WIENER, LEO:
American philologist; born at Byelostok, Grodno, Russia, July 27, 1862; studied in the gymnasia of Minsk and Warsaw, in the University of Warsaw, and in the Polytechnic of Berlin. Emigrating to the United States, he had for several years a varied career in New Orleans and in Kansas City, being obliged to work as a day-laborer and to peddle fruit in order to gain a livelihood. At length he was appointed teacher in Odessa, Mo., and later professor in the University of Kansas, where he remained until he was called to an assistant professorship in Slavic languages at Harvard University, which office he still (1905) holds.
Wiener is a prolific writer on philology, having contributed numerous articles to philological journals in America, England, Germany, Russia, and Austria. He has published also several articles on Jewish questions in the Jewish press of the United States, and has devoted especial attention to the study of Judæo-German in its philological aspects, having published several monographs on this subject in scientific journals. He is the author of "The History of Yiddish Literature in the Nineteenth Century" (New York, 1899), and has compiled an "Anthology of Russian Literature." He has translated numerous works from the Russian and from the Yiddish, including "Songs from the Ghetto" by Morris Rosenfeld, and the complete works of Leo Tolstoy.
