Geibel’s Gesammelte Werke were published in 8 vols. (1883, 4th ed. 1906); his Gedichte have gone through about 130 editions. An excellent selection in one volume appeared in 1904. For biography and criticism, see K. Goedeke, E. Geibel (1869); W. Scherer’s address on Geibel (1884); K. T. Gaedertz, Geibel-Denkwürdigkeiten (1886); C. C. T. Litzmann, E. Geibel, aus Erinnerungen, Briefen und Tagebüchern (1887), and biographies by C. Leimbach (2nd ed., 1894), and K. T. Gaedertz (1897).
GEIGE (O. Fr. gigue, gige; O. Ital. and Span. giga; Prov.
gigua; O. Dutch gighe), in modern German the violin; in medieval
German the name applied to the first stringed instruments
played with a bow, in contradistinction to those whose strings
were plucked by fingers or plectrum such as the cithara, rotta and
fidula, the first of these terms having been very generally used
to designate various instruments whose strings were plucked.
The name gîge in Germany, of which the origin is uncertain,[1] and
its derivatives in other languages, were in the middle ages applied
to rebecs having fingerboards. As the first bowed instruments
in Europe were, as far as we know, those of the rebab type, both
boat-shaped and pear-shaped, it seems probable that the name
clung to them long after the bow had been applied to other
stringed instruments derived from the cithara, such as the fiddle
(videl) or vielle. In the romances of the 12th and 13th centuries
the gîge is frequently mentioned, and generally associated with
the rotta. Early in the 16th century we find definite information
concerning the Geige in the works of Sebastian Virdung (1511),
Hans Judenkünig (1523), Martin Agricola (1532), Hans Gerle
(1533); and from the instruments depicted, of two distinct types
and many varieties, it would appear that the principal idea
attached to the name was still that of the bow used to vibrate the
strings. Virdung qualifies the word Geige with Klein (small) and
Gross (large), which do not represent two sizes of the same
instrument but widely different types, also recognized by
Agricola, who names three or four sizes of each, discant, alto,
tenor and bass. Virdung’s Klein Geige is none other than the
rebec with two C-shaped soundholes and a raised fingerboard cut
in one piece with the vaulted back and having a separate flat
soundboard glued over it, a change rendered necessary by the
arched bridge. Agricola’s Klein Geige with three strings was of a
totally different construction, having ribs and wide incurvations
but no bridge; there was a rose soundhole near the tailpiece
and two C-shaped holes in the shoulders. Agricola (Musica
instrumentalis) distinctly mentions three kinds of Geigen with
three, four and five strings. From him we learn that only one
position was as yet used on these instruments, one or two higher
notes being occasionally obtained by sliding the little finger
along. A century later Agricola’s Geige was regarded as
antiquated by Praetorius, who reproduces one of the bridgeless ones
with five strings, a rose and two C-shaped soundholes, and calls
it an old fiddle; under Geige he gives the violins. (K. S.)
GEIGER, ABRAHAM (1810–1874), Jewish theologian and
orientalist, was born at Frankfort-on-Main on the 24th of May
1810, and educated at the universities of Heidelberg and Bonn.
As a student he distinguished himself in philosophy and in philology,
and at the close of his course wrote on the relations of
Judaism and Mahommedanism a prize essay which was afterwards
published in 1833 under the title Was hat Mohammed aus
dem Judentum aufgenommen? (English trans. Judaism and
Islam, Madras, 1898). In November 1832 he went to Wiesbaden
as rabbi of the synagogue, and became in 1835 one of the most
active promoters of the Zeitschrift für jüdische Theologie
(1835–1839 and 1842–1847). From 1838 to 1863 he lived in Breslau,
where he organized the reform movement in Judaism and wrote
some of his most important works, including Lehr- und Lesebuch
zur Sprache der Mischna (1845), Studien from Maimonides (1850),
translation into German of the poems of Juda ha-Levi (1851),
and Urschrift und Übersetzungen der Bibel in ihrer Abhängigkeit
von der innern Entwickelung des Judentums (1857). The last-named
work attracted little attention at the time, but now
enjoys a great reputation as a new departure in the methods of
studying the records of Judaism. The Urschrift has moreover
been recognized as one of the most original contributions to
biblical science. In 1863 Geiger became head of the synagogue of
his native town, and in 1870 he removed to Berlin, where, in
addition to his duties as chief rabbi, he took the principal charge
of the newly established seminary for Jewish science. The
Urschrift was followed by a more exhaustive handling of one of
its topics in Die Sadducäer und Pharisäer (1863), and by a more
thorough application of its leading principles in an elaborate
history of Judaism (Das Judentum und seine Geschichte) in 1865–1871.
Geiger also contributed frequently on Hebrew, Samaritan
and Syriac subjects to the Zeitschrift der deutschen morgenländischen
Gesellschaft, and from 1862 until his death (on the 23rd of October
1874) he was editor of a periodical entitled Jüdische Zeitschrift
für Wissenschaft und Leben. He also published a Jewish prayer-book
(Israëlitisches Gebetbuch) and a variety of minor monographs
on historical and literary subjects connected with the fortunes of
his people. (I. A.)
An Allgemeine Einleitung and five volumes of Nachgelassene Schriften were edited in 1875 by his son Ludwig Geiger (b. 1848), who in 1880 became extraordinary professor in the university of Berlin. Ludwig Geiger published a large number of biographical and literary works and made a special study of German humanism. He edited the Goethe-Jahrbuch from 1880, Vierteljahrsschrift für Kultur und Litteratur der Renaissance (1885–1886), Zeitschr. für die Gesch. der Juden im Deutschland (1886–1891), Zeitschr. für vergleichende Litteraturgeschichte und Renaissance-Litteratur (1887–1891). Among his works are Johann Reuchlin, sein Leben und seine Werke (Leipzig, 1871); and Johann Reuchlin’s Briefwechsel (Tübingen, 1875); Renaissance und Humanismus in Italien und Deutschland (1882, 2nd ed. 1901); Gesch. des geistigen Lebens der preussischen Hauptstadt (1892–1894); Berlin’s geistiges Leben (1894–1896).
See also J. Derenbourg in Jüd. Zeitschrift, xi. 299–308; E. Schrieber, Abraham Geiger als Reformator des Judentums (1880), art. (with portrait) in Jewish Encyclopedia.
Abraham Geiger’s nephew Lazarus Geiger (1829–1870), philosopher and philologist, born at Frankfort-on-Main, was destined to commerce, but soon gave himself up to scholarship and studied at Marburg, Bonn and Heidelberg. From 1861 till his sudden death in 1870 he was professor in the Jewish high school at Frankfort. His chief aim was to prove that the evolution of human reason is closely bound up with that of language. He further maintained that the origin of the Indo-Germanic language is to be sought not in Asia but in central Germany. He was a convinced opponent of rationalism in religion. His chief work was his Ursprung und Entwickelung der menschlichen Sprache und Vernunft (vol. i., Stuttgart, 1868), the principal results of which appeared in a more popular form as Der Ursprung der Sprache (Stuttgart, 1869 and 1878). The second volume of the former was published in an incomplete form (1872, 2nd ed. 1899) after his death by his brother Alfred Geiger, who also published a number of his scattered papers as Zur Entwickelung der Menschheit (1871, 2nd ed. 1878; Eng. trans. D. Asher, Hist. of the Development of the Human Race, Lond., 1880).
See L. A. Rosenthal, Laz. Geiger: seine Lehre vom Ursprung d. Sprache und Vernunft und sein Leben (Stuttgart, 1883); E. Peschier, L. Geiger, sein Leben und Denken (1871); J. Keller, L. Geiger und d. Kritik d. Vernunft (Wertheim, 1883) and Der Ursprung d. Vernunft (Heidelberg, 1884).
GEIJER, ERIK GUSTAF (1783–1847), Swedish historian, was
born at Ransäter in Värmland, on the 12th of January 1783, of a
family that had immigrated from Austria in the 17th century.
- ↑ The words gîge, gîgen, geic appear suddenly in the M. H. German of the 12th century, and thence passed apparently into the Romance languages, though some would reverse the process (e.g. Weigand, Deutsches Wörterbuch). An elaborate argument in the Deutsches Wörterbuch of J. and W. Grimm (Leipzig, 1897) connects the word with an ancient common Teut. root gag—meaning to sway to and fro, as preserved in numerous forms: e.g. M.H.G. gagen, gugen, “to sway to and fro” (gugen, gagen, the rocking of a cradle), the Swabian gigen, gagen, in the same sense, the Tirolese gaiggern, to sway, doubt, or the old Norse geiga, to go astray or crooked. The reference is to the swaying motion of the violin bow. The English “jig” is derived from gîge through the O. Fr. gigue (in the sense of a stringed instrument); the modern French gigue (a dance) is the English “jig” re-imported (Hatzfeld and Darmesteter, Dictionnaire). This opens up another possibility, of the origin of the name of the instrument in the dance which it accompanied. (W. A. P.)
