Samuel Bogumił Linde (born Samuel Gottlieb Linde;Toruń, 11 or 24 April 1771 – 8 August 1847,Warsaw) was a Polishlinguist,librarian, andlexicographer of Swedish-German extraction. He was director of the Prussian-foundedWarsaw Lyceum during its existence (1804–31) and an important figure in thePolish Enlightenment.
Samuel Gottlieb Linde was born in Toruń,Crown of Poland, which 22 years later, after his birth, as a result of theSecond Partition of Poland, became a city under the rule of the King of Prussia (Prussian Poland), to Jan Jacobsen Linde, a master locksmith and member of the city council who had immigrated fromSweden, and Anna Barbara,née Langenhann. His mother's family originated fromCoburg.[1] His second nameGottlieb has been rendered in Polish asBogumił. Linde came from a German-speaking family but learned the Polish language in Leipzig in order to serve as alector of Polish atUniversity of Leipzig where he had previously studied theology and philology. In 1793 he began to collaborate with supporters of theConstitution of 3 May 1791. During theKościuszko Uprising (1794) he was in Warsaw and supportedHugo Kołłątaj.
In 1795–1803 he was a librarian toJózef Maksymilian Ossoliński and began gathering material for his future dictionary for Polish and other Slavic grammar and expressions by traveling for six years through Galicia and to Moldova. He became director at the newly established Königlich-Preußisches Lyzäum in Warsaw, the laterWarsaw Lyceum (1804–31).Linde hiredFrédéric Chopin's father,Nicolas Chopin, as a teacher ofFrench language. The composer himself studied at the Lyceum in 1823–26.
Linde was aLutheran and he was instrumental in establishing the Lutheran community in Warsaw. He is buried at theEvangelical Cemetery of the Augsburg Confession in Warsaw. Linde married Ludwika Nussbaum, originally from Switzerland. Their daughter Ludwika Emilia Izabela marriedLeopold Otto, a Lutheran pastor.
Linde's major work wasSłownik języka polskiego [pl] (Dictionary of the Polish Language), a six-volume monolingualdictionary, of lasting importance forSlaviclexicography, published in Warsaw in 1807–14. It was the first major dictionary of the Polish language.[2][3] The second edition was published posthumously inLemberg (Polish Lwów, now Lviv) in 1854–1861. Both editions are now present in several digital libraries.
