Steinthal

Steinthal

Heymann or Hermann Steinthal (born at Gröbzig, Anhalt, May 16, 1823; died at Berlin March 14, 1899) was a German philologist and philosopher.

He studied philology and philosophy at the University of Berlin, and was in 1850 appointed privat-dozent of philology and mythology at that institution. He was a pupil of 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 racial psychology. Steinthal was one of the directors (from 1883) of the Deutsch-Israelitische Gemeindebund, and had charge of the department of religious instruction in various small congregations.