More about Singer

Samuel Singer began studying jurisprudence, philosophy, history and economics in Vienna. Then he turned to studying Germanic, Romance, and English languages. After getting his doctorates both in law and philosophy (thesis on fragments of a dictionary in the Germanic languages) he worked at the Goethe Institute in Weimar and, as a guest student, attended lectures in Leipzig and Berlin. His Jewish background prevented him from pursuing an academic career in Vienna, so he moved to Switzerland. In 1891 he qualified as a professor at the University of Bern in Germanic philology and modern German language and literature. He was appointed associate professor in 1896 and Ordinarius in 1904. Between 1907 and 1930 he was also the director of the medieval department of the German Seminar and in 1913/14 he was dean of the faculty of philology and history. He retired and thus became Professor Emeritus in 1930. His main work, the collection of proverbs and sayings from the Romanic-Germanic Middle Ages, was completed on the basis of his manuscripts by a Swiss research group between 1995 and 2002 and published as a 13-volume lexicon entitled “Thesaurus proverbiorum medii aevi”.

The major part of Samuel Singer's library originates from the 20th century. However 3,459 books were published in the 19th century, and 95 books in the preceding centuries. Most of the publications are in German, alongside French, Latin, English, and other European languages. Singer's subject classification has  been retained. In the historical collection around 1,380 titles reference books and original sources, around 700 titles deal with subjects such as literary history, religion, law and art, and around 1,460 titles are journals, anthologies, and dissertations.