Prague German

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
The golden city of Prague from the Powder Tower seen from

As a Prague German ( Czech : pražská němčina ) is that form of written German language referred to in Bohemia and there, especially in Prague , now the capital of the Czech Republic was maintained. In the German language history , it plays an important role through its balancing function between the bairisch and alemannisch dominated Upper German forms of writing in Austria and southern Germany and in central Germany settled East Middle language forms from which ultimately the modern New High German was written language.

history

In addition to the Czech language, there have been various German dialects in Bohemia since the Middle Ages , which were influenced by Central Bavarian in the south and south-west and closely connected with the neighboring dialects in Upper and Lower Austria and the Bohemian Forest . In the Egerland around the city of Eger , northern Bavarian dialects were spoken, in the north and northeast, however, East-Central German dialects, which were similar to the dialects in Saxony and Silesia . There was also the also from the West Germanic dialect continuum resulting Yiddish language of the Jewish population. A form of German was therefore used in writing in Bohemia, which represented a compromise between these different varieties .

The Prague German is a dialect-free, strong on the written language oriented German. Linguists therefore doubt that Prague German is derived from the dialects spoken in the region from ancient times. Rather, the Prague German is likely to have originated from the fact that German became the educational language of the Jews in the Habsburg lands and they first learned this German through the written language. For a long time, Jewish schools in the Habsburg lands were only allowed to teach practical subjects such as mathematics and geography in addition to religion, provided that the language of instruction was German. German became the language of education for many Jews and often also the mother tongue for subsequent generations .

When Germany decided in favor of the Little German solution without Austria in the 19th century , a movement emerged which turned against German models for the Austrian written language and looked for a new model for the Austrian written language within the Habsburg lands. This was soon found in Prague German. Now even non-Jews began to orientate themselves to this German. Since anti-Semitism was already strong at the time, people began to assume continuity with the dialects that had been spoken in the region for a long time, thereby downplaying the fact that it was a German that was influenced by Jews. For linguists, however, one thing is clear: If this continuity existed, Prague German would be German with a strong dialectic color. But it is relatively dialect-free.

In the big cities, especially in Prague, this Prague written German was increasingly used orally by the bourgeoisie and the administration. It thus formed a bridge between the southern Upper German writing habits and the East Central German forms of the Saxon office language in the north. The language form of the works printed in Prague enjoyed great popularity both in the south and in the north, while especially from the 16th to the 18th century Upper German books were massively rejected or ignored in the north and, conversely, East Central German works in the south were hostile. Prague German retained this balancing function well into the 20th century, where it met with the writers Rainer Maria Rilke , Franz Kafka , Max Brod , Franz Werfel , Egon Erwin Kisch , Friedrich Torberg , Oskar Baum , Johannes Urzidil , Felix Weltsch , Paul Leppin and Lenka Reinerová experienced a final bloom.

After the occupation of Czechoslovakia by the German Reich in 1939 and the expulsion of the German-speaking population after 1945, German literature production in Prague was stopped and could only continue to exist in exile. The Prague German as an independent variant of the German language largely ceased to exist.

German and Czech

Both languages, German and Czech, have coexisted in spoken form in Bohemia since the Middle Ages. During this time, however, Latin always functioned as the written language of the educated, the curia and the imperial administration, and apart from a few works, both German and Czech existed mainly as the spoken language of the peasant population in various regional variants. The Czech language only began to flourish through the work of Jan Hus , but from the 15th century after the Hussite Wars and especially during the Counter Reformation after the Thirty Years' War it was discriminated against as a heretical language and pushed into the underground.

At the same time, German began to emancipate itself more and more from Latin, and so it increasingly became the language of education in Bohemia. The Prague German developed into the regional standard variety and enjoyed a high level of prestige in the entire German-speaking area from the 17th century. It was considered to be particularly “pure” German, with no regional coloring, which was due to the aforementioned middle position between Upper German and East Central German writing and speaking habits. After the legal position of the Jewish population was improved with tolerance patents under Emperor Joseph II , many began to integrate into the German-speaking society of Bohemia, and many Jews were among the most important representatives of Prague German in the 19th century. They also gave up the Yiddish language more and more.

In the 19th century, the Czechs began to oppose forced bilingualism , where Czech was the clearly disadvantaged language. Due to the movement of the Young Czechs and under the influence of the Slavs Congress in Prague in 1848, the Czech-speaking population now demanded more political participation and recognition of the language. Czech literature also began to flourish again, and the language expanded greatly in the decades that followed. However, despite many compromises ( German University in Prague ), no satisfactory solution could be found between the ethnic and linguistic groups, and this situation contributed significantly to the collapse of Austria-Hungary and the independence of Czechoslovakia . Around 1860, the German-speaking majority of Prague fell in the course of industrialization with the accompanying urbanization .

Contrary to the political turbulence, Prague German experienced a new period of prosperity in democratic Czechoslovakia both before the First World War and in the inter-war period , when more and more nationalist and fascist circles began to dominate politics in Austria and Germany. Above all, Bohemian-Jewish writers and emigrants from Austria and Germany who fled to Prague contributed significantly to this. However, with the outbreak of World War II, this last flowering phase came to an abrupt end.

Characteristic

In the Middle Ages, the German language in Bohemia was strongly influenced by Bavarian- Austrian influences. During the time of humanism and the Reformation , however, the East Central German influence on the written language intensified, above all through the linguistic effect of Martin Luther's translation of the Bible . After the Thirty Years' War , there was an increased immigration of German-speaking settlers into the war-ravaged Bohemian areas, which led to a further mix of dialects. Religiously motivated expulsions to and from Bohemia reinforced this development in the course of the Counter Reformation .

From the Upper German writing language , as it was used in the 17th and 18th centuries in Austria and today's southern Germany, the Prague German developed more and more in the direction of the Saxon spelling. The typical Upper German distinction between ei and ai was given up at an early stage . The Upper German diphthongs ue, iu, uo and eu are also deleted in favor of the Central German writing convention. The confusion of w and b, as well as b and p, which is typical of the Bavarian dialect , is declining, as is the spelling of the aspirated kh, which comes from Carinthian and Tyrolean .

These adjustments to the East Central German spelling primarily concerned the spelling, but less so the vocabulary, semantics and grammar used . Here the Upper German forms were largely preserved. As a result, Prague German still sounded very familiar in terms of word choice and narrative to Austrian and Bavarian ears, while it was easier to read in the north because it used almost the same spelling.

In the 18th century, Bohemia was the theater of war in the Seven Years' War between Prussia and Austria, which resulted in destruction and population losses in Bohemia. The subsequent resettlement of German-speaking people from different regions outside of Bohemia resulted in a further balance in Prague German between the two linguistic poles.

In the 19th century, Prague German was increasingly influenced by the typical Austrian administrative language. The state seized more and more administrative competence and thus also determined the linguistic terms used for it. A vocabulary that sounds typically Austrian for Bavaria, such as “carpenter” for “carpenter” or “butcher” for “butcher”, originates from this period. However, the Bohemian kitchen vocabulary with its many terms originating from Czech spread in the other direction at the same time, both to Austria and to Old Bavaria, which means that culinary terms are mostly identical in the three regions.

Prague German-language newspapers

  • Prager Oberpostamts-Zeitung , later Prager Zeitung
  • Libussa (1802–1804), a patriotic quarterly publication
  • Bohemia (1828-1938)
  • Libussa (1851–1860), yearbook for ...
  • Lotos (1851–1942), scientific journal
  • Medical correspondence sheet for Bohemia , organ of the Association of German Doctors in Prague (1864–1865, 1873–1875), later Prague medical weekly (1876–1915)
  • Prager Tagblatt (1876–1939)
  • Prager Abendblatt (1867-1918)
  • Prague Press (1921–1939)
  • Social Democrat (1925–1938), central organ of the DSAP
  • Supplement to Rudý prapor (Red Flag) (1927–1928)
  • Prager Rundschau (1931–1939)
  • Deutsche Volks-Zeitung , Prague, mouthpiece of the German-speaking communists in Czechoslovakia
  • Die Weltbühne , appeared in exile in Prague from 1934 to 1938
  • Rote Fahne (1934–1938), communist daily newspaper
  • Der Neue Tag (1939–1945), daily newspaper for Bohemia and Moravia: official publication organ of the Reich Protector for Bohemia and Moravia and the subordinate German agencies
  • Prague evening (1939–1944)
  • Bohemia and Moravia (1940–1945), sheet of the Reich Protector
  • Welt Studenten Nachrichten (1947–1990), magazine of the International Student Union
  • Construction and Peace (1951–1965), weekly newspaper for German workers in Czechoslovakia, later Volkszeitung (1966–1968), later Prager Volkszeitung (1969–2005), weekly newspaper for Germans in the Czech Republic / weekly newspaper for German citizens in the Czech Republic
  • Czechoslovakia (1953–1960), organ of the Ministry of Information and Enlightenment, later Socialist Czechoslovakia (1961–1990)
  • In the Heart of Europe (1958–1971), Czechoslovak Monthly , later Czechoslovakian Life (1972–1992), later Czechoslovakian Life Today (1993–1993)
  • Information bulletin of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Czechoslovakia (1978–1989)
  • New Prague Press (1981–1990), news from politics, economy, society, culture, sport
  • IOJ Nachrichten (1985–1991), newspaper of the International Organization of Journalists
  • Prague newspaper (1991–)
  • German newspaper , supplement to the newspaper " Lidové noviny "
  • Foreign trade of the Czech Republic (1993), later economy and trade in the Czech Republic (1994–2009)
  • The countries of the Bohemian crown (1994–1997), revue for society and culture
  • Plus (1994–), magazine of the German-Czech Chamber of Commerce and Industry
  • Landes-Anzeiger (1995–1998), information sheet of the regional assembly of Germans in Bohemia, Moravia and Silesia, later Landes-Zeitung ( regional newspaper ) (1999–2014), newspaper of Germans in the Czech Republic, later LandesECHO (2014–), magazine of Germans in the Czech Republic

Other German-language newspapers from Bohemia appeared in Budweis (Südböhmische Volkszeitung, Waldheimat) , in Prachatitz (Der Böhmerwald) and Klattau (Der Bote aus dem Böhmerwalde) . In Moravia, on the other hand, the cities of Brno and Olomouc were important independent centers for press and literature, which in the 19th century, however, often oriented more towards Vienna than towards Prague. Also sends Czech Radio Radio Prague .

literature

  • Peter Wiesinger (Ed.): Studies on Early New High German - Emil Skála on his 60th birthday on November 20, 1988 . Among employees by Franz Patocka et al. Kümmerle, Göppingen 1988, ISBN 3-87452-712-3 .
  • Jaromír Povejšil: The Prague German of the 17th and 18th centuries - a contribution to the history of the German written language . Buske, Hamburg 1980, ISBN 3-87118-349-0 .
  • Emil Skála: The development of the office language in Eger 1310 to 1660 (publications of the Institute for German Language and Literature, 35: Series B. Building blocks for the history of the language of New High German). Akademie-Verlag, Berlin 1967.

See also

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Historical writing languages ​​- Internet bibliography: Special case: Bohemian and Moravian
  2. ↑ Český rozhlas 7 - Radio Praha: Goethe Medal to Lenka Reinerova
  3. ↑ Peter von Polenz : German language history from the late Middle Ages to the present . Volume III. de Gruyter, Berlin (inter alia) 1999, ISBN 3-11-014344-5 , p. 134 ( limited preview in the Google book search).
  4. ↑ Helmut Glück : The vernacular languages ​​as a subject of learning in the Middle Ages and in the early modern period . de Gruyter, Berlin (inter alia) 2002, ISBN 3-11-017541-X , p. 62 ( limited preview in the Google book search).
  5. ↑ KK priv. Prager Zeitung - online at ANNO
  6. ↑ Libussa - online at NKP
  7. ↑ First year - online at Archive.org
  8. ↑ [1]
  9. ↑ [2]
  10. ↑ [3]
  11. ↑ Prager Abendblatt - online at ANNO
  12. ↑ Barbara Köpplová: The new day - every such koncu nemeckého tisku v Čechách a na Moravě . In: Sborník Národního muzea v Praze, řada C - Literární historie 57 (4): 31-36. ( Memento of the original from March 4, 2016 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. @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.nm.cz
  13. ↑ Marco Zimmermann: 60 years of German-language publications in Czechoslovakia: From “Aufbau und Frieden” to “Prager Zeitung”, Radio Prague, October 1, 2011
  14. ↑ Ralf Pasch, Marco Zimmermann: The role of journalists from the newspaper Aufbau und Frieden / Prager Volkszeitung in the search for identity of the German minority in Czechoslovakia after 1945 - a project sketch
  15. ↑ Prague newspaper
  16. ↑ Wirtschaftsmagazin Plus ( Memento of the original from September 27, 2015 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. @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / tschechien.ahk.de
  17. ↑ Silja Schultheis: New Wind in the regional newspaper Radio Prague, February 14, 2003
  18. ↑ LandesECHO
  19. ^ University of Gießen : German-language newspapers from the beginnings to 1945 ( Memento from February 19, 2008 in the Internet Archive )
  20. ^ Radio Prague