The academic and cultural community of Mexico mourns the death of Dr. Margit Frenk Freundmember of the Mexican Academy of Language (AML), who dedicated his life to unraveling the secrets of popular lyrics and Hispanic oral tradition. Frenk, a central figure in Mexican and international philology, died leaving a legacy of rigor, sensitivity and passion for the living word.
The Mexican Academy of Language, through a statement, expressed its deep pain at the loss of the academic who occupied chair XXIV, highlighting her career as a “distinguished philologist and researcher.”
The architect of the oral lyric
Born in Hamburg, Germany, on August 21, 1925, Margit Frenk arrived in Mexico with her family in 1930, fleeing the political circumstances prior to the start of Nazi persecution. This early exile became a fruitful destination: Mexico became his home and the epicenter of his exceptional career.
He trained at the Faculty of Philosophy and Letters (FFyL) from UNAM, where he obtained his master’s degree. Subsequently, he obtained a doctorate in Linguistics and Hispanic Literature at El Colegio de México (Colmex) in 1972, with the thesis Las jarchas mozárabes y los beginnings de la lyrica romanesque, a work that laid the foundations for his research on the survival and transformations of sung and word-of-mouth poetry.
Among his fundamental works are the essential Mexican folk songbook (in several volumes), The New Corpus of Ancient Hispanic Popular Lyrics (15th-17th centuries) and pioneering studies such as Between Voice and Silence (Reading in the Time of Cervantes), where he analyzed the importance of reading aloud in Hispanic culture. His work allowed the collection and study of anonymous couplets, ballads and carols that would otherwise have been lost.
On the other hand, his teaching was carried out in institutions such as The College of Mexico (Colmex), where she was director of the Center for Linguistic and Literary Studies (CELL), and at the Faculty of Philosophy and Letters of the UNAM, where she was Professor Emeritus.
As founder and coordinator of the magazines Literatura Mexicana and Literaturas Populares, she opened vital spaces for the rigorous study of oral tradition, ballads, Don Quixote and the theater of the Golden Ages.
Recognitions for a lifetime of research
Dr. Frenk’s work was recognized with the highest distinctions throughout her career. She was Emerita Researcher of the National System of Researchers (SNI) and Colmex, and received the National Prize for Sciences and Arts in the area of Linguistics and Literature (2000), the Alfonso Reyes International Award (2006) and the Menéndez Pelayo International Prize (2009). In addition, she was awarded an Honoris Causa Doctorate by the UNAM and the Sorbonne New Paris 3 University.
In 1993, Margit Frenk entered the AML to occupy chair XXIV with the speech Bird talk or birds in folk poetry, a text whose eloquence was cited by the Academy to bid her farewell, underlining the “acuteness and sensitivity of her prose and the contagious passion of the pioneer who pointed out the paths that must be followed.”
The words with which he is remembered capture the essence of his fascination with language and popular culture: “the remote memories of the green hummingbird, of the brown and blue birds, the red macaw, the beautiful red-necked thrush that screams when it sings, the reminiscences of the chattering parrot, which infected its peers with its eloquence, causing a ‘din of the precious birds’ to emerge.”
The passing of Margit Frenk represents an invaluable loss for the humanities. The “girl who came to Mexico and became a philologist” will be remembered as an explorer of the word and a teacher who, through her work, taught to listen to the anonymous voice that travels from word to mouth, forever enriching the panorama of Hispanic culture.
Echoes and Tributes to Margit Frenk
The death of Margit Frenk Freund has provoked reactions from the institutions that saw her grow as an academic. The College of Mexico (Colmex) and the National Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM) have been emphatic in recognizing his intellectual stature and human quality.
The College of Mexico (Colmex): The Center of its Teaching. Margit Frenk was a key figure at Colmex, specifically at the Center for Linguistic and Literary Studies (CELL). Her colleagues remember her as a researcher who fused a rare combination of warmth and unwavering discipline.
The philologist was known for the “iron sweetness” with which she directed her students and their projects. This discipline manifested itself in his crowning work, the Cancionero Folklorico de México, an effort of compilation and analysis seen as the most complete work of popular poetry in any language, which required years of coordination and methodical field work.
Beyond research, she was a teacher who trained generations of philologists. The UNAM and Colmex emphasize that his legacy is not limited to his books, but to the school of thought that he founded, based on close reading and the opening of spaces for new researchers to address oral poetry and the Golden Ages.
UNAM: The Teacher of the Living Word
At the National Autonomous University of Mexico, where he earned his master’s degree and Honoris Causa Doctorate, Frenk’s deep connection with the living and popular culture of Latin America is emphasized.
Tribute is paid to her as the researcher who valued the anonymous voice. His work demonstrated that the lyrical and popular ballads were not mere appendages of cultured literature, but rather its foundation and source of inspiration. By studying sung lyrics, he revealed the collective memory and everyday history that canonical literature often ignored.
We remember his ability to find in verses and carols—the simplest forms of expression—the complexity and beauty inherent in the human condition. His research on reading aloud in the time of Cervantes (as in his work Between the voice and the silence) underline their focus on the experience of the word beyond the written text.
The general consensus is that Margit Frenk was an “explorer of the word” who, with her acuity and sensitivity, returned to oral poetry the dignity and place it deserved within the canon of Hispanic literature.
