Wrede, Ferdinand

Born July 15, 1863, in Spandau; died Feb. 19, 1934, in Marburg. German linguist. Head of the German school of dialectography.

Wrede directed the Dialectological Institute in Marburg and edited the first dialect atlas of the German language (Deutscher Sprachatlas, 1908-1934). A proponent of the Berlin school of philology, Wrede sought to prove the un-soundness of the neogrammarian thesis on the “stability of sound laws” and denied the possibility that modern dialects developed spontaneously from old tribal dialects. Wrede examined each individual subdialect in terms of broad dialectographical relationships.