Bodenstedt, FRIEDRICH MARTIN VON

Bodenstedt, FRIEDRICH MARTIN VON, born in Hanover, 22d April 1819. In 1840 he went to Moscow as a tutor, and there translated Pushkin's poems. After extensive travels in the Crimea, Turkey, Greece, and Asia Minor, he returned to Germany in 1847, and published Die Völker des Kaukasus (1848). He edited for some years the Weser Zeitung, and in 1854 was appointed professor of Slav languages at Munich, afterwards obtaining also the chair of Old English there. These posts he resigned in 1866 for the superintendence of the Meiningen court theatre, which he retained only till 1873. Bodenstedt published many translations from the Russian, English (Shakespeare), and Persian, and several volumes of poetry, including dramas and romances. His most popular work is the Lieder des Mirza Schaffy (1851; 143d ed. Berlin, 1893), feigned to be a translation from the Tartar. He published his autobiography in 1890, and Theodora, a narrative poem, in 1892. He died in April 1892.