Concise dictionary of German superstition

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

The concise dictionary of German superstition ( Siglen : HWdAgl , HDA , HdA ) is a folklore reference work. The 10-volume encyclopedia was published between 1927 and 1942 by Hanns Bächtold-Stäubli with the assistance of Eduard Hoffmann-Krayer in the Walter de Gruyter publishing house. In addition to the concise dictionary of German fairy tales , the concise dictionary of sagas and the atlas of German folklore , it was one of the major folklore projects that the young subject was supposed to establish among the academic sciences.

The HdA is now considered scientifically out of date, both in terms of content and its theoretical and methodological basis. It is still relevant as a document of the technical history. European ethnologists (“folklorists”) repeatedly criticize the fact that the HdA is still used today by journalists and other lay people.

History of origin

In the 1920s, German-speaking folklore began to institutionalize and establish itself as a university subject. In order to make their research results more easily accessible both to their own and to representatives of the neighboring disciplines, several encyclopedic projects were started, such as the concise dictionary of German fairy tales and the concise dictionary of German folk songs . Of these, only the HdA was ultimately concluded.

The plan for a lexicon of German superstition was initiated by Eduard Hoffmann-Krayer and his student Hanns Bächtold-Stäubli. Originally, the two Swiss folklorists only wanted to rework Adolf Wuttke's The German Folk Superstition of the Present (1860). In the meantime, Wuttke's work was out of date, both in terms of the amount of material newly gained and in terms of his natural mythological interpretations. The HdA was made possible by the owner of Walter de Gruyter Verlag, Gerhard Lüdtke , who had campaigned for the project, which was unprofitable from an entrepreneurial point of view. After a multi-volume overview was initially planned in the early years, work began on a work in lexicon format in 1925 .

The basis of the HdA was formed by the approx. 600,000 to 1.5 million index cards created by Bächtold-Stäubli. These had been created by him on a voluntary basis alongside his job by hand and contained handwritten notes as well as pieces of paper cut out and pasted in from other works. The volume of the HdA grew as the work progressed, so that from 1927 to 1942 ten volumes were finally published. The HdA sold poorly, however. With Bächtold-Stäubli's state of health, the productivity of the project also decreased, and more and more keywords were dropped in the later volumes.

reception

The contemporary reception of the HdA was largely positive; it was seen as a great relief for folklore and neighboring disciplines. Criticism was almost only made on the content or the lack of individual articles. Even then, the work was in some cases criticized as an extensive but unreflected collection of material.

Today the HdA is scientifically fundamentally out of date. Christoph Daxelmüller summarized the criticism in his foreword to the new edition from 1987: First, it still follows a phenomenological approach that pulls the phenomena presented out of their historical and social context. The HdA thus offers superficial comparisons of inadmissibly objectified concepts such as “host magic” and “blood superstition”. The HdA does not perceive specific people as carriers of these phenomena, but rather a diffuse “ people ”. Second, the HdA cannot fulfill its claim to use a neutral superstition term. The editors preferred “superstition” to “ popular belief ” because they wanted to include scholarly ideas. In superstition is, however, a category to which a small minority elite theologians and scientists all pejorative excludes what they think subjectively wrong. So it is not possible to objectively assign beliefs and practices to a category of “superstition”. In addition, the HdA follows the outdated romantic theory, according to which the superstition of the rural population should go back to relics of pre-Christian paganism . And thirdly, the HdA led to a distorted presentation of folklore in public. Today the discipline is often seen as a science of the magical , irrational and occult , the task of which is to connect the modern present with the archaic past. Especially in the journalistic presentation of folklore and folk religiosity , the HdA has "caused a lot of spiritual mischief".

According to Daxelmüller, the HdA can only be used today if one is very familiar with the scientific and historical context of the time it was created. Folklorist Willi Höfig agrees with this judgment in 2009 and believes that "the use of the HDA is burdened with practically unreasonable requirements", a "requirement that hardly anyone can meet today." While the HdA was actually written for a folklore specialist audience , it also found the interest of a bourgeois public. As its scientific acceptance decreased, it gained increasing popularity among laypeople. The CD-ROM version published in 2006 was advertised as the “reading book of superstition”. Folklorist Michaela Fenske sums it up: "The largely decontextualized, positivist collection of practices and ideas from the religious world of agricultural society, largely criticized as" out of date "by the discipline, brought and still gives bourgeois readers an exotic reading pleasure."

The folklorist Dieter Harmening judged the HdA in 2009: "It is a mixture whose speculative power is difficult, if at all, to evade the layman, and neither is the expert, who is a little further from the subject." He warns journalists in particular from using it. Harmening formulates the approach of modern superstition research in his own dictionary of superstition as follows:

“Only historical research on superstition is able to falsify the universalistic conceptual apparatus by looking to answer questions about the origin and processes of transmission: which materials are passed on in which ways, where from and where; by whom and how are they received and how do they change their shape, their meaning and their use? If one looks only at the authors and works from which the tradition is based, then numerous thoughts and forms can be recognized as being shaped by specific, historically describable environments, and behind them contemporary scientific teachings and practices based on them become visible. "

- Dieter Harmening : Harmening 2009, p. 16f.

However, there have recently been more positive reviews of the HdA. According to Roland Linde, it is “still an indispensable reference work.” And according to Eva Kreissl , the HdA should be read “with the same caution” as the online encyclopedia Wikipedia .

literature

  • Christoph Daxelmüller : Foreword. In: Hanns Bächtold-Stäubli (Hrsg.): Concise dictionary of German superstition . Volume 1, Unchanged Photomechanical Reprint from 1927. Walter de Gruyter, Berlin / New York 1987, ISBN 3-11-011194-2 , pp. V – xl.
  • Michaela Fenske : Knowledge of cultural studies goes public. Insights into the sphere of activity of science and the public using the example of folklore encyclopedias. In: Historical Anthropology. 19th year, Issue 1, 2011, pp. 112–122.
  • Dieter Harmening : Dictionary of superstition. 2nd, revised and expanded edition. Reclam, Stuttgart 2009, ISBN 978-3-15-018620-6 .

Web links

Wikisource: Concise dictionary of German superstition  - sources and full texts

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Fenske 2011, p. 116.
  2. ↑ Daxelmüller 1987, p. Vi, xxxiv.
  3. ↑ Daxelmüller 1987, p. Xxxiv.
  4. ↑ Harmening 2009, p. 16.
  5. ↑ Daxelmüller 1987, p. Vi f.
  6. ↑ Daxelmüller 1987, p. Xi f.
  7. ↑ Daxelmüller 1987, p. Xii.
  8. ↑ Daxelmüller 1987, p. Xv.
  9. ↑ Daxelmüller 1987, p. Xvi f.
  10. ↑ Daxelmüller 1987, pp. Xviii f.
  11. ↑ Daxelmüller 1987, pp. Xix-xxi.
  12. ↑ Daxelmüller 1987, p. Xxi.
  13. ↑ Daxelmüller 1987, pp. Xxiii.
  14. ↑ Daxelmüller 1987, pp. Xxii, xxviii, xxxi.
  15. ↑ Daxelmüller 1987, pp. Xxxiii f.
  16. ↑ Daxelmüller 1987, p. Xxv.
  17. ↑ Willi Höfig: Review of: Concise Dictionary of German Superstition. Edited with the special participation of Eduard Hoffmann-Krayer and the collaboration of numerous experts from Hanns Bächtold-Stäubli, Vol. 1-10. Berlin: de Gruyter 1927-42. CD-ROM (digital library 145): Berlin: Directmedia 2006. In: Fabula . Volume 50, No. 1/2, pp. 128-131. Here p. 130.
  18. ↑ Fenske 2011, p. 117. See also ibid, p. 113.
  19. ↑ Harmening 2009, p. 16.
  20. ↑ Fenske 2011, p. 122.
  21. ↑ Roland Linde: Treasure digging and magic. Case studies from the county of Lippe. In: Jan Carstensen, Gefion Apel (Ed.): “Verflixt!” - Ghosts, witches and demons. (= Writings of the LWL-Freilichtmuseum Detmold. Westfälisches Landesmuseum für Volkskunde. Volume 35). Waxmann, Münster / New York / Munich / Berlin 2013, ISBN 978-3-8309-2885-0 , pp. 159–167; here: p. 167, note 17.
  22. ^ Eva Kreissl : Superstition as a cultural technique. A research project at the Graz Folklore Museum. In: Jan Carstensen, Gefion Apel (Ed.): “Verflixt!” - Ghosts, witches and demons. (= Writings of the LWL-Freilichtmuseum Detmold. Westfälisches Landesmuseum für Volkskunde. Volume 35). Waxmann, Münster / New York / Munich / Berlin 2013, ISBN 978-3-8309-2885-0 , pp. 85–95. Here p. 89, col. 2.