George Ostrogorsky was born on this day in 1902. The Russian Revolution of 1917 caused representatives of Saint Petersburg (European) culture, whose names are now part of world culture, to come out of Russia: Vladimir Nabokov, George Vernadsky, Pitirim Sorokin, Ivan Bunin, Igor Stravinsky, to name just a few. George Ostrogorsky was born in Saint Petresburg in 1902. His education in a classical gymnasium there became a lifelong investment. It takes years to develop expertise in Byzantine Greek – therefore, like with music, it is important to start early. In 1919, George graduated from the gymnasium, and in 1920, he left for Finland with his family. The second husband of Ostrogorsky’s mother, Anna Konstantinovna, was Vasily (William) Sommer, an ethnic German from Riga. This fact may explain why Ostrogorsky enrolled in Heidelberg University in Germany. There, in 1925, he defended his dissertation on the rural tax community in 10th-century Byzantium (Die ländliche Steuergemeinde des byzantinischen Reiches im X Jahrhundert, Vierteljahresschrift für Sozial- und Wirtschaftsgeschichte 20 [1927]: 1–108.). It is hard not to see the Marxist theory's influence in studying world history through the prism of economic relationships. Similarly to another Russian expat, the philosopher Nicholas Arseniev, who taught in Königsberg, Ostrogorsky took a teaching post in Breslau (as a Privatdozent). I wrote “similarly” because both places “changed hands” after World War II. Ostrogorsky can be best compared to the Russian historian of the Russian Church, Igor K. Smolitch (1898–1970), who wrote in German. In honing his teaching and research expertise (Habilitationsschrift), Ostrogorsky wrote on theological and ideological problems, focusing on Byzantine iconoclasm. With the victory of the National Socialist Party in Germany in 1933, Ostrogorsky became concerned that his Jewish ancestry on his father’s side could prevent him from holding a teaching post. In the same year, he moved to Belgrade and accepted a position as Chair for Byzantine Studies. Nevertheless, Ostrogorsky’s magnum opus, the History of the Byzantine State, came out for the first time in Germany in 1940. This is the very Russian title (history of the state!) alluding to the famous Karamzin's title. Apparently, due to his contributions to scholarship in Yugoslavia, Ostrogorsky avoided deportation from Yugoslavia along with many Russians following Tito’s breakup with Stalin (Informbiro Period). He was even able to visit Moscow and publish his articles in the USSR. With this life trajectory, he resembles one of the last Russian imperial canonists, Prof. Sergei V. Troitsky (1878–1972), who also became a Yugoslav scholar. Ostogorsky’s name belongs to the same cohort of Russian Byzantinists abroad as those of Alexander Vasiliev (b. Saint Petersburg, 1867–d. Frederiksberg, VA, 1953), Dimitri Obolensky (b. Saint Peterburg, 1918–d. Burford, UK, 2001), or Fr. John Meyendorff (b. Neuilly-sur-Seine, France, 1926–d. Montreal, Canada, 1992). In their “In memoriam” to Ostrogorsky, William Huse Dunham, Jr., Ernst Kitzinger, and Ihor Sevčenko wrote: “Throughout his life, Ostrogorsky remained attached to his Russian background and retained his love for Russian literature – he even said that had he remained in Russia he would have studied that literature rather than Byzantium – and it is worth noting that the first and the last items in his bibliography were written in Russian.” To this, I would like to add my hope that Ostrogorsky’s words in his letter to Nicholas P. Toll (Nikolai Petrovich Toll’) in Prague, written in 1933, where Ostrogorsky identified himself as a Russian Orthodox, remained true until the end of his life in 1976. Sources: Memoirs of Fellows and Corresponding Fellows of the Mediaeval Academy of America, Speculum 52. 3 (July1977): 774-776. Priest Igor Ivanov, “Iugoslavskii akademik G.A.Ostrogorskii (1902-1976) i ego raboty o iizantiiskom ikonopochitanii,” [The Yugoslavian Academic G.A.Ostrogorskii (1902-1976) and His Works on Icon Veneration in Byzantium], Khristianskoe chtenie [Christian Reading] 2 (1917). |
