Arnold Niederer

Arnold Niederer (born December 3, 1914 in St. Gallen ; † April 6, 1998 in Zurich ; resident in Lutzenberg ) was a Swiss folklorist .

Life

Arnold Niederer completed an apprenticeship in Lausanne and made up his Matura in 1944 . From 1944 to 1951 he studied Romance studies , folklore and sociology in Zurich and received his doctorate in 1956. From 1956 to 1963 he worked as the head of the foreign language department at the Zurich vocational school . As the successor to Richard Weiss, Niederer worked from 1964 to 1980 as a full professor of folklore at the University of Zurich . He opened up folklore to social science theories and methods. Alpine cultural analyzes and work on the " Atlas of Swiss Folklore " set the tone. This was followed by research on southern European migrants , the world of work and everyday communication. In an effort to integrate the nationally operated subject into a European ethnology , Niederer helped Swiss folklore to gain a stronger profile and international contacts.

He had a personal and scientific familiarity with the Lötschental since his first contact with the valley in the 1930s. From 1991 he was an honorary citizen of Ferden . The Arnold Niederer Foundation in Ferden aims to preserve the building fabric of the "Arnold Niederer House" and to use it culturally. The aim is to keep the memory of Arnold Niederer alive.

Arnold Niederer had been married to Loni Nelken, an ethnologist from Germany, since 1972.

Works

• Arnold Niederer: Alpine everyday culture between persistence and change: selected works from the years 1956 to 1991. Bern: Haupt 1996.
• Catalog raisonné 1956–1994 ( PDF )

literature

• Ueli Gyr: "... with reference to ...": Insights into the research and teaching activities of the folklorist Arnold Niederer. In: Swiss Archives for Folklore. Volume 76 (1980), Issue 1-2, pp. 3-76 Web access via e-periodica.ch.
• Arnold Niederer: Bibliography for his 75th birthday: publications since 1980 *. In: Swiss Archives for Folklore Volume. 85 (1989), Issue 3-4, pp. 402-410 Web access via e-periodica.ch.
• Ueli Gyr: Obituary: On the death of Arnold Niederer (1914–1998). In: Swiss Archives for Folklore. Volume 94 (1998), Issue 1, pp. 101-104 Web access via e-periodica.ch.
• Ueli Gyr: From Richard Weiss to Arnold Niederer: two alpine research exponents in comparison. In: Swiss Archives for Folklore. Volume 102 (2006), Issue 2, pp. 231–250 Web access via e-periodica.ch.
• Claude Macherel: Arnold Niederer or the existence of a human life. In: near distance. Baden: here + now 2013, pp. 89–97.

Web links

• Ueli Gyr: Arnold Niederer. In: Historical Lexicon of Switzerland . March 26, 2009 , accessed June 8, 2020 .
• Biography on the website of the Arnold-Niederer-Haus Ferden VS and Arnold-Niederer-Stifung

Individual evidence

1. ^ Arnold Niederer Haus. In: Niedererhaus.ch. Retrieved June 17, 2020 . 
2. ^ Loni Niederer-Nelken. Retrieved June 17, 2020 . 

This version of the article is based on the entry by Ueli Gyr in the Historical Lexicon of Switzerland (HLS), which islicensed under the Creative Commons - Attribution - Distribution under the same conditions 4.0 International (CC BY-SA 4.0)licenseaccording to theHLS's usage instructions. If the article has been revised and expanded to such an extent that it differs significantly from the HLS article, this module will be removed. The original text and a reference to the license can also be found in the version history of the article.