Samuel Adalberg

Samuel Adalberg (1868 – 10 November 1939) was a Polish historian of folklore, literature, a paremiologist and a state official. He is remembered for editing and publishing the first modern book on Polish proverbs.

Biography

Born in Warsaw in 1868, in the years 1878–1888 he attended the Szkoła Realna of Samuel Dickstein. At that time he befriended Samuel Abraham Poznański. He was also employed by , an entrepreneur, philanthropist, and paremiologist, to organize his library. At that time he translated and published anonymously two collections of Yiddish proverbs (in 1888 and 1890), and published, under his own name, a book on Polish proverbs, Księga przysłów polskich (The Book of Polish Proverbs; 1889–1894) called "the first modern work on this topic in Polish" He was also involved in the release of an annotated editions of older Polish literary works, published by the Polish Academy of Arts and Sciences. From 1898 he was a member of the Commission on Philology of the Polish Academy of Arts and Sciences in recognition of his work on the study of proverbs.

Unable to sustain himself from just his academic interests, around the turn of the century he also worked at Hipolit Wawelberg's bank. Later he became involved with the Hipolit Wawelberg Foundation and the Society for Educating the Jews (Towarzystwo Szerzenia Oświaty Wśród Żydów).

Following the end of World War I and the restoration of Polish independence, in the Second Polish Republic he joined the Polish Regency Council and became its top official for the Jewish affairs. Later, until 1930, he worked in various capacities in the department for Jewish affairs in the Polish Ministry of Religions and Public Education, eventually becoming its director.

Polish historian of literature, Julian Krzyżanowski, called him, "a pioneer of the modern study Polish paremiology."