VASMER, Rihard Vil’gelm (Georg Rihardovič, Richard Wilhelm Georg Vasmer). St.Petersburg 9/21.10.1888 — Taškent 22.2.1938.Russian Numismatist and Oriental Scholar. Born in a Lutheran family of German background, son of Richard Julius Friedrich Vasmer und Amalia Maria Julia Schaub. Educated in St.Petersburg. From 1906 studies of Arabic, Persian and Turkish at Leipzig and 1907-10 at St.Petersburg, where Bartol’d led him to numismatics. Worked in Ermitage cataloguing Oriental coin collections, served in WW I. From 1930 director of the department of Eastern numismatics in Ermitage. He was best known as a specialist of Cufic coins. Imprisoned in 1934 or 1936. He had been member of a non-communist party and kept contact with his brother, the Slavic linguist Max Vasmer (1886–1962), who was living in Germany (and wrongly accused of being a Nazi). Died of pneumonia in a camp, rehabilitated 1956. Married 1914 Alide Pavlovna Nipp.
Publications: “Sassanian Coins in the Ermitage”, NC 5:8, 1928, 249-334.
– Wrote on Muslim numismatics.
Sources: *German Wikipedia with photo (long article, but in *Russian version still much more); not in Miliband and in Vasil’kov & Sorokina.
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