Baltic German

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As a Baltic German and Baltic German in linguistics that is the idiom of the German-speaking minority in Latvia and Estonia referred mainly from the period before the Second World War. Characteristic for the idiom of the German-Baltic is, in addition to the particularly colored pronunciation, a large number of loan words that have their origin in the neighboring peoples. In addition, there are peculiarities in the sentence order and regionalisms .

Geographical assignment

Map of the Russian Baltic provinces of Estonia, Livonia and Courland

The term is limited to the territory of the present-day states of Estonia and Latvia (with the exception of Latgale ), roughly synonymous with the historical Russian Baltic Governments . During the time of the tsar there was a Baltic German population that had settled in Saint Petersburg . Lithuania is geographically part of the Baltic States , but had a much smaller German-speaking population and was under Polish influence for a long time. Only in the Memelland was there a greater German influence, but this can be assigned to the area of ​​the Prussian dictionary .

Emergence

Since the beginning of the 13th century, the majority of German immigrants came from the Low German-speaking areas . This is a significant influence on the development of Baltic German. Middle Low German was in effect until around 1600 , after which High German with many Low German elements prevailed. The later immigrants came from various German-speaking countries, as well as from Scandinavia and Russia . Dzintra Lele-Rozentāle explains the influences on the formation of "Baltic German" in the 18th century as follows: On the level of the spoken language, however, there was contact between Latvian and Middle Low German, Middle Low German and High German, and between Middle Low German dialects (North Low Saxon, Elbe East German, Westphalian) and hypothetically between Latvian and Livisch, Livisch and Middle Low German . In the 18th century, the final transition from Low German to High German took place. Woldemar von Gutzeit reports in retrospect from the year 1864: Until the eighties of the last century, and later itself, it was used by the bourgeoisie and on noble farms - and longest by women and in confidential circles drawn and some old people in Riga still remember them from their youth. In addition to these influences, there was a constant interaction with the indigenous peoples of Latvians and Estonians and other linguistic minorities, especially the Russians. On the one hand, this interaction enriches the vocabulary , on the other hand it affects the position of the words in the sentence and leaves traces in the pronunciation . In his book “How to speak in Riga”, Guido Eckardt emphasized the regional differences in Baltic German, but especially used the largest city in the Baltic States as a reference for his dictionary of words. Oskar Masing's Baltic German dictionary was not completed as a result of the war; the material is largely lost. The collection of Baltic German word material begun by Walther Mitzka after 1958 and continued by Alfred Schönfeldt is located in the Herder Institute (Marburg) . The philologist Wolfgang Laur distinguishes the social classes of the Baltic Germans in their way of speaking as speaking high German, small German and half German. Since the middle of the 19th century, the academic upper class has oriented itself towards a standard German maintained at the University of Dorpat ( Tartu ).

Interaction with indigenous languages

Since the Baltic German minority dominated the administration, churches and schools at the same time, many Latvians and Estonians learned the German language in order to gain access to education and prosperity. They used this to transfer many expressions from German into their own languages. In the Baltic provinces of the Tsarist Empire, German was the language of the “privileged” and “literati”. From the occasionally elitist point of view of this class, the autochthonous people were “ un-German ” and could only rise to “half-Germans” by acquiring knowledge of German. In commercial and agricultural life, pidgin languages ​​developed , which were mostly disparagingly referred to as "half German", "knot German", "Kullendeutsch", "Ljurbendeutsch", "Kadakdeutsch", "Kaddikdeutsch" or "Wacholderdeutsch". From a Latvian perspective, this group of people was called "kārkļu vācieši" or "mazvācieši". A typical representative of this genre is the character of "Švauksts" from the novel "Mērnieku laiki " by the brothers Reinis and Matīss Kaudzīte .

Due to the adaptation of the German-speaking traders and craftsmen to the majority of the population, a jargon developed that was called "small German" and especially in Riga "Dinakantisch".

August Wilhelm Hupel reports from the Baltic States in the second half of the 18th century: Without looking at the various classes, the country's inhabitants are divided into two main classes, German and non-German. The last one understands all hereditary people, or in a word the farmers. Anyone who is not a farmer is called a German, even if he cannot speak a German word, for example Russians, Englishmen [...] This class includes the nobility, scholars, citizens, officials, servants who are bored, even those who have been left free as soon as they have their previous one Confuse clothes with German .

vocabulary

August Wilhelm Hupel (1737–1819) describes the vocabulary of the Baltic Germans (1795)
Woldemar von Gutzeit (1816–1900) describes the vocabulary of the Baltic Germans (between 1859 and 1898). The letters W through Z were left unfinished.

Baltic German is documented in more or less extensive dictionaries from the literature section . There are differences in time, region and social level. According to the changing rule, the most common etymological sources are Low German, Latvian, Estonian, Livonian, Russian, Polish and Swedish.

The Latvian etymologist Konstantins Karulis (2000) shows numerous examples of influences of Latvian on Baltic German. The influences are of three kinds: lexical (borrowing, word formation), syntactic and phonetic.

Stegmann (1951) shows a potpourri of typical words from the kitchen environment: Where a 'Trum' is written on the 'Pliete', where you get the water in the 'Spann' and light the fire with 'Spitzkis', where you can spill something with 'Luppaten' mopping up and by the way prefers a gently roasted 'Kalkuhn' to the coarse 'Tumm' (to have a trembling 'Bubbert', a pink 'Kissell' or a 'Kummchen full of Schmantschaum' afterwards), where you can, if you can 'get by' To take a look into the 'hand chamber', see 'Burken' full of 'black, knitted or peel berries' - there you are without a doubt in a Baltic household.

Use of diminutive

Reduced forms of well-known words are just as popular in Baltic German as z. B. in Latvian: Kleining, Pupping, Sohning, Tanting, Tochting .

Kohl (1841) describes how the Germans take over the use of the diminutive from the Latvian language: [He] diminishes even the most grandiose terms and constantly speaks of "Kühchen", "Oechschen", "Hundchen", "Städtchen" and "Städteleinchen" , "Little men", "little mountain", "heap", "little church", "little tower", "wood" etc. even the highest of all terms, "God" he diminishes [...] .

Special features in the grammar

Baltic German shows similar deviations from the standard language as other dialects. Some changes follow the general trend of simplification, which can be understood as a modernization of the German language. The following examples are excerpts from Kobolt (1990).

items

  • The gender of individual nouns can be ambiguous, resulting in the following examples: the chorus, the wire, the gasoline, the straw, the cable.
  • By eliminating the feminine ending, new masculine forms are created : The bark [e], the sülz [e], the kress [e], the cardboard [e].

noun

  • Endings can be omitted when forming the plural and umlauts can be formed: The shirts [n], the lights [r], the doctors [n], the pastors [n], the boats, the breads.
  • The genitive is replaced by a dative construction in the example: "To the teacher his mother" instead of "The mother of the teacher".
  • A two-part object appears as a plural form like: pants, glasses, pliers. (This development has parallels in Russian, Estonian and Latvian).

verb

  • Strong conjugation is found in atavisms such as: schraub - schroben.
  • In the imperative , the vowel can remain unchanged as in: werf !, speak!
  • One observes the interchanging of letters in the inflection of some verbs according to the following example: calculate, I calculate, you calculate, he calculates, we calculate, you calculate, I calculated, calculated, ...
  • The conjugation forms can be restricted. This allows the future tense 1 to be expressed by the present tense and the perfect tense to be displaced by the past tense .

Typical pronunciation

  • In addition to the “ Zungen-R ”, two peculiarities characterize the pronunciation of the Baltic Germans: The diphthong “ei” is pronounced as “äi” and the “g” sounds like “ch”. Siegfried von Vegesack indirectly reveals how the Baltic Germans deal with the "g" when he pairs it in the rhyme with "ch" as in the following excerpts:
    • And I hear the old grandfather clock strike
      and her throat clearing after the hour strikes,
      as if she wanted to tell us:
      "Now watch out - and count correctly!"
    • And the brown manure rises
      who has a nose, escapes.
    • like in a book,
      train by train,
  • The poet Werner Bergengruen also stated (verbally) that one of his aunts still pronounced her last name around 1900 as emphatically "Berjengrien".
  • The following neck verses from Livonian students about their fellow students from Riga sound a little exaggerated in dialect (here the umlauts are caricatured):
    Old Riga is what we are called.
    Ha! what city does it hold up!
    How do we in Teenen praise
    the sleek place on the beach at Dina!
    The Great Guild and the Beerse
    How deeply they reach into the rent!
    So we happily sing these verses;
    We are only happy when Riga stays!
  • Jacob Johann Malm (1795–1862) described the typical speech of the Estonian Germans (called: Estonians) in a humorous way with his poem "The Oberpahlsche Friendship". The poem was so popular that many knew it by heart. The following excerpt from his poem with 100 verses shows the use of Estonian loanwords and some typical features of the pronunciation influenced by Estonian:
    • the voiced consonants b, d, g are replaced by the unvoiced p, t, k.
    • The sound "sch" is pronounced as "s".
    • Where the letter “v” is pronounced like “f” in High German, it ends up with a “w”.
    • The umlaut "ü" becomes "i".
Oberpahlsch transcription
So I ten tenn nu pei me
And went to Varwad tann
Wor Oberpahlse Wreind his animal
And pomped hard.		 So I thought then to myself
And then walked on toes in
front of a friend from Oberpahl's door
And cried grimly at.

Baltic German in Fiction

  • Thomas Mann represented the language of the Baltic German in his novel Buddenbrooks by a typical representative: Pastor Sievert Tiburtius from Riga : Have mercy, Consul! What a treasure and God's blessing you have in your daughter Klara! I guess that's a wonderful child!
  • Siegfried von Vegesack shows in his trilogy Die Baltische Tragödie towards the end of the second part in the chapter "July Fourteen" the conflict of a German-Baltic in Berlin, when he is classified as a "German-Russian", Lithuanian, Latvian or Estonian. While the German-Baltic feels primarily German, he feels disregarded in Germany as “half-German”.
  • The Baltic German writer Oskar Grosberg wrote novels and stories from the Baltic German milieu, including Rigasches Deutsch .
  • In his novel Meschwalden , Oskar Grosberg writes how a Baltic landlord tells about his trip to Germany: ... As his wife in the hotel told the maid to come to the hallway where she was taking the contents Accidentally poured and picked up the coffee cup and how the maid looked at her like a dojahnsche and you had to make yourself understood with Marjell with signs. "People are so stupid that they don't even understand German properly!"
  • Harry Siegmund describes retrospect in his memoirs . Memories of a civil servant in turbulent times about the start of studies in Königsberg in 1928: In the midst of these colorful, somewhat haughty-looking fraternity students, I felt even more insecure and made no attempt to approach them and talk to them. I was also silent because I was afraid that my Baltic way of speaking would attract attention as a stranger and that I would be inferior to them in every respect.
  • The doctor Heinrich Bosse (1869–1946) describes in his report, Our Mrs. Feldmann , how a resolute tenant wife drives away the rival: “If you don't get to the ward in an hour, I'll cut your neck off! I'll go hitch up and lead you myself. You have half an hour. Coffee is on the table, I'll give you ham. Pascholl, out of bed! My husband do you want to know? I sent him on demand to pick violets! I'll buy biljett, I won't throw it in the ditch! "

Texts in small German or half-German language

  • Jacob Johann Malm: The Oberpahl friendship . German-Estonian poem. Verlag Ferdinand Wassermann, Reval 1900; Reprint Harry von Hofmann Verlag, Hamburg 1961 or Bibliolife 2008, ISBN 9780559651335 digitized .
  • Schanno von Dinakant (N. Seemann von Jesersky): Dinakant's stories in poems, made up by Schanno von Dinakant . Reprint of the Riga 1904 edition. Harro von Hirschheydt publishing house.
  • N. Seemann von Jesersky: Dinakantische stories in poems and Rigasches dictionary (with over 2000 words "Dinakantisch"). 2nd Edition. 1913 (reprint: Verlag Harro von Hirschheydt, Hannover 1967).
  • Bernhard Semenow: Schanno in the ink. 6 “hairy dolle” final experiences of Schanno von Dinakant. Free from the liver and from nature, as well as after proper correction . Reprint of the Riga 1906 edition. Harro von Hirschheydt publishing house.
  • Bernhard Semenow: Schanno as "Red". 6 again very "great", but not at all terrifying strikes d. Schanno v. Dinakant. Free of the liver and without censorship! As well as after proper correction . Reprint of the Riga 1906 edition. Harro von Hirschheydt publishing house.
  • Bernhard Semenow: Schanno as forest brother 6 tight, hairy, thick, tricky, scary adventures of Schanno von Dinakant. Free of the liver and without censorship, as well as after proper correction . Reprint of the Riga 1907 edition. Harro von Hirschheydt publishing house.
  • Rudolf Seuberlich (local poet, inventor of Jeannot / Schanno): Baltic purrs . N. Kymmel ’s bookstore, Riga 1898.
  • Walter von Wistinghausen : administrator Pirk his house boesie. All sorts of rhymes in Estonian half-German . Kluge & Ströhm publishing house, Meine / Hannover 1954.

literature

bibliography
  • Ineta Balode, Dzintra Lele-Rozentāle: German in the Baltic States. An annotated research bibliography. With the assistance of Reet Bender u. Manfred v. Boetticher (= foreign languages ​​in the past and present. Volume 17). Harrassowitz Verlag, Wiesbaden 2016, ISBN 978-3-447-10598-9 .
Further
  • Oskar Angelus: About the death of the Baltic German dialects in Acta Baltica XV of the Institutum Balticum, Königstein 1976.
  • Gustav von Bergmann: Collection of Livonian provincial words . published in Salisburg, 1785
  • Heinrich Bosse: The little German people in the Baltic provinces of the Baltic Sea. In: Yearbook of the Baltic Germans. Volume XXXIV, 1987, ISBN 3-923149-14-X , p. 49.
  • Woldemar von Gutzeit: Word treasure of the German language Livonia . 4 volumes and supplements. Verlag Kymmel, Riga 1859–98 (e-book from Harald Fischer Verlag, Erlangen 2001; reprint: Nabu Press 2010, ISBN 978-1-142-51795-3 ).
  • August Wilhelm Hupel : Idiotikon of the German language in Lief and Ehstland . Hartknoch Publishing House, 1795.
  • Konstantins Karulis: Baltic German and Latvian. To linguistic interference. in Jochen D. Range [ed.]: Aspects of Baltic research. , Verlag Die Blaue Eule, Essen 2000. ISBN 3-89206-929-8
  • Erich Kobolt: The German language in Estonia using the example of the city of Pernau . Verlag Nordostdeutsches Kulturwerk, Lüneburg 1990. ISBN 3-922296-54-8 . (Contains phonetics, dictionary and grammar)
  • Johann Georg Kohl : The German dialect in Kur-, Liv- and Esthland. In: The German-Russian Baltic Sea provinces or nature and peoples life in Kur-, Liv- and Esthland. Volume 2, Arnoldische Buchhandlung, Dresden / Leipzig 1841, pp. 367–404 ( digitized version ; PDF; 17 MB ).
  • Walther Mitzka : Studies in Baltic German. In: German dialect geography. Booklet XVII, Marburg 1923 (with report on half-German).
  • Berend von Nottbeck: 1001 words Baltic . Verlag Wissenschaft und Politik, Cologne 1987, ISBN 3-8046-8705-9 .
  • Ineta Polanska: On the influence of Latvian on German in the Baltic States . Dissertation at Otto Friedrich University, Bamberg 2002.
  • Karl Sallmann: Lexical contributions to the German dialect in Estonia . 1880 (Reprint: Nabu Press 2012, ISBN 978-1-273-27680-4 ).
  • Alfred Schönfeldt : The Baltic German. In: Yearbook of the Baltic Germans. Volume XXXIV, 1987, ISBN 3-923149-14-X , pp. 87-97.
  • Alfred Schönfeldt: The work on the Baltic German dictionary. In: Yearbook of the Baltic Germans. Volume LVI, 2009, pp. 136-142.
  • Alfred Schönfeldt: Miggriger Gniede . From the Baltic German dictionary . In: Yearbook of the Baltic Germans. Volume XII, 1965, pp. 55-58.
  • Johannes Sehwers : Linguistic-cultural-historical studies mainly on the German influence in Latvian . Reprint of the 1936 edition. Otto Harrassowitz Verlag, Berlin 1953.
  • Wolfgang Stammler : The ›half-German‹ of the Estonians. In: Journal for German Dialects. 17/1922, Erlangen 2001, pp. 160-172 (Reprint: Nabu Press 2010, ISBN 978-1-142-51795-3 ).
  • Kurt Stegmann von Pritzwald : From Baltic German to home in the heart - We Balts . Salzburg / Munich 1951.

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ epa.oszk.hu (PDF; 534 kB) Víghné Szabó Melinda: Lexical-semantic investigation of Baltic German with standard German.
  2. ↑ Dzintra Lele-Rozentāle: Language Problems in the Baltic States of the 18th Century. For German-German and German-Latvian language contact. In: Michael Schwidtal, Armands Gūtmanis (ed.): The Baltic States in the mirror of German literature. Carl Gustav Jochmann and Garlieb Merkel. Contributions to the international symposium in Riga from September 18-21, 1996 on the cultural relations between Baltic States and Germans . University Press C. Winter, Heidelberg 2001, ISBN 3-8253-1216-X .
  3. ^ Woldemar von Gutzeit (1864), page III.
  4. ↑ giselabrandt.de Gisela Brandt: History of the German language in the Baltics.
  5. ↑ Guido Eckardt: How to speak in Riga. A chat. Jonck and Poliewsky Publishing House, Riga 1904.
  6. ↑ dspace.utlib.ee Dissertationes Philologiae Germanicae Universitatis Tartuensis. Reet Bender: Oskar Masing and the history of the Baltic German dictionary
  7. ↑ Wolfgang Laur: About the German-Baltic way of speaking in Baltische Hefte , 4th year, Heft 4, p. 203 (July 1958)
  8. ↑ kirj.ee (PDF; 156 kB) Külli Habicht: Infinite constructions in the Estonian written language of the first half of the 17th century. (About German influences on the older written Estonian language).
  9. ↑ Sabine Jordan: Low German in Latvian. Research on the Middle Low German loanwords in Latvian. Publishing house for regional history, Bielefeld 1995, ISBN 3-89534-144-4 .
  10. ^ Johann Sehwers: The German loan words in Latvian. Inaugural dissertation at the University of Zurich, 1918.
  11. ↑ periodika.lv A very moderate statement on the terms un-German , half-German and knot German from the time of the Russian Revolution : Who is German, who is Latvian or Estonian? In: Düna newspaper. August 16, 1906.
  12. ^ Jürgen Beyer: H as in Jerne. In: Stig Örjan Ohlsson, Siiri Tomingas-Joandi (ed.): Den otidsenlige Urban Hiärne. Föredrag från det internationella Hiärne-Symposiet i Saadjärve, 31 August - 4 September 2005 (= Nordistica Tartuensia, Volume 17). Greif, Tartu 2008, pp. 15–24 (celebratory speech with detailed remarks on the Estonians' ›Halbdeutsch‹).
  13. ↑ German edition: Reinis Kaudzīte and Matīss Kaudzīte: Landvermesszeiten . Kaspars Kļaviņš Publishing House, Salzburg 2012.
  14. ^ Valentin Kiparsky: Foreign in Baltic German (Mémoires de la société néo-philologique de Helsingfors XI). 1936; Review in the Baltic Monthly Issues of June 1, 1937: periodika.lv .
  15. ↑ periodika.lv Schanno von Dinakant: Your Bix is ​​weck ; in Riga on Sunday, May 24, 1931.
  16. ^ Periodika.lv obituary for Jeannot / ›Schanno‹. In: Deutsche Zeitung im Ostland. September 28, 1941.
  17. ^ August Wilhelm Hupel: Topographische Nachrichten von Lief- und Ehstland. Volume I, Riga 1774, p. 174.
  18. ↑ Kohl (1841), p. 374.
  19. ↑ The graphemes “g” and “ch” each represent several phonemes. Depending on the position to the vowel within a syllable, different pronunciation rules apply. Details can be found in the chapter Sound composition and pronunciation in Kobolt (1990).
  20. ^ Franz Baumer: Siegfried von Vegesack. Home in boundless. A biography. Eugen Salzer Verlag, Heilbronn 1974, ISBN 3-7936-0191-9 , pp. 24, 94, 131.
  21. ↑ Bosse (1987), p. 61.
  22. ^ Bosse (1987).
  23. ↑ Oberpahlen is the German name of the Estonian city of Põltsamaa .
  24. ↑ periodika.lv Rigasches German. In: Rigasche Rundschau. July 22, 1933.
  25. ^ Heinrich Bosse: Our Mrs. Feldmann. In: Yearbook of the Baltic Germans. Volume XXXII, 1985, ISBN 3-923149-10-7 , p. 159.