Werner Lehfeldt

Werner Lehfeldt (born May 22, 1943, Perleberg) is a German Slavist.

Lehfeldt attended primary school Goethe-Oberschule in Perleberg and after the escape from East Germany from 1960 to 1962, the Ostseegymnasium in Timmendorfer Strand, where he graduated in 1962. From 1962, he studied Slavic Studies at the Universities of Mainz, Hamburg, Sarajevo and Bochum, receiving a degree in Bochum in 1967 in Slavic Studies and history. He continued to work there the same year as a researcher. In 1973 he habilitated in Bochum and in 1976 was appointed as the Chair in the Department of Slavic Linguistics at the University of Konstanz. In 1980 he declined an offer from the University of Hamburg and also in 1991 as a professor at the University of Geneva, where he taught as a guest professor for one semester. Between 1979 and 1989 he taught for ten semesters at the University of Basel. In 1991 he finally took a position at the University of Göttingen, where he led the Department of Slavic Philology from April 1992 until his retirement at September 30, 2011.

Since 1992 he was a corresponding member of the Croatian Academy of Arts and Sciences. Since 1994 he was a member of the Akademie gemeinnütziger Wissenschaften in Erfurt, and since 2011 a member of the Brunswick Scientific Society. On February 9, 1996 he became a full member of Philology and History class of the Göttingen Academy of Sciences and Humanities. On 1 April 2006 to 31 March 2012 he became a chairman of this class and a vice president of the Academy. On 28 October 2010 he received an honorary degree from the Moscow Institute of Russian Language by the Russian Academy of Sciences. On 19 April 2012 he received an honorary degree by the University of Kazan.

Since 1983 Lehfeldt was a co-editor of the journal Russian Linguistics, from 1993 to 2006 a leading co-editor and an editor-in-chief.

His main research areas include:

• comparative morphology of Slavic languages
• diachronic and synchronic accentology of Slavic languages
• morphosyntax of Russian
• history of Russian and Serbo-Croatian
• quantitative phonology
• linguistic typology
• history of science.