Alexander Hilferding

Alexander Hilferding (also spelled Aleksandar Fedorovich Giljferding; Russian: Александр Фёдорович Гильферди́нг; 14 July [O.S. 2 July] 1831 – 2 July [O.S. 20 June] 1872) was a Russian linguist and folklorist of German descent who collected some 318 bylinas in the Russian North.

A native of Warsaw, he assisted Nikolay Milyutin in reforming the administration of the Kingdom of Poland. In the late 1850s, he was a Russian diplomatic agent in Bosnia; he published several books about the country and its folklore, thanks to the collaborative efforts of Prokopije Čokorilo. Hilferding was elected into the St. Petersburg Academy of Sciences as a corresponding member in 1856. He died of typhoid while collecting folk songs in Kargopol, in the north of European Russia, and was later reburied in the Novodevichy Cemetery, St. Petersburg. Hilferding's collection of Slavonic manuscripts is preserved in the Russian National Library.