Walter Anderson (folklorist)

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

Walter Anderson
200px Walter Anderson around 1930
Born	Walter Arthur Alexander Anderson (1885-10-10)October 10, 1885 Minsk, Russian Empire
Died	Kiel, Germany
Nationality	German, Estonian
Fields	Folkloristics Literary history Numismatics
Institutions	University of Kazan University of Tartu University of Königsberg University of Kiel
Alma mater	University of Saint Petersburg University of Kazan
Thesis	Император и аббат: исторія одного народнаго анекдота
Notable students	Oskar Loorits Isidor Levin W. F. H. Nicolaisen
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. 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. Anderson's most significant students at the time were Oskar Loorits and

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From 1920 he was a member of the Learned Estonian Society (Gelehrte Estnische Gesellschaft), Estonia's oldest scholarly organization, from 1928 to 1929 he was the president of the society, 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.

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. 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, and he published several articles in this field. Some of his contributions to the study of Islamic coins are considered to have been groundbreaking.