Weinreich Max (April 22, 1894, Goldingen – January 29, 1969, New York, USA) – scholar, linguist, and writer.
He studied in Russian and German schools and graduated from Saint Petersburg University (exact year unknown). In 1923, he received a doctorate from the University of Marburg, Germany. His dissertation focused on the history and distribution of Yiddish dialects. That same year, he published his first book in Yiddish, Steps, based on his dissertation materials.
In 192? (exact year unclear), he moved to Vilna (now Vilnius), where the parents of his wife Regina (years of life unknown) lived. (Her father, Dr. Tsemakh Shabad, once served as a prototype for “Doctor Aybolit,” a character created by Korney Chukovsky.) The first headquarters of YIVO (the Yiddish Scientific Institute), founded in Berlin in 1925, was located in the Weinreichs’ apartment.
Weinreich headed YIVO’s research and educational efforts, putting not only its linguistic work but also its activities in literature, folklore, Jewish history, economics, sociology, psychology, philosophy, and education on a scientific footing.
From 1939–40, he and his family moved to New York, where the YIVO headquarters was soon relocated. From 1940 to 1950, Weinreich served as YIVO’s research director in New York. He taught at City College and became the first professor of Yiddish (either at this college or anywhere—unclear).
He was the author, co-author, and editor of numerous publications in the academic journal YIVO Bleter, other YIVO scientific publications, the popular journal Yidishe Shprakh (Yiddish Language), the oldest Yiddish-language newspaper Forverts (The Forward), and English-language journals.
Based on the autobiographies of 300 young Polish Jews, he wrote the socio-psychological study The Way to Our Youth (1935). In his work Hitler’s Professors (published in Yiddish in 1947 and in English in 1946, reissued by Yale University in 1999), he sharply condemned German academics who collaborated with the Nazis and participated in the genocide of Jews.
Weinreich’s magnum opus was History of the Yiddish Language: Concepts, Facts, Methods, published in Yiddish in 1973 and in English in 1980. In this monumental work, he meticulously examined all aspects of the development of the Yiddish language in the 8th–9th centuries in the region where the Main River flows into the Rhine. He explored historical and cultural factors—Yiddish arose among Jews descended from Jewish settlers, many of whom came from Italy, including Jewish Roman legionnaires who spoke Old French and Old Italian dialects with elements of Hebrew and Aramaic—as well as linguistic factors, such as the presence of etymological elements from Hebrew, Romance, Germanic, and Slavic languages, the influence of the Talmud and shtetl life, and the relationships between Yiddish and other Jewish languages.
His son Uriel (1926–1967) was the author of College Yiddish and the Modern English-Yiddish and Yiddish-English Dictionary.
Selected Works:
Shtaplen fir etyudn tsu der yidisher shprakhvisnshaft un literaturgeshikhte, 1923
Bilder fun der yidisher literaturgeshikhte fun di onheybn bis Mendele Mokher-Seforim, 1928
Praktishe gramatik fun der yidisher shprakh, 1929 (co-author)
Der veg tsu undzer yugnt, 1935
Di Yidishe visnshaft in der heyntiker tsait, 1941
Hitlers profesorn: heylek fun der daytsher visnshaft in daytshland farbrekhns kegn yidishn folk, 1947
Geshikhte fun der yidisher shprakh: bagrifn, faktn, metodn, 1973
History of the Yiddish Language, University of Chicago Press, 1980