Walter Anderson (folklorist)

For other people of the same name, see Walter Anderson (disambiguation).
Walter Anderson

Walter Anderson around 1930
Born Walter Arthur Alexander Anderson
(1885-10-10)October 10, 1885
Minsk, Russian Empire
Died August 23, 1962(1962-08-23) (aged 76)
Kiel, Germany
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).

Life

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.[1] 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.

Career

In 1904, Anderson enrolled at the University of Kazan and from 1909 continued his studies in Saint Petersburg, where he received a Magister degree from the University of Saint Petersburg in 1911. In 1916 he submitted his thesis on the ballad of the Emperor and the Abbot for which he received a Doctorate from the University of Kazan in 1918. He worked at the University of Tartu in Estonia between 1920 and 1939, where in 1920 he was made the first holder of a chair of folklore.[2] Anderson's most significant students at the time were Oskar Loorits and August Annist and later Isidor Levin.

From 1920 he was a member of the Learned Estonian Society (Gelehrte Estnische Gesellschaft), Estonia's oldest scholarly organization,[3] from 1928 to 1929 he was the president of the society,[4] and in 1930 he, like his father Nikolai Anderson before him, was made an honorary member of the society. In 1936 Anderson became a corresponding member of the Prussian Academy of Sciences.[5]

From 1940 to 1945 he worked at the University of Königsberg. After the end of the second world war he received a visiting professorship at the University of Kiel, which he held until his retirement. A notable student he mentored at Kiel was W. F. H. Nicolaisen who had a distinguished career in folklore studies in the United States and Scotland. In 1950 Anderson was invited to the US to take part in a meeting of the International Folk Music Council held in Bloomington, Indiana, after which he stayed at Indiana University Bloomington for a few months as a visiting scholar.[6] He retired in 1953 but remained affiliated with the University of Kiel as emeritus professor until his death.

Work

Walter Anderson was one of the driving forces behind the comparative geographic-historical Method of folkloristics. He is best known for his monograph Kaiser und Abt (Folklore Fellows' Communications 42, Helsinki 1923) on folktales of type AT 922. Anderson also had a keen interest in numismatics,[1] and he published several articles in this field. Some of his contributions to the study of Islamic coins are considered to have been groundbreaking.[7]

External links

References

  1. 1 2 Kuusk, P., Martinson, I., Eelsalu, H.; translated by Groote, S. (1997), "Wilhelm Robert Karl Anderson", Reprints at the Tartu Observatory Virtual Museum (Tartu Observatooriumi Virtuaalne Muuseum), retrieved November 29, 2012 External link in |work= (help)
  2. ↑ Harris, Ernest Howard (1947), Literature in Estonia (2nd ed.), London: Boreas, p. 21
  3. ↑ "766. Monatssitzung vom 3. November 1920", Sitzungsberichte der gelehrten estnischen Gesellschaft zu Dorpat 1912-1920, Tartu: Gelehrte Estnische Gesellschaft, 1921, p. 131
  4. ↑ "Anderson, Walter Arthur Alexander", BBLd – Baltisches Biographisches Lexikon digital, Göttingen: Baltische Historische Kommission, 2012
  5. ↑ "Walter Anderson". Member list of the Prussian Academy of Sciences. Berlin-Brandenburg Academy of Sciences and Humanities. Retrieved 29 November 2012.
  6. ↑ Stith Thompson (1996), A Folklorist's Progress: Reflections of a Scholar's Life (Special Publications of the Folklore Institute, Indiana University ed.), Bloomington: Indiana University Press
  7. ↑ Ivar Leimus (2007), Sylloge of Islamic coins 710/1-1013/4 AD: Estonian public collections, Tallinn: Estonian History Museum
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