Richard Vasmer

Richard Vasmer

Richard Richardovich Vasmer (German: Richard Wilhelm Georg Vasmer; Russianized forms: Roman Romanovich, Richard Richardovich, or Georgiy Richardovich; 9 October 1888 – 22 February 1938) was a Russian and Soviet numismatist and Orientalist-Arabist. According to I. Yu. Krachkovsky, Vasmer was "our foremost expert on Eastern, especially Muslim, numismatics". He was a foreign corresponding member of the Royal Swedish Academy of Letters, History and Antiquities (1929). Vasmer was the younger brother of the renowned German linguist, Slavist, and Balkanist Max Vasmer. Vasmer was born into a family of Russian Germans. He graduated from the Karl May Gymnasium, Leipzig University, and Saint Petersburg Imperial University. He was invited to work at the Hermitage Museum, where he cataloged Arabic coins in the museum's collection. He participated in World War I. In 1918, he returned to the Hermitage, serving as secretary of the Numismatics and Glyptics Section of the State Academy of the History of Material Culture. He was the chief curator of Eastern numismatics at the Hermitage until his arrest. Until 1925, he worked on the first Soviet exhibition of Eastern coins, after which he devoted himself entirely to scholarly work. He primarily studied the circulation of Arabic coins in medieval Eastern Europe, as well as numismatics as a source for the history of Eastern states. He pioneered research on coin hoard analysis, engaging in cartography and systematization of numismatic finds. He published over 50 works, with extensive unpublished manuscripts preserved in archives. Arrested in 1934 on fabricated charges in the "Russian National Party case", he was sentenced to ten years in a corrective labor camp. He died in a camp in Tashkent at the age of 49. He was rehabilitated in 1956.

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Ajit (newspaper).

Baskerville.

Richard Vasmer

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