Career
He was the author of the Germanic substrate hypothesis as well as a number of important works concerning Jewish ethnic and racial identity. Feist served as the director of the Jewish Reichenheim Orphanage in Berlin from 1906 to 1935. Feist emigrated to Denmark in 1939 where he died four years later.
As director of the Reichenheim Orphanage, Feist established and maintained close relationships with his wards, 77 of whom corresponded with him during their time of service in the First World War.
The correspondence consists of 745 letters which Feist received between the years 1914 and 1918, and offers a glimpse into the lives of Jewish soldiers who served in World War I.
The collected correspondence has been archived in the Centrum Judaicum of the New Synagogue in Berlin since 1995. The letters were published as a collection in 2002.
Bibliography for Wulfila database: Feist, Sigmund. Vergleichendes Wörterbuch der Gotischen Sprache Mit Einschluss des Krimgotischen und sonstiger zerstreuter Überreste des Gotischen.
Dritte neubearbeitete und vermehrte Auflage East. J. Brill Leiden 1939
An Analysis of * z loss in West Germanic
"Studying the Jew"
Listed in The Encyclopedia of Language and Linguistics
Römer, Ruth: Sigmund Feist und die Gesellschaft fuer deutsche Philologie in Berlin.
In: Muttersprache 103 (1993), 28-40
Römer, Ruth: Sigmund Feist: Deutscher – Germanist – Jude. In: Muttersprache 91 (1981), 249-308.