Kai Donner

Karl Reinhold "Kai" Donner (1 April 1888 – 12 February 1935) was a Finnish linguist, ethnographer and politician. He carried out expeditions to the Ob-Ugric and Samoyedic peoples^[2] in Siberia 1911–1914 and was docent of Uralic languages at the University of Helsinki from 1924. He was considered a pioneer of modern anthropological fieldwork methods, though his work is little known in the English-speaking world.

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Kai Donner
Donner, 1916
Born	Karl Reinhold Donner (1888-04-01)1 April 1888 Helsinki, Grand Duchy of Finland
Died	12 February 1935(1935-02-12) (aged 46) Helsinki, Republic of Finland
Resting place	Hietaniemi Cemetery
Alma mater	University of Cambridge
Known for	Linguist, ethnographer
Spouse	Margareta von Bondsdorff (m. 1914)^[1]
Scientific career
Institutions	University of Helsinki

Donner was the son of professor (later senator) Otto Donner, himself a noted philologist, and Wilhelmina Sofia Charlotta Munck. Kai studied Finno-Ugric philology at the University of Helsinki from 1906. In 1909, he studied at Cambridge under James Frazer, A. C. Haddon, and W. H. R. Rivers at the same time as his better-known contemporary, Bronisław Malinowski. He earned a Master of Arts degree from the University of Helsinki in 1911, followed by a Licentiate in 1921 and a Doctorate in 1923.^[3]

Studying the Finno-Ugric-speaking peoples of Siberia had become an important part of the "national sciences" — Finno-Ugric philology and ethnology, folklore studies, and archaeology — that arose in answer to the interest in national "roots" that followed the "National Awakening" of the mid-19th century. Donner had decided early on that he wanted to follow in the footsteps of pioneer philologist and explorer M. A. Castrén (1813–1852) and study the peoples who lived beyond the Ural Mountains. On his first trip, he traveled along the upper reaches of the Ob and most of the Yenisey between 1911 and 1913. His second trip took him to the Ob, Irtysh, and upper Yenisei. Living with the Nenets and Khanty people, Donner studied not only the language but also the way of life and beliefs of his hosts. His travelogue, Bland Samojeder i Sibirien åren 1911–1913, 1914 ('Among the Samoyeds in Siberia in the years 1911–1913, 1914'), was first printed in 1915.

During World War I, Donner was active in the Jäger Movement which was secretly sending young men from Finland to Germany to receive military training in preparation for an armed struggle for independence from Imperial Russia. Betrayed to the Okhrana in 1916, he fled to Sweden and lived there and in Imperial Germany as a refugee until 1918. During his exile, he also served as acting legation secretary in Stockholm from 1917 to 1918. During the Finnish Civil War, Donner served as commander of the Terijoki crossing helping among others former minister of war, Sukhomlinov, and grand-duke Cyril Romanoff and his family to escape from revolutionary Russia. He was also active as second in command to the newly established Finnish Military Intelligence. From 1918 to 1919, he was titled Commander of the Finnish and Russian borderland. He was a close friend of General Mannerheim and wrote the first authoritative biography of Mannerheim.

In the 1920s and early 1930s, Donner was one of the more influential leaders of the far-right Lapua Movement. He was editor-in-chief of the political journal Suunta from 1920 to 1922 and served as a presidential elector in 1931. Finland-Swedish by mother tongue, he expressed reservations about the persecution of Swedish speakers, which was commonly supported by conservative Finns in those decades.

He was the father of the Finnish politician and film producer Jörn Donner and geologist Joakim Donner. He is buried in the Hietaniemi Cemetery in Helsinki.^[4]

Biography

Works

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