Sigismund von Herberstein

Siegmund (Sigismund) Freiherr von Herberstein, (or Baron Sigismund von Herberstein), (b.August 23, 1486 - March 28, 1566), Austrian diplomat, writer and historian. He was most noted for his extensive writing on the geography, history and customs of Russia and contributed greatly to early Western European knowledge of that area.

External links and References

• the primary source of material on Herberstein is Marshall Poe's publications, particularly A People Born To Slavery': Russia in Early Modern European Ethnography (Cornell UP). This is not available online, but he has several books at http://www.amazon.com
• for the Russian text of Herberstein's book, see http://stepanov01.narod.ru/library/herb/herb00.htm
• Internet searches yield some other sites with fragmentary information, although a lot is derived from Poe's works, and most of the rest from Rerum Moscoviticarum Commentarii - but since this was the major work of the time in that field, this is not surprising.
• for the derivation of tsar and Herberstein's contribution of czar, see the Oxford English Dictionary, 2nd edition, entry on tsar.