Maria Schwauss was a German writer, translator and linguist. She trained as an educator before studying botany in Zurich. Schwauss travelled to Guatemala in 1919, where she worked as a private teacher until 1928. When she returned to Germany, she settled in Dresden and devoted herself to disseminating Latin American culture, literature and language as a translator and author.

Material:
This partial set of her papers comprise manuscripts and preparatory materials on the two-volume dictionary of Latin American vocabulary “Lateinamerikanisches Sprachgut” that Schwauss worked on for about 40 years. Volume I, a dictionary of regional vernacular in Latin America, (Leipzig 1970) was a continuation of the Spanish-American dictionary planned by Georg Hellmuth Neuendorff in the 1930s, which Schwauss worked on alone after his death in 1949. As a result, a number of Neuendorff’s manuscripts are also in the collection.

• 2 card index boxes with numerous vocabulary cards, 7 notebooks of botanical and zoological words, 2 indexes, 16 boxes (preparatory materials for Volume II, a dictionary of flora and fauna in Latin America, Leipzig 1977)
• 2 card file boxes
• 5 letters
• 2 microfilms

Keywords: linguistics