Leo Wiener

Leo Wiener (27 July 1862 – 13 December 1939) was an American historian, linguist, author and translator. He is best known for his historical works on slavic languages as well as his works on Yiddish culture. Furthermore, he is well known for his books "The History of Yiddish Literature in the Nineteenth Century" (1889), "Africa and the Discovery of America" (1922), and "Mayan and Mexican Origins" (1926). His complete edition of Tolstoy's works provided a very literal translation of the text from Russian. While his edition holds value, his translations of Tolstoy's most popular novels War and Peace and Anna Karenina were largely overshadowed by Constance Garnett and Aylmer Maude.

Biography

Wiener was born in Białystok (then in the Russian Empire), of Lithuanian Jewish origin. His father was Zalmen (Solomon) Wiener, and his mother was Frejda Rabinowicz. He studied at the University of Warsaw in 1880, and then at the Friedrich Wilhelm University in Berlin. Wiener later declared, "Having 'for many years been a member of the Unitarian Church,' and having 'preached absolute amalgamation with the Gentile surroundings', [I] 'never allied with the Jewish Church or with Jews as such."

Wiener left Europe with the plan of founding a vegetarian commune in British Honduras (now Belize). He sailed steerage to New Orleans. On his arrival, in 1880, he had no money. After travel and work around the US, he went to Kansas City, Missouri, and became a lecturer in the department of Germanic and Romance languages at the University of Kansas. He was a polyglot, and was reputed to speak thirty languages well.