Walter Anderson | |
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Walter Anderson around 1930
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Born | Walter Arthur Alexander Anderson October 10, 1885 Minsk, Russian Empire |
Died | August 23, 1962 Kiel, Germany |
(aged 76)
Nationality | German, Estonian |
Fields | |
Institutions | |
Alma mater | |
Thesis | Император и аббат: исторія одного народнаго анекдота |
Notable students | |
Known for | the law of self-correction |
Walter Arthur Alexander Anderson (Belarusian: Вальтэр Артур Аляксандр Андэрсан; October 10 [O.S. September 28] 1885, Minsk, Russian Empire – August 23, 1962 in Kiel, Germany) was a German ethnologist (folklorist).
Anderson was born from a Baltic German family in Minsk (now in Belarus), but in 1894 moved to Kazan (Russia), where his father, Nikolai Anderson (1845–1905), had been appointed as professor for Finno-Ugric languages at the University of Kazan. Anderson's younger brother was the well known mathematician and economist Oskar Anderson (1887–1960), and his older brother was the astrophysicist Wilhelm Anderson (1880–1940). The turmoil created by the Russian Revolution prompted Anderson and his brother Wilhelm to leave Russia and to move to Tartu in Estonia. While living in Estonia in 1939, Anderson, like the majority of Baltic Germans living there, was resettled to Germany. In 1962 he died after having been involved in a traffic accident.