author
Heinrich Moritz Gottlieb Grellmann
1756–1804
A late-18th-century German scholar of statistics and cultural history, he is best known for an influential early study of the Romani people that circulated widely in translation. His career took him from Jena and Göttingen to an appointment in Moscow, where he died in 1804.
1 Audiobook
Dissertation on the Gipseys Representing their manner of life, family economy, occupations & trades, marriages & education, sickness, death, & burial, religion, language, sciences & arts, &c. &c. &c.; with an historical enquiry concerning their origin & first appearance in Europe
by Heinrich Moritz Gottlieb Grellmann
About the author
Born in Jena on December 7, 1756, Heinrich Moritz Gottlieb Grellmann was educated in Weimar and studied first at Jena and then at Göttingen. He built his academic career there, becoming an associate professor in 1787 and a full professor in 1794.
Grellmann is remembered chiefly for Die Zigeuner, published in Göttingen in 1783 and later expanded in a second edition. The book was treated as an early scholarly study of the Romani people and was translated into other languages, which helped spread his work across Europe.
He also worked as a statistician and cultural historian. In 1804 he was appointed professor of statistics at the University of Moscow, but he died there the same year, on October 13, 1804.