Solomon pear tree

Solomon Birnbaum (also: Salomo, Salomon, Solomon, Schlojme A [scher] Birnbaum, Birnbojm or: Solomon Ascher ) (born December 24, 1891 in Vienna , Austria-Hungary ; died December 28, 1989 in New York ) was an Austrian linguist for the Yiddish and Hebrew languages .

Life

Solomon Birnbaum came from a Jewish family and was the eldest son of Nathan Birnbaum and Rosa Korngut. He attended a grammar school in Vienna and later two classes in Chernivtsi , where he passed the Abitur. From 1910 to 1912 he studied architecture in Vienna. Birnbaum served in the Austro-Hungarian army during the First World War . From 1918 he studied oriental studies at the universities of Vienna , Zurich , Berlin and Würzburg , where he received his doctorate. From 1922 to 1933 he held the first teaching position for Yiddish in Western Europe at the University of Hamburg . After the transfer of power to the National Socialists , Birnbaum fled to Great Britain with his wife Irene Gruenwald, who remained Birnbaum's employee and editor of his works for the rest of his life, and his children .

From 1936 to 1957, Birnbaum was a lecturer in paleography and epigraphy of Hebrew at the School of Oriental and African Studies at the University of London . From 1938 (also until 1957) he also taught at the School of Slavonic and East European Studies at the University of Yiddish (East European Jewish Studies) . During the Second World War , Birnbaum was released to translate for the British authorities. In 1970 he emigrated to Toronto , Canada , to live with his children.

In 1986 he was awarded an honorary doctorate from the University of Trier .

Fonts (selection)

• Practical grammar of the Yiddish language. Vienna 1918
  • Grammar of the Yiddish language. Hamburg 1966, 1979, 1984, 1988
• Life and words of Balschemm; 1920
• The Hebrew and Aramaic element in the Yiddish language; 1921 (dissertation)
• The Yiddish language. In: Germanic-Romanic monthly (1923)
• The legend of Yiddish. In: Teuthonista (1933)
• The Age of the Yiddish Language. In: Transactions of the Philological Society, London 1939
• Jewish Languages. In: Essays in Honor of the Very Rev. Dr. JH Hertz, London 1944 (1942)
• Yiddish Phrase Book. Edited by The Linguaphone Institute for The Jewish Committee for Relief Abroad, London 1945
• The Cultural Structure of East Ashkenazic Jewry. In: The Slavonic and East European Review, London 1946
• The Verb in the Bukharic Language of Samarkand. In: Archivum Linguisticum 2 (1950/51)
• How old are the Cave Manuscripts? In: Vetus Testamentum (1951)
• The Hebrew Scripts. 2 volumes. Leiden 1954-57, 1971
• The Yiddish language. Hamburg 1974, 1986, 1997
• Yiddish - A Survey and a Grammar. Toronto 1979, 2016
• On the history of u-sounds in Yiddish. In: Journal for German Philology (1981)

literature

• Birnbaum, Solomon. In: Lexicon of German-Jewish Authors . Volume 3: Birk – Braun. Edited by the Bibliographia Judaica archive. Saur, Munich 1995, ISBN 3-598-22683-7 , pp. 35-40.
• Erika Timm , Walter Röll : In memoriam Salomo Birnbaum. In: Yiddistik-Mitteilungen 3, Trier 1990, pp. 16–22 (identical to: Laudation. In: Awarding of the honorary doctorate from the University of Trier to Professor Dr. Salomo Birnbaum, June 4, 1986. [Trier 1986], p. 10-14).
• David Birnbaum: Solomon Birnbaum's experiences at the University of Hamburg . In: Hamburg Key Documents on German-Jewish History, August 22, 2018, doi: 10.23691 / jgo: article-206.de.v1 .

Web links

• Literature by and about Solomon Birnbaum in the catalog of the German National Library
• Website of the Solomon Birnbaum Society for Yiddish in Hamburg
• Article about Salomon Birnbaum in the biographical database Persecution and Emigration of German-Speaking Linguists 1933–1945 , by Utz Maas (online since 2018, previously print editions)

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Susanne Blume Berger, Michael Doppelhofer, Gabriele Mauthe: Manual Austrian authors of Jewish origin 18th to 20th century. Volume 1: A-I. Edited by the Austrian National Library. Saur, Munich 2002, ISBN 3-598-11545-8 , p. 964.