Immanuel Olsvanger

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Immanuel Olsvanger (born April 13, 1888 in Grajewo , Russian Empire ; died February 7, 1961 in Jerusalem , Israel ) was a Jewish folklorist , translator , journalist and Zionist activist . His collections of Yiddish anecdotes , short stories , proverbs and songs , which he published in Lithuanian Yiddish transcribed into Latin script , have seen numerous editions. He has also translated various books into Hebrew and published a book of poems with his own Hebrew poems.

life and work

biography

Immanuel Olsvanger was born in 1888, according to some sources in 1881, in Grajewo, a small town near the border to Russia near Białystok . Grajewo temporarily had a Jewish majority, culturally attributable to Lithuanian Judaism . His father was a merchant , one grandfather was a rabbi in St. Petersburg . Olsvanger attended high school in Suwałki , studied medicine and philology in Königsberg and later in Bern , where he received his doctorate in 1916 with the dissertation The burial of the Jews, examined linguistically and moral history .

He began his political activities as a Zionist while still a student and was a co-founder of the Zionist student organization HeChawer in 1912 , of which he became president. From 1918 to 1920 he was secretary at the Swiss Society for Folklore, at the beginning of the 1920s he worked in South Africa and from 1924 in England for Keren Hajesod , the Zionist organization responsible for fundraising. In the 1930s he traveled to Asia, especially India, in 1933 he emigrated to the then Mandate Palestine .

Olsvanger spoke a large number of languages, both European and Asian, promoted the spread of Esperanto and translated numerous books into Hebrew. He died in Jerusalem in 1961, where a street is named after him.

Works

His first collection of Yiddish stories and songs, compiled on behalf of the Swiss Commission for Jewish Folklore, was published in Basel in 1920 under the title Rosinkess with Mandlen. From the folk literature of the Eastern Jews. Rascals, stories, proverbs and riddles , whereby the rascals are nowadays referred to more as anecdotes. The volume is aimed at a German-speaking audience who is not familiar with Yiddish. The stories are written in the northeast Yiddish dialect , Lithuanian Yiddish, but not in Hebrew, as is common practice, but in Latin. The difficulty that arises from the fact that the dialectal differences in the pronunciation of the vowels in Latin script become recognizable, which is not the case with Hebrew script, which knows no vowels, has been solved by Olsvanger with an umlaut , known as the "Olsvanger umlaut “Is known. The story collection was later republished repeatedly. In 1935 the extended anthology Rêjte Pomeranzen was published for the first time by Schocken in Berlin and under the changed title Röyte Pomerantsen in 1947 by Schocken in New York. Two years later, the anthology was published under the title L'chayim! at Schocken in New York in an English version for an English-speaking audience.

In 1925 the volume of poems Eterna sopiro with poems in Esperanto was published in Vienna, and in 1942 they were reprinted in Jerusalem. The volume of Hebrew poems בין אדם לקונו (Ben Adam le-Kono) , first appeared in Tel Aviv in 1943 and has been reprinted several times since then.

In 1921, Olsvanger in South Africa published a study on Yiddish folklore in English under the title Contentions with God. A study in Jewish folklore .

Translations

Olsvanger translated Boccaccio , Dante and Goethe into Hebrew, but also Japanese and Sanskrit literature. A selection of Goethe poems appeared for the first time in 1943, and in the same year the first part of Dante's Divine Comedy was published under the titleהקומדיה האלוהית - התופת (Ha-komedyah ha-elohit - Ha-tofet) , the secondהקומדיה האלהית - טור הטהר (Ha-komedyah ha-elohit - Ha-tohar) and third partהקומדיה האלהית - העדן (Ha-komedyah ha-elohit - Ha-eden) was released in the 1950s. Bocaccio's Decamerone was published in 1947 under the titleדקמרון - ספר עשרת הימים (Decameron - Sefer asseret ha-jamim) .

Web links

literature

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b Immanuel Olsvanger in WorldCat. Retrieved November 4, 2011 .
  2. ^ Grajewo. In: Encyclopaedia Judaica, Volume 8. Macmillan Reference USA, Detroit, 2007, p. 30 , accessed November 4, 2011 .
  3. ↑ a b c d Desanka Schwara : Humor and tolerance. Eastern Jewish anecdotes as a historical source. Böhlau Verlag, Cologne / Weimar, 2001, p. 41, ISBN 3-412-14500-9 , accessed on November 4, 2011 .
  4. ↑ Immanuel Olsvanger (1888–1961). (PDF; 220 kB) Akadem.com, accessed on November 7, 2011 .
  5. ↑ Immanuel Olŝvanger: From the folk literature of the Eastern Jews. Rascals, stories, proverbs and riddles. Verlag der Schweizerische Gesellschaft für Volkskunde, Basel, 1920, accessed on November 4, 2011 (Yiddish, text available online).
  6. ↑ Philologos: What Have the Romans Ever Done For Us? In: The Jewish Daily Forward . November 11, 2009, accessed November 7, 2011 .
  7. ↑ Immanuel Olŝvanger: Rêjte pomeranzen. Schocken Verlag, Berlin, 1935, accessed on November 4, 2011 .
  8. ↑ Classical Jewish Humor. In: Construction , New York. Pp. 23-24 , accessed on November 7, 2011 (Volume 13, No. 32, August 8, 1947).
  9. ↑ Immanuel Olŝvanger: L 'chayim! Schocken Books, New York, 1949, accessed November 4, 2011 .
  10. ↑ editions of Eterna sopiro in WorlCat
  11. ^ Editions by Ben Adam le-Kono in WorlCat
  12. ↑ Immanuel Olŝvanger: Contentions with God. A study in Jewish folklore. Pub. under the auspices of the Cape Town Jewish Historical and Literary Society by TM Miller, Cape Town, 1921, accessed November 4, 2011 (English, text available online).
  13. ↑ Getzel Kressel: Olsvanger, Immanuel. In: Encyclopaedia Judaica, Volume 15. Macmillan Reference USA, Detroit, 2007, p. 412 , accessed November 4, 2011 .
personal data
SURNAME Olsvanger, Immanuel
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Olschwanger, Immanuel; Olswanger, Immanuel; Olsvanger, ʻImanuʼel
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Jewish folklorist, translator and Zionist activist
DATE OF BIRTH April 13, 1888
PLACE OF BIRTH Grajewo , Russian Empire
DATE OF DEATH February 7, 1961
Place of death Jerusalem , Israel