Carl Friedrich Aichinger

Carl Friedrich Aichinger (born March 31, 1717 in Vohenstrauss ; † December 13, 1782 in Sulzbach ) was a German linguist who tried to reform the German language and literature.

Life

Aichinger studied from 1735 to 1738 and took his final exam in 10 subjects. In 1741 he married Anna Elisabeth Cantzler and took over the rectorate of the Latin school in Sulzbach. Aichinger was city preacher from 1750 to 1777 and inspector of the Protestant churches from 1777 until his death on December 13, 1782.

Act

Aichinger took an active part in the search for a supra-regional standard language in Germany in the 18th century, trying to strengthen the Upper German position.

In 1753 he published the grammar "An attempt at a teutschen Sprachlehre", in which he described his ideas of an appropriate standard German. Aichinger opposed the ideas of the "anomalists" who wanted to make an existing "dialect", the Upper Saxon dialect , the standard. Aichinger saw it differently. He was of the opinion that when choosing the standard German language one could not ignore the various dialects of German. Instead, he advocated a balance: In his spirit, an ideal language (not yet existing) should be created that should take the various dialects into account when searching for a standard language.

The special thing about Aichinger is, among other things, that as a Protestant preacher he sided with the Upper German resistance against Gottsched's Saxon, which there was polemically described as a non-progressive Catholic fundamental opposition. This shows that at that time it was no longer a question of a conflict of denominations, but of the solid rivalry between different language regions, whereby as an Upper Palatinate he was closer to the Bavarian-Austrian variant than that of his fellow believers in Saxony. Aichinger even went so far as to dedicate his grammar to the influential Viennese Catholic Archbishop Joseph Fürst Trautson , because he hoped that this would improve his theses at the Viennese court, where the late Baroque language dispute was finally decided politically.

Ultimately, he was unable to prevail, the position of the anomalists, represented by Johann Christoph Gottsched among others , prevailed. From the middle of the 18th century, the East Central German written language became the standard German language (" High German ").

literature

• Paul Roessler: Aichinger and Popowitsch. An anti-Scottish parallel action by Upper German grammarians? In: Language standardization and language planning . Festschrift for Otto Back. Edited by Heiner Eichner u. a. Editions Present, Vienna 1997, 263–286, ISBN 3-901126-89-9 .
• Manfred Knedlik:  Aichinger, Carl Friedrich. In: Biographisch-Bibliographisches Kirchenlexikon (BBKL). Volume 21, Bautz, Nordhausen 2003, ISBN 3-88309-110-3 , Sp. 9-11.

Web links

• Literature by and about Carl Friedrich Aichinger in the catalog of the German National Library