Kuhn, Nikolai Albertovich

Father, Albert Frantsevich, was an educated man, was fond of science, knew Russian culture well; had German and Anglo-Scottish roots. Mother, Antonina Nikolaevna, from the noble family of the Ignatievs , was a very capable pianist, student of Rubinstein and Tchaikovsky.

After graduating in 1903 with a diploma of the first degree and a prestigious award to them. Sazikova for the essay, the historical and philological faculty of Moscow University , he was left at the university, but because of his participation in the student movement, the performance was not approved by the trustee of the Moscow school district and he began to work in the Tver female teacher’s seminary named after P. P. Maksimovich ^{[1] [2]} . In 1905, he worked at the University of Berlin with Professor Meyer and at the Museum of Ethnology. At the end of 1906 he returned to Tver; was elected chairman of the board of the Tver private real school. With the opening of the People’s University in Tver in January 1907, he lectured in it on the history of culture.

In 1908, he was elected professor of the general history of the Moscow Higher Women's Pedagogical Courses D.I. Tikhomirova , where he lectured until the courses closed in 1918. At the same time, he lectured at the Moscow Society of People’s Universities, taught history at educational institutions of Moscow (in 1915, according to the yearbook All Moscow, he taught at the G. Shelaputin Gymnasium ).

In 1911-1912, he led excursions of Russian teachers in Rome , lectured in Roman museums on the history of ancient art, the Roman Forum, and the Palatine . Since 1915 - professor at Moscow City University. A. L. Shanyavsky at the Department of the History of Religions. Since 1916, he is a professor at the Nizhny Novgorod City People's University .

Since 1920, N. A. Kun is a professor at the Department of Social Sciences at Moscow State University . At the same time he taught the history of culture at the 1st Moscow Pedagogical Institute (1918-1925). In the 1920s, N. A. Kun also taught at the Moscow State Musical College named after Rimsky-Korsakov, the so-called "People’s Conservatory", in the village of Cherkizovo .

From 1935 until the end of his life, he was a professor of MIFLI .

Since 1933, he was editor of the Department of Ancient History of the Great Soviet Encyclopedia and the Lesser Soviet Encyclopedia , wrote several hundred articles and notes.

Married N.A. Kun was on Elena Frantsevna Roper (1871-1961). She came from an Anglo-Scottish family. As the twelfth child in the family, Elena Frantsevna lived with her elderly parents; conducted extensive business correspondence of her father in English, French and German. The marriage with the beginning scientist was not to the liking of Elena Frantsevna's parents, and they threatened her with the deprivation of inheritance. Before the marriage, Elena Frantsevna converted from the Church of England to Orthodoxy, and the day after the secret wedding, the young couple wrote together a waiver of inheritance.

In recent years, N. A. Kun spent at the cottage in Cherkizovsky Park . He died before reading his report, “The Emergence of the Cult of Serapis and the Religious Politics of the First Ptolemies,” which became his last work.

He was buried in the Cherkizovsky cemetery , where his children had been buried earlier: Antonina (1908-1924), who drowned in the river; Eugene (1902-1930), who died from tuberculosis and Hippolytus (1903-1932), who died from an injury.

Son Nikolai (1911-1942) died as a result of the shell shock received at the front.

He published the translation of “ Letters of Dark People ” (1907), wrote the books “Tales of African Peoples” (1910), “Mohammed and Mohammedanism” (1915), “Italy in 1914” (1915), two volumes of “Tales of the Gypsies” (1921) and 1922), “The Predecessors of Christianity (Eastern cultures in the Roman Empire)” (1922), “The Primeval Religion” (1922), “Tales of the Peoples of the Islands of the Great Ocean” (1922).

The book, written in 1914, "for high school and high school students, as well as for all those interested in the mythology of the Greeks and Romans," is still the most famous. Under its original title, “What the Ancient Greeks and Romans Told About Their Gods and Heroes,” the book was published in 1922 , 1937, and 1940. After 1940 (the last lifetime edition was signed for publication on September 17, 1940), it was repeatedly reprinted in mass editions, but with amendments introduced under the title Legends and Myths of Ancient Greece.

A significant amount of materials from the archive of N. A. Kun in 1989 was transferred by his granddaughter, Inna Ippolitovna Kun-Nemirovskaya, to the People’s Archive , an independent public documentation center.

• Natalya Potapova. Nikolay Albertovich Kun
• Biography
• Kun-Nemirovskaya I.I. My grandfather Nikolai Albertovich Kun
• Kuhn’s People’s Book // Literary Russia . - No. 24. - June 15, 2007.
• Kun Nikolay Albertovich (neopr.) . Chronicle of Moscow University . Date of treatment March 13, 2018.