Alexander Borisovich Lakier (1825-1870) was a Russia

Russia

Russia or , officially known as both Russia and the Russian Federation , is a country in northern Eurasia. It is a federal semi-presidential republic, comprising 83 federal subjects...

n historian of German

Germany

Germany , officially the Federal Republic of Germany , is a federal parliamentary republic in Europe. The country consists of 16 states while the capital and largest city is Berlin. Germany covers an area of 357,021 km2 and has a largely temperate seasonal climate...

 descent who was interested in heraldry

Heraldry

Heraldry is the profession, study, or art of creating, granting, and blazoning arms and ruling on questions of rank or protocol, as exercised by an officer of arms. Heraldry comes from Anglo-Norman herald, from the Germanic compound harja-waldaz, "army commander"...

.

Alexander Lakier was born in the city of Taganrog

Taganrog

Taganrog is a seaport city in Rostov Oblast, Russia, located on the north shore of Taganrog Bay , several kilometers west of the mouth of the Don River. Population: -History of Taganrog:...

 in 1825. His father, Boris Lakier, a convert from Judaism, was the doctor who certified the death of the late Russian Emperor Alexander I of Russia

Alexander I of Russia

Alexander I of Russia , served as Emperor of Russia from 23 March 1801 to 1 December 1825 and the first Russian King of Poland from 1815 to 1825. He was also the first Russian Grand Duke of Finland and Lithuania....

 who died in Taganrog in 1825.

Lakier graduated from the Legal Dept. of the Moscow University and defended his thesis with On Domains and Estates (O Votchinah i Pomestyakh) released in Saint Petersburg

Saint Petersburg

Saint Petersburg is a city and a federal subject of Russia located on the Neva River at the head of the Gulf of Finland on the Baltic Sea...

 in 1848. In 1856-1858, Lakier traveled across Europe

Europe

Europe is, by convention, one of the world's seven continents. Comprising the westernmost peninsula of Eurasia, Europe is generally 'divided' from Asia to its east by the watershed divides of the Ural and Caucasus Mountains, the Ural River, the Caspian and Black Seas, and the waterways connecting...

, Palestine

Palestine

Palestine is a conventional name, among others, used to describe the geographic region between the Mediterranean Sea and the Jordan River, and various adjoining lands....

 and the United States of America. He kept a travel diary, fragments of which were published in Sovremennik

Sovremennik

Sovremennik was a Russian literary, social and political magazine, published in St. Petersburg in 1836-1866. It came out four times a year in 1836-1843 and once a month after that...

 (1858), Russkiy Vestnik (1858) and were later included in the book The Travel Through North American States, Canada and Cuba, which was published in Saint Petersburg in 1859. In 1858, Alexander Lakier entered the Russian Ministry of Internal Affairs, where he was involved in statistics work and worked as editor in the commission on liberation of peasants. In 1860, he returned to Taganrog

Taganrog

Taganrog is a seaport city in Rostov Oblast, Russia, located on the north shore of Taganrog Bay , several kilometers west of the mouth of the Don River. Population: -History of Taganrog:...

, where he worked as lawyer.

Alexander Lakier published The History of Russian Sovereigns' Titles (1847), On Service in Russia before Peter The Great Times (Saint Petersburg, 1850), Review of Relations between Russia and England in 16th and 17th Centuries (1854) and other. His most famous work was "Russian Heraldry" (Saint Petersburg, 1855). This oeuvre is still a valuable reference, where Lakier made an attempt to analyze and explain coats of arms of Russian dukes and nobility. The volume also featured the history of Russian stamps - unique until early 20th century.