Portrait
Dr. Karl Friedrich Schwartz
My father, Wilhelm Schwartz, was born in Tartu, and my mother, Marju Lepaleht, in a northern Estonian fishing village, Karepa.
I was born in Bielefeld near Hanover in 1948. Since my parents spoke both Estonian and German, my brothers and I grew up bilingually.
I studied theology, biology, and several languages in the universities of Heidelberg, Berlin und Munich. I am a biologist specialized in microbiology (bacteriology and virology).
I worked for more than 25 years as a medical and scientific journalist; therefore I am highly competent in translating scientific passages from a foreign language into German.
Since 2003 I have extended my knowlege of the Estonian language by intensively
studying Estonian in the Institute of Finnougristic at the Ludwig Maximilian
University of Munich.
