Abstract
In 1727 a new rank was created at the two-year-old Imperial Russian Academy of Arts and Sciences, that of adjunct. The appointees to this post were G.-F. Müller (1705–83), J.-G. Gmelin (1709–55), L. Euler (1707–83), J. Weitbrecht (1702–47), and G. W. Krafft (1701–54).1 Müller, Krafft and Weitbrecht had been in St Petersburg since 1725, the year in which the Academy was established. The others arrived in 1727. Müller came to Russia as a student in the academy university and as a teacher of Latin and history in its gymnasium. Weitbrecht, a physiologist, and Krafft, a mathematician, also taught in the gymnasium. Gmelin, Krafft and Weitbrecht all had magisters from the university in Tübingen, Müller had studied literature and history at Leipzig, and Euler had earned a magister in mathematics at Basel. Krafft was the eldest at twenty-six; Gmelin was only eighteen. Müller, who with Gmelin will serve as a focal point of this chapter, was twenty-two. Müller and Euler were to have the most distinguished careers at the Academy. They both died in 1783 after serving the two longest periods of tenure as members in the Academy’s history.2
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Notes and References
For general and documentary information on these adjuncts, see P. Pekarskiy, Istoriya Imperatorskoy Akademii Nauk v Peterburge, I, St Petersburg, 1870;
Yu. Kh. Kopelevich, Osnovaniye Peterburgskoy Akademii Nauk, Leningrad, 1977; Materialy dlya istorii Imperatorskoy Akademii Nauk, 10 vols, St Petersburg, 1886–1900 (hereafter, Materialy); Protokoly zasedaniy konferentsii Imperatorskoy Akademii Nauk s 1725 po 1803 goda, vol. 1 (1725–43) St Petersburg, 1897.
For further information on Müller, see J. L. Black, G.-F. Müller and the Imperial Russian Academy, Toronto, 1986; for Müller and Euler,
see E. Winter and A. P. Yushkevich (eds), Der Briefwechsel L. Eulers mit G. F. Müller 1733–1767, vol. 1: Die Berliner und die Petersburger Akademie der Wissenschaften im Briefwechsel Leonhards Eulers, Berlin, 1959. Euler left Russia in 1741 for the academy in Berlin. But he remained an honorary member even during the Seven Years War when Russia and Prussia were on opposite sides. He returned to St Petersburg to stay in 1766. Müller left the capital to live in Moscow in 1765, where he continued to serve the Academy in a variety of capacities, including that of the Academy’s official delegate to Catherine II’s famous Legislative Assembly.
In 1716, G. W. Leibniz tried to persuade Peter I to explore Siberia, as had F. S. Saltykov, one of Peter’s more prominent diplomats, in 1714; see V. Ger’e, Sbornik pisem i memorialov Leibnitsa otnosyashchikhsya k Rossii i Petru Velikomu, St Petersburg, 1873, p. 360; and ‘Propozitsii Fedora Saltykova’, in Pamyatniki drevney pis’mennosti i iskusstva, 83:5 (Series 4), St Petersburg, 1891, pp. 22, 24.
On Strahlenberg and Messerschmidt, see E. P. Zinner, Sibir’ v izvestiyakh zapadnoyevropeyskikh puteshestvennikov i uchenykh XVIII veka, Vostochno-sibirskoye, 1968.
On the Tatishchev proposal, see L. V. Cherepnin. Russkaya istoriografiya do XIX veka, Moscow, 1957, p. 165.
On Bering, see Raymond H. Fisher, Bering’s Voyages: Whither and Why, Seattle, 1977;
P. Lauridsen, Vitus Bering: The Discoverer of Bering Straits, New York, 1969;
F. A. Golder, Bering’s Voyages, 2 vols, New York, 1922–3;
L. S. Berg, Otkrytiye Kamchatki i kamchatskiye ekspeditsii Beringa, 1725–1742, Moscow-Leningrad, 1946.
Müller, ‘Zur Geschichte der Akademie der Wissenschaften zu S. Petersburg’, in Materialy, 6, St. Petersburg 1890, p. 253; A Letter from a Russian Sea-Officer to a Person of Distinction at the Court of St. Petersburg, London, 1754, pp. 11–12.
Gmelin, Reise durch Sibirien von dem Jahr 1733–1743, I, Göttingen, 1751, p. x;
Müller, Istoriya Sibiri, I, Moscow-Leningrad, 1937, pp. 460–1.
See, besides the titles mentioned above, J. L. Black, ‘G.-F. Müller and the Russian Academy of Sciences Contingent in the Second Kamchatka Expedition, 1733–43’, Canadian Slavonic Papers, 25, 2, June 1983, pp. 235–52; and
M. O. Kosven. ‘Etnograficheskiye rezul’taty Velikoy Severnoy Ekspeditsii 1733–1743 gg.’ in Sibirskiy etnograficheskiy sbornik, 3, 1961, pp. 167–212.
For an English-language survey of the dispute which led to Müller’s disgrace, see D. Obolensky, ‘The Varangian-Russian Controversy: The First Round’, in H. Lloyd-Jones (ed.), History and Imagination: Essays in Honour of H. R. Trevor-Roper, London, 1981, pp. 322–42.
On the ‘Gmelin affair’ see L. A. Maier, ‘Der Krise der St. Petersburger Akademie der Wissenschaften nach der Thronbesteignung Elisabeth Petrovna und die “Affäre Gmelin”’, Jahrbücher für Geschichte Osteuropas, 27, 3, 1979, pp. 353–73; Materialy, 9, pp. 427–32; Die Berliner, 2, 1961, pp. 202–3.
The Müller essay was printed in Nouvelle bibliothèque germanique, 13, 1753, pp. 46–87; the English language version is cited in note 11 (above). See also L. Breitfuss, ‘Early Maps of North-Eastern Asia and of the Lands around the North Pacific: Controversy between G. F. Müller and N. Delisle’, Imago Mundi, 3, 1939, pp. 87–99; and
Raymond H. Fisher, The Voyage of Semen Dezhnev in 1648: Bering’s Precursor, London, 1981, pp. 5–6.
Müller’s ‘memoir’ appeared on the following pages of ‘Zur Geschichte’ (1890): 252–4, 269–71, 279–87, 340–66, 383–422. They have been translated into English by Professor D. K. Buse in D. K. Buse and J. L. Black (eds), G.-F. Müller in Siberia, 1733–43, Kingston, Ontario, 1988.
These punishments were observed in Krasnoyarsk: Reise, 3 (14 November 1739), p. 354; (15 July 1740), pp. 447–8. The first woman had already spent twelve years in prison. The second had cut off her husband’s head, ‘in jealousy’. She died after five days, Gmelin said, either of starvation or plagues of insects.
Müller, ‘Zur Geschichte’, p. 401 see also Maier, ‘Gerhard Friedrich Müller’s Memoranda on Russian Relations with China and the Reconquest of the Amur’, Slavonic and East European Review, 59, 2, April 1918, pp. 219–40.
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© 1989 School of Slavonic and East European Studies. University of London
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Black, J.L. (1989). J.-G. Gmelin and G.-F. Müller in Siberia, 1733–43: A Comparison of their Reports. In: Wood, A., French, R.A. (eds) The Development of Siberia. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-349-20378-9_3
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