obituary

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An obituary is the assessment, evaluation and, if necessary, appreciation of the life and achievements of a deceased person.

Alternative name

In today's parlance, obituary and necrology are synonyms .

etymology

The verb obituary has been used since Kaspar von Stieler , he paraphrases it in Latin Sectari aliquem clamore per vias , 'Chasing someone through the streets with loud shouts' . No earlier source is known for the noun obituary than Philipp von Zesen's "Hoch-deutscher Helikon", but he uses it differently from Stieler to Germanize the foreign word "echo".

In the poems of Johann Christian Günther , “Obituary” occurs more frequently, for him it has the meaning “Nachruhm”, which only appears in the dictionary in Johann Christoph Adelung . Joachim Heinrich Campe noted in his “Dictionary of the German Language” (2nd edition 1813) the following meanings of “obituary”: (1) a call to a person or thing who is moving away; (2) "a call which one leaves behind to others after his removal, his death" (text of the deceased!); (3)  Synonym of “Nachruhm” (like ennobling).

It was not until the middle of the 19th century that the word broke away from these historical references and penetrated as a replacement word for “ Nekrolog ” (a text written about a deceased person), for which there were previously no generally accepted suggestions for German translation.

All other meanings of the noun (Zesen, Günther, Campe) are largely lost due to the change in meaning . This led to the strange situation that noun (obituary = necrology) and verb (obituary = to call after; cf. Adelung, Campe) contain disjoint meanings.

See also

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Kaspar von Stieler: The German language family tree and growth. 1630.
  2. ^ Philipp von Zesen: For the third and last time completed High German Helicon. 1649.
  3. ↑ Hoch-deutscher Helikon, indicator of foreign words [unpaginated]: " Echo [:] Tahlmunde / widerschal / gegenhal / obituary [emphasis by editor], reverberation / revoked."
  4. ↑ Schweidnitz 1710–1715 line “Your obituary calls the stars his brothers.” Or “Your obituary will one day stand by the stars” ( zeno.org ).
  5. ^ Johann Christoph Adelung: Attempt of a complete grammatical-critical dictionary of the High German dialect (1774–1786). Volume 3: Sp. 383 ( woerterbuchnetz.de ).
  6. ^ Friedrich Kluge: Etymological dictionary of the German language. 18th edition edit. by Walther Mitzka . De Gruyter, Berlin 1960.
  7. ↑ DUDEN: The large dictionary of the German language in 6 volumes, ed. v. Günther Drosdowski 1976 ff.