Max Weinreich: Yiddish Linguist, Literary Scholar & Public Intellectual (2012)

Max Weinreich (1894-1969) was first and foremost a linguist, but other topics he wrote about included psychology (he translated Freud into Yiddish), sociology, economics, theater studies, literary history, education, ethnography, and philosophy. He had a second career as a writer of popular articles in the Yiddish newspaper Der Forverts,  frequently under the pseudonym Sore Brener. His linguistic interests included the history of linguistics, orthography, grammar, etymology, dialectology, stylistics, and the influence of traditional Jewish culture in all its facets on the development of the Yiddish language.

In 1925, on the initiative of the linguist Nahum Shtif, the Yidisher Visnshaftlekher Institut (YIVO) was founded in Berlin and began its work in Vilna. Its first offices were located in a room in Weinreich's apartment.