Gion Antoni Bühler

Gion Antoni Bühler

Gion Antoni Bühler (born October 10 or 20, 1825 in Domat ; † December 24, 1897 there ) was a Swiss editor , writer and teacher .

From 1864 he tried to create a Graubünden Romance language with the Romontsch fusionau , but without success.

Live and act

Surname

Gion Antoni Bühler was actually born as Gion Antoni Bieler. Only later did he adopt the German form of the surname. Gion Antoni Bühler also traded as Johan Antoni Bühler or Joann Anton Bühler.

Biographical

Gion Antoni Bühler was born in Domat on October 10 or 20, 1825, depending on the source. His father Christian Balzer Bieler was a Romansh and worked as a teacher.

Gion Antoni Bühler graduated from the teachers' seminar in Chur from 1842 to 1845 and was then a teacher in various schools in the Surselva . From 1859 on he taught music, singing, Romansh, German, methodology, drawing and calligraphy at the canton school in Chur .

Gion Antoni Bühler played several musical instruments and gave individual lessons on a wide variety of instruments in addition to school. He was the founder and conductor of various choirs, for example the Uniun da cant romontsch and the Musica d'harmonia in Chur.

Gion Antoni Bühler was married to Maria Catrina Schwarz from the German-speaking village of Obersaxen . They had eight children. Bühler died in Domat in 1897. The obituary held Giacun Hasper Muoth , also a poet and fighter for the Grisons Romanesque.

Journalism and writing

From 1856 to 1865 Gion Antoni Bühler was co-editor of the liberal, Sursilvanian newspaper Il Grischun , and also editor of the magazine Il Novellist , which appeared from 1867 to 1868.

Bühler's first literary phase was from 1857 to 1867, during which time he wrote Sursilvan. His second phase was from 1867 until his death, here he used the standardized language Romontsch fusionau, which he had developed .

Gion Antoni Bühler wrote numerous poems and short stories, such as Dieus protegia ils ses (German God protects his own ), a story about the Swabian children , Igl Indian grischun (German The Bündner Indian ), a short novella about emigration to America or Il calger da Sent (German Der Schuhmacher von Sent ). In 1865, he translated the play Wilhelm Tell by Friedrich Schiller .

Language maintenance

Gion Antoni Bühler was the editor of song books for teachers, for mixed choirs as well as for male choirs, including some of his own compositions.

Gion Antoni Bühler was a co-founder of the “Societad Raeto-romana”. After two founding approaches in 1863 («Societad Rhaetoromana») and 1870, this was given up again in 1880, but in terms of content it was the forerunner of the Societad Retorumantscha , shortly SRR (German Rhaetoroman Society ), which was founded shortly afterwards . He was the first president of the SRR from 1885. His work continues to this day in the collection and preservation of Romance literature, language maintenance and science (series "Romanica Raetica").

In 1861 Gion Antoni Bühler first wrote the Curta instrucziun per emprender il Lungatg Tudestg en Scolas ruralas Romonschas (German: Brief instruction for learning the German language in rural Romance schools ), then in 1864 the Grammatica elementara dil lungatg Rhäto-Romontsch per diever dils scolars en classas superiuras dellas Scolas ruralas Romontschas (German basic grammar of the Rhaeto-Romanic language for use by upper level teachers in rural Romance schools ).

Romontsch fusionau

Although the first Romansh dictionary appeared around 1857 ( Zaccaria Pallioppi , Putèr ), there were ideas as early as 1776 ( Joseph Planta ) and 1824 ( Placidus a Spescha ) to establish a standard language over the Romansh dialect continuum . However, these ideas were not yet fully fermented.

Gion Antoni Bühler, who spoke a Sutsilvanic dialect corresponding to his hometown and wrote Sursilvan , intended to create a written language that consisted of elements from the various Graubünden Romanic dialects. In addition to the Upper Engadine dictionary by Zaccaria Palliopi, Gion Antoni Bühler still had the Sursylvanian orthography standard from Baseli Carigiet from 1858 at his disposal, but a written standard for other dialects, which are summarized today in the idioms Sutsilvan, Surmiran and Vallader , did not exist at that time . In addition, Baseli Carigiet's orthography norm only referred to the Catholic variant of Sursilvan, but not the Protestant one.

Bühler's efforts to create a Romansh standard language were supported by the Canton of Graubünden, especially since such a language would have simplified the printing of school books. In the Catholic circles of Surselva, however, bitter resistance to the project arose immediately, as in the Upper Engadin , but less energetically.

Gion Antoni Bühler called the artificial language “Romontsch fusionau” (German United Romanic ). His maxims in the formation of the vocabulary and the design of the grammar were:

1. Taking into account Latin etymology .
2. Use of analogies to other Romance languages.
3. Consideration of use and euphony.

Bühler introduced numerous new graphemes so that a precise representation of the Romontsch fusionau became possible, for example the letter ç for the phoneme combination / t͡ʃ /.

At the beginning, Romontsch fusionau was close to Surselvian. After the orthography conference of March 1867 in Reichenau , the Engadin influence increased more and more. Since the publication of his Rimas in 1875, Gion Antoni Bühler also used the two umlauts ö and ü, which are otherwise only used in the Engadin. The use of these two umlauts is closely related to Bühler's first maxim of Latin etymology: The non-Ladin roundings such as pievel (German people ) or pli (German more ) were less close to the Latin origins POPULUS and PLUS than the Ladin equivalents pövel and plü . Politically, Romontsch fusionau thus lost the last loyal Sursilvaners, without having succeeded on the other hand in getting the Engadins on board.

Gion Antoni Bühler developed Romontsch fusionau over about three decades. Thus, one cannot speak of a self-contained language, which in turn made it difficult for Bühler's contemporaries to adopt the artificial language. The constant changes also stood in the way of the distribution of his literary works, and some of his works were later even translated from the Romontsch fusionau into Sursilvanian, so that the readability was guaranteed in a larger circle.

Ultimately, Gion Antoni Bühler remained the only one who wrote fusionau in Romontsch. His propaganda tool was the novelist - with the subtitle in fegl periodic per las familias romonschas (German a regular sheet for the Romance families ) - which, however, had to be discontinued after just two years and around 50 editions for cost reasons. In his classes at the teachers' seminar, Bühler was committed to conveying the principles of Romontsch fusionau, but failed to teach the canton's young teachers the new language, so that they would have spread it more widely. Romontsch fusionau died with Bühler's death in 1897. Politically, Romontsch fusionau was already off the table with the victory of the conservatives in 1877 at the Landsgemeinde in Disentis , because the more liberal forces of the Surselva would have been the only ones who would have made a breakthrough across the canton of Romontsch fusionau can help.

literature

• Ines Gartmann: Bühler, Gion Antoni. In: Historical Lexicon of Switzerland .
• Reto R. Bezzola : Litteratura dals Rumauntschs e Ladins. Ediziun da la Lia Rumauntscha, Chur 1979. (Written in Putèr.)
• Gion Deplazes: The Rhaeto-Romans. Your Identity in Literature. Desertina, Disentis 1991, ISBN 3-85637-199-0 .

Web links

• Publications by and about Gion Antoni Bühler in the Helveticat catalog of the Swiss National Library

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Lexicon Istoric Retic ( Memento of the original from July 14, 2014 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. : October 10, 1825.  
2. ^ Necrology by the poet Giacun Hasper Muoth: October 20, 1825.
3. ↑ Joseph Planta: History of the Romance language . Chur: New Topographical Society 1776 (translation from An Account of the Romansh language , London).
4. ↑ Placidus a Spescha: General Romance-German language teaching as it should and should be: To become an easily comprehensible, properly flowing, and acceptable written language. Adapted from the Surselver dialect by a lover of Romance literature . 1821.
5. ^ Ricarda Liver: Romansh: An introduction. Narr Francke Attempto, Tübingen, 2010, ISBN 978-3-8233-6556-3 .
6. ↑ Father Baseli Carigiet: Ortografia gienerala speculativa. Disentis, 1858.
7. ^ Script from the University of Friborg. Accessed July 10, 2014.
8. ^ Necrology for Gion Antoni Bühler by Giacun Hasper Muoth.