Wolfgang Mieder


Wolfgang Mieder is professor of German and folklore at the University of Vermont, in Burlington, Vermont, USA. He is a graduate of Olivet College, the University of Michigan, and Michigan State University. He has been a guest speaker at the University of Freiburg in Germany, the country where he was born.
He is most well known as a scholar of paremiology, the study of proverbs, Alan Dundes labeling him "Magister Proverbium, paremiologist without peer". In addition to being a prolific author and editor on proverbs, he has made a distinct contribution by producing an "astounding number of bibliographies", both articles and volumes, on several topics within paremiology. His annual list of recent proverb scholarship is published in each volume of Proverbium. His most complete work in this area is his 2009 International Bibliography of Paremiology and Phraseology, published in two volumes.
Since 1984 he has been the editor of Proverbium: Yearbook of International Proverb Scholarship, an annual journal published by the University of Vermont. He is editor of the Supplement Series to Proverbium, a series of book on various facets of proverb studies. Each volume of Proverbium contains 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. The term became more established with the publication of Twisted Wisdom: Modern Anti-Proverbs by Mieder and Anna T. Litovkina.
His work also includes contributions to paremiography, the collecting and writing of proverbs. He has published a number of collections of proverbs, both topical and international. Also, in every year's volume of Proverbium, he publishes a list of proverb collections that have recently been published.
Mieder was honored by the American Folklore Society with their Lifetime Scholarly Achievement Award in 2012. He was honored by three festschrift publications on his 60th birthday. He was later honored with a festschrift volume to honor his 65th birthday. He has also been recognized by biographical publications that focused on his scholarship. In 2012, he was awarded a European folklore award, the European Folklore Prize In 2014, he was honored with an honorary doctorate by the University of Athens. In 2015, he was honored with "Doctor Honoris Causa" by the University of Bucharest. On the occasion of 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. For his 75th birthday, colleagues have honored him with another festschrift: Living by the Golden Rule: Mentor – Scholar – World Citizen: A Festschrift for Wolfgang Mieder’s 75th Birthday.
Mieder's work has become the topic of study for other scholars.
Though Mieder is originally from Germany, he has lived in Vermont for over 40 years, teaching at the University of Vermont. This long time residence is reflected in his scholarship, as he has published four books on proverbs of New England and Vermont. His perspective and contributions from two countries has been the topic of an article.

Selected books written or edited by Mieder

Books on paremiology
Proverb bibliographies:
Holocaust and Jewish studies:
Studies of European folktales