The New International Encyclopædia/Leskien, August

LESKIEN, lĕs'kḗ-en, August (1840—). A German philologist. He was born at Kiel and studied there, at Leipzig, and at Jena, where he specialized in Slavic linguistics under Schleicher (1866-67), and was made professor of comparative philology in 1869. A year later he went to Leipzig to give the first course there in Slavic languages. With Burgmann he edited Litauische Volkslieder und Märchen (1882). In 1884 he became an editor of Ersch and Gruber's Realencyklopädie. His other writings include: Indogermanische Chrestomathie, with Ebel, Schleicher, and Schmidt (1869); Handbuch der altbulgarischen Sprache (3d ed. 1898); Die Deklination im Slawisch-Litauischen und Germanischen (1876); Untersuchungen über Quantität und Betonung in den slawischen Sprachen (1885-93); and Die Bildung der Nomina im Litauischen (1891).