Women's Lexicon

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Amaranthes, Frauenzimmer-Lexicon (Leipzig: J. Fr. Gleditsch & Sohn, 1715).
Frauenzimmer Lexicon - original edition from 1715 - Libri rari in the Deutsches Museum in Munich

Frauenzimmer-Lexicon is the common short title of the lexicon that Gottlieb Siegmund Corvinus brought to market under the pseudonym Amaranthes in 1715 by the Johann Friedrich Gleditsch publishing house . Revised new editions were published in 1739 and 1773. It was to become the first German-language lexicon specifically aimed at women.

The front page offers a comprehensive overview of the content. The following is the transcript:

Useful, gallant and curious | Frauenzimmer- | Lexicon, | In which not only | The women spiritually and | Secular orders, offices, dignities, positions of honor, professions and trades, privileges and | legal benefits, weddings and solemnities in mourning, | Just and inheritance, names and deeds of the goddesses, | Heroines, learned woman-pictures, artists, prophets, affter | Prophets, martyrs, poets, heretics, quackers, enthusiasts | and other sectarian and enthusiastic women-persons, sorceresses and witches, also | other professional, curious and noteworthy woman images, costumes and fashions, | Kitchen- table- maternity room- laundry- nehe- house- pantry- cellar- children-cleaning, equipment | and supplies, jewels and adornments, gallantry, silk, wool and other witnesses, so to their | Clothing and plaster useful, smoke and fur, hair plaster and essays, make-up, precious | Olities and Seiffen, stock of books, arts and sciences, names, root | names and special designations, peculiar habits and customs, properties, | strange kinds of speech and terms, superstitious being, dandy eyes and proverbs, | Domestic activities, divertissements, games and other amusements, general coincidences, complaints and infirmities of women, maidens and small children, servants' order and work, female punishments, peculiar punishments, and all that | what can appear to a woman and necessary to her | to know | But also | A perfect | made in the very latest way Cooking, cake and pastry book, | Including the associated cracks, table tops and kitchen notes, | Neatly worded briefly and clearly after the alphabet | and declared to find | The female sex as a whole to | peculiar benefit, message, and delight | Issued upon request | From | Amaranthes. | [Line] | Leipzig, 1715. | bey Joh. Friedrich Gleditsch and son.

The reviewer of the German Acta Eruditorum noted with astonishment that this encyclopedia also offered entries that were familiar to everyone - entries on any household item. It is precisely this characteristic that makes the book one of the most interesting sources of bourgeois everyday life in the early 18th century. The rich urban budget is here in general inventory. The pets, the books in the woman's possession, kitchen utensils, but also the places in the city that are important for women are noted.

The articles are only partially networked. After a short reading, a few basic categories emerge - the lexicon seems to have been composed of several individual lexicons and brought under an alphabet. A large part of the articles comes from an exquisite cookbook that ranges from simple recipes to festive tables. Women's biographies make up a second large part of the lexicon.

A number of the articles were adopted unchanged in 1732 in Johann Heinrich Zedler's Great Complete Universal Lexicon of All Sciences and Arts .

literature

  • Gottlieb Siegmund Corvinus: Useful, gallant and curious women's lexicon. Gleditsch, Leipzig 1715. ( digitized and full text in the German text archive )
  • New Library or News of New Books , No. 42 (Frankfurt / Leipzig 1715), pp. 140 ff.
  • New Library or News of New Books , No. 46 (Frankfurt / Leipzig 1715).
  • German Acta Eruditorum , No. 35 (Johann Friedrich Gleditsch, Leipzig 1715), pp. 891-898.
  • Manfred Lemmer: “Afterword” for the reprint of the Frauenzimmer-Lexicon (Insel, Leipzig 1980).

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