Wolfgang Mieder

Wolfgang Mieder (born 17 February 1944 in Nossen) is a retired professor of German and folklore who taught for 50 years at the University of Vermont, in Burlington, Vermont. He is a graduate of Olivet College (BA), the University of Michigan (MA), and Michigan State University (PhD). 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". He also produced many bibliographies, both articles and volumes, on several topics within paremiology. His most complete work in this area is his 2009 International Bibliography of Paremiology and Phraseology, published in two volumes. In 2023, his International Bibliography of Paremiology and Phraseology (2008-2022) was published.

From 1984 through 2021 he was the editor of Proverbium: Yearbook of International Proverb Scholarship, an annual journal published by the University of Vermont. He was also editor of the Supplement Series to Proverbium, a series of book on various facets of proverb studies. Each volume of Proverbium contained 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. He has also published a bibliography of paremiography, a list of proverb collections.

Mieder received the American Folklore Society's Lifetime Scholarly Achievement Award in 2012. He was honored by three festschrift publications on his 60th birthday, and another for his 65th birthday. He has 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 awarded an honorary doctorate by the University of Athens, and in 2015 "Doctor Honoris Causa" by the University of Bucharest. For 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 honored him with another festschrift: Living by the Golden Rule: Mentor – Scholar – World Citizen: A Festschrift for Wolfgang Mieder’s 75th Birthday. To honor Mieder on his 80th birthday, proverb scholars produced an 828-page festschrift, “STANDING ON THE SHOULDERS OF GIANTS” A Festschrift in honour of Wolfgang Mieder on the occasion of his 80th birthday. In 2024, the University of Vermont awarded him an honorary doctorate. In 2025, the German government awarded him the Order of Merit.

Mieder's work has become the topic of study for other scholars.

Mieder, originally from Germany, has lived in Vermont for more than four decades, teaching at the University of Vermont, and 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.

Honors

Honorary doctorate