of the chancery gave rise to the mixed character of sounds and
forms which is still a feature of the literary language of Germany.
Thus the use of the monophthongs ī, ū, and ǖ, instead of the old
diphthongs ie, uo and üe, comes from Middle Germany; the forms
of the words and the gender of the nouns follow Middle rather than
Upper German usage, whereas, on the other hand, the consonantal
system (p to pf; d to t) betrays in its main features its Upper
German (Bavarian-Austrian) origin.
The language of Luther no doubt shows greater originality in its style and vocabulary (cf. its influence on Goethe and the writers of the Sturm und Drang), for in this respect the chancery could obviously afford him but scanty help. His vocabulary is drawn to a great extent from his own native Middle German dialect, and the fact that, since the 14th century, Middle German literature (cf. for instance, the writings of the German mystics, at the time of and subsequent to Eckhart) had exercised a strong influence over Upper Germany, stood him in good stead. Luther is, therefore, strictly speaking, not the father of the modern German literary language, but he forms the most important link in a chain of development which began long before him, and did not reach its final stage until long after him. To infer that Luther’s language made any rapid conquest of Germany would not be correct. It was, of course, immediately acceptable to the eastern part of the Middle German district (Thuringia and Silesia), and it did not find any great difficulty in penetrating into Low Germany, at least into the towns and districts lying to the east of the Saale and Elbe (Magdeburg, Hamburg). One may say that about the middle of the 16th century Luther’s High German was the language of the chanceries, about 1600 the language of the pulpit (the last Bible in Low German was printed at Goslar in 1621) and the printing presses. Thus the aspirations of Low Germany to have a literary language of its own were at an early stage crushed. Protestant Switzerland, on the other hand, resisted the “uncommon new German” until well into the 17th century. It was also natural that the Catholic Lower Rhine (Cologne) and Catholic South Germany held out against it, for to adopt the language of the reformer would have seemed tantamount to offering a helping hand to Protestant ideas. At the same time, geographical and political conditions, as well as the pronounced character of the Upper German dialects, formed an important obstacle to a speedy unification. South German grammarians of the 16th century, such as Laurentius Albertus, raise a warning voice against those who, although far distant from the proper use of words and the true pronunciation, venture to teach nos puriores Germanos, namely, the Upper Germans.
In 1593 J. Helber, a Swiss schoolmaster and notary, spoke of three separate dialects as being in use by the printing presses:[1] (1) Mitteldeutsch (the language of the printers in Leipzig, Erfurt, Nuremberg, Würzburg, Frankfort, Mainz, Spires, Strassburg and Cologne; at the last mentioned place in the event of their attempting to print Ober-Teutsch); (2) Donauisch (the printers’ language in South Germany, but limited to Bavaria and Swabia proper—here more particularly the Augsburg idiom, which was considered to be particularly zierlich);[2] (3) Höchst Reinisch, which corresponds to Swiss German. Thus in the 16th century Germany was still far from real unity in its language; but to judge from the number and the geographical position of the towns which printed in Mitteldeutsch it is pretty clear which idiom would ultimately predominate. During the 17th century men like M. Opitz (Buch von der deutschen Poeterey) and J. G. Schottelius (Teutsche Sprachkunst, 1641, and Von der teutschen Sprachkunst, 1663), together with linguistic societies like the Fruchtbringende Gesellschaft and the Nuremberg Pegnitzorden, did a great deal to purify the German language from foreign (especially French) elements; they insisted on the claims of the vernacular to a place beside and even above Latin (in 1687 Christian Thomasius held for the first time lectures in the German language at the university of Leipzig), and they established a firm grammatical basis for Luther’s common language, which especially in the hymnals had become modernized and more uniform. About the middle of the 17th century the disparity between the vowels of the singular and plural of the preterite of the strong verbs practically ceases; under East Middle German influence the final e is restored to words like Knabe, Jude, Pfaffe, which in South German had been Knab, &c.; the mixed declension (Ehre, Ehren; Schmerz, Schmerzen) was established, and the plural in -er was extended to some masculine nouns (Wald, Wälder);[3] the use of the mutated sound has now become the rule as a plural sign (Väter, Bäume). How difficult, even in the first half of the 18th century, it was for a Swiss to write the literary language which Luther had established is to be seen from the often quoted words of Haller (1708–1777): “I am a Swiss, the German language is strange to me, and its choice of words was almost unknown to me.” The Catholic south clung firmly to its own literary language, based on the idiom of the imperial chancery, which was still an influential force in the 17th century or on local dialects. This is apparent in the writings of Abraham a Sancta Clara,[4] who died in 1709, or in the attacks of the Benedictine monk, Augustin Dornblüth, on the Meissner Schriftsprache in 1755.
In the 18th century, to which these names have introduced us, the grammatical writings of J. C. Gottsched (Deutsche Sprachkunst, 1748) and J. C. Adelung (Grammatisch-kritisches Wörterbuch der hochdeutschen Mundart, 1774–1786) exercised a decisive and far-reaching influence. Gottsched took as his basis the spoken language (Umgangssprache) of the educated classes of Upper Saxony (Meissen), which at this time approximated as nearly as possible to the literary language. His Grammar did enormous services to the cause of unification, ultimately winning over the resisting south; but he carried his purism to pedantic lengths, he would tolerate no archaic or dialectical words, no unusual forms or constructions, and consequently made the language unsuited for poetry. Meanwhile an interest in Old German literature was being awakened by Bodmer; Herder set forth better ideas on the nature of language, and insisted on the value of native idioms; and the Sturm und Drang led by Goethe encouraged all individualistic tendencies. All this gave rise to a movement counter to Gottsched’s absolutism, which resulted in the revival of many obsolete German words and forms, these being drawn partly from Luther’s Bible translation (cf. V. Hehn, “Goethe und die Sprache der Bibel,” in the Goethe-Jahrbuch, viii. p. 187 ff.), partly from the older language and partly from the vocabulary peculiar to different social ranks and trades.[5] The latter is still a source of linguistic innovations. German literary style underwent a similar rejuvenation, for we are on the threshold of the second classical period of German literature. It had strengthened Gottsched’s hand as a linguistic reformer that the earlier leaders of German literature, such as Gellert, Klopstock and Lessing, were Middle Germans; now Wieland’s influence, which was particularly strong in South Germany, helped materially towards the establishment of one accepted literary language throughout all German-speaking countries; and the movement reaches its culmination with Goethe and Schiller. At the same time this unification did not imply the creation of an unalterable standard; for, just as the language of Opitz and Schottelius differed from that of Luther, so—although naturally in a lesser degree—the literary language of our day differs from that of the classic writers of the 18th century. Local peculiarities are still to be met with, as is to be seen in the modern German literature that emanates from Switzerland or Austria.
But this unity, imperfect as it is, is limited to the literary language. The differences are much more sharply accentuated in the Umgangssprache,[6] whereby we understand the language as it is spoken by educated people throughout Germany; this is not only the case with regard to pronunciation, although it is naturally most noticeable here, but also with regard to the choice of words and the construction of sentences. Compared with the times of Goethe and Schiller a certain advance towards unification has undoubtedly been made, but the differences between north and south are still very great. This is particularly noticeable in the pronunciation of r—either the uvular r or the r produced by the tip of the tongue; of the voiced and voiceless stops, b, p, d, t, g and k; of the s sounds; of the diphthongs; of the long vowels ē and œ̄, &c. (cf. W. Vietor, German Pronunciation, 2nd ed., 1890). The question as to whether a unified pronunciation (Einheitaussprache) is desirable or even possible has occupied the attention of academies, scholars and the educated public during recent years, and in 1898 a commission made up of scholars and theatre directors drew up a scheme of pronunciation for use in the royal theatres of Prussia.[7] This scheme has since been recommended to all German theatres by the German Bühnenverein. Desirable as such a uniform pronunciation is for the national theatre, it is a much debated question how far it should be adopted in the ordinary speech of everyday life. Some scholars, such as W. Braune, declared themselves strongly in favour of its adoption;[8] Braune’s
- ↑ For literature bearing on the complicated question of the Druckersprachen, readers are referred to the article “Neuhochdeutsche Schriftsprache,” by W. Scheel, in Bethge’s Ergebnisse . . . der germanistischen Wissenschaft (1902), pp. 47, 50 f. Cf. also K. von Bahder, Grundlagen des nhd. Lautsystems (1890), pp. 15 ff.
- ↑ A German Priamel mentions as an essential quality in a beautiful woman: “die red dort her von Swaben.”
- ↑ Cf. for a detailed discussion of the noun declension, K. Boiunga, Die Entwickelung der mhd. Substantivflexion (Leipzig, 1890); and, more particularly for the masculine and neuter nouns, two articles by H. Molz, “Die Substantivflexion seit mhd. Zeit,” in Paul and Braune’s Beiträge, xxvii. p. 209 ff. and xxxi. 277 ff. For the changes in the gender of nouns, A. Polzin, Geschlechtswandel der Substantiva im Deutschen (Hildesheim, 1903).
- ↑ Cf. C. Blanckenburg, Studien über die Sprache Abrahams a S. Clara (Halle, 1897); H. Strigl, “Einiges über die Sprache des P. Abraham a Sancta Clara” (Zeitschr. f. deutsche Wortforschung, viii. 206 ff.).
- ↑ Cf. F. Kluge, Etymologisches Wörterbuch (6th ed.), pp. 508 ff. One can speak of: Studenten-, Soldaten-, Weidmanns-, Bergmanns-, Drucker-, Juristen-, und Zigeunersprache, und Rotwelsch. Cf. F. Kluge, Die deutsche Studentensprache (Strassburg, 1894); Rotwelsch i. (Strassburg, 1901); R. Bethge, Ergebnisse, &c., p. 55 f.
- ↑ Cf. H. Wunderlich, Unsere Umgangssprache (Weimar, 1894).
- ↑ Cf. Th. Siebs, Deutsche Bühnenaussprache (2nd ed., Berlin, 1901), and the same writer’s Grundzüge der Bühnensprache (1900).
- ↑ W. Braune, Über die Einigung der deutschen Aussprache (Halle, 1905); and the review by O. Brenner, in the Zeitschrift des allgemeinen deutschen Sprachvereins, Beihefte iv. 27, pp. 228-232.
