Gero Schliess reports on what the title accurately calls a “mammoth task”:
Precisely 70 years ago, the German Academy of Sciences in Berlin initiated the huge project of the Goethe dictionary – a lexicon precisely listing, describing and explaining every single word used by Goethe in his poems, dramas, letters, official writings and scientific essays.
In his speech on the occasion of the 70th anniversary of the initiative, project manager Michael Niedermeier of the Berlin-Brandenburg Academy of Sciences and Humanities (BBAW) said that back then, the time was ripe for this project.
Following the Nazi era, people were yearning for the imperturbable values epitomized by Goethe and his era. At the time, nobody could have imagined that the project would go on over several generations, including the reunification of Germany.
Goethe commanded the biggest ever documented individual lexicon of 93,000 words. The researchers have collected everything, ranging from verbs and nouns to prepositions and articles. Martin Luther, by comparison, “only” commanded 23,000 words.
It took more than 20 years just to list and evaluate these 93,000 words. But now, an end is in sight. In terms of lexical evaluation, the present team consisting of 17 academics has reached the letters S and T. It is hoped that the project will be completed in 2025. Originally, the researchers had the year 2040 in mind. However, the patience and the budget of the BBAW and of the academies in Heidelberg and Göttingen cooperating with it turned out to be limited after all.
Michael Niedermeier says the dictionary, whose website is here, is a “central instrument of exploring Classicism, and it will take decades and centuries until its full effect will be realized.” Hyperbolic, perhaps, but surely one is permitted a bit of proud hyperbole when discussing a project like this. Thanks, Trevor!
Maybe this doesn’t help with the “explaining” but I would think that a rather important development over the seventy years is the development of technology to the point where it ought to be a quick and straightforward exercise to get digital versions of the best available texts of pretty much everything Goethe ever wrote, load them into a single database, press a few buttons, and get a complete concordance, equivalent in detail to that that was probably generated by hand over the course of the first few decades of the project.
Goethe commanded the biggest ever documented individual lexicon of 93,000 words.
What do they mean by “word”? German concept of a word is quite extendable.
The researchers have collected everything, ranging from verbs and nouns to prepositions and articles.
Aren’t prepositions and articles form a closed set. Or they mean that the concordance was extended for them as well? (Seems a bit absurd)
J.W. Brewer: […] get a complete concordance, equivalent in detail to that that was probably generated by hand over the course of the first few decades of the project.
It took more than 20 years just to list and evaluate these 93,000 words.
In the spring of ’84, my particular section of a college-freshman English class was reading Ulysses, and we were given an assignment that required going to the library, getting hold of a hard-copy concordance of it (the university owned multiple copies) and picking a particularly striking word, tracing it through the book, and then ruminating about its various usages. Now it’s easy to find free searchable online concordances of Ulysses, but it took a while to use the internet to find evidence of the prior existence of hand-generated hard-copy ones. I’m not actually 100% sure if the one I was able to find a few references to (originally done by Miles Hanley at the U. of Wisconsin in the 1930’s and then revised after his death to match up with a revised edition of Ulysses) is the one we used. Hanley (1893-1954) also worked during the ’30’s on the Linguistic Atlas of New England, so he was a scholar of wide-ranging interests.
Should rather be called “philosophy of nature”. Goethe refused to follow the evidence to such philosophically unappealing conclusions like white being a mixture instead of pure purity.
Ah, that was partly deliberate. Luther wasn’t trying to write poetry or philosophy, he was trying to render the Bible and his own religious musings in 1) as plain language as possible, 2) using words that would be as widely understood as possible. That imposes a least-common-denominator effect on his life’s work.
I suppose ad-hoc compounds that wouldn’t go into another dictionary aren’t in this one either.
“I suppose ad-hoc compounds that wouldn’t go into another dictionary aren’t in this one either.”
The Abend- words listed are:
Abendscheiden
Abendschein
Abendschimmer
Abendschmaus
Abendsegen
Abendseite
Abendsendung
Abendsession
Abendsitzung
Abendsonne
Abendsonne-Glut
Abendsonnenblick
Abendspazieren
Abendspazierfahrt
Abendspaziergang
Abendspiel
Abendständchen
Abendstern
Abendstille
Abendstrahl
Abendstunde
Abendtafel
Abendtau
Abendtee
Abendtisch
Abendunterhaltung
Abendvorlesung
Abendwäldchen
abendwärts
Abendwind
Abendwindeskühle
Abendwolke
Abendwort
Abendzeit
Abendzeitung
Abendzirkel
[copy-paste mishap patch]
Abend
Abendanfrage
Abendasche
Abendbeleuchtung
Abendbesuch
Abendbetglocke
Abendbrot
Abendcollation
Abenddämmerung
Abendergötzung
Abenderlustigung
Abendessen
Abendfest
Abendfleiß
Abendfliege
Abendgebet
Abendgelag
Abendgesellschaft
Abendgespräch
Abendgestirn
Abendglanz
Abendglocke
Abendgrüne
Abendgruß
Abendhauch
Abendhimmel
abendig
Abendkollation
Abendkonferenz
Abendkost
Abendkreis
Abendkühle
Abendkuß
Abendland
abendländisch
abendlich
Abendlicht
Abendlied
Abendluft
Abendmahl
Abendmahlzeit
Abendmusik
Abendopfer
Abendplätzchen
Abendpost
Abendprediger
Abendprobe
Abendpromenade
Abendregen
Abendrot
Abendröte
abends
Abendschatten
Oh. Some of these do require an explanation and belong in a dictionary, but others are ad-hoc. Abendhimmel “evening sky” for instance.
For words like that, though, it’s really functioning more as a concordance than a dictionary. The entry for “Abendhimmel,” for example, doesn’t bother to define the word but it does reveal that Goethe once used it as a rhyme for “Bim-Baum-Bimmel” in one of the great classics of Western literature.
It is hoped that the project will be completed in 2025.
That seems to have been overoptimistic; the site now says:
https://woerterbuchnetz.de/?sigle=GWB&lemid=G02976
They go into all the senses the word “Gewalt” had in Goethes writing, and say:
—
Auffallend, wie wenig die negativen Bedeutungen G-s Wortgebrauch prägen. Zwar ist der Komplex physischer (selten psychischer) Gewalt (C) mit üb 250 Belegen – davon etwa die Hälfte idVbdg ‘mit ( .. ) G.’ – gut belegt, er tritt aber gegen die Bedeutungen ‘Kraft’ (A) u ‘Macht’ (B) deutlich zurück. In letzteren vornehmlich dokumentiert sich G-s sprachschöpferisches Vermögen, bei A in Charakterisierung (elementarer) physischer wie geistiger Vitalität u Durchsetzungskraft, bei B in der Umschreibung politischer u geistiger Machtverhältnisse. Als eine Elementarkategorie politischen Handelns wird ‘Gewalt’ dabei nicht der Kritik unterzogen.
—
(My translation)
Remarkable, how uncharacteristic the negative meanings are for G’s use of the word. Indeed, the complex of physical violence (less frequently abusive behaviour) (C) , with over 250 citations, about half of these of the form ‘mit … Gewalt’, is well represented, but is still considerably less frequent than the meanings (A) strength/force and (B) power. Goethe demonstrates his linguistic creativity in the meanings (A) and (B): in the case of (A) in the characterisation of (core) physical and mental vitality and assertiveness, in the case of (B) in the description of political and religious power relations. As a basic form of political action, ‘Gewalt’ is not placed above criticism.
—
We discussed Gewalt in another thread with reference to Karl Marx.
Closer to the opposite – “is not criticized”, “is not subjected to criticism”.
My translation:
“[It is] conspicuous how little the negative meanings influence G’s word use. The complex of physical (rarely psychological) violence (C) is, to be sure, well attested with > 250 attestations[*] – about half of them in the connected phrase ‘mit […] Gewalt‘ [“violently”, “with violence”] – but it clearly takes second place to the meanings ‘force/strength’ (A) and ‘[physical/magical] power’ (B). In the latter especially, G’s language-creative ability documents itself: in A in the characterization of (elementary) physical as well as spiritual vitality and the ability to get one’s will done, in B in the circumscription[**] of constellations of political and spiritual power. As an elementary category of political action ‘violence’ is not subjected to criticism during this.”
The last sentence is ambiguous; depending on intonation it could mean “Being an elementary category of political action, G does not criticize ‘violence’ here” or “G does not criticize violence here in its function as an elementary category of political action [but perhaps very much otherwise]”.
* mit […] Belegen […] belegt “attested with attestations”. My impression of the whole quote is that the sentences weren’t planned ahead. That whirring sound in the distance is G himself.
** “Description” does seem to be intended, but that would normally be Beschreibung; Umschreibung would by default refer to talking around things, with euphemisms or such. (…Unless you stress it on the first syllable, in which case it would refer to the act of rewriting.) This could nonetheless be deliberate: a comprehensive description from all around, from numerous points of view.
the “rewriting” sense seems like a good fit here – power as that which changes things.
@DM
Thanks–I should have just left the German. I found the text impenetrable in places and pivoting on the use of single words that have multiple equivalents in English. But “unterziehen”–I just thought, you pull on a jumper over your shirt (überziehen) so “nicht unterzogen” must mean the jumper is still on😊. Just look unfamiliar verbs up! 🙂
Ah, you were thinking of the one stressed on the prefix.
What you’re hearing in the distance is me practicing my evil laugh because somebody has to.