The polyglot Georg Sauerwein (Hannover 1831 – Oslo 1904), son of a Lutheran pastor, grew up in Schmedenstadt and Gronau, and studied theology and philology in Göttingen. Among his teachers were Georg Ewald, one of the Göttinger Sieben, and Theodor Benfey.
Without obtaining a degree, Sauerwein travelled to England in 1852 to work as a private tutor. Through recommendations of his former teachers he established contact with Max Müller, who in turn introduced him to Chr.K.J.Bunsen and his sister-in-law Augusta Hall (Lady Llanover). Sauerwein became a member of her circle and shared its Welsh-oriented activities; he participated in the 1853 Abergavenny eisteddfod and addressed the assembly in Welsh. He maintained, throughout his life, a special interest in the Welsh language, wrote occasional poems in Welsh and was disappointed when an inquiry as to a possible position at the new University of Wales misfired.
In 1857 Sauerwein became private tutor to Princess Elisabeth of Wied, later queen of Romania and sentimental author under the pen name “Carmen Sylva”. He passed his Welsh interest on to her: she visited the Llandudno eisteddfod of 1890.
At the same time he worked in an advisory capacity for the British Foreign Bible Society, supervising a great many translations and himself furnishing parts of an Old Testament in Malagasy and the Gospel of John in Kabyle. In 1873 he was awarded an honorary doctorate by his Göttingen alma mater.
Sauerwein’s interest in small or subaltern languages was not only philologically but also politically motivated, and strongly linked to his pacifism and his defence of minority cultures in the mid-century imperial framework. He is mainly known as a champion of the Lithuanian and Sorbian populations of East Prussia, staying regularly in their midst in the Spreewald near Berlin, as well as in Klaipėda and Tilsit, and vidicating their rights in verse and prose. He wrote sentimental-patriotic poems in these languages, e.g. Serbske stucki (“Sorbian songs”, 1877) and the still-popular Lietuvininkai mes esam gimę (“Lithuanians we are born”, 1878), published polemic articles requesting the German government to repeal its assimilationist policies, and supported the work of Jonas Basanavičus. He was one of the initiators of the Lithuanian Literature Society (1879) and of the first Lithuanian newspaper, Auszra (“Dawn”, 1883), and was appointed honorary member of the youth society Birutė. His attempts to gain a seat in one of Germany’s parliamentary assemblies failed, however: the authorities and the press accused him being an unpatriotic Pan-Slavist.
Sauerwein took refuge in Norway, where he lived between 1874 and 1904, making the western village of Dovre his home base for a campaign against German nationalism in Lithuania and Sorbian Lusatia. He was also interested in Ivar Aasen’s Norwegian language movement, witness his verse collection Frie viso ifraa Viggu’n (“Free songs from the mountain’s edge”, 1885), the first work ever published in Landsmål/Nynorsk. The collection had been prepared by extensive folklore research in the area and would in turn stimulate further interest in the area’s oral culture.
The last years of his life he was dedicated to the Kristiana Fredforening, a pacifist society, as a publicist and orator. He died in 1904.
