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118 Intellectual Background

reference to Robertson’s View of Progress appears in a minor detail about

the Teutonic Knights’ move to Venice during the Crusades.⁵⁵ Nonethe-

less, it will be explained later that Daukantas viewed the Crusades as

a detrimental episode, associated with forced Christianization. Lastly,

Kog

alniceanu extensively consulted the History of Charles V during his

sojourn in Spain, to familiarize himself with the history of the country,

even incorporating ﬁve pages from the book into his own travel notes,

Notes sur L’Espagne.⁵⁶

THE SP

ATAUFKL

ARUNG IN G

OTTINGEN

My historians were inﬂuenced in myriad ways by a generation of Ger-

man scholars who succeeded Herder’s contemporaries and preceded the

representatives of the German historical school, such as Ranke, Droysen

and Dahlmann. They were active primarily between 1770 and 1850, an

era associated with the late Enlightenment, the Sp

ataufkl

arung in Ger-

man scholarship and culture. Since the mainstream current of German

Enlightenment, the Aufkl

arung occurred after its French and British

counterparts, and the Sp

ataufkl

arung emerged even later, representatives

of the latter were able to beneﬁt from the heritage of earlier generations.

However, it would be incorrect to assume that receptivity to foreign

ideas and models was purely imitative, when in fact it was selective

and purposeful. The critical and creative rethinking of foreign schemata

not only instigated new directions in scholarship but helped scholars to

engage with already existing problems in German intellectual life.⁵⁷ This

era was undoubtedly characterized by an unusually syncretic intellectual

world; no other epoch in German culture could boast such diversity:

the Sturm und Drang, Classicism, early and late Romanticism.⁵⁸ It was

also a time of political turbulence: the French Revolution, the ensuing

Jacobin terror, the revolutionary wars, and the intensiﬁcation of national

sentiment all challenged the ideals of the Aufkl

arung. This accounted

⁵⁵ Daukantas, Raˇstai, I. 148.

⁵⁶ These ﬁve pages were omitted from the published version of Kog

alniceanu’s Notes sur

L’Espagne, and I was not in a position to check the barely legible manuscript (which was

written on a coach). Thus, unfortunately I was unable to identify the passage in question.

⁵⁷ Reill, The German Enlightenment, 31.

⁵⁸ Christopher Becker-Schaum, Arnold Hermann Ludwig Heeren: Ein Beitrag zur Geschichte

der Geschichtswissenschaft zwischen Aufkl

arung und Historismus (Frankfurt am Main, 1993),

291.

Intellectual Background 119

for a further peculiarity of the epoch; the simultaneous presence of ideals

traditionally considered to be in agreement with and in opposition to

ideals inherent in the Aufkl

arung.⁵⁹

ottingen University was founded in 1734 under the auspices of

the Elector of Hanover, who was then George II of England, and in

the eighteenth century the town became a ﬂourishing site of German

scholarship, and a major gateway for the reception of British ideas.⁶⁰

Here, a group of talented scholars, including Johann Christian Gatterer

(1729–99), August Ludwig Schl

ozer (1735–1809), Christian Gottlob

Heyne (1729–1812) and Arnold Heeren (1740–1840), often referred

to as the ‘G

ottingen school’, initiated new avenues of historical en-

quiry.⁶¹ Representing a variety of disciplines, such as philology, German

and international law and Staatswissenschaften (political science), di-

versities among these scholars were signiﬁcant. Yet, they were linked

by their essentially historical approach to human developments and a

critical examination of the past. They also endeavoured to establish

a ﬁrm factual basis for their analysis, and their writings successfully

integrated several distinct trains of thought in eighteenth-century schol-

arship.⁶² A crucial ambition of G

ottingen scholars resided in laying

the foundations for a new type of history that they called Universal-

historie, as advocated (albeit not fulﬁlled) by Gatterer, which pursued

an innovative approach whereby historical writing was not simply re-

duced to the narration of events and the unrelated summary of national

histories. World history was to be endowed with a philosophical frame-

work, and the historian was expected to consider cause and effect

carefully, as well as relate his narrative to the broad areas of social and

economic life.⁶³

ottingen scholars did not regard the classical heritage as an outdated

relic of a bygone age, rather, in the spirit of neohumanism, they

distinguished themselves by inventing a new pedagogical purpose for

⁵⁹ Ibid., 291.

⁶⁰ Hermann Wellenreuther, ‘G

ottingen und England im achzehnten Jahrhundert’, in 250

Jahre Vorlesungen an der Georgia Augusta 1734–1984 (G

ottingen, 1985), 30–63; Michael

Maurer, Aufkl

arung und Anglophilie in Deutschland (G

ottingen and Zurich, 1987).

⁶¹ Marino, Praeceptores Germaniae: G¨ottingen 1770–1820; Rudolf Vierhaus, ‘Die Univer-

sit

at G

ottingen und die Anf

ange der modernen Geschichtswissenschaft im 18. Jahrhundert’, in

Hartmut Boockmann und Hermann Wellenreuther (eds.), Geschichtwissenschaft in G¨ottingen,

eine Vorlesungsreihe (G

ottingen, 1987), 9–29.

⁶² Iggers, ‘The University of G

ottingen 1760–1800 and the Transformation of Historical

Scholarship’, Storia della Storiograﬁa 2 (1982), 18.

⁶³ Ibid., 27.

120 Intellectual Background

studying it.⁶⁴ As I have explored in the previous chapter, the institutional

framework of the university provided a blueprint for the foundation

or re-establishment of several universities in the region, including

those of Warsaw, Vilna, Moscow and Tartu. Neo-humanist ideas

inﬁltrated the University of Vilna when the G

ottingen scholar Ernest

Grodek became professor there, and Lelewel and Daukantas were

strongly inﬂuenced by the currents of neohumanism. In addition to

the institutional framework, methodological innovations introduced by

German historians, especially their standards of source criticism, were

also deemed exemplary by my historians, as illustrated by Lelewel’s

Historyka. It is also worth recapitulating that a ground-breaking venture

associated with the University, Monumenta Germaniae Historica, became

the epitome of source editions, providing a template that was emulated

throughout Europe. Scholars in Bohemia counted G

ottingen scholars

as a major inﬂuence, beneﬁting from contacts with them; to that end,

Palack

y’s article, Geschichte der sch¨onen Redek¨unste bei den B¨ohmen (f¨ur

Eichhorn’s Literaturgeschichte in G¨ottingen bestimmt) was produced, as

the title indicates, at the request of the G

ottingen scholar Johann

Gottfried Eichhorn.⁶⁵

As well as the conceptual framework, the substance of my ﬁve histo-

rians’ work was also indebted to G

ottingen scholars, whose pioneering

research into the history of Central and Eastern Europe helped to grad-

ually improve the status of the region within the European intellectual

landscape. In this context, the achievements of August von Schl

ozer

(1735–1809), though less spectacular than those of Herder but equally

signiﬁcant, cannot be ignored. Schl

ozer, who promoted Locke’s and

Montesquieu’s ideas in Germany, admired the genre of universal his-

tory and earned recognition for his Vorstellung einer Universalgeschichte

(1772), and its successor, Weltgeschichte nach ihren Haupttheilen im

Auszug und Zusammenhange.⁶⁶

⁶⁴ On the study of philology see ‘Ulrich Muhlack, Klassische Philologie zwischen Hu-

manismus und Neuhumanismus’, in Rudolf Vierhaus (ed.), Wissenschaftler im Zeitalter der

Auﬂkl

arung (G

ottingen, 1985), 93–119.

⁶⁵ On scholarly contacts between Bohemian scholars and G

ottingen, see Walter Scham-

schula, Die Anf

ange der tschechischen Erneuerung und das deutsche Geistesleben (1740–1800)

(Munich, 1973), especially 94–116.

⁶⁶ On Schl

ozer’s activities in general: Ursula A. J. Becher, ‘August Ludwig v. Schl

ozer’,

in Hans Ulrich Wehler (ed.), Deutsche Historiker (G

ottingen, 1989), VII. 7–22; on Schl

ozer

in Eastern Europe see Helmut Neubauer, ‘August Ludwig Schl

ozer (1735–1809) und die

Geschichte Osteuropas’, Jahrb¨ucher f¨ur Geschichte Osteuropas 18 (1970), 205–30.

Intellectual Background 121

Schl

ozer spent several years in St Petersburg, undertaking innovative

research into Russian history, culminating in a translation of the

famous Nestor Chronicle. His familiarity with Eastern Europe found

further expression in the Allgemeine Nordische Geschichte (1771), which

included a detailed and favourable account of the history of the Slavs.

He claimed that: ‘apart from the Arabs, who once reigned from

Malacha to Lisbon, I do not know of any people in the entire world,

who spread themselves, their language, their rule and their colonies

so unusually extensively’.⁶⁷ Interestingly, Schl

ozer declared that the

Slavs were undoubtedly Northern people, even if they inhabited lands

with Southern ‘air and climate’,⁶⁸ although he admitted the term

‘Northern’ was highly arbitrary and relativistic. For his purposes the

Elbe and the Danube acted as the dividing lines between the ancient

‘Southern’ and the modern ‘Northern’ world.⁶⁹ Both Lelewel and

Palack

y were thoroughly acquainted with and relied on Schl

ozer’s

achievements and drew upon them in their work. Furthermore, the

Nordische Geschichte was one of the ﬁrst scholarly accounts to dispute

the Turkish ancestry of the Hungarians in favour of the Finno-Ugrian,

an argument that Horv

ath incorporated into his own discussion of their

origins, although he retained some scepticism towards it. Daukantas

relied heavily on Schl

ozer’s and Ludwig August Gebhardi’s account of

Baltic history, Geschichte von Littauen, Kurland and Lieﬂand (Halle,

1785), whilst Kog

alniceanu consulted his Zur Geschichte der Deutschen

in Siebenb¨urgen.

The widely read journals and magazines produced at G

ottingen re-

vealed a keen interest in Northern and Eastern European and, more

speciﬁcally, Slavonic history and culture.⁷⁰ As early as the 1740s, lec-

tures were offered at the university on Russian and Polish history,

whilst connections with the eastern and northern parts of Europe

were also forged through the considerable number of students from

those regions.⁷¹ Schl

ozer’s path was followed by subsequent ‘minor’

scholars who embarked on the study of East European history. The

⁶⁷ August Ludwig Schl

ozer, Allgemeine Nordische Geschichte, 2 vols. (Halle, 1771), I. 221.

⁶⁸ Ibid., I. 2–3. ⁶⁹ Ibid., I. 2.

⁷⁰ Manfred Hildermeier, ‘Von der Nordischen Geschichte zur Ostgeschichte: Osteuropa

im G

ottinger Horizont’, in Boockmann and Wellenreuter (eds.), Geschichtswissenschaft in

G¨ottingen, 115.

⁷¹ Hildermeier, ‘Von der Nordischen Geschichte zur Ostgeschichte’, 115; Ulrich Schindel,

‘Christian Gottlieb Heyne und G

ottingen as Mittler europ

aischer Aufkl

arung in Ungarn’,

Ural-Altaistische Jahrb¨ucher 10 (1991), 53–70.

122 Intellectual Background

multi-volume Allgemeine Weltgeschichte, a translation and adaptation

of the venture of two British scholars, William Guthrie’s and John

Gray’s A General History of the World, was particularly useful to them.⁷²

The substantially revised German version was produced under the

editorship of Heyne, and its German contributors acknowledged the

accomplishments of the English original, but also highlighted its abun-

dant mistakes, misunderstandings and overall unreliability, which they

triedtorectifyasfaraspossible.⁷³ To that end, new volumes were

adjoined to the original, in order to cover the history of regions that had

been neglected in the English version, such as Eastern and Northern

Europe.

The Guthrie-Gray Allgemeine Geschichte included the history of Hun-

gary, Wallachia, Moldavia, Transylvania, Lithuania (and also Norway

and Denmark). All these were addressed by Ludwig August Gebhardi,

a professor at L

uneburg and member of the Historical Institute in

ottingen.⁷⁴ These volumes enjoyed considerable popularity in Eastern

and Northern Europe and were frequently consulted by local historians

for reference purposes, including my historians. Individual parts were

also translated into local languages, such as Greek, Serbian, Hungarian

and Danish, and became trendsetters for national histories. Horv

ath

and Kog

alniceanu relied on Gebhardi’s Geschichte des Reichs Hungarn

und der damit verbundenen Staaten (1778), which formed part XV of the

Guthrie-Gray Weltgeschichte. The ﬁrst two of Gebhardi’s four volumes

concentrated on the history of the Hungarian Empire, whilst the third

discussed the history of Transylvania, Galicia, Dalmatia, Croatia and

Slavonia and the fourth dealt with the history of Serbia, Bosnia, Bul-

garia, Wallachia and Moldavia. Daukantas’s histories drew extensively

on Gebhardi’s other contribution to this series, Geschichte von Lithauen,

Preussen, Ostlichen Preussen und Lieﬂand (1789)⁷⁵. Not only were these

valuable to my historians as secondary sources, they also familiarized

them with central themes in European history, as Horv

ath’s discussion

of vassalage has demonstrated.

⁷² Guthrie’s and Gray’s venture was itself an adaptation, an abridged version of a

monumental historical enterprise entitled Universal History from the Earliest Account of Time

to the Present.

⁷³ Johann August Ernesti, ‘Vorrede’, Allgemeine Weltgeschichte ausgefertigt von Guthrie Gray

und anderen in diesen Theilen der Wissenschaften ber¨uhmten Gelehrten (Leipzig, 1765), I. viii–ix.

⁷⁴ Apart from Gebhardi, another G

ottingen historian, Johann Christian Engel (1770–

1814), was equally signiﬁcant for my protagonists.

⁷⁵ This work was co-authored with August Schl

ozer.

Intellectual Background 123

It was largely through the mediation of G

ottingen scholars that my

historians came to understand the main tenets of ‘commercial language’.

In this context, the role of an eminent philologist and historian, Arnold

Hermann Ludwig Heeren, is especially remarkable. Heeren’s intellectual

mindset was typical of the syncretism of the Sp

ataufkl

arung. His focus

on the individual character of nations testiﬁed to the inﬂuence of Ro-

manticism, but the systematic, comparative and typifying tendencies of

his work run counter to the Romantic worldview.⁷⁶ Politically, Heeren

aligned himself with constitutional liberalism, although he preferred

to conceal this commitment. His writings were aimed at academics

and the informed public alike and, of his rich oeuvre, two books were

especially appreciated by my historians.⁷⁷ The ﬁrst one, Ideen ¨uber die

Politik, den Verkehr und den Handel der vornehmsten V¨olker der alten

Welt, continued the tradition of universal histories as expounded by

Schl

ozer and Gatterer. Nevertheless, Heeren relinquished his predeces-

sors’ totalizing approach, focusing instead on underlying issues, hence

the title of his work, Ideen. His comparative approach and geographical

backdrop recalled Montesquieu’s principles, whilst the scholarly anal-

ysis of economic life resonated with Adam Smith’s style of thought.⁷⁸

Heeren was also inﬂuenced by, though not always in agreement with,

William Robertson, and the resemblance in their arguments can prob-

ably be explained by shared theoretical assumptions.⁷⁹ Heeren’s other

celebrated volume, Handbuch der Geschichte des Europ

aischen Staatensys-

tems und seiner Colonien (1809) was translated into English and French

soon after its publication. It was primarily concerned with the study of

constitutions and political institutions, and was one of the ﬁrst studies

to attend to aspects of colonial history.

Horv

ath’s arguments and preoccupations were hugely indebted to

Heeren, who was, in all likelihood, his favourite author. As the next

chapter will reveal, the Hungarian scholar translated his major article

allamelm´eleti the´ori

ak eredete, kifejl´ese ´es befoly

asa, Heeren ut

an (The

Origins, Development and Inﬂuence of State Theories in Modern

⁷⁶ Becker-Schaum, Arnold Herrmann Ludwig Heeren, 291–9.

⁷⁷ Importantly, Heeren saw his work as part of literary studies: for him historical

science (Geschichtswissenschaft) only served as an auxiliary discipline (Hilfswissenschaft); see

Becker-Schaum, Arnold Herrmann Ludwig Heeren, 296.

⁷⁸ Horst Walter Blanke, ‘Verfassungen, die nicht rechtlich, aber wirklich sind: A. H.

L. Heeren und das Ende der Aufkl

arungshistorie’, Berichte zur Wissenschaftsgeschichte 6 (1983),

147.

⁷⁹ Heeren reviewed Robertson’s Historical Disquisition on India in Bibliothek der Alten

Litteratur und Kunst (which he himself edited) 9 (1792), 120.

124 Intellectual Background

Europe, after Heeren, 1842) into Hungarian, and quoted extensively

from his other writings. He hailed Heeren’s prize-winning essay on

the Crusades, Versuch einer Entwicklung der Folgen der Kreuzz¨uge f¨ur

Europa, for ‘elucidating the causes and consequences of the Crusades in

a brilliant way’.⁸⁰ Horv

ath’s two volumes on the history of commerce

and trade in Hungary, inspired mainly by Heeren’s work, ‘nationalized’

the standard Enlightenment postulate about the beneﬁcial role of the

growth of towns in the dismantling of feudalism, by adapting it to the

Hungarian context.

As has been explained in Chapter 1, Lelewel studied the profession

of librarianship drawing upon Heeren’s biography of Heyne, whose in-

novative cataloguing system was widely employed in Europe. Lelewel’s

early book, Dzieje staro˙zytne Indii (1820), which assessed the literature,

philosophy, legal system and geography of ancient India, and its re-

lationship with other civilizations, drew heavily on Heeren’s Ideen.⁸¹

Furthermore, his lectures on European history at the University of

Vilna, especially those relating to the more recent and contemporary pe-

riod, were almost entirely based on Heeren’s Handbuch,portrayingthe

Crusades, the Reformation and America’s discovery as the crucial junc-

tures of European history.⁸² Daukantas relied on Heeren’s Ideen for his

reconstruction of the trading routes of ancient Lithuanians.⁸³ Palack

y’s

diaries and Kog

alniceanu’s library also provide evidence that they had

encountered Heeren’s works, but his impact remained perfunctory.

ENCOUNTERS WITH NIKOLAI KARAMZIN

Nikolai Karamzin (1766–1826), a foremost Russian author, enjoyed

considerable popularity on a European scale, as well as among four

of my historians. In his homeland, he edited numerous journals and

magazines and his contribution to the renewal of the Russian language

attracted much praise, whilst his sentimental stories were well-received

abroad. Karamzin’s major historical achievement, Istorija gosudarstva

rossijskago (1818–29, History of the Russian State) was a twelve-volume

⁸⁰ Horv

ath Mih

aly kisebb t¨ort´enelmi munk

ai, II. 21.

⁸¹ Jan Tuczy

nski, Herder i herderyzm w Polsce (Gda

nsk, 1999), 86.

⁸² The lectures appeared as Dzieła, Vol. III. (Warsaw 1959), under the title Wykłady

kursowe z historii powszechnej w uniwersytecie wile´nskim 1822–24.

⁸³ Daukantas, Raˇstai, II. 17.

Intellectual Background 125

opus which related the history of the Russians until 1611, and prompted

Alexander Pushkin to herald him as the Colombus of ancient Russia. Also

available in French and German translations, the Istorija contributed

to the awakening of international interest in Russia, especially after the

victories over Napoleon brought the Tsar’s empire into the limelight.

In a similar vein to Robertson’s celebrated introduction to the History

of Charles V , the ‘View of Progress’, Karamzin’s preface, enunciating

his philosophy of history and containing a pr

ecis of his interpretation

of Russian history, became the most widely read part of his work.

Karamzin divided Russian history into three distinct stages: pre-

political, monarchical and autocratic. He structured developments

around the ﬂuctuation between anarchy and authority, and he found

that the scale of anarchy was in inverse proportion to the extent of

the prince’s power and his concern for the welfare of the people. He

traced Russia’s greatness to benevolent autocracy, and the Istorija,an

extended ‘statesman’s handbook’, sought to unravel the development

of autocratic rule and how it could be most effectively sustained.⁸⁴ At

the same time, Karamzin maintained that the rule of the prince was not

absolute; it was challenged by the Slavic libertarian tradition, especially

the early Slavs’ public assemblies. He took pride in Russia’s oriental

heritage, in which he located the unique genius of the Russian people

and also asserted that his nation was on a par with other European coun-

tries. On the ideological front, not only was Karamzin a conservative

representative of the hereditary nobility, ﬁercely critical of liberalism

and the occidental culture of the West, but he also defended autocracy

and serfdom because he thought these could save Russia from foreign

invasion.⁸⁵

Karamzin provided inspiration for several members of the Slavic res

publica litteraria. In G. P. Gooch’s general survey on nineteenth-century

historical writing, Palack

y is characterized as ‘an avid reader of Karamzin

and Johannes von M

uller’, but it would be a gross exaggeration to assign

primacy to the Russian author in Palack

y’s very complex intellectual

world. His diary exhibits familiarity with Karamzin, but Lelewel appears

to have been more decisively inﬂuenced by the Russian scholar. In 1822

Lelewel published a review article on Karamzin’s Istrorija in the Russian

⁸⁴ R. E. McGrew, ‘Notes on the Princely Role in Karamzin’s Istorija Gosudarstva Rossijskago’,

American Slavic and East European Review 18:1 (1959), 13–14.

⁸⁵ Vladimir Rhyzkov, ‘Enlightenment, Freedom, and Civic Society in Nikolai Karamzin’s

Political Thought’, MA thesis (Budapest, Central European University, 2004), 13.

126 Intellectual Background

journal Severny Archiv (Northern Archive), in which he favourably

contrasted the achievements of the Polish Enlightenment historian

Adam Naruszewicz with those of Karamzin.⁸⁶ Carefully disguised under

historiographical criticism, this was nevertheless an ideological polemic

against the Russian scholar.⁸⁷ Lelewel began with the claim that ‘several

writers aspire to be historians but only very few can achieve that aim. It

is not difﬁcult to ﬁnd talented historians, but few display real maturity’:

the four scholars who met that criterion were Thucydides, Tacitus,

Robertson and Hume.⁸⁸ With this declaration my protagonist implied

that it was unwise for Karamzin to venture into historical writing; he

should have simply remained an author.⁸⁹

Lelewel was also dismayed that Karamzin’s ambition to teach politi-

cians and lawmakers how to govern Russia prompted him to focus on

the history of rulers and the state, to the detriment of the history of

the people. The impact of the new, professional standards of historical

writing was revealed in Lelewel’s dismissive attitude towards Karamzin’s

admired narrative skills; he declared that these were of secondary impor-

tance. While the review brought Lelewel popularity, Karamzin himself

did not take it seriously, declaring that his opponent’s nationality would

be defence enough. In response to criticism of his conservatism and

authoritarian tendencies, he added ironically that ‘at least I am liberal,

I allow them (i.e. his critiques) to say and to write what they wish’.⁹⁰

Despite this critical attitude and their fundamentally different political

stances, Lelewel’s arguments reveal similarities with Karamzin’s; espe-

cially noteworthy are their shared views on the unique democracy of

early Slavic communities, except that for Karamzin the ancient Russians,

and for Lelewel the early Poles, were seen as the foremost representatives

of democracy and equality. A further parallel is that, like Karamzin,

Lelewel also refuted occidentalism, the belief in the superiority and

exemplary nature of Western European values.

Daukantas’s view of Karamzin’s work was unaffected by the dis-

crepancy between his democratic tendencies and the Russian scholar’s

approval of authoritarianism.

⁸⁶ The revised version of his article was published as ‘Por

ownanie Karamzina z Narus-

zewiczem’, in Dzieła, II/2. 588–628.

⁸⁷ Frank Mocha, ‘The Karamzin–Lelewel Controversy’, Slavic Review 31:3 (1972), 600.

⁸⁸ Lelewel, Dzieła, II/2. 589.

⁸⁹ Mocha, ‘The Karamzin–Lelewel Controversy’, 600.

⁹⁰ J. L. Black, Nicholas Karamzin and Russian Society in the Nineteenth Century (Toronto,

1975), 143.

Intellectual Background 127

Karamzin’s Istorija assumed twofold relevance for Daukantas: he

employed it as a sourcebook whenever his narrative beneﬁted from

reference to Russian history, and secondly, Karamzin’s anti-Polish ten-

dencies rendered his arguments especially attractive for the Lithuanian

scholar. Daukantas was often inclined to ignore more obvious sources,

especially Polish ones, if he found them unsympathetic to the cause of

Lithuania. Karamzin’s verdict on Lithuanian history represented a more

appealing alternative; for example, his account was more favourable

towards the ancient pagan Lithuanians than were Polish chronicles,

emphasizing their bravery in warfare, and he also tended to be more

appreciative of Lithuanian rulers. Karamzin’s impact on Daukantas was

so great that the preface of Pasakojimas contained an acknowledgement

to him.⁹¹

Kog

alniceanu’s obvious fascination with Karamzin’s intellectual

world was evident in his inaugural lecture at the Mihailean Academy in

1843 in Ias¸i, Cuv

ant pentru deschiderea cursului de istorie nat¸ional

aîn

Academia Mih

ailean

a. This piece, an introduction to a lecture series on

Romanian history, extensively relied on the preface to Karamzin’s Is-

torija.Kog

alniceanu read the Russian scholar’s opus magnum in French

translation. L’histoire de l’empire de la Russie was published in Paris

simultaneously with the Russian original, initially under Karamzin’s

supervision. It is worth noting that a Romanian translation of the Is-

torija was also published in 1833.⁹² The ﬁrst part of Karamzin’s preface

contained a meditation on the meaning and purpose of history, paying

tribute to conventional topoi, in particular the magistra vitae,whilst

the second part highlighted the most crucial junctures in Russian his-

tory. Kog

alniceanu adopted this twofold structure for his own lecture.

The ﬁrst section was in fact a word-for-word translation of the ﬁrst

passages from Karamzin’s preface. Kog

alniceanu’s text indicated the

source of inspiration, although not the depth of his involvement with

Karamzin’s text:

After the contemplation of the world, after the wonders of nature, nothing is

more interesting, more noble or more worthy of our attention than History.

History, gentlemen,—as some of the most respected authors have remarked—is

the true account and presentation of the accomplishments of humankind; it

is the accumulation of ages and experiences. Therefore, it can legitimately be

called the voice of our predecessors and the icon of past times. Karamzin calls

⁹¹ Daukantas, Raˇstai,Vol.II.,8.

⁹² Drace Francis, The Making of Romanian Culture, 119.