He was educated first at the Reval grammar school, matriculated at St Petersburg as a law student in 1836, and subsequently at Berlin, from 1840 to 1842, where he devoted himself exclusively to studies of Eastern languages.

On his return to St Petersburg in 1843 he taught classics in the First Grammar School, and soon afterwards received a post in the Imperial Academy, where in 1852 the cultivation of the Tibetan language and literature was assigned to him as a special function.

From 1860 to 1873 he simultaneously held the professorship of classical languages in the Saint Petersburg Roman Catholic Theological Academy.

First, he contributed to the Memoirs and Bulletin of the St Petersburg Academy, and brought out independently a number of valuable articles and larger publications on the language and literature of Tibet.

He edited and translated the great Finnish epic Kalevala into German; he arranged, completed and brought out in twelve volumes the literary remains of Matthias Alexander Castrén, bearing on the languages of the Samoyedic tribes, the Koibal, Karagas, Tungusic, Buryat, Ostyak and Kottic tongues, and prepared several valuable papers on Finnic mythology for the Imperial Academy.