Juri Lotman was born in Petrograd

February 28 1922

Juri Lotman was born in Petrograd (now Saint Petersburg) to a family of Jewish Russian intellectuals. His parents moved to Petrograd from Odessa. His father Mikhail Lotman (1882—1942) was a lawyer educated in the St Petersburg University. He died during the Siege of Leningrad in 1942, when Lotman was at the front. His mother Aleksandra Lotman (1889—1963) was a Sorbonne-educated dentist.

Juri Lotmani vanemad 1913. aastal. Fotograaf: Jossif Otsup (M. Lotmani kodulehelt)

Juri Lotman was the youngest of their four children. The oldest daughter Inna Obraztsova (1915-1999) was a composer who graduated from the Leningrad Conservatory. The middle daughter Lidia Lotman (1917-2011) was a literary scholar who worked at the Institute for Russian Literature of the Russian Academy of Sciences (Pushkin House). The youngest daughter (1919-2003) was a cardiologist.

The Lotman family home was located on the Nevsky Prospect.

Elurada

Without the semiosphere, language not only does not function, it does not exist. The different substructures of the semiosphere are linked in their interaction and cannot function without the support of each other. This is the sense of semiosphere in the contemporary world, steadily expanding into space over the centuries, it has now taken on a global character, and includes within itself the call signs of satellites, the verse of poets and the cry of animals. The interdependence of these elements of the semiosphere is not metaphorical, but a reality.

Juri Lotman “Semiosfäärist”. Rmt: Semiosfäärist. Tallinn: Vagabund 1999