Ado Grenzstein

Ado Grenzstein, pseudonym A. Piirikivi (5 February 1849 – 20 April 1916) was an Estonian journalist, writer and teacher, brother of Tõnis Grenzstein. In 1881 he founded the Olevik newspaper, which become one of the most important Estonian newspapers of the period. The purpose of the paper was "weaning the Estonian peasant readership away from the 'firebrands and madcaps' who edited Sakala.[1] He soon broke with the Estonian national movement and became an apologist of Russification. He even went further, expressing doubt whether the loss of the Estonian nation would be of any consequence to man-kind.[2] His views have been characterized as "national nihilism".<[3] In 1901 he left Estonia and settled first in Dresden, and then later in Paris.[4]

Ado Grenzstein

In an attempt to revitalize the Estonian language, Grenzstein tried to coin words out of nothing (see ex nihilo lexical enrichment) and introduced neologisms such as kabe "draughts, checkers" and male "chess".[5]

References
  1. Kirby, David (15 July 2014). The Baltic World 1772-1993: Europe's Northern Periphery in an Age of Change. Routledge. p. 197. ISBN 978-1-317-90218-8.
  2. "Kiusaja Grenzstein by Hent Kalmo". Archived from the original on 2015-02-03. Retrieved 2018-10-02.
  3. "Venestamine Eestis 1880-1917. Dokumente ja materjale" (PDF). gbv.de. Tallinn. 1997. Retrieved 22 March 2023.
  4. Salupere, Malle (2005). Tartu (Dorpat): eine tausendjährige junge Kulturstadt (in German). Tartu University Press. p. 99. ISBN 978-9949-11-072-8.
  5. Zuckermann, Ghil'ad (2003), Language Contact and Lexical Enrichment in Israeli Hebrew. Palgrave Macmillan. ISBN 978-1403917232 , p. 149.


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