Friedrich Rossel - Leo Tolstoy's first home tutor

Based on memoirs and archive data, the author introduces and describes Leo Tolstoy’s fi rst home tutor the German Friedrich Rössel, who educated the boy from 1833 to 1841. Rössel arrived in Yasnaya Polyana in 1829, living there until his death in 1848. He served as the children’s home tutor. In Tolstoy’s home he was called Friedrich Ivanovich, and he appears in Russian literature under the name of Karl Ivanich Mauer from Tolstoy’s autobiographical novel “Childhood. Adolescence. Youth”. In the article the author reveals the role of the fi rst foreign home tutor in the formation of the future classicist’s personality. When Tolstoy was an old man, he remembered his teacher’s kindness a quality Rössel managed to teach his young pupil.