Friedrich Braun or Fyodor Aleksandrovich Braun (20 July 1862 – 14 June 1942) was a

Russia Russia, or the Russian Federation, is a country spanning Eastern Europe and North Asia. It is the list of countries and dependencies by area, largest country in the world, and extends across Time in Russia, eleven time zones, sharing Borders ...

n- German scholar who provided philological and mythological backing for the Normanist theory. Braun came to study Scandinavian and Germanic epics on the advice of Alexander Veselovsky. He graduated from

St. Petersburg University Saint Petersburg State University (SPBGU; ) is a public research university in Saint Petersburg, Russia, and one of the oldest and most prestigious universities in Russia. Founded in 1724 by a decree of Peter the Great, the university from the be ...

in 1885 (with a gold medal for his thesis on ''

Beowulf ''Beowulf'' (; ) is an Old English poetry, Old English poem, an Epic poetry, epic in the tradition of Germanic heroic legend consisting of 3,182 Alliterative verse, alliterative lines. It is one of the most important and List of translat ...

'') and was a lecturer at the Bestuzhev Courses. He was appointed dean of the university's department of history and philology in 1905. His major writings, including an 1899 monograph on the relations between the

Goths The Goths were a Germanic people who played a major role in the fall of the Western Roman Empire and the emergence of medieval Europe. They were first reported by Graeco-Roman authors in the 3rd century AD, living north of the Danube in what is ...

and Ancient

Slavs The Slavs or Slavic people are groups of people who speak Slavic languages. Slavs are geographically distributed throughout the northern parts of Eurasia; they predominantly inhabit Central Europe, Eastern Europe, Southeastern Europe, and ...

, concern the history of Germanic peoples in Eastern Europe. In 1920 Professor Braun was sent on a business trip to Germany, where he decided to remain. He joined the staff of the

Leipzig University Leipzig University (), in Leipzig in Saxony, Germany, is one of the world's oldest universities and the second-oldest university (by consecutive years of existence) in Germany. The university was founded on 2 December 1409 by Frederick I, Electo ...

in 1922 and published a paper in support of the

Japhetic theory In linguistics, the Japhetic hypothesis or Japhetic theory of Soviet linguist Nikolay Yakovlevich Marr (1864–1934) postulated that the Kartvelian languages of the Caucasus area are related to the Semitic languages of the Middle East. The h ...

. He retired from teaching 10 years later.Dictionary of Russian emigres
/ref> Elena Rydzevskaya and Viktor Zhirmunsky were among his disciples. In 1933 Braun signed the '' Vow of allegiance of the Professors of the German Universities and High-Schools to Adolf Hitler and the National Socialistic State''.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Braun, Fyodor German Germanists Philologists from the Russian Empire German philologists Germanic studies scholars Mythographers 1862 births 1942 deaths Saint Petersburg State University alumni Academic staff of Saint Petersburg State University Immigrants to Germany