Ado Grenzstein, pseudonym A. Piirikivi (5 February 1849 – 20 April 1916) was an

Estonia Estonia, officially the Republic of Estonia, is a country in Northern Europe. It is bordered to the north by the Gulf of Finland across from Finland, to the west by the Baltic Sea across from Sweden, to the south by Latvia, and to the east by Ru ...

n 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 nationalist movement and became an apologist of

Russification Russification (), Russianisation or Russianization, is a form of cultural assimilation in which non-Russians adopt Russian culture and Russian language either voluntarily or as a result of a deliberate state policy. Russification was at times ...

. He even went further, expressing doubt whether the loss of the Estonian nation would be of any consequence to mankind. His views have been characterized as "national

nihilism Nihilism () encompasses various views that reject certain aspects of existence. There have been different nihilist positions, including the views that Existential nihilism, life is meaningless, that Moral nihilism, moral values are baseless, and ...

". In 1901, he left Estonia and settled first in

Dresden Dresden (; ; Upper Saxon German, Upper Saxon: ''Dräsdn''; , ) is the capital city of the States of Germany, German state of Saxony and its second most populous city after Leipzig. It is the List of cities in Germany by population, 12th most p ...

, and then later in

Paris Paris () is the Capital city, capital and List of communes in France with over 20,000 inhabitants, largest city of France. With an estimated population of 2,048,472 residents in January 2025 in an area of more than , Paris is the List of ci ...

. In an attempt to revitalize the

Estonian language Estonian ( ) is a Finnic language and the official language of Estonia. It is written in the Latin script and is the first language of the majority of the country's population; it is also an official language of the European Union. Estonian is sp ...

, Grenzstein tried to coin words out of nothing (see ex nihilo lexical enrichment) and introduced

neologisms In linguistics, a neologism (; also known as a coinage) is any newly formed word, term, or phrase that has achieved popular or institutional recognition and is becoming accepted into mainstream language. Most definitively, a word can be considered ...

such as ''kabe'' "draughts, checkers" and ''male'' "chess". 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 offi ...

.

p. 149.

References

External links

* {{DEFAULTSORT:Grenzstein, Ado 1849 births 1916 deaths category:People from Viljandi Parish People from Kreis Fellin Estonian non-fiction writers Estonian journalists Journalists from the Russian Empire Writers from the Russian Empire Estonian male writers Estonian publishers (people) Male non-fiction writers 19th-century Estonian writers 19th-century newspaper founders Emigrants from the Russian Empire to France