Miklosich, FRANZ VON

Miklosich, FRANZ VON, the greatest of Slavonic scholars, was born at Lützenburg, in the Slovenian part of Styria, 20th November 1813. After studying law at Gratz University, he went in 1838 to Vienna to practise as an advocate, but was led by Kopitar to the study of philology, and in 1844 obtained a post in the Imperial Library. From 1850 to 1885 he was professor of Slavonic at Vienna, in 1851 being elected to the Academy, and knighted in 1869. He died 7th March 1891. His works, nearly thirty in number, include Radices Linguae Palæoslovenicæ (1845); Lexicon Linguae Palæoslovenicæ (1850); Vergleichende Grammatik der Slavischen Sprachen (4 vols. 1852-74), which has done for Slavonic what Grimm and Diez have done for the German and the Romance languages; Die Bildung der Slavischen Personennamen (1860); Ueber die Mundarten und die Wanderungen der Zigeuner Europas (12 parts, 1872-80); Rumunische Untersuchungen (1882); and Etymologisches Wörterbuch der Slavischen Sprachen (1886).