ABSTRACT
George Ostrogorsky, eminent twentieth-century Byzantinist and socioeconomic historian, was born on 19 January 1902, in St. Petersburg, Russia, and died on 24 October 1976 in Belgrade, Yugoslavia. The son of Alexandra Konstantinovna Leman and Alexander Yakovlievitch Ostrogorsky, himself an educator, the young Ostrogorsky attended the classical gymnasium, where he learned Greek. Completing his studies, Ostrogorsky left his native city with his family after the Bolshevik revolution and ended up in Germany, where he eventually became a student of philosophy and sociology at the prestigious University of Heidelberg (1921). It was there that this man who always felt a great affinity for Russian literature first came in contact with and developed an interest in Byzantine studies.
