Wolfgang Mieder

Wolfgang Mieder
Born (1944-02-17) 17 February 1944 (age 80)
Nossen, Saxony, Germany
NationalityAmerican
Alma materOlivet College (B.A.)
University of Michigan (M.A.)
Michigan State University (PhD)
Known forExpert on proverbs
Scientific career
FieldsGerman and folklore
InstitutionsUniversity of Vermont

Wolfgang Mieder (born 17 February 1944 in Nossen) is a retired professor of German and folklore who taught for 50 years at the University of Vermont, in Burlington, Vermont, USA. He is a graduate of Olivet College (BA), the University of Michigan (MA), and Michigan State University (PhD). He has been a guest speaker at the University of Freiburg in Germany,[1] the country where he was born.

Small sampling of books that Mieder has written or edited, Proverbium on shelf in rear

He is most well known as a scholar of paremiology, the study of proverbs, Alan Dundes labeling him "Magister Proverbium, paremiologist without peer".[2] He also produced many bibliographies,[3] both articles and volumes, on several topics within paremiology. His most complete work in this area is his 2009 International Bibliography of Paremiology and Phraseology, published in two volumes.

From 1984 through 2021 he was the editor of Proverbium: Yearbook of International Proverb Scholarship, an annual journal published by the University of Vermont. He was also editor of the Supplement Series to Proverbium, a series of book on various facets of proverb studies. Each volume of Proverbium contained his annual list of recent proverb scholarship.

He has published extensively in English and in German. He is the creator of the term anti-proverb, proverbs that are twisted from their original forms.[4] The term became more established with the publication of Twisted Wisdom: Modern Anti-Proverbs by Mieder and Anna T. Litovkina.[5]

His work also includes contributions to paremiography, the collecting and writing of proverbs. He has published a number of collections of proverbs, both topical[6] and international.[7]

Mieder received the American Folklore Society's Lifetime Scholarly Achievement Award in 2012.[8] He was honored by three festschrift publications on his 60th birthday, and another for his 65th birthday.[9][10] He has been recognized by biographical publications that focused on his scholarship.[11][12] In 2012, he was awarded a European folklore award, the European Folklore Prize [13] In 2014, he was awarded an honorary doctorate by the University of Athens, and in 2015 "Doctor Honoris Causa" by the University of Bucharest.[14][15] For his seventieth birthday in 2014 friends and colleagues from around the world contributed sixty-six essays to Gegengabe, an international festschrift volume to honor Wolfgang Mieder for his contributions to world scholarship and his outstanding personality.[16] For his 75th birthday, colleagues honored him with another festschrift: Living by the Golden Rule: Mentor – Scholar – World Citizen: A Festschrift for Wolfgang Mieder’s 75th Birthday.[17] To honor Mieder on his 80th birthday, proverb scholars produced an 828 page festschrift, “STANDING ON THE SHOULDERS OF GIANTS” A Festschrift in honour of Wolfgang Mieder on the occasion of his 80th birthday.[18]

Mieder's work has become the topic of study for other scholars.[19][20]

Mieder, originally from Germany, has lived in Vermont for more than four decades, teaching at the University of Vermont, and has published four books on proverbs of New England and Vermont.[21] His perspective and contributions from two countries has been the topic of an article.[22]

  1. ^ Janet Sobieski. "Wolfgang Mieder, Professor of German and Folklore". Retrieved 17 February 2009.
  2. ^ Dundes, Alan. 2007. As the Crow Flies: A Straightforward Study of Lineal Worldview in American Folk Speech. Kimberly J. Lau, Peter Tokofsky, and Stephen D. Winick, eds. What goes around comes around: The circulation of proverbs in contemporary life, 171-187. Utah State University Press.
  3. ^ p. 246. Petrova, Roumyana. 2014. Contrastive study of proverbs. Introduction to Paremiology. A Comprehensive Guide to Proverb Studies edited by Hrisztalina Hrisztova-Gotthardt and Melita Aleksa Varga, pp. 243-261. Berlin: De Gruyter Open. Online: Open Access version.
  4. ^ p. xi, Charles Clay Doyle, Wolfgang Mieder, & Fred Shapiro. The Dictionary of Modern Proverbs. New Haven: Yale University Press.
  5. ^ Supplement volume to Proverbium. University of Vermont.
  6. ^ Yankee Wisdom: New England Proverbs, New England Press, 1989.
  7. ^ The Prentice-Hall Encyclopedia of World Proverbs. MJF Books, 1986.
  8. ^ AFS site
  9. ^ "College of Arts and Sciences".
  10. ^ Kevin McKenna, ed. 2009. The Proverbial 'Pied Piper': A Festschrift Volume of Essays in Honor of Wolfgang Mieder on the Occasion of His Sixty-Fifth Birthday. New York: Peter Lang. ISBN 978-1-4331-0489-3
  11. ^ Lauhakangas, Outi. 2012. In honorem Wolfgang Mieder. In Program of the Sixth Interdisciplinary Colloquium on Proverbs, 4th to 11th November 2012, at Tavira, Portugal, Rui B. Soares and Outi Lauhakangas, eds., pp. 81-84. Tavira: Tipograpfia Tavirense.
  12. ^ Jones, Amy. 2012. Wolfgang Mieder: Ein Fuβ in beiden Ländern. In Sprache als Heimat, A. Jones, ed. Quasi. Middlebury [College] Zeitschrift 1:52-58.
  13. ^ Prize awarded
  14. ^ Web link to University of Bucharest announcement Archived 4 March 2016 at the Wayback Machine.
  15. ^ Mieder, Wolfgang. 2016. An American-Romanian Friendship in Paremiology. Revisita de Etnografie şi Folclor 1-2: 165-182.
  16. ^ Christian Grandl and Kevin McKenna, ed. 2015. Bis dat, qui cito dat Gegengabe in Paremiology, Folklore, Language and Literature Honoring Wolfgang Mieder on His Seventieth Birthday.Frankfurt am Main: Peter Lang. ISBN 978-3-631-64872-8
  17. ^ Nolte, Andreas and Dennis Mahoney. 2019. Living by the Golden Rule: Mentor – Scholar – World Citizen: A Festschrift for Wolfgang Mieder’s 75th Birthday. Bern: Peter Lang.
  18. ^ Babič, Saša, Fionnuala Carson Williams, Christian Grandl, Anna T. Litovkina (eds.) "STANDING ON THE SHOULDERS OF GIANTS" A Festschrift in honour of Wolfgang Mieder on the occasion of his 80th birthday. Proverbiuim, Online supplement 3. 2024.
  19. ^ Nolte, Andreas. 2015. "Jedes Sprichwort muss einen Zipfel haben, wo man's anfasst": Ein Sprichwort-Spiel für Wolfgang Mieder. Bis dat, qui cito dat: Gegengabe in Paremiology, Folklore, Language and Literature ed. by Christian Grandl and Kevin McKenna, pp. 287-296. Peter Lang.
  20. ^ Doulaveras, Aristeides N. “The Contribution of Wolfgang Mieder to International Proverb Scholarship”. Conversing with Greek Folk Culture. Various Essays, edited by Aristeides N. Doulaveras, Thessaloniki: Stamouli Publications, 2021, pp. 73-78. (in Greek)
  21. ^ All published by Shelburne, Vermont: The New England Press. Talk Less and Say More: Vermont Proverbs, 1986. As Sweet as Apple Cider: Vermont Expressions, 1988. Yankee Wisdom: New England Proverbs, 1989. As Strong as a Moose: New England Expressions, 1997.
  22. ^ Jones, Amy. 2012. Wolfgang Mieder: Ein Fuss in beiden Laendern. "Sprache als Heimat" Quasi: Middlebury [College] Zeitschrift 54-56, entire article 52-58.