Max Weinreich
| Max Weinreich | |
|---|---|
| Born | 22 April 1894 Kuldīga, Russian Empire (now Latvia) |
| Died | 29 January 1969 (aged 74) New York City, New York, United States |
| Occupation | linguist, sociolinguist |
| Language | Yiddish |
| Alma mater | University of Marburg (1923) |
| Notable works | History of the Yiddish language, Hitler's Professors |
| Notable awards | Guggenheim Fellowship for Humanities |
| Spouse | Regina Shabad |
| Children | Uriel Weinreich, Gabriel Weinreich |
| Relatives | Zemach Shabad |
Max Weinreich (22 April 1894 in Kuldīga, Russian Empire, now Latvia – 29 January 1969 in New York City, United States) was a Latvian linguist, specializing in sociolinguistics and Yiddish, and the father of the linguist Uriel Weinreich, who edited the Modern Yiddish-English English-Yiddish Dictionary.
Max Weinreich (Russian: Мейер Лазаревич Вайнрайх, Meyer Lazarevich Vaynraykh) began his studies in a German school in Kuldiga, transferring to a Russian gymnasium in Liepāja after four years. He then lived in Daugavpils and Łódź. Between 1909 and 1912 he resided in Saint Petersburg, where he attended I. G. Eizenbet's private Jewish gymnasium for boys. He was raised in a German-speaking family but became fascinated with Yiddish.
In the early 1920s, Weinreich lived in Germany and pursued studies in linguistics at the universities of Berlin and Marburg. In 1923, under the direction of German linguist Ferdinand Wrede in Marburg, he completed his dissertation, entitled “Studien zur Geschichte und dialektischen Gliederung der jiddischen Sprache” (Studies in the history and dialect distribution of the Yiddish language). The dissertation was published in 1993 under the title Geschichte der jiddischen Sprachforschung (History of Yiddish linguistics).
In 1925, Weinreich was the co-founder, along with Nochum Shtif, Elias Tcherikower, and Zalman Reisen, of YIVO (originally called the Yidisher Visnshaftlekher Institut — Yiddish Scientific Institute). Although the institute was officially founded during a conference in Berlin, in August 1925, the center of its activities was in Wilno (today Vilnius, Lithuania), which eventually became its official headquarters as well. YIVO's first office in Wilno was in a room in Weinreich's apartment. Remembered as the guiding force of the institute, Weinreich directed its linguistic, or philological section in the period before the Second World War.
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