Heymann Steinthal


Heymann or Hermann Steinthal 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 psychology. Steinthal was one of the directors of the, and had charge of the department of religious instruction in various small congregations.

Works

Steinthal's principal works are:
The first volume of his Gesammelte Kleine Schriften appeared at Berlin in 1880.