Ado Grenzstein
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Ado Grenzstein, pseudonym A. Piirikivi (5 February 1849 – 20 April 1916) was an Estonian journalist, writer and teacher, brother of . 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''. 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. His views have been characterized as "national nihilism". In 1901 he left Estonia and settled first in
Dresden Dresden (, ; Upper Saxon: ''Dräsdn''; wen, label= Upper Sorbian, Drježdźany) is the capital city of the German state of Saxony and its second most populous city, after Leipzig. It is the 12th most populous city of Germany, the fourth ...
, and then later in
Paris Paris () is the Capital city, capital and List of communes in France with over 20,000 inhabitants, most populous city of France, with an estimated population of 2,165,423 residents in 2019 in an area of more than 105 km² (41 sq mi), ma ...
. In an attempt to revitalize the
Estonian language Estonian ( ) is a Finnic language, written in the Latin script. It is the official language of Estonia and one of the official languages of the European Union, spoken natively by about 1.1 million people; 922,000 people in Estonia and 160, ...
, Grenzstein tried to coin words out of nothing (see ex nihilo lexical enrichment) and introduced
neologisms A neologism Greek νέο- ''néo''(="new") and λόγος /''lógos'' meaning "speech, utterance"] is a relatively recent or isolated term, word, or phrase that may be in the process of entering common use, but that has not been fully accepted int ...
such as ''kabe'' "draughts, checkers" and ''male'' "chess". Ghil'ad Zuckermann, Zuckermann, Ghil'ad (2003),
Language Contact and Lexical Enrichment in Israeli Hebrew ''Language Contact and Lexical Enrichment in Israeli Hebrew'' is a scholarly book written in the English language by linguist Ghil'ad Zuckermann, published in 2003 by Palgrave Macmillan. The book proposes a socio-philological framework for the an ...
.
Palgrave Macmillan Palgrave Macmillan is a British academic and trade publishing company headquartered in the London Borough of Camden. Its programme includes textbooks, journals, monographs, professional and reference works in print and online. It maintains off ...
.

p. 149.


References

Estonian non-fiction writers Estonian journalists 1849 births 1916 deaths Estonian emigrants to France Estonian male writers Estonian publishers (people) Male non-fiction writers 19th-century Estonian writers 19th-century newspaper founders {{Estonia-writer-stub