Page:EB1911 - Volume 15.djvu/817

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788
KIELCE—KIEV

populations in 1897, are Kielce (q.v.), Jedrzejow (Russ. Andreyev, 5010), Miechow (4156), Olkusz (3491), Pinczów (8095), Stopnica (4659) and Wloszczowa (23,065).


KIELCE, a town of Russian Poland, capital of the above government, 152 m. by rail S. of Warsaw, situated in a picturesque hilly country. Pop. (1890), 12,775; (1897), 23,189. It has a castle, built in 1638 and for some time inhabited by Charles XII.; it was renowned for its portrait gallery and the library of Zaluski, which was taken to St Petersburg. The squares and boulevards are lined with handsome modern buildings. The principal factories are hemp-spinning, cotton-printing and cement works. The town was founded in 1173 by a bishop of Cracow. In the 16th century it was famous for its copper mines, but they are no longer worked.


KIEPERT, HEINRICH (1818–1899), German geographer, was born at Berlin on the 31st of July 1818. He was educated at the university there, studying especially history, philology and geography. In 1840–1846, in collaboration with Karl Ritter, he issued his first work, Atlas von Hellas und den hellenischen Kolonien, which brought him at once into eminence in the sphere of ancient historical cartography. In 1848 his Historisch-geographischer Atlas der alten Welt appeared, and in 1854 the first edition of the Atlas antiquus, which has obtained very wide recognition, being issued in English, French, Russian, Dutch and Italian. In 1894 Kiepert produced the first part of a larger atlas of the ancient world under the title Formae orbis antiqui; his valuable maps in Corpus inscriptionum latinarum must also be mentioned. In 1877–1878 his Lehrbuch der alten Geographie was published, and in 1879 Leitfaden der alten Geographie, which was translated into English (A Manual of Ancient Geography, 1881) and into French. Among Kiepert’s general works one of the most important was the excellent Neuer Handatlas über alle Teile der Erde (1855 et seq.), and he also compiled a large number of special and educational maps. Asia Minor was an area in which he took particular interest. He visited it four times in 1841–1888; and his first map (1843–1846), together with his Karte des osmanischen Reiches in Asien (1844 and 1869), formed the highest authority for the geography of the region. Kiepert was professor of geography in the university of Berlin from 1854. He died at Berlin on the 21st of April 1899. He left unpublished considerable material in various departments of his work, and with the assistance of this his son Richard (b. 1846), who followed his father’s career, was enabled to issue a map of Asia Minor in 24 sheets, on a scale of 1: 400,000 (1902 et seq.), and to carry on the issue of Formae orbis antiqui.


KIERKEGAARD, SÖREN AABY (1813–1855), Danish philosopher, the seventh child of a Jutland hosier, was born in Copenhagen on the 5th of May 1813. As a boy he was delicate, precocious and morbid in temperament. He studied theology at the university of Copenhagen, where he graduated in 1840 with a treatise On Irony. For two years he travelled in Germany, and in 1842 settled finally in Copenhagen, where he died on the 11th of November 1855. He had lived in studious retirement, subject to physical suffering and mental depression. His first volume, Papers of a Still Living Man (1838), a characterization of Hans Andersen, was a failure, and he was for some time unnoticed. In 1843 he published Euten—Eller (Either—or) (4th ed., 1878), the work on which his reputation mainly rests; it is a discussion of the ethical and aesthetic ideas of life. In his last years he carried on a feverish agitation against the theology and practice of the state church, on the ground that religion is for the individual soul, and is to be separated absolutely from the state and the world. In general his philosophy was a reaction against the speculative thinkers—Steffens (q.v.), Niels Treschow (1751–1833) and Frederik Christian Sibbern (1785–1872); it was based on the absolute dualism of Faith and Knowledge. His chief follower was Rasmus Nielsen (1809–1884) and he was opposed by Georg Brandes, who wrote a brilliant account of his life and works. As a dialectician he has been described as little inferior to Plato, and his influence on the literature of Denmark is considerable both in style and in matter. To him Ibsen owed his character Brand in the drama of that name.

See his posthumous autobiographical sketch, Syns punktetfor min Forfattervirksomhed (“Standpoint of my Literary Work”); Georg Brandes, Sören Kierkegaard (Copenhagen, 1877); A. Bärthold, Noten zu K.’s Lebensgeschichte (Halle, 1876), Die Bedeutung der ästhetischen Schriften S. Kierkegaarde (Halle, 1879) and S. K.’s Persönlichkeit in ihrer Verwirklichung der Ideale (Gütersloh, 1886); F. Petersen, S. K.’s Christendomsforkyndelae (Christiania, 1877). For Kierkegaard’s relation to recent Danish thought, see Höffding’s Archiv für Geschichte der Philosophie (1888), vol. ii.


KIEV, Kieff, or Kiyeff, a government of south-western Russia, conterminous with those of Minsk, Poltava, Chernigov, Podolia, Kherson and Volhynia; area 19,686 sq. m. It represents a deeply trenched plateau, 600 to 800 ft. in altitude, reaching 950 to 1050 ft. in the west, assuming a steep character in the middle, and sloping gently northwards to the marshy regions of the Pripet, while on the east it falls abruptly to the valley of the Dnieper, which lies only 250 to 300 ft. above the sea. General A. Tillo has shown that neither geologically nor tectonically can “spurs of the Carpathians” penetrate into Kiev. Many useful minerals are extracted, such as granites, gabbro, labradorites of a rare beauty, syenites and gneiss, marble, grinding stones, pottery clay, phosphorites, iron ore and mineral colours. Towards the southern and central parts the surface is covered by deep rich “black earth.” Nearly the whole of the government belongs to the basin of the Dnieper, that river forming part of its eastern boundary. In the south-west are a few small tributaries of the Bug. Besides the Dnieper the only navigable stream is its confluent the Pripet. The climate is more moderate than in middle Russia, the average temperatures at the city of Kiev being—year, 44.5°; January, 21°; July, 68°; yearly rainfall, 22 inches. The lowlands of the north are covered with woods; they have the flora of the Polyesie, or marshy woodlands of Minsk, and are peopled with animals belonging to higher latitudes.[1] The population, which was 2,017,262 in 1863, reached 3,575,457 in 1897, of whom 1,791,503 were women, and 147,878 lived in towns; and in 1904 it reached 4,042,526, of whom 2,030,744 were women. The estimated population in 1906 was 4,206,100. In 1897 there were 2,738,977 Orthodox Greeks, 14,888 Nonconformists, 91,821 Roman Catholics, 423,875 Jews, and 6820 Protestants.

No less than 41% of the land is in large holdings, and 45% belongs to the peasants. Out of an area of 12,600,000 acres, 11,100,000 acres are available for cultivation, 4,758,000 acres are under crops, 650,000 acres under meadows, and 1,880,000 acres under woods. About 290,000 acres are under beetroot, for sugar. The crops principally grown are wheat, rye, oats, millet, barley and buckwheat, with, in smaller quantities, hemp, flax, vegetables, fruit and tobacco. Camels have been used for agricultural work. Bee-keeping and gardening are general. The chief factories are sugar works and distilleries. The former produce 850,000 to 1,150,000 tons of sugar and over 50,000 tons of molasses annually. The factories include machinery works and iron foundries, tanneries, steam flour-mills, petroleum refineries and tobacco factories. Two main railways, starting from Kiev and Cherkasy respectively, cross the government from N.E. to S.W., and two lines traverse its southern part from N.W. to S.E., parallel to the Dnieper. Steamers ply on the Dnieper and some of its tributaries. Wheat, rye, oats, barley and flour are exported. There are two great fairs, at Kiev and Berdichev respectively, and many of minor importance. Trade is very brisk, the river traffic alone being valued at over one million sterling annually. The government is divided into twelve districts. The chief town is Kiev (q.v.) and the district towns, with their populations in 1897, Berdichev (53,728), Cherkasy (29,619), Chigirin (9870), Kanev (8892), Lipovets (6068), Radomysl (11,154), Skvira (16,265), Tarashcha (11,452), Umañ (28,628), Vasilkov (17,824) and Zvenigorodka (16,972).

The plains on the Dnieper have been inhabited since probably the Palaeolithic period, and the burial-grounds used since the

  1. Schmahlhausen’s Flora of South-West Russia (Kiev, 1886) contains a good description of the flora of the province.