Alfred Senn, internationally renowned philologist and linguist, was born in Blotzheim, Alsace, on March 19, 1899 of Swiss parents, Alfred and Bertha (nee Affolter) Senn. After attending elementary and secondary schools in Goldach, Switzerland, he studied at the classical gymnasium in St. Gallen from which he graduated with highest honors in March 1918. From 1918 to 1921 he studied primarily Germanic philology but also German literature and Greek philology at the University of Fribourg where he received his doctorate upon completing a dissertation on Germanic loan words in the languages of Europe. Although Senn had never been his student, it was Dr. Max Niedermann, professor of Indo-European philology at the University of Basel, who directed him toward the study of Baltic languages and especially Lithuanian.
Immediately after his doctoral examination, Senn went to Lithuania where, through his fraternity brother, Dr. Joseph Ehret, he took the post of assistant director of the Department of Information of the Lithuanian Ministry of Foreign Affairs. After resigning this position in 1922, Senn took a variety of jobs -- including teaching and serving as a principal at local gymnasia, lecturing at the University of Lithuania, and serving as a correspondent for the Swiss Telegram Agency. In 1925 he managed to obtain a more stable post at the University of Lithuania in Kaunas where he taught diverse courses in comparative linguistics.
In 1930, uncomfortable as a Swiss living in Lithuania, he accepted a Sterling Fellowship in Germanics at Yale University. The following year he transferred to the German Department at the University of Wisconsin, where he served as professor of Germanic and Indo-European philology and also as chairman of the Department of Comparative Philology. While at Wisconsin he introduced the teaching of Russian and also helped in winning approval for Polish language courses. He became actively involved in local Swiss-American affairs and from 1939 to 1940, after his departure from Madison, edited the Amerikanische Schweizer Nachrichten, a weekly published in Winona, Minnesota, and Monroe, Wisconsin. In addition, he founded the Swiss radio program which remained a regular feature of WHA Radio until the early 1970s.
In 1938 Senn became professor of Germanic Philology (after 1948, professor of Germanic and Balto-Slavic Philology) at the University of Pennsylvania, where he remained until his retirement in 1969. During this period he served as chairman of the Department of Germanic Languages (1944-1946) and the Department of Balto-Slavic Studies (1947-1965), and was a visiting lecturer at several institutes and universities in both the United States and Switzerland. He also served on the editorial board of the American Slavic and East European Review and as president of the American Association of Teachers of Slavic and East European Languages (1948), the American Association of Teachers of German (1956-1959), the International Association of Slavic Languages and Literatures (1960-1963), and the American Name Society (1963).
Senn was a man of diverse scholarly interests. In his lifetime he studied some forty languages and collected an extensive library dealing with such subjects as Indo-European linguistics, history of the German language, and Swiss and Lithuanian history, culture, and folklore. His library has been donated to the University of Wisconsin-Madison Memorial Library. His most important published works include:
- Worterbuch der litauischen Schriftsprache, 5 vols. (Heidelberg: Carl Winter, 1932-68). In collaboration with Max Niedermann, Franz Brender, and Anton Salys.
- Handbuch der litauischen Sprache, 2 vols. (Heidelberg: Carl Winter, 1955-66).
- Kleine litauische Sprachlehre, 2 vols. (Heidelberg: Julius Groos, 1929).
- An Introduction to Middle High German (New York: Norton, 1937).
- Word-index to Wolfram's Parzival (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1938).
- Multi-lingual Dictionary, A Seven Language Dictionary (New York: Bantam, 1967). Contributor.
- “Storia della letteratura lituana,” in Giacomo Devoto, et al. (eds.), Storia delle letterature baltiche (Milan: Nuova Accademia, 1957, new ed. 1969).
- “Carl Spittelers Dichtersprache,” German Quarterly 32 (1959): 187-198.
- “Notes on Swiss Personal Names,” Names, 10 (1962): 149-158.
In 1923 Senn married Marie Vedlugaite; they had three children: Marie B., Elfrieda G., and Alfred Erich. Alfred Senn died in 1978.
