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Heinrich Wilhelm Ludolf (20 December 1655 – 25 January 1712) was a German Pietist, secretary to Prince George of Denmark, and ecumenical traveller. He is known also as a linguist.

Life

Ludolf was the nephew of Hiob Ludolf the linguist. He acted as a Danish and as an English diplomat. A friend of August Hermann Francke, he travelled to Russia in the 1690s. He had persuaded Francke that the territories related to the Eastern Orthodox Church were important for the future. Gottfried Leibniz saw the importance of Ludolf's efforts on an even larger scale, bridging the gap to China.

Ludolf was also one of the founders of the Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge in London, and with Anton Wilhelm Böhme linked it to Francke's organisations in Halle.

Works

Ludolf's Grammatica Russica was published at Oxford in 1696. This Russian grammar had an introduction that showed, among other remarks, that Russian-speakers themselves distinguished between the spoken Russian language, and Church Slavonic.

Notes

1. Nicholas Hope (1999). German and Scandinavian Protestantism 1700-1918. Oxford University Press. pp. 123–. ISBN 978-0-19-826994-6.
2. Pieter N. Holtrop; C. H. Slechte (2007). Foreign Churches in St. Petersburg and Their Archives: 1703 - 1917. BRILL. p. 117. ISBN 978-90-04-16260-0.
3. W. R. Ward (11 April 2002). The Protestant Evangelical Awakening. Cambridge University Press. p. 304. ISBN 978-0-521-89232-2.
4. Franklin Perkins (19 February 2004). Leibniz and China: A Commerce of Light. Cambridge University Press. p. 132. ISBN 978-0-521-83024-9.
5. Norbert Finzsch; Robert Jütte (30 January 2003). Institutions of Confinement: Hospitals, Asylums, and Prisons in Western Europe and North America, 1500-1950. Cambridge University Press. p. 138. ISBN 978-0-521-53448-2.
6. The Structure and Development of Russian. CUP Archive. 1953. p. 142. GGKEY:24YXEZXTZLT.
7. Dunn, J. A. (1993). "What Was Ludolf Writing About?". The Slavonic and East European Review. 71 (2): 201–216. ISSN 0037-6795.

• 1655 births
• 1712 deaths
• Diplomats for Denmark
• German orientalists
• German Protestants
• German male non-fiction writers