Heymann Steinthal

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Heymann Steinthal
Heymann Steinthal
Born	(1823-05-16)16 May 1823 Gröbzig, Anhalt-Köthen, Germany
Died	14 March 1899(1899-03-14) (aged 75) Berlin, Prussia, Germany
Nationality	Germany

Heymann, Hermann or Chajim Steinthal (16 May 1823 – 14 March 1899) was a German philologist and philosopher.

He studied philology and philosophy at the University of Berlin, and was in 1850 appointed Privatdozent of philology and mythology at that institution. He was influenced by Wilhelm von Humboldt, whose Sprachwissenschaftliche Werke he edited in 1884. From 1852 to 1855 Steinthal resided in Paris, where he devoted himself to the study of Chinese, and in 1863 he was appointed assistant professor at the Berlin University; from 1872 he was also privat-dozent in critical history of the Old Testament and in religious philosophy at the Hochschule für die Wissenschaft des Judenthums. In 1860 he founded, together with his brother-in-law Moritz Lazarus, the Zeitschrift für Völkerpsychologie und Sprachwissenschaft, in which was established the new science of comparative ('folk') psychology, the Völkerpsychologie. Steinthal was one of the directors (from 1883) of the Deutsch-Israelitischer Gemeindebund [de], and had charge of the department of religious instruction in various small congregations.

On the occasion of the 100th anniversary of Chajim H. Steinthal's death, an international, interdisciplinary conference, organized by the Leopold-Zunz-Zentrum zur Erforschung des europäischen Judentums (LEUCOREA Stiftung, Wittenberg), the Synagogue Museum Gröbzig and the Konrad Adenauer Foundation, was held December 1–4, 1999, at Schloss Wendgräben (Saxony-Anhalt, Germany). The conference volume was published by Brill and contains papers presented in the fields of linguistics, philosophy, Jewish studies and history as well as an inventory of Steinthal’s papers in the Jewish National and University Library in Jerusalem.^[1]