Maximilian Lambertz

Maximilian Lambertz (27 July 1882 in Vienna – 26 August 1963 in Markkleeberg near Leipzig) was an Austrian linguist, folklorist, and a major personality of Albanology.

In the years 1900 to 1905, he studied comparative linguistics and classical philology in Vienna, and subsequently received his doctorate with a dissertation on the "Greek slave name" (Vienna 1907). A government scholarship enabled him to travel to Italy and Greece. While in Greece, he overheard the conversation of some fishermen from Attica. He got curious when he was told that it was the Arvanitika dialect of the Albanian. This would change his course of work from that moment on. After his return home, he became a school teacher at Bundesgymnasium in Vienna, but in 1907 he moved to Munich, where he participated in the Thesaurus Linguae Latinae project. In 1911, he returned to Vienna and took his career as a school teacher again. His first publication in the field of Albanian studies (together with Gjergj Pekmezi) was a teaching and reading book of Albanian (published in Vienna, 1913), Lehr und Lesebuch des Albanischen (Manual and Reader of Albanian). In the years 1913 and 1914, he traveled for several weeks depending southern Italy, to study the Albanian dialects spoken there. In particular, he devoted himself to the less known northern dialects of Arbëresh, in the Abruzzo and Molise regions, especially the dialect of Villa Badessa (Alb: Badhesa). On this trip, his first collection of photographs came out.

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