Notker III.

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Notker Labeo, fantasy portrait (relief on the door of the collegiate church St. Gallen )

Notker III. , called Notker Labeo, Notker Teutonicus or Notker the German (* around 950 in Thurgau ; † June 28, 1022 in St. Gallen ), was a Benedictine monk and head of the monastery school in St. Gallen. He was the first Aristotle commentator of the Middle Ages and the most important translator before Luther.

Drawing and explanation of geometric figures according to Aristotle in Notker's commentary on the categories in the St. Gallen manuscript, Stiftsbibliothek, Cod. Sang. 818, page 62 (11th century)
Glosses Notkers in a manuscript by Ciceros De inventione . St. Gallen, Abbey Library, Cod. Sang. 820, page 124 (10th century)

Life

Notker translated individual works from ancient Latin literature , which were part of the convent school in the early Middle Ages , into Old High German . His translation and commentary on the Psalter is particularly important .

The authors he has translated also include Boethius , Martianus Capella and the book of Job from the Old Testament. From Boethius he translated, among other things, Aristotle transmissions and commentaries.

Notker died of the consequences of an infectious disease, which participants in the Italian campaign of Emperor Heinrich II had brought to St. Gallen.

plant

Notker's translation technique is not one-sidedly geared towards understanding the Latin text, but rather aims at an appropriate (old high) German expression. This made him especially popular with his students. Notker has de facto created a new scientific language and a German literary language interspersed with artistic sensitivity.

The graphematic system that he helped create for his Alemannic mother tongue is also impressive . Notker commented on this in a letter to Bishop Hugo von Sitten as follows: "One must know that the German words cannot be written without an accent - acute and circumflex - with the exception of articles that are pronounced alone without an accent."

Notker's initial law

Notker was a keen observer of his Alemannic language, which was also reflected in his works in the spelling of the plosives : In his writing system, b and p, d (as far as <germ. Þ, not <t) and t as well as g and k alternate depending on the finalization of the preceding word. The voiceless consonants p, t, k are firstly at the beginning of a sentence or part of a sentence and secondly within a sentence if the immediately preceding word ends in a voiceless consonant (in Notker p, t, k; pf, z, ch; b, d , g; f, h, s). In contrast, the initial consonants b, d, g are used if the immediately preceding word ends in a vowel or a voiced consonant (in Notker's case l, r, m, n). The initial law also applies to the basic word of a compound word.

Examples:

  • demo golde, but des koldes ('the gold', 'the gold')
  • fiurgot, but erdcot ('fire god', earth god ')

This regularity also applies to modern Swiss German dialects; see Heusler's law .

literature

Web links

Footnotes

  1. ↑ Section as well as the translation of the Notker quote from: Dieter Kartschoke (see literature)
  2. ↑ Stefanie Stricker: Notker's initial law. In: Metzler Lexicon Language. Edited by Hans Glück. Metzler, Stuttgart / Weimar 1993, p. 429.
personal data
SURNAME Notker III.
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Notker Labeo; Notker Teutonicus; Notker the German
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Head of the monastery school in St. Gallen; Translator of ancient Latin literature
DATE OF BIRTH around 950
PLACE OF BIRTH Thurgau
DATE OF DEATH June 28, 1022
Place of death Prince Abbey of St. Gallen