Eduards Volters (18 March 1856 – 14 December 1941) was a linguist, ethnographer, archaeologist who studied the Baltic languages and culture. He was a long-time professor at the Saint Petersburg University (1886–1918) and Vytautas Magnus University (1922–1934).
Volters, born in Riga, studied linguistics in Germany, present-day Estonia, and Ukraine earning his master's degree in 1883. In 1886–1918, he lived in Saint Petersburg where he taught at the Saint Petersburg University and worked as a librarian at the Library of the Russian Academy of Sciences. He supported and encouraged Lithuanian and Latvian students and joined their cultural activities. In 1918, Volters moved to Vilnius and started organizing the Central Library of Lithuania (considered to be the predecessor of the Martynas Mažvydas National Library of Lithuania). Due to the Polish–Soviet War, he moved to Kaunas where he lived until his death. He established and headed the Central Library (1920–1922), was director of the (1922–1936), and taught various courses at the Vytautas Magnus University (1922–1934).
Volters' interests were varied – linguistics, ethnology, folklore, archaeology. He was a prolific writer and authored more than 400 articles in Lithuanian, Latvian, German, Russian, though much or his collected material remains unpublished. In 1883–1887, he organized expeditions to collect ethnographic data and folklore examples in Lithuania and Latvia. In 1908–1909, Volters made the first audio recordings of Lithuanian folk songs. In total, Volters and his assistants collected some 1,000 fairy tales, 300 songs, and 2,000 examples of riddles, proverbs, jokes, etc. He prepared and published methodologies and instructions on how to collect ethnographic data to preserve accuracy and authenticity. Initially supportive of the Lithuanian press ban, Volters soon became its critic and managed to get a few Lithuanian publications approved and published for academic purposes, including the reprint of the Catechism, or Education Obligatory to Every Christian by Mikalojus Daukša in 1884. He published a statistical work on the inhabited localities in the Suwałki Governorate in 1901 and had similar works planned for the Kovno and Vilna Governorates. He also carried out or supervised several archaeological excavations – various tumuli in 1888–1889, Apuolė hill fort and tumulus in 1928–1931, Kaunas Castle in 1930 and 1932.
Biography
Volters was born on in Hagensberg (Āgenskalns), a district of Riga, to a family of a pharmacist of Baltic German origin. His nationality is ambiguous and there is no consensus whether he should be considered German, Latvian, or Lithuanian. He attended the . He studied linguistics and Slavic languages at the Leipzig University and Dorpat University and defended his master's thesis (advisor Alexander Potebnja) at the Kharkiv University in 1883. Encouraged by professors August Leskien, Karl Brugmann, Aleksander Brückner, Adalbert Bezzenberger, Volters decided to study Baltic languages and culture.
In 1884, he was elected a true member of the Imperial Russian Geographical Society. In 1886–1918, he taught at the Saint Petersburg University as a privatdozent. The subjects included bibliography, Lithuanian and Latvian languages and ethnography, ancient history of Lithuania. He supported Lithuanian and Latvian students, including Pranas Vaičaitis, Povilas Višinskis, Kazimieras Būga, Antanas Smetona, Rainis, . From 1894, he also worked as a librarian at the Library of the Russian Academy of Sciences. In 1904–1917, he was state censor of Lithuanian theater plays. He had a reputation as a lenient censor who allowed patriotic and historical plays that glorified episodes from the former Grand Duchy of Lithuania but was stricter on any commentary related to social inequality. He was a member of the Lithuanian Literary Society and the Lithuanian Scientific Society and gifted them 1,037 and 1,337 books, respectively.