Manfred Bierwisch

About

Manfred Bierwisch (1930–2024) was a German linguist in the area of structuralism and generative linguistics, with profound connections to music and cultural theory. Bierwisch is near singular in linguistic-theoretical thought in that he, rooted in Eastern Germany, combined several intellectual streams in the post-WII period before Wende, maintaining scholarly exchanges in dictatorship East Germany - at times at great personal cost, including jail time in the 1950s-, with West Germany, French and North American scholarship.