Queenhofer manuscript

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Page of the Königinhofer manuscript

The Königinhofer Manuscript ( Rukopis královédvorský in Czech ) is a forgery, presumably made by Václav Hanka and published by him, of a medieval song collection with 14 poems and poem fragments in epic and lyrical form in Old Czech. After the alleged discovery by Václav Hanka in 1817, the manuscript became the basis of a romanticizing , national historical image . In the 1860s and 1880s in particular, there was a bitter dispute about its authenticity.

Description of the handwriting

The manuscript kept in the National Museum in Prague (Národní muzeum) consists of seven parchment double sheets on both sides of which were written in small, delicate script. Two sheets of paper are not written on and are cut to a length of about 3/4 of the normal page height, so that the manuscript consists of 24 whole pages and 4 so-called strips. The leaves are approximately the same size, 12 cm high and between 7 and 8 cm wide. The strips are 2 cm wide. The number of lines per page is between 31 and 33. The parchment is yellowed and dirty in places. The manuscript is decorated with vermilion chapter headings and seven initials .

content

Záboj and Slavoj
by Josef Václav Myslbek ( 1881 )

The fragment of the first poem describes the expulsion of the Poles from Prague in 1004 and agrees with the information in Hajek's Chronicle; the second poem describes the defeat of a Saxon army, the third the alleged victory of the Bohemian-Moravian army under Yaroslav over the Tatars at Olomouc in 1241 . The fourth poem describes the victory over Vlaslaw, of which the chronicler Cosmas reports in Chronica Boemorum , the fifth an old Bohemian tournament; the sixth celebrates the victory of the pagan chiefs Zaboj and Slavoj over a Christian general Lüdek (Ludwig?) supposedly 805 . The rest consists of smaller songs in folk tone with no special inscriptions.

history

background

After the defeat of the Bohemians in the Battle of White Mountain in 1620, German was elevated to the status of an official language in Bohemia by the Renewed State Order . From the end of the 18th century, intellectuals called for a Czech National Revival , which should go hand in hand with the maintenance, recognition and use of the Czech language.

"Finding" and spending

Václav Hanka

In this mood of national awakening, the linguist and editor of Old Slavic texts, Václav Hanka, claimed to have found a manuscript on September 16, 1817 in the tower cellar of the Deanery Church of St. John the Baptist in Dvůr Králové nad Labem (Queen's Court on the Elbe). Hanka dated the manuscript to the 13th century due to the historical context; the songs contained therein were considered the oldest known document of Czech literature.

For the 1818 u. a. The National Museum in Prague, founded by Hanka, collected historical sources of all kinds, with chronicles making up the largest part of the collection. As the Czech counterpart to the high mediaeval poetry revered by contemporary German romantic poets, the manuscript was therefore a welcome addition to the collection in order to underpin the status of the Czechs as a culturally superior nation.

In 1818 Hanka added the Grünberg manuscript , which was allegedly found at Grünberg Castle and which was allegedly given anonymously to the State Museum, of which Hanka was now archivist. This manuscript contained works that were dated to the 9th and 10th centuries.

Hanka initially provided the “Urtext” of the Königinhof manuscript with its own translation into modern Czech and a German translation by Václav Svoboda and published the sensational find in this form in 1819. The book caused a stir: Goethe , Jacob Grimm , François-René de Chateaubriand , Cesare Cantù and others. a. expressed joyful astonishment, and Hanka received awards and honorary memberships from learned societies from all over Europe.

A Polish translation by Lucjan Siemieński was published in Cracow in 1836, and another German edition by Josef Mathias Graf von Thun was published in Prague in 1845 under the title Poems from Prehistoric Bohemia . In 1852 Hanka gave a "polyglot", d. H. an edition of the works of the manuscript with translations into many European languages; A photographic facsimile was published in 1862, an illustrated edition in 1873, and another new edition in 1879.

Early reception

The manuscript influenced the literature of Czech Romanticism, and in the period of the National Renaissance, together with the Grünberg manuscript - as intended by its “discoverer” - it became an important national symbol of the Czechs. The historian František Palacký wrote a history of Bohemia (1836–1837), not least based on the manuscripts , the tenor of which is the struggle between peace-loving Slavs and Germanic tribes who invaded by force. Antonín Dvořák set four texts from the manuscript to music as songs.

Dispute over the manuscripts and evidence of forgery

The authenticity of both the Königinhofer and the Grünberger manuscript was soon as eagerly challenged as it was defended. Immediately after the Grünberg manuscript became known, Josef Dobrovský declared it to be a forgery, while František Palacký and Pavel Jozef Šafárik protected it in 1840. From 1858 onwards there was increasing scientific criticism, and an anonymous author described the manuscript as a forgery in a newspaper article in 1858. There was general outrage and the editor of the newspaper was sentenced to imprisonment on the basis of a lawsuit by Hankas, but was given amnesty by Emperor Franz Joseph . Other authors responded with extensive defenses for the handwriting. The proof of the forgery was provided in 1859 by the historian and later Viennese university professor Max Büdinger in the “ Historischen Zeitschrift ” (No. 1/1859) published in Munich . Hanka's funeral in 1861 was attended by tens of thousands of nationally enthusiastic Czechs who, in their opinion, wanted to accompany him, who in their opinion was wrongly accused of being a forger, on his last journey.

After about 25 years without spectacular incidents in which the manuscripts but were still considered by the population undoubtedly genuine, international scientific circles as controversial, was from 1886 to 1887 by the linguist January Gebauer and the Prager lecturer Jaroslav Goll and Tomáš Garrigue Masaryk by Articles in the journal Athenaeum again stated that both the Königinhofer and the Grünberger manuscripts were forgeries. The discussion flared up again passionately and did not stop at personal insults. In the meantime, the German-Czech conflict was defused, but the assumption of a forgery meant making a whole generation of well-deserved national cultural greats into the vicinity of ridicule and having to rethink the already internalized understanding of history of the Czech nation. Masaryk, who later became the first president of Czechoslovakia, was vehemently of the opinion that a modern nation should not refer to an invented past. Czech nationalists kept the dispute simmering until the 1920s.

A study from 1967, the results of which were only published in the 1990s, conclusively proved that the manuscripts are forgeries. Hanka's authorship is considered likely; but some also consider a bona fide publication of the manuscripts by Hanka.

See also

literature

Web links

Commons : Königinhofer Handschrift  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Felix Czeike : Historical Lexicon Vienna. Volume 1: A – Da. Kremayr & Scheriau, Vienna 1992, ISBN 3-218-00543-4 , p. 494.