To Vladimir Iakovlevich Propp—100 Years

Abstract

V. Ia. Propp was born 29 April 1895 in [St.] Petersburg. On graduating from the Anninsk School in 1913, he entered the Historical-Philological Department of [St.] Petersburg University. In 1915, he interrupted his studies, voluntarily took six-week courses in first aid and sick care, followed by service as a medic at an infirmary and a field hospital. He graduated from the university in 1918 in Slavonic-Russian philology, from 1918 to 1928 worked as a teacher in Petrograd-Leningrad schools, and from 1926 taught German in Leningrad higher-educational institutions. In the 1920s and 1930s, he conducted scientific research for the Folklore Commission of the Geographical Society Department of Ethnography, at the A. N. Veselovskii Institute for the Comparative Study of the Literature and Languages of the West and the East, in the Folklore Section of the Institute of the History of the Arts, at the Institute of Russian Literature (Pushkin House) of the USSR Academy of Sciences, and at the Institute of Ethnography of the USSR Academy of Sciences. From 1932 through 1969, he worked in the Philological Department of Leningrad University—as a German-language instructor, an assistant professor, and from 1938, as full professor in the Folklore Division; in 1939, he defended his doctoral dissertation. In 1942-44, he was in evacuation with university [colleagues] in Saratov. He spent some time as head of the [university's] Folklore Division, and in the 1960s as head of the History of Russian Literature Division. He passed away on 22 August 1970.