1. Wolfgang Steinitz was a German linguist and folklorist.
17 Facts About Wolfgang Steinitz
1. 2.
Wolfgang Steinitz researched the language and culture of the Ugric peoples of West Siberia, including the songs that form an important part of the tradition of this endangered ethnic group.
3.
Wolfgang Steinitz was born on 28 February 1905 in Breslau, the son of a wealthy Jewish lawyer.
4.
Wolfgang Steinitz joined the Communist Party in 1927 and traveled to Finland, Estonia, and the Soviet Union.
5.
In 1933 Wolfgang Steinitz was fired from the Friedrich Wilhelm University in Berlin because he was a member of the communist party.
6.
Wolfgang Steinitz took his family to the Soviet Union in 1934, and taught for several years in Leningrad at the Institute of Northern Peoples, a training center for members of the indigenous peoples of the Russian North and Siberia.
7.
Wolfgang Steinitz fell out with his colleagues over the way the state treated ethnic minorities, leading to problems with the authorities.
8.
Wolfgang Steinitz left Russia and from 1938 until the end of World War II he and his family lived in Stockholm, Sweden.
9.
Wolfgang Steinitz returned to Berlin in 1946, and became professor of Finno-Ugrian languages at Humboldt University.
10.
Wolfgang Steinitz held many different scientific and political positions in East Germany, including heading the Finno-Ugric Institute of East Berlin's Humboldt University.
11.
Wolfgang Steinitz may have arranged the 1951 visit to the institute by the distinguished Russian ethnographer Sergei Aleksandrovich Tokarev.
12.
Wolfgang Steinitz died in Berlin, East Germany in 1967 from the effects of a stroke.
13.
Wolfgang Steinitz investigated the peoples speaking Finno-Ugric languages during his time in Leningrad, particularly the languages and cultures of the Ugric Khanty people.
14.
Wolfgang Steinitz soon came in contact with little-known folk song traditions on the theme of the misery of the Silesian weavers.
15.
In East Germany, Wolfgang Steinitz's work was an important source for the folk movement.
16.
Wolfgang Steinitz wrote an easy-to-use textbook of the Russian language and was the founder and co-editor of a dictionary of the German language, "Worterbuch der deutschen Sprache", which is totally available online in Open Access.
17.
Wolfgang Steinitz founded the Marx-Engels-dictionary in 1952, which was published in 1963 as a sample issue.