with Gerhardt Friedrich Müller, the Russian historiographer, as Müller's literary assistant and as tutor in his family. Here Schlözer learned Russian and devoted himself to the study of Russian history. In 1762 a quarrel with Müller placed him in a position of some difficulty from which he was delivered by an introduction to Count Rasumovski, who procured his appointment as adjunct to the Academy. In 1765 he was appointed by the Empress Catherine an ordinary member of the Academy and professor of Russian history. In 1767, he was elected a foreign member of the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences.

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